I catch myself wanting to watch a specific dancer in a company or an actor on stage. I tell myself that I like to see the choices they make. But am I really just captivated by their energy? Sometimes I’m conflicted between wanting to watch them, spreading my attention to the entire stage picture or looking at a different dancer to appreciate everyone. With theater, sometimes I watch what an actor is doing when they are in the background, rather than paying attention to the main event. I wonder if they are upstaging the action or I’m just interested. I’ve been told many times about how the cat or dog on stage steals the attention, because they are just being.
That makes me wonder about being my true self; am I pushing for attention or trying to hide to give others the spotlight? I wish this self-reflection didn’t take up so much of my life energy and I could just be. I think I just have naturally big energy. I forget that I’m only 5’3. I remember in middle school wanting to answer every question. I was a Lisa Simpson always waving my hand wanting to be called on. After a while, the teacher paid me no attention, so I willed myself to be smaller. I wrote down my answer to prove to myself that I knew it. My parents kept telling me to give my younger sister the opportunity to play, win, etc. I tried to take up less space around my more introverted ex-husband, hoping that it would give him space to excel. (FYI, it didn’t.)
Now, when I hang out with actors, I don’t have to worry about taking up less space, because they seem quite comfortable being large and dominating the conversation. When I hang out with musicians, the conversation flows between us. We seem to go back and forth with ideas, opinions, information. It’s just like our musical improvisations, going between listening and responding. Is it just the people I know or is one’s personality temperament indicative of which art form they’ve chosen?
A colleague once told me her story. She was interested in both acting and music. Her mentor asked her how she liked to spend most of her time: alone or with people? She chose music because she enjoyed her alone time more. There is a lot of practice and preparation that goes into acting as well. Memorizing lines is the most obvious, but there has to be constant practice to the “scales” of acting, i.e. emotional availability and degree of intensity, as well as physical flexibility.
I was watching “Carol and the End of the World” on Netfllix and I stopped in the middle of episode three. Those episodes were the longest 30 minutes in my life. I kept waiting for something to happen; something to make me want to relate to someone or at least have some conflict to resolve. This show taught me that tension is a big motivator in a story line. I wonder if it’s the tension that a performer holds in their bodies/beings that makes them interesting to me?
I find the almost kiss much more evocative than when the kiss actually happens. It’s the energy of the desire; the uncertainty of which way the decision will go; the tensile strength that a performer can hold without relaxing which grabs my interest. I don’t want to be told the answer. I want to live in the question: which way will the body will move, what will the character choose to do. If it’s too obvious I’m not interested.
Karheinz Stockfhausen’s essay “…how time passes…” appears in the third volume of “die Reihe” a German “periodical devoted to the developments in contemporary music”, pub. 1957. I read this 32 page article all three years when pursuing my master’s degree in music composition from CalArts. It was very dense with not only concepts, but mathematical formulas of duration and sound. I told myself when I can get through this and understand it, I deserve that degree! I came away with one deep concept that I keep in mind when playing my flute, storytelling, watching a performance, or even looking at a painting. To create a piece that will engage the audience one needs to balance satisfying their expectation with surprising them.
Classical period music often bores me, because the phrase set up was almost always predictable: same, same, different. Minimal music of the sixties played with that expectation by having same, same, same….different. This played with the tension between expectation and meditation.
Watching Noh theater was always interesting for me, because I would fall asleep. Try as I might, I couldn’t keep my focus on the slow-moving performers. But I was always fascinated when my eyes opened again and they were in a different place on the stage! I tried over and over to be able to see how they got there, but I couldn’t do it. So, I finally had to accept that, for me, Noh theater is like a long blink and the surprise of where they would be next!
I think for some, minimal music is like Noh theater—not being able to keep focus on the same until the music changes. Atonal music does not have enough of the “same” to keep a listener engaged. Listening to atonal music requires a different set of standards of what is the same. No longer the recognizable melody, or inherent chord progressions, one needs to listen to the length of the phrase, the register, the rhythm, tone colors, the orchestration, the silences.
And what does this all have to do with being big and holding attention when improvising? For me, it’s comfort. It’s the paradox of being comfortable in uncertainty. It’s not being concerned with what others think, or getting caught in a self-reflective death spiral. Being big is being committed to listening and responding. It’s going with the flow, even if it takes you into some uncharted territory. Actually, that’s the most fun!! It’s trusting yourself to make an authentic choice rather than the “right” choice.
When I went with my in-laws to their favorite British pub to play with their favorite musician, needless to say I was nervous. The pub was a classic British pub, with low ceilings and a noisy crowd. As I was called on stage to play with him, I said to myself, “just play what you hear.” He put down his guitar and took up his Bodhrán and started to drum. The crowd paid his drumming no attention. I came in with a note (probably “D” since that is my favorite). Usually, I will start mimicking the rhythm of the drum, but this time I didn’t hear any rhythm. I didn’t hear anything else, so I kept holding that D. It felt like forever. I started to get nervous and wanted to push something, but I decided to trust that when the time was right I would hear something. After about 15 seconds of holding ONE note, the crowd quieted down and paid us attention. When we had the crowd’s attention, I heard a melody and the improv was well received.
Now, the challenge is to be present in each moment and not try to replicate the experience of a moment that worked well and is seared into my memory. Accepting a good night along with a mediocre one is part of being in the moment. Each event is different: different musicians I’m playing with, different tunes, and different audiences. Why would I want to make that experience small by comparing it to something from the past? I can’t make a lilac smell like a rose, and yet both are beautiful. Why would I want to force a performance to be like something else?
Next to some players I will be small, next to others I may be big. My goal is to always be me—big or small, but always authentic.