the scary mind
Saturday, October 25, 2008 at 11:05AM 
;)
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After an extremely rough tech rehearsal Thursday evening for the annual Spirit Walk, and a loud and scary start Friday, I eventually settled down into a much more natural performance style that included more gesture and less bluster. This may not be exactly what Custer embodied, but how is anyone to know for sure? With smaller groups I'm finding I can tone it down and tell more story with complete confidence. The text is in there, I know the words and all the variations possible on the words that have been chosen, so all I have to do is relax enough to let them out. There is this perhaps irrational belief in the power of words that propels me to order them exactly as written on the page. It's more attention to detail while striving for perfection. I've spent a fair amount of time choosing the words while writing the script - as presumably all writers do - so as a performer I want to recite those lines word for word out of respect for the effort the writer expended.
But the performer inevitably finds gaps in the writing that need to be covered. And I'm getting comfortable enough that an additional word here and there for clarification purposes adds to the natural flow. Along with an occasional swapping around of words throughout the text doesn't totally destroy my concentration.
Probably the more amazing effect, which of course is the reason why people perform "on stage" in the first place, is the transportation effect. During one of the interviews in the excellent 2008 Scorsese film Shine A Light, Keith Richards speaks about getting into a state where he feels he's floating several feet above the stage while playing. At other times he can play things that amaze his conscious mind. In a similar vein, there are times while reciting lines that I'm observing being observed by audience members, wondering what they are thinking about the performance, assessing how it could be modulated for greater effect, as well as wondering about their judgement of the historical accuracy of the text, all in the split seconds between the utterance out loud of the prepared text. This truly is multi-tasking, or surely as close to it as I'm likely to achieve.
There is a photographic analogue. One makes instantaneous decisions about technical details while trying to determine the meaning and context of a particular image, whether viewing prints in a book or especially while on location with a camera: the thousand stimuli that are present in the natural world must be sifted and selected. When we really get in the photographic zone, we are definitively multi-tasking.
Reader Comments (4)
Kent -- I really like this. It's Jackson Pollack with flow.
Thanks Dave. Can you elaborate?
What I especially like about this image - and many of the images that head the postings here - is that it was seen while walking around the music school while waiting for Claire to come out, considered for about one second, composed and photographed within another two or three seconds. The nearly automatic, unconscious photograph that really connects with people is probably the most powerful for me. This one's a great example of a style that is completely opposite to the "serious" work that I do with the view camera.
Elaboration -- What I see in the image is movement in what is of course a still life. Pollack's work also is very active -- but the activity is more in envisioning his act of painting and is more chaotic. In your composition the movement is more directed -- the elements in the picture seem to be trying to flow out of the frame.
Not too shabby Dave. I'll take the comparison w/ Pollack any day, good or bad.