Steinway Hall-Part 2

Last night’s posting (Steinway Hall - Part 1) about the gifted Laura Garritson got me to thinking. I suppose if you haven’t read that one yet, you might go there first. It got me to thinking about greatness in performance.

As a young man I came to New York to study acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater. There I spent two intense years under the tutelage of world-renowned teacher, Sanford Meisner.

There I learned to act, but interestingly enough, I’ve always liked to say that it was there that I learned more about composing music than anywhere else. At an acting school. Had I ended up being a sculptor, I really believe that this acting school would still have been my high point in study.

It was there that I learned what makes an artist tick – an understanding of the reality of doing. That acting is reacting. To act before you think. That there is no indicating in the reality of doing.

It was there that I found my inner sense of emotion and experimented with and finally figured out how to bring myself to my art – whatever the medium. It’s something I’ve thought about and taught all these years since my student days.

The other night with Ms Garritson, my student days simply continued. I doubt she’s ever been to acting school. After all, when you master both the violin and the piano in 25 years, who would have the time? It always brings a smile to my face when I see someone who has accomplished so naturally what I’ve spent all this time learning. I’m not jealous. Rather I’m excited and proud of our human and spiritual abilities to grasp so fast the fundamental.

Most people grow up with terrible misconceptions of what performance is. Moms and Dads push children into so many bad habits as they encourage them to find their greatness. It’s not Mom and Dad’s fault. They don’t know any better, but many artists spend much of their time trying to break bad habits developed when young. Occasionally, either because of good teaching or simply a natural understanding, young artists come through the learning process unscathed. But I digress.

When one achieves a certain level of technical performance, the ability to perform the tasks of one’s art mistake free, then greatness becomes possible. But we all know that a mistake free performance does not ensure greatness. The mastering of the technical is only half the problem. The mastering of the reality of doing is the other half. Hopefully, in the best of scenarios, it’s a balancing act – a balancing act between the technical and the emotional. If one half is developed far beyond the other, there are always problems.

To be a great technician, but not have the ability to pour your emotions through your work makes for art that comes off ‘intellectual’. To do the opposite is to simply lose the confidence of your audience no matter what the art form.

The other night I watched this young lady work with this proper balance. She stood out because of the balance; whereas the others lagged behind somewhat because of their relative imbalances concerning just this issue. I’m not saying that Laura played perfectly and with total emotional focus. I’m sure she would agree with me that she has some growing to do on both counts. There’s always a way to go on the growth scale no matter how great the artist. But she balanced the two on the level of her abilities at this time in her career.

And that balancing allowed me to trust her in the moments of her performance so that I ceased to be the audience, the observer, the watcher. Instead, I left my seat and joined her in her exploration of the music. She took me on the ride. She allowed me into her soul and filled the space with her artistry. Her craft was solid and so I did not have to worry about her making mistakes and her emotional commitment was balanced so that, again, I did not have to worry about her reality of doing.

Consequently I was able to become completely absorbed into the performance. No need to analyze, no need to pull back and protect myself from the abuse of mistakes, no need to doubt. Because of the totality of her commitment, I too could commit to my part of the performance — to be a totally absorbed listener.

And so I did. But it was really she who did. As I said, I just went along for the ride. It was only afterwards that I began to analyze what had happened there in Steinway Hall. It’s why, when Laura Garritson finished, I stood and applauded. I had already left my seat minutes ago.

~ Peter Link

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and information about Peter Link, please visit Watchfire Music.

No Emotion

A woman called several weeks ago to thank me for a sacred song I’d written that she sang as a solo in church. We had a most friendly talk and near the end of the conversation she said proudly, “I just want to assure you that I sing your songs with absolutely no emotion.”

This took me back a beat and so I asked her what she meant by that and she explained, “Well, I think there should be no personality in church singing whatsoever, that the solo should be performed emotionless.”

As we talked I discovered a real confusion in this poor soul about the art of sacred solo performance. She was essentially confusing bad acting with emotion; and since she basically did not understand the craft of acting through song and did not like it when other singers “hammed it up” in a church solo, she had made the wrong decision that all acting/emotion in a performance was bad. I tried to help her make sense of all this, but she would have none of it. To her, ‘emotionalism’, as she called it, did not belong in the church service.

As a composer who has been thinking about this fascinating world of music for about 40 years now, I’ve come to think of music as essentially aural symbols of emotion. The drama of a song is hugely important to me as I write and governs its flow. Without emotion, what do you have? A passel of notes arranged by some intellectual method which most often results in a boring song – boring, because it does not go anywhere. Devoid of emotion, you have a song devoid of interest. It’s why people are not that attracted to computer written music. The computer is smart and can arrange music in lightening speed, creating millions of compositional patterns, but no computer has ever written a song that captures the public consciousness and probably never will unless somehow man is able to teach computers how to process with human emotion.

So I say to my friend, the soloist who sings with no emotion, please don’t sing my songs that way. Let the reality of your emotions be expressed through the lyrics and the melodies of the song. Touch people’s hearts with your feelings. Tickle their imaginations with your deep understanding of the full range of emotion that plays through a song. Share your emotional insights of these sacred songs with your audience, your congregation, so that all may take advantage of your spiritual insight.

When you hide your emotion or lid it down, you simply cut off the real experiential possibilities of the song. Bring your own particular corner of life to the song through your true feelings so that I may see the truth through your eyes. And if your personality, or better, your individuality, shines through the song, I say we’re all better off for it. If you can bring a tear to my eye or a laugh to my heart in the course of the solo, that really means that you have touched me so deeply with the truth of the song that I am moved – moved from one point of understanding to another higher one. And that, my friend, is why I go to church.

