Anyone trained in any "classical" artistic domain or technique is surely familiar with some form of fascist training or trainer who holds religious subscription to particular principles that dare not be challenged.
It is these systems that make the overwhelming pursuit of craft, in many ways, possible for they simplify, outline, elucidate and offer hints as to how one can gain eventual mastery. But as systems get further and further removed--by time and geography--from their founders and pioneers, the veracity of said methods dissipates. Like a game of telephone where the message gets more distorted with each retelling, each reinterpretation of technical "doctrine" gets more polluted with the elder generation's preferences, proclivities and personalities.
Eventually, many a student grow frustrated when very personalized interpretations get handed down in lessons as artistic or even scientific "truth". WHich is not to say that many mentors and greats don't have much to offer; but it again begs the question where is the balance between intuition, in artistic-education, and guided cultivation? Where lies the balance of subscription to technique with self-guidance?
As someone who's always marched to her own drum yet inherited a crooked, scoliotic DNA, I have longed to be straight, to be right, to be archetypal. For to me, that somehow connoted beauty, dedication, intelligence and refinement. Both my physical training as well as my vocal and other artistic training has been a tumultuous wrestling with the desire to be "right" by my esteemed (and sometimes merely feared) pedagogues and the sense that I too know something of myself.
So while my vocal gifts were often lauded, they were equally often--given their idiosyncratic, foibles (often linked to physical maladaptations from my scoliosis)--were castigated, patronized and condescended to. This led to many tearful lessons and stifled sobs after botched auditions or humiliating master classes. In the Alexander and movement world as well as the musical world this held true--though far less in the former than in the later. Wherever it followed me, though, it only exacerbated the curve: the curve away from center from which all artists create.
Over the years, my deep desire to be "right", to be accepted, to be beautiful made me gravitate towards disciplines that were more formal and than merely "free". Be it daoist or iyengar yoga; to classical voice; to Alexander technique: I sought out systems which were rigorous and required me to do the work rather than be worked upon to be fixed or to be told anything goes so long as it felt "good".
Despite my earnest, committed pouring of self (overly I might add!) into all that I did and do, I would find my physical "deformity" (from the spinal curvature to its impact on my carriage and voice) would always manifest, somehow cause waves--be they gentle or tsunami level--thrusting me back ashore rife with shame, embarrassment and self-hate--and as a result of something physically I just couldn't control.
So my spine curves to the right; so I'm uneven; so what--one might say. A truly first world problem--perhaps. But we don't get to choose our struggles and who is anyone to judge the pain of another for I don't think specifics so much make the matter or measure the suffering; but context, compression and karmic inheritance sculpt the impact of circumstances on life and no one should apologize for her life experience--be it colorful, limited or somewhere in between.
So as the years go on, the deepness of my symmetry only sharpens in my visceral recognition while--ironically--the work seems to make it less apparent visually. Still, I seem to know my pattern, my mis-form more intimately these days and while there are moments when I can own and see it and say so what; there are more moments still when I feel kinesthetically dumb, impaired. Many a performances where my intercostals will simply not expand as they would in a "normal" body and I momentarily curse myself my voice for not being able to do what I musically yearn to do so to serve the music.
So much of my struggle in Alexander and formal, structural yoga has been in walking the line between so-called "Correctness" and honoring my proclivities which may not be mutable. Likewise in art, I oscillate between utter admiration and devotion to technique and tradition while also subscribing fervently to the notions of self-guided work, of self-learning, for this is the only path towards self-acceptance. I am not interested in automaton artists who can execute but say nothing of themselves. In the great interviews on "bel canto" singing between Pavarotti, Sutherland and Horne, Pavarotti goes on to say that the singer must not only accept, but truly love every part of him or herself: for the entire body--not merely the voice--is the singer's instrument and dear domain.
From Stanislavski and his pedagogical progeny to Garcia in classical voice, so many creative pioneers have echoed that technique must bring out the truer, more authentic, less habituated "voice" or self. Paradoxically, artists study systems and principles so to set themselves free from the training wheels of technique. One looses herself by immersing herself in technique only to find her more cultivated, polished self in the end. The trick--or rather torment--I find, is not losing the joy of expressing, creating, living in that self-struggle with technique, that struggle towards self-acceptance.
Martha Graham quipped that "you are unique and if that is not fulfilled, then something has been lost". It is my fear that this world loses so much unique vision--not only in the arts but as a whole--because in their student years so many learn to apologize for their comings inherited and acquired: to essentially apologize for themselves.
When my physical habits and asymmetries are inevitably pointed out and harped upon by teachers intent on rigorously holding me to principle--I might argue who die for principle; I find myself at first discouraged and often upset which has always been this sensitive soul's reaction. However, with slightly more purview on life and the purpose of art and the subsequent holding that art gardens our souls as much as serves as something to do; I no longer know if I so much care how perfectly balanced and/or fully expanded my limbs are. Because external form is fabulous, but not if I cannot stay with myself--my invisible, inner self--in physical moments of strain, in mental moments of worry, in spiritual moments of agony.
More and more, I have days where I rue technique, where I proclaim I shall live (and sing, and move!) as I am: I will celebrate the self. I will ceaser apologizing for what is my unique gift=however deformed or imperfect it might be. In idiosyncracy lies the mystique.
A teacher's condescension, patronization or castigation used to catapult me to uncontrollable tears as it viscerally registered as rejection of my very being and like most creative souls I seem to perch evermore on the precipice of tears. As a performing artist, critique is always difficult for unlike a lawyer or doctor--or even writer or painter--our instrument, our art is our bodies. And I have put that time into my instrument; I have worked to principle, I have held form--or at least aspired towards it--and I am a good student damn it! So when my hours and sometimes years of dedication to practices I love are dismissed by those who say they know the way; I can't help--once I dry my eyes--to ask who are they?
Given the brevity of life, I suppose part of me can jettison their judgment; for I know I've poured in the work and asked myself to relinquish habit in the service of returning back to the beginning so to know my truest potential again. But I am a human. I have an ego. I have feelings that, while, yes, especially sensitive, don't deserve to be dismissed as casual, incapable or lazy.
Which lands me back begging the cosmos for clarity on whom and to what I should base my self-assessment.
I believe in faulty kinesthesia; that we know not ourselves as others see and observe us. That said, I also believe in rigorous practice in the service of self-expression. Form without function is like being undead rather than alive.
I wish to be alive. And to be alive is to be imperfect. It's in the imperfection we all shine through. So I, in moments of rigorous practice, cultivate and experiment and stretch myself to be not myself--so that when I step outside the studio, off of the mat, onto the stage: I can shine more freely, efficiently and perhaps even form(ally)--or lessly--as myself.