I Can Just See It Part A |
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Once many years ago I knew a woman—I’ll call her Sandra—who was suddenly drawn to the idea of singing. She had become involved in community theater, was bitten by the performing bug, began taking lessons, and looked for opportunities to perform. Somewhat older than young, Sandra was new to voice performance and I was curious about her motivations. After all, most musicians get started early in life. So I asked her, “Why do you want to sing?” “Because it’s my vision—I can just see myself in those spotlights” was her answer. Over time, as I came to know her better, I began reflecting on that vision. She didn’t say, “I love to sing.” She didn’t say, “I love music.” She didn’t even say, “I especially enjoy listening to vocal music, and I want to participate in the pleasure of creating such music—constructing it physically, rendering it artistically, and bringing it to life spiritually.” No. Instead, she simply said, “I want to be a singer.” It interested me, this distinction between being something versus doing something. So I watched Sandra as she developed her performance instincts in “open-mic” gatherings. At first, of course, there was the unavoidable self-consciousness—that weird awkwardness that only sets in when you’re actually on stage. The act of performing in front of others always feels painfully different than the way one imagines it in the shower or the car. Monitor speakers are tricky to get used to. The microphone pops with wind noise, and fluctuates in volume. The audience is nothing but a yellow-blue smear of waxy light. Drum fills emerge off-beat—or at least you could swear they do, because, after all, you were keeping up; and your foot taps are out of synch with his hi-hat, so it must have been him, right? Just as you start to move to the groove, a guitar neck jumps over, hits your shoulder, and then pulls away. “What was that? Is that me out of tune? Oh, now I’ve forgotten the words.” Performance is very distracting. |
But as one becomes accustomed to the mechanics of performing, more and more attention can be paid to the music. That’s what I was listening for as I observed Sandra. The music. Because that’s what singing is all about. Unfortunately, Sandra never mastered singing. And the reason became quite apparent over time. She didn’t know how to listen. She closed her eyes as she bobbed at the microphone, and was obviously unaware of events around her. There was no connection with the musicians or the audience. She was like Tommy—lost in an inner world where she was seeing herself so clearly that there was no attention left over for other performers—unable to attend to music. She was being a singer. But almost certainly would never learn to sing. I often speculate on what is happening internally to produce human behaviors. In Sandra’s case, I believe that she constructed a mental image that was primarily visual—which is to say spatial—with a strong set of associated feelings that were social, self-preoccupied, and somewhat juvenile (Mommy, look at me!). She did not have a keen sense of music, because music proceeds across time, and Sandra had collapsed time into a single state—a sense of aliveness and wholeness, a feeling of self-ratification. She was fascinated by the end result, the product of music, but could not atomize it into the ordered sequence of temporal gestures that make music possible. Sandra was trapped in a spatial vision that disallowed time. She could “just see herself” in the spotlights. But she could not hear. |
