"The game is to say something new with old words."
--Emerson
Emerson uttered this line (I cna only imagine...) as he knew there is nothing new under the sun save for each individual's unique, singular perceptions of the enduring world. But it seems in an age of growing homogeneity, artistic training pasteurizes out idiosyncrasy to instead churn out cookie cutter artists who may meet academic "standards" or substitute as approximations for former archetypes or ideals, but rarely offer distinct artistic vision that says something truly about him or herself.
When someone special does emerge from the flock of "impeccable sheep" to borrow Deresiewicz's term, if she's a performer, we'll say she has "presence" and if she's a writer or fine artist, we'll remark that she has "voice".
But how does such one's presence, voice or credo manifest or translate to the audience? What language do we employ to evaluate not artistic talent and promise, but expressive spirit? Bernstein, in his brilliant, though sprawling, Norton Lectures at Harvard, tried to offer a universal terminology for intelligently discussing/analyzing music for non-musicians. He ambitiously attempted to overlay Chomskyan linguistics onto musical analysis so to--try--and offer a universal lexicon for musical discussion. His thoughts were vast and deserve their own dissection, but his attempt alone, inspires the following (and likely subsequent) (mis)musings on ways to reconcile conflicting value systems: namely, traditional modes of artist training (particular performing artists) and Alexander/self training.
One over-used, almost hackneyed term--when it comes to both describing and measuring performers--is the notion of "presence". Ask any director, casting agent, teacher or performer what it is and get just as many different answers. Most definitions will center around a physical charisma, a visceral energy or a magnetism. In her Letters to a Young Artist, Anna Deavere Smith conceives of presence--most basically--as space. She elaborates that presence happens when one holds space, invites others into said space or simply "engage[s] in space" (13-14).
As a longtime student and teacher of the Alexander technique, I spend a fair amount of time thinking about space and its relationship to presence. On the most basic level, it was always apparent to me--personally--that I sang better and more theatrically when I could see and inhabit the imagined space in which a song lived. Further, I could solve technical vocal problems better by conceiving of my body in different ways rather than trying to overtly manipulate the musculature which often can't be directly controlled since technology is just starting to show us how the voice anatomically works.
To clarify, sometimes the problem solving was as simple as seeing myself as twice--or three times!--my actual size so to truly sense (and tap into) my body's full potential to sing a particularly strenuous phrase without strain. But on the whole, Alexander work is innately concerned with space; with creating more internal space in one's thoughts/attitudes since the former inevitably shape/control the physical space in one's body and world. Any performer who's studied the alexander technique knows that its ability to enhance (so-called) presence, posture, voice and charisma (and thusly improve performance) is the reason it's required at Juilliard, Curtis and so many of the world's top conservatories for dancers, musicians and actors alike.
Since space, like energy, is infinite, ever-expanding and always available to us; it seems to me that--contrary to popular thought that people either have presence or they don't--conceiving of presence as "space" offers those who may not seem to have it at first the chance to nurture it. For if one doesn't naturally take up the space she deserves in the world (and thusly silently apologizes for herself and lacks "presnece") than she can--through Alexander or some other psychophyiscal means--learn to take up the space that is hers in the world and thusly accrue "presnece". I find this a highly inspiring thought since--whether one plans to make her life in the tradiitonal arts or not--all trades and pursuits, on some level, are an art and thusly presence should accompany anyone who wishes to excel at anything in this world.
Most interestingly, ADS poetically states that presence isn't so much about finding the spotlight for oneself, so much as it is about "finding the light and being apart of it". This emphasis of US over I is noble, but I wonder, too, if it's too easy. On the other hand, Harold Clurman, one of the founders of the group theater and later one of the nation's most revered acting teachers, wrote in The Fervent Years that "to be greater collectivists, we must first become greater individualists". Taken out of context, the exhortation towards individualism may seem objectivist and supremely unartistic; but I think it's the lack of individuality today--in the arts as well as society as a whole--that robs it of its emotional veracity, its potential impact and thusly much of the cultural legacy we could and should nurture. It's also a lack of individuality and thusly humanity that enables people to treat others indifferently at best and cruelly at worst.
Alexander students and teachers spend years--in simple and eventually more complex activities--learning how to "stay with oneself" psycho-physically so to more holistically, freely and openly include others in their process, their space and their lives. It's not about selfishness so much as self care: for one can only extend a hand to another if she herself stands on stable, safe ground. In Hegelian terms, we might consider that it is only through self-consciousness that we can eventually gain consciousness of others and empathize with and for them. More basically, though, to know oneself, is to be able to see oneself in others.
