emotion

 Years ago I had a hot debate with a fellow performer.  We had both noticed that in some performances, the performers were able to create strong emotions in the audience.  Sometimes, under the right circumstances, the appearance of sadness in the performer would make the audience cry.  The performer's joy could make the audience joyful.  He was trying to convince me it was magic, as in "could not be explained by science."  That rubbed me the wrong way, so I argued that it had to be something to do with what the performer actually did, and what images and sounds made their way from the performer to the eyes and ears of the people watching.  But the actual mechanism remained a mystery.

Sometimes it can be difficult to decide what to work on next, to get the most bang for the buck.  When I'm working with performing groups they often ask me if it's too early to get into the "emotional stuff" with a new piece, if they haven't even quite got the notes and words nailed down.

My short answer would be "no", but I can imagine why they might think so!  First, when you're a hammer everything looks like a nail.  Lots of performers, especially musicians, are first and foremost great technicians.  They love to fine-tune their technical skills, above all else!  Just like a bowler who spends hour after hour down at the lanes, trying to bowl strikes.  It's very "flow" - clear rules, instant feedback.  It's fun!  But bowling isn't a performance art.  I mean, people may like to watch it, but it's a sport, not an art, and the spectators aren't having to suspend disbelief.  Their expectations are rather low, in terms of the emotional depth of the experience of watching a bowling tournament.  So treating stage performance like bowling isn't the best approach.

Also there's a prevailing attitude that the "fluffy stuff" is pointless until the technique is in place.  And to some extent that's true - if you don't know the notes, you're not going to make big gains by delving deeper into the character and the objective!

However, that's not the end of the story.

Firstly, the strategy of "finishing the technique" before getting into the emotional guts of the piece is fatally flawed because the technique can never be finished.  There is no perfect.  If you wait for perfection before moving on, you will never move on.

Secondly and maybe more importantly, having a clear concept of the piece at an emotional level gives you a framework to hang all that technique on.  If you ground your musical and performance choices in the human purpose of the piece, you might actually remember those dynamics!  I wouldn't take the artistic analysis to its conclusion right away, but if you can just figure out the basics (who are you, who else is there, what's the relationship, what are the changes), you will find all that technical work will be more exciting and more efficient too.

Finally, you get a whole lot of technique "for free" when you give yourself over to the human, emotional concepts that form the purpose of the piece.  A thousand little details fall into place without discussion, springing naturally and forcefully from the scene.  And just like the tennis player who finally just watches the ball instead of obsessing on the details of their swing, letting your "self 2" take over will let you get out of your own way, letting your best technician shine through for a change.

So it's never too early.

Recently I read a book entitled "The Listener's Guide to Great Instrumentalists" by David Hamilton, and found another perspective on performance that dovetails beautifully with what I believe, and adds a perspective unique to the performing musician.  Let me quote from the introduction.

A musical performer engages simultaneously in several activities.  Although, as with any such abstract schematization, the boundaries are not always clear-cut, we might distinguish three such activities: execution, interpretation, and projection.  The relate, respectively, to the instrument, the musical work, and the listener.  The performer must have sufficient command of the instrument to execute the music that has been written for it.  He must understand that piece he is playing, must have (at least instinctively, not necessarily in a verbally articulate form) a conception of its shape and its sense.  And finally, he must communicate that conception, and a sense of his own involvement in the whole process, to the audience.

I think that's a pretty good summary of what's involved in stage performance - essentially technique and virtuosity, understanding at the level of emotional meaning, and the ability to project that meaning (or in some cases that technique) to the audience.

My general belief is that performers should "swing for the fences" and communicate something important or at least enjoyable at an emotional level, but the book reminds me that this is not the only option.  It's quite reasonable for a performer to show off their virtuosity and be appreciated for that skill alone.  Not every mode of performance allows this kind of approach.  Nobody cares if they are watching a "great actor" - in fact that concept can only distract from the great acting that (we hope) is going on.  But in the musical realm, there are lots of people who would pay twenty bucks just to see someone who has an amazing command of an instrument.  Chiefly I'm speaking of people who also play that instrument.  :)  It's like being impressed with a guy who can bowl a 300 game - it may not touch you at an emotional level, but being impressed is still an experience that has value.

There is a name for a piece that is written to show off skills.  It's called an "étude" which translates to "study" in English.  Chopin produced many such pieces, each focusing on a particular piano skill, like the ability to play a lot of notes very quickly, or to play chords that are spread beyond the reach of a normal hand, or to play a different time signature with each hand.  That can be amazing to watch!  However I believe that for enduring listening pleasure, we gravitate towards works that have more depth.  I'm not a person with an encyclopedic knowledge of piano pieces, but I love to listen to "Claire de Lune" or Chopin's "Raindrop Prelude" because those pieces seem to deliver the emotional depth that I crave in performance.  Rachmaninoff's "Prelude in C# Minor" is another of my favorites because of it's passion.

