Sour grapes (Song festival 2019)

Let's say that you're sixteen years old and a member of the closely knit and highly supportive youth population of the kibbutz. There are two songs presented by members of this population in the song festival and you are allowed to vote for two songs. Who do you vote for?

Thus it was no surprise that with approximately 75% of the voting audience being under the age of 18, the two teenager songs came first and second (out of eleven). There were many older people in the audience but I suspect that many either didn't want to vote or couldn't understand how to vote (via a mobile phone application).

My song came last with hardly any votes. It's not surprising that I am bitter about the entire experience.

There was one other song which had a good chorus, but the ratio between verse and chorus was far too high which lessened the impact of the choruses. The other songs tended to wander around and were far too long. My song was concise and to the point.

I think that I proved my point about not wanting to sing my song; as I wrote six years ago: I don't like the competition aspect for two reasons: first, a kibbutz is supposed to be an egalitarian society and the idea of competition is supposed to be eschewed; secondly, people vote not necessarily on the merits of the song that they have just heard for the first time but more probably on the merits of the performance and also possibly according to family affiliations. The identities of the lyricists and composers were not disclosed till the end of the evening, but one could see who was singing; in certain cases, this could lead one to make an informed guess as to the identities of the writers. It's fairly clear that if I'm singing anything, it's going to be a song that I wrote.

I don't know how true the organiser's statement about having difficulties in finding singers (which forced me to sing) is true. On the one hand, one song was sung by someone who might still be in the army and learnt the song very quickly, giving credence to the organiser's statement. On the other hand, two songs were sung by trios (one person singing in both), several were sung by duos and only a few were solos. So someone could have been extracted from one of those trios or persuaded to sing two songs.

I'm fairly certain that someone called the evening a celebration; I call it a degredation. I feel much worse about yesterday than I did six years ago, because I felt that my song was very catchy and would have a good chance of winning had there been a level playing field.

The only consolations that I can take are

• two performers told me on Friday morning that they couldn't get my song out of their heads after hearing it in rehearsal the previous evening. 
• I sent the song to a few friends via mobile phone two weeks ago and they were very complimentary
• while making a condolence visit a few weeks ago to someone whose mother had just died, this person surprised me by saying how much he appreciates the amount of time and attention that I invest in preparing songs for the Yom Kippur evening.