Furthermore, if we return to the notion of presence as space, in one sense, we can never share the "light" with others if we ourselves don't occupy space or no where to find the light-filled space. So while semantically at odds, I believe both Clurman and ADS espouse similar philosophies: that art is a relationship, a unifying experience that paradoxically has the artist quite aware of himself but always in relation to another, in service to something universal. Since Plato's time, the theater has been seen as a communal repository; that space which allows for catharsis or which, in Artaud's time, replaces organized religion. Though our age be secular, I don't think we should ever shy away from theater's spiritual roots or its spiritual impact--regardless of our personal beliefs; for even if we believe there's nothing beyond this earthly existence, we still benefit from the contemplative mirror (and subsequent discussion/action) that art provides.
In an attempt to wonder about and eventually postulate an underlying psycho-physical training for all artists--and potentially all humans--I return to what most resonates from ADS's writing which is that the driving objective of developing craft (or if you prefer, artistic "self") is to become a more conscious, sensitive, empathetic part of the whole (artistic community and society at large 178).
She reminds her fictive young mentee whom she's writing to that "presence requires being aware" (19). In Alexander work, awareness (of self, of habit, of environment) is a prerequisite to employ the fundamentals of the technique itself. Likewise, Richard Boleslavsky's Acting: The First 6 Lessons ends poignantly with the teacher's pontificating on rhythm and why the actor must be so attuned to it. With witty anecdotes that compress into a poetic statement on not only the actor's fundamental call, but truly all artists' call; Boleslavsky implores his protege to:
Be sensitive to every change in the manifestation of [the world's] existence. Answer that change always with a new and higher level of your own Rhythm. This is the secret of existence, perseverance and activity. This is what the world really is--from the stone up to the human soul. The theatre and the actor enter this picture only as a part. But the actor cannot portray the whole if he does not become a part (134).
The teacher precedes this by exhorting "the creature" to, first, become sensitive to rhythm in herself, than to the sounds and music around her so to eventually sense shifts in rhythm between the world and her.
Countless examples abound of lauded pedagogues emphasizing that self-development must underlie--and I dare say fuel--creative training. Even today, young artists are reminded that having something "to say" trumps kosher technique. Yet we live in a world where a singer who forgets a word or mispronounces a diphthong fails her freshman jury; a world where actors are cut from programs they pay good money for; a world where a writer's advance is sometimes based on whom she knows and thusly can appeal to rather than what she has to say. So students and aspiring creatives learn to play the game of self-preservation: they kowtow and conform--especially if they want to work in their chosen field!
But so what if someone can sing an aria a la Joan Sutherland: they aren't Dame Joan. No one has that jaw from which that sonorous upper extension soared--so why, subtly and not so subtly, do institutions and teachers alike suggest to aspiring singers that they should be second rate versions of Australia's great canary?
I acknowledge that studying the greats of the past is a required part of any artist's training; but I believe it should be viewed as "making friends" with geniuses who paved the way so to be inspired by and in conversation with one's friends.
I am not quite sure what an uber-artistic training would look like: one that trains the psychophysical instrument for ultimate functioning prior to imposing technical ideas of right and wrong upon the body/spirit. For while the frenetic quest for perfect form or commercial acceptance often compromises innate expressivity and creative joy, there must be rigor to polish raw ability into realized "genius". Actors must learn to declaim Shakespeare with regard for meter and so forth across the disciplines. When we bank a river, it flows more efficiently and powerfully and this is the boon of classical training, of technical prowess. But can such rigor be self-directed rather than externally imposed onto artists?
John Dewey said that the Alexander technique was a "prerequisite for all other learning". With its emphasis on awareness and self-possession, on conscious thought over habitual action, the technique offers humans a means of productively playing and experimenting. The great soprano Amelita Gallo-Curci was such a lady. She went on to become one of the most revered singers of the late 19th/20th centuries, but first she taught herself to sing from a book of Garcia vocalises. Always wanting to 'sing like the birds' yet knowing she'd never find such wisdom in a fascist conservatory where she herself studied piano, she--quite literally--found her own voice by combining her knowledge of musical theory with her curiosity and deep desire to discover how to sing. Interestingly, the book which she used to teach herself--Garcia's--is striking similar (philosophically) to F.M. Alexander's over-arching philosophy.
Perhaps Gallo-Curci, and the few like her, are anomalies. But perhaps they're only anomalies because fortune spared them the circumstance of meeting the wrong teachers, programs and external pressures when they were most impressionable. Self-directed training need not be nihilistic, cavalier or casual. Rather, those with the most to say and express are often the most self-scrutinizing. So in their tortured journey to share their light with their world, I hold that the training process should lighten their load by providing them room to play, rather than rob them of their innate, expressive joy. How one banks a river all the while still letting it choose its course is a question I'm still living, with the answer--hopefully--to come someday soon.