Quite often I get questions from blog readers in email, and sometimes they seems like good fodder for blog posts. I figure if I answer in a post, everyone can benefit. Here's what one fellow asked:

I’d like to know how to get to the level of intimacy with the audience to be able to make myself vulnerable to them.  To me that is where the connection is.  I am willing to go there, I just don’t know where “there” is.

Very good question!  It's also great to see that this reader realizes there's something he doesn't understand, and that he's willing to learn.  We would all do better to cultivate "beginner mind" so we can keep on learning!

So how do we develop intimacy with an audience?  First of all, what's intimacy?

The Wikipedia definition of intimacy is a bit complex, but in a nutshell emotional intimacy involved breaking down the barriers between yourself and someone else, so that you are willing to disclose "previously hidden thoughts and feelings."  Telling someone your secret dreams and thoughts, and listening to theirs, forms the foundation of an intimate relationship.

Of course, in the every-day world, this can take months or years, and as a performer if you're shooting for intimacy you don't have that kind of time.  Also even if you achieve intimacy with an audience, you probably can't say you have a relationship.  (Even if some of them might think you do, and then come up to you after the show and talk to you like a long-lost close friend even though you have never seen them before... but I digress.)

So for a performer, just what does intimacy mean?  I'll take a stab at it.  Achieving intimacy with an audience means that at least one person in the audience feels that they got something honest from you.  For at least a little while, they feel that they have a connection with you, based on that honest communication.  It might not be a real relationship, but at some level it *reminds them* of one, and they come to associate your face, your voice, your presence with an emotional state of closeness.

Do you agree?  I think that makes sense.

So how do we get there?  First and foremost, you have to understand your material at a human level.  You can't convey anything if you've got nothing to convey.  Secondly I believe that because of the super-developed human bullsh*t radar, your best and perhaps your only chance to have them believe you're being honest is to actually be honest.  I don't think you can fake it, or if that is possible, it's much harder than just being honest.

This is where it gets hard.  Being honest at an emotional level means that you're going to feel vulnerable.  You're not *really* vulnerable, of course.  Nothing bad is going to happen to you because you told someone else how you really feel.  Quite the opposite.  But most of us get stuck to some degree in the kindergarten mentality that says we must keep our feelings to ourselves, or someone in our peer group will taunt and make fun of us.  It's true - kids can be cruel.  Five is a hard age.  But growing beyond that level, emotionally, is a prerequisite if you're going to be honest and not get massive stage fright about it.

If you're having trouble being intimate with audiences (or your spouse for that matter) because you're afraid to open the kimono and tell them the truth, you're not alone.  When you were five and the other kids made fun of you for having a pink lunchbox, you might have thought you would die, but you didn't.  As I told my five-year-old yesterday, "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."  You've got nothing *real* at risk, by being honest on stage.  And if you're putting up a facade, you have very little to gain from the experience.

So how do you do it?  You already know how.  Some part of you might have been inventing reasons why you can't be honest on stage.  Tell that part of you to shut up for a while, and try it!

I told myself I would not try to write any blog entries during the holiday season.  The plan was to kick back and reflect on the first few months of Owning The Stage, what turned out to be interesting and what didn't, and thereby to come up with a plan for 2009.  However, The Economist published a really interesting article on one of my pet topics, namely the purpose of music in Society, and I had to bring it to your attention, dear reader, and add a comment or two.

If you have fifteen minutes, you should probably read the whole article, but if you're busy let me give you the whirlwind tour.

Music is really important for humans.  You can tell because it's very time consuming and expensive for Society to produce and consume it as much as we do.  But what purpose does it serve?  There are three competing theories.

Theory number one goes like this: music gives the performer a better chance to reproduce, so generation by generation that advantage breeds more musical people.  I like this theory, even if it's a bit self-serving to do so!  I live in two circles, a musical and performance one, and a computer science one, and I have certainly noticed that the people who know me as a performer respond to me quite differently.  When Realtime is singing somewhere, we all get attention from the opposite sex.  We're all quite married, of course, but the attention doesn't go unnoticed!  It's just not the same when I attend a computer-related conference.  And not just because everyone there is male.

Theory number two is that music serves to bind together groups, and creates a survival advantage in that way.  I think we can all corroborate that one too - if you're a musician, I would bet dimes to dollars that you have a clique built up around the style of music that you sing or play.  Imagine the power of that force in prehistoric times to keep the tribe together, and determine who was in, and who was out.  Makes sense.

Number three I don't much care for.  It states that our ability to comprehend and perform music is an accident - we evolved those mental capacities for other reasons.  Stephen Pinker says basically this: A brain devoted to turning sound into meaning is tickled by an oversupply of tone, melody and rhythm. Singing is auditory masturbation to satisfy this craving. Playing musical instruments is auditory pornography.

However, perhaps they are all partly right.  As the article suggets, perhaps we evolved the musical capacity for other reasons, but then put them to good evolutionary use, for reproduction and survival.  I can buy that.