On Fame

“I always thought I should be treated like a star.” - Madonna

“Fame is fickle and I know it. It has its compensations, but it also has its drawbacks and I’ve experienced them both.” - Marilyn Monroe

“Now there is fame! Of all — hunger, misery, the incomprehension by the public — fame is by far the worst. It is the castigation of God by the artist. It is sad. It is true.” - Pablo Picasso

If you fail to succeed in any case, it is because you have not demonstrated the life of Christ, Truth, more in your own life…” - Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health

I find it interesting to note that Mrs. Eddy says nothing here about money, glory, good reviews, or fame. I personally have experienced all four of the latter, and I can’t say as I have gotten much of anything out of the four. The money, I spent — the glory, only served to confuse my ego — the good reviews, no matter how good, were never good enough, — and the fame — well, let’s just say, “it was all a bit on the hollow side.” in fact, let me tell you my favorite story about fame.

In the early part of my career I was working in New York as an actor– performing the lead role in “Hair” on Broadway at night and doing a leading role on CBS’s “As The World Turns”, better known as “As The Stomach Turns” during the day. I received several hundred fan letters a week, was on the Johnny Carson show and the Ed Sullivan show, was recognized constantly in the streets and generally badgered and harangued whenever I went out of my apartment for autographs and interviews with the media.

“Hair”, at the time, was the hottest production on the planet and just across 47th street Dustin Hoffman was starring in “Jimmy Shine” having just leaped to stardom in the hit movie, “The Graduate”. They cordoned off 47th street every night to cars because the street would fill with fans of both “Hair” and Dustin.

So every night after the show I would take a deep breath at the backstage door, then as the doorman opened the door to let me out, I would run pell mell through the hysterical screaming mob of teenage girls while they, for some reason, would try to grab me and tear the clothes off my back. Because I was also known from television, the decibels would rise higher as I scrambled through the crowd. Then I would out-run those frenzied females a half a block down 47th Street towards 8th Avenue as they chased me down the street.

8th Avenue was an entirely different story. It was just another New York street. The mob would not turn the corner; they would not leave the lights of Broadway. And so I would run around the corner, stop, and stand and wait for the bus…

To me, that ’s fame. I believe it was Andy Warhol who said, “in the age of television, everybody would get to be famous for 15 minutes.” For me, it was a half a block.

“Fame is proof that the people are gullible.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become well known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized.” - Fred Allen

On: Writer's Block

I’m not a writer who’s worried about writer’s block. I’ve learned where creativity comes from — God. The first thing I do when I sit down to compose is to pray because it puts me in tune with the force that I know to be God. My watchword is, “The worst things I write come from me; the best things I write come through me.” So, I titled my own album, “Thru Me.”

The creative process is really about connecting to God – connecting to the source of inspiration. I understand that if I connect myself with God, who is All, I connect myself with the allness of life — all the energy, spirit, soul, and beauties of truth.

Then, once I’ve connected, if I have the human mechanical ability to orchestrate, play the guitar, piano, etc., I do my part in the creative process. It’s a collaboration with God or a collaboration with the allness of life. God is the source of creativity, and we humans invent the story line or arrange the musical notes. God supplies the impetus.

I also find that if I do move into the moment that most writers recognize as writer’s block – when the creative juices just aren’t there or the ideas just aren’t flowing, that it means that I’m either not God connected or I simply don’t know enough about my subject. So I go to work. If I’m not God connected, I stop and connect – close my eyes, pray, focus on the simple truths of life, meditate on the source of my inspiration, even simply watch my breathing. I don’t need to do this for more than a minute or so to find my connection. Then I go back to the work at hand.

If I am still blocked, I do my part in the collaboration. I research my subject. I learn more about it, I try to look at it from different angles, I try to think more deeply about the moment

I’m all about being in the moment. I find that when I’m truly in the moment and surrounded by the ideas of the subject, full of the research that I have done, pregnant with the insights I have dreamed, then I’m ready to write. I’ll be on the piano or sitting with the guitar, and something in me will tell me to turn on the recorder, because here it comes. It’s not magic; it’s preparation. It’s about knowing my subject. It’s about having my own special corner on life and getting to the essence of that.

Neil Simon once told me that he doesn’t get writer’s block because he writes every day. He stays in shape – like an athlete. I’ve found this to be a great life lesson. I stay in shape to write by writing. And if for whatever reason I’m unable to write each day (sometimes life just takes me in other directions) I can get back to the flow pretty quickly.

If I haven’t written lately, I will always take the first day back and just play (a warm up), put no demands on myself for that day, just play in the music or the words, jot down phrases that come to mind, sing a few songs, become one again with my guitar and most importantly, put no pressure on myself to “come up with something”. This way the flow begins naturally – the flow with God and idea. It’s all a part of the research.

Then, usually, the next day starts with an excitement for the process, not a fear of blank. I keep pressure at bay by focusing on the truths of the concept. If nothing comes, I go back and tighten my concept. I’ve always said that if you can’t make a decision, then you just don’t know enough about your subject. Decisions should make themselves. When I’m fully prepared or fully informed, there’s no decision to make because the truth is revealed by the preparation. Work flows because I’m prepared and excited about communicating a clear idea.

Summary: Don’t buy into writer’s block. Don’t make a mysterious thing of it like it is some mental disease. It’s just another word for lack of research, lack of focus and mostly, lack of connection to the source.

Get connected. Do the research. Let it flow.

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