A few days ago, I did an Ask Me Anything on Instagram, and one response in particular, about combating nerves onstage, garnered follow up questions and requests to extrapolate. I thought I’d take a break from alphabetizing various aspects of my apartment and eating pringles to share it here and expand a bit, because it’s an optic which I’ve returned to- for both guidance and reevaluation- during this bonkers moment.
The question was about how to cope with nerves onstage- I responded that, to me, ‘bad’ nerves manifest as a sort of protective contraction, one that’s fundamentally self-centered. I think the ultimate antidote is to escape oneself by leaning into listening, by shifting attention away from execution into other lines, collaboration, response. For me, that shift is encapsulated by Maggie Nelson’s reference, in the “The Argonauts,” to her marriage as “an infinite conversation, an endless becoming.”
Maggie Nelson’s dedication to her partner, Harry Dodge, in “The Argonauts”
The quote is obviously about her relationship, but the phrase “endless becoming” really struck me and has become a pillar in the way I regard performing and performance anxiety. I find that approaching a performance as a “becoming,” something to be actively crafted moment to moment rather than a reproduction of preparation, necessitates a type of awareness and presence that disarm nerves. Actively deciding to indulge curiosity, take risks, pursue pleasure onstage goes hand in hand with leaning into listening. Both tactics are about expansion via sensitivity to others, response as invention, and forgetting your own physicality.
Earlier this spring, a deep-dive into (infatuation with) Jenny Odell and Simone Weil’s writings about the power of unmixed attention remade my approach to performance and renewed my understanding of the aid the phrase “endless becoming” offers me. I realized that deeming a performance (or a practice session, or an interaction) an endless becoming is essentially dedicating my sustained attention to my surroundings, all the souls and whims and vicissitudes they contain. I’ve mulled this phrase frequently in the past 2 weeks since the COVID-19 crisis hit everywhere in the US, all concerts have been canceled, and solidarity, surroundings, and performance all have new meanings.
For performers, this has been a series of spasmodic, pretty scary losses- I am, like pretty much all of my colleagues, looking at months of cancelled concerts and blank space. It’s a major reckoning on so many levels, and I think so many artists are now granted the time (slash forced?) to review our own ideas about the shape of creative purpose outside the receptacle of immediate dates or familiar structures. I know I’m not alone in feeling the weirdness of this position- I think most of us went straight from school to work, often with lots of overlap, and this is the first time that we are working and practicing without an outside goal or date. This vantage has made me double down on reevaluating my thoughts about artistic utility: people’s needs right now are acute and material, but also social and spiritual- does music have a place there? Is it a necessary service or a luxury? What kind of pleasure can solitary practice provide when it’s not aimed at anything immediate, and can that pleasure be shared?
One consequence of this moment has been a huge upswing in livestreaming. And, the internet being the internet, a subsequent upswing in hot opposing takes: I’ve seen more and more critiques of free streaming as something that legitimizes claims that music is worthless, that exposure is a substitute for compensation. I have my own conflicting feelings about the limits of livestreaming, but I don't think artists’ willingness to embrace free streaming during a pandemic that has ravaged their income devalues their work at all, quite the opposite— from what I’ve seen, it’s an embrace of music as a service, vital even when it’s separate from business. Of course the ability to play into free livestreaming is a privilege not feasibly sustainable… but it’s been 2 weeks of chaos, and the leap by artists into open performances that have a social utility entirely distinct from profit has been by and large generous and in good faith.
I have been struggling with/ trying to interrogate my own thoughts about livestreaming, because my knee jerk reaction to any type of internet solidarity is always cynicism. I think in general, the internet favors representations of things over their actuality, and that’s very true in the case of enacting solidarity. I believe so deeply in the communality of live performance, because its organic “becoming” fosters openness and surprise and a sense of place. Attending a performance can be so ego-less: in real life, you can walk around and participate in the world and be seen without performing your identity, online you can’t exist or be visible without inserting yourself.
Last March, I wrote a blog that evangelized live performances as distinct from and as an antidote to the whiplash and isolation wrought by social media. Now, the only live performances available are through that medium, somewhere that doesn’t have a place, on platforms that are organized around performative profiles. I’m really asking myself if sensitive attention and responsiveness are possible in this mode. I have no idea if this is a defeat of those principles or if it’s an opportunity to try and harvest generous attention to one another on platforms that previously atomized it?
I haven’t livestreamed anything, for multiple reasons: I took a biiiig ol break, I’ve been taking the time to learn new repertoire, but mostly I’ve just wanted the privacy and haven’t figured out a way to do it authentically. The “yes, but why you” voice which echoes in my head every time I perform has lost the pragmatic backing of being hired and having a contract. I can’t get over this uncertainty- I could play through ambivalence about the medium, but I can’t do it when I think my own intentions would be dubious.
It’s eerie how this disaster has accelerated so many insidious apparatuses of modern times: augmented the isolation of social media to social distancing, escalated the erasure of public space, exaggerated existing monopolies and inequalities. When all this started, I saw the societal breakdown as an argument and opportunity to make all structures, the music ‘biz’ included, operate more laterally. Some days I’m still convinced that evolution is a radical possibility, perhaps through streaming and its inherent accessibility, other days I stare in disbelief at the cruelty being publicly touted, and I believe the only thing that’ll arise from this is further contractions and austerity.
So I find myself turning to my onstage life rafts: get out of myself, deal with this as an endless becoming. I’m of the belief that life has no external or overarching meaning, and I actually find great comfort in that. To me, that presents us with the responsibility and freedom to ascribe significance. My most pungent nihilistic leanings (which have been overactive of late) have also led me to my deepest optimism: if nothing we do has an externally legitimized meaning, action itself is more valuable.