Of more importance to the performer is the following:

What all of these hypotheses have in common is the ability of music to manipulate the emotions, and this is the most mysterious part of all. That some sounds lead to sadness and others to joy is the nub of all three hypotheses. The singing lover is not merely demonstrating his prowess; he also seeks to change his beloved’s emotions.

Once we understand more clearly the way that music functions in the brain to create emotions in the listener, the performing arts will no doubt be able to exploit that information to create more impactful performances.  But for the time being, we'll just have to stick with what works, and learn more by trial and error!

So after finishing the rather deep and dense Stanislavski book (aren't you glad I read that so you don't have to?), I decided to take a breather from my constant reading of performance-related books, and read the immensely popular "The Power Of Now" by Eckhart Tolle. It's one of those books you pretty much have to read, at least if you live in my house. ;)

However, my brain has had the "performance filter" installed 24/7 for the past three months.  Every scrap of input that makes its way to one of my five senses gets evaluated for relevance to making performance better, or understanding it more deeply.  So I find that stuff wherever I look, and preditably the Tolle book is no different.  And I've only read chapter one.

Here's a quick and inexpert summary.  Mr. Tolle had a very mystical experience.  After feeling quite horrible and suicidal, he said to himself, "I can't live with myself any more."  Then he stopped, wondering if that meant there were two of him, the one who was feeling horrible, and the other one who couldn't live with that one any more.  At that moment, the horrible feeling self shriveled up and died, leaving him in a state of complete bliss.  He spent the next two years disengaged from the world, living on park benches, just being in a more or less constant state of inner joy.

Tolle describes this emotional pain and suffering as a result of identifying with your mind, instead of your being.  Your mind thinks, views the present with the filter of the past, and tries to ensure its survival in the future.  But you are not your mind!  Your constant thinking and negative mental chatter (remember the series on stage fright?) do not constitute your real, complete self.  And you can experience a state of inner peace and joy by turning off that mental chatter.

Now to the point - that is one reason that people love to be entertained, to observe and mentally participate in a performance.  It allows them to stop the mental chatter, and live in another world for a while.  They give over control of their emotional lives and their attention to the performance, and they get a break from the negative self-chatter, and the emotional anxiety of their lives.

And of course its even more powerful for a performer who gives him or her self over completely and successfully to the scene/song, and stays in it.  As I've often read and said, the performer will benefit even more from the performance than the audience.

I'm quite lucky - I have discovered that I have an easy time focusing on the now, and getting to a state of inner peace.  And it's not because I've ever trained myself in meditation.  I believe it's because I've had twenty years practice on stage, shifting myself into a new state of mind in order to perform truthfully.

So if you needed one more reason to learn how to perform better, there it is!  Inner peace and joy.  That's better than a poke in the eye.

I laughed out loud when I ran across this short article on The Onion - America's Finest News Source.

Basically it talks about how a woman was moved to the core of her being by lyrics that the artist put no thought into.  It's meant to be funny (it is The Onion, not the New York Times), but it reminds me of an important truth about stage performance and audiences that I think people overlook often, which is that it's not about you!  Your audience doesn't have a mind-reading device, so they can't specifically tell what you're thinking about, and moreover they just don't care.  At the end of the day they care about the emotional effect you're having on them, and nothing else is even in the equation.

I bet it happens a million times a day that someone is moved by lyrics that meant nothing to the composer, or more likely meant something completely different to the composer than what the listener took away.  After all between the singer and the listener, there's no direct link - just light waves, and vibrations in the air.  That's the nature of what we call communication.  The sound and light don't mean anything until they get through the audience's eyes and ears, and into their brains where they stimulate memories, and ultimately emotional responses.  Sometimes the listener won't even know why the emotions are happening!

I get that sometimes.  Certain female voices just hit me, and I choke up for "no reason."  I love it, but I have no idea why it happens.  Maybe I was dropped on my head as a child.  But anyway I don't know what was going through those female singers' heads when they sang the notes that get to my soul, and ultimately I don't care.  I just keep hitting rewind and going for another hit.

On the other hand, this doesn't mean you can cruise along and think about your laundry while you're on stage.  What's going on in your mind is going to have an impact on your performance.  Humans are wired up with incredible circuitry for guessing the emotional state of the people around them.  In a split second they will take in your body language, facial expression, tone of voice and words as well as the whole context, and make a snap judgment about what you're feeling.  Because you know, back in the day it was important to know whether Ug was going to give you some of the mastodon meat or club you senseless.  I imagine there were lots of people in prehistory who were bad at this game, but they all got killed.  We are the survivors.  And we can all spot a fake a mile away.

So your specific objective in the scene (a.k.a. "song", or "story"), the degree to which you are authentically pursuing that objective and reacting emotionally to it are going to affect everything about the way you come across.  The people watching you perform are going to pick up on that.  Just don't mistake your emotions for theirs.