The Inner Game of Music - hits and misses

I recall a few years back that the "Inner Game" concepts ran like a wildfire through my circle of a cappella singers.  Every educational event featured a class in The Inner Game, and everyone was talking about it.  The book itself, by Barry Green, was written way back in 1985 as a follow-on to the hugely popular "Inner Game Of Tennis" by Timothy Gallwey.  Even today, many Inner Game concepts can be seen in the prevailing attitudes and beliefs in performance circles.

I am re-reading The Inner Game Of Music now, and testing all its concepts with what I have learned about performance from other sources, and now I find that I agree with a lot of the book, but I disagree with a lot of it as well.  I have just finished Chapter 3, which goes over the basic Inner Game concepts at a high level.

As a quick overview, the basic idea of the Inner Game is to remove the self-generated interference that is getting in the way of you being the best performer (or tennis player) that you can be.  The equation Performance = Potential - Interference ( P = p - i ) sums it up, no pun intended.  The interference in question is created by your judgmental self, which is your "Self 1".  Everything you do that works well comes from the other part of you, your "Self 2."  Some people have tried to map these concepts of Self 1 and Self 2 to "left brain" and "right brain" or even to "mind and body", but Gallwey specifically says that he's trying to say something much simpler: If it interferes with your potential, it's Self 1; If it expresses your potential, it's Self 2.

It's here that I start to have a problem with The Inner Game.  I see the performer as one thing, not two.  I believe it's more useful to view yourself holistically, rather than to honour the schitzophrenia of naming multiple selves.  As soon as you identify a "Self 1" that does things to you that you don't like, you're giving up control.  It may be a useful device, but it doesn't seem like the most useful one, nor does it seem entirely honest or accurate.

Moving along, once Gallwey identifies Self 1, we start to talk about strategies for reducing its power.  We hear Self 1 criticizing us, sowing fear, uncertainty and doubt in our minds while we perform, so we refuse to talk back to it.  We focus on something else in order to fool Self 1 into shutting up for a while.

Dude, it's not your Self 1, it's just *you* doing it.  So stop! ;)

Seriously, negative self-talk is a big problem for performers, and it can keep you from being in the ideal state of mind for performing.  It's a good idea to have strategies to manage it, many of which I addressed here, in my series on stage fright.

Shifting your focus to "the now" is a great idea.  And focusing on something that is happening in the moment is a good strategy.  My only issue is what Green suggests you focus on: look at your instrument, listen to the sound, focus on your feelings, focus on what you know.  The common theme is that you are turned inward instead of outward - navel gazing, while trying to perform.  In The Inner Game Of Tennis, Gallwey suggests that students look at the seams of the tennis ball as it comes toward them, and apparently that works really well.  But now we come to the crux of the problem - stage performance is not the same as tennis!  Sure "performance" is important in both games, but that's just because English is a stupid language sometimes.

If you're a tennis player, your job is to hit the little green ball over the net better than your competitor.  If you do this, you win.  The fans get excited (one hopes) but there's not a lot of emotional content there, other than the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.  There is no suspension of disbelief - it's really two people hitting a ball over a net.

For a stage performer, on the other hand, there's an audience and they need to create a scene in their mind, based on what you are doing.  So what you do as a stage performer is much more difficult to understand and measure than a tennis game.  What you focus on in order to quiet your Self 1 negative self-talk is *critical* for a stage performer, and the only thing that makes sense as a focus is *the scene* - any mental cycles that you waste on your instrument, the sounds in the room, or your feelings, is a distraction from the scene, pure and simple.  The audience does not care at all about your feelings.  They only care about the scene they are creating in their heads, and the emotions being evoked.  They care about their own feelings.

In tennis, it makes a lot of sense to be in a state of relaxed concentration all the time.  In stage performance, relaxed concentration only makes sense if you're playing a scene where relaxed concentration is appropriate.  One wouldn't be in a state of "relaxed concentration" while singing a marching song, or playing a love scene.  Relaxed concentration is a sports performance thing, not a stage performance thing.

So here's how the book scores so far:

• Self 1 vs. Self 2.  Doesn't work for me.
• Focus on the now.  Check - I agree.
• What they suggest you focus on: instrument, your feelings, etc.  Nope, that's not gonna work.
• Relaxed concentration.  Nope.

Stay tuned!  The book has 12 more chapters.