Performance is always hazardous…
Some final comments taken from my response to a discussion between several members of The Guitar Circle who attended the course in Argentina, Monday 15th. – Sunday 21st., April 2024 https://guitarcraft.com/event/the-world-needs-us-right-now-2024.
RF responses to Team comments
D: The difference that is most apparent to me is that there’s an intrinsic personal hazard in performance that can’t be eliminated. The presence of an audience the performer doesn’t select and can’t actually control is a heavy thing. It can be great. It can be horrible. And all of the points between.
RF: Performance is always hazardous. The greater we embrace hazard, the greater the creative opportunity.
Conventional performances mediated by commerce can be psychologically, emotionally, physically and economically problematic. My experience of performing live began in 1959 (solo acoustic) and in “beat groups” from 1961. A heuristic from my semi-professional life: when a fight breaks out, keep playing (Winchester Lido 1964 with The League Of Gentlemen supporting Dave Dee & The Bostons). Performing may also open a door to Heaven, cf E’s comment below.
Much of my professional life has been (what we would today consider) abusive: resentment, hostility and ill-will, manipulation, theft and lies have been constants. The question for me is: how does this serve my practice? My engagement with these problematics is work, work I would recommend to very few and to date have recommended to none.
D: My interpretation is that that the intent of heckling the performance team is to simulate the hazard of performance in an environment of safety.
RF: The GC environment must be safe for us all, while challenging. Where we have high wires, we have safety nets.
E: It was the May 25th, 2013, Orchestra of Crafty Guitarists performance in Hadley MA… the performance was in a church… Suddenly, we are no longer guitarists walking in a circle, playing notes in a room. We are a galaxy of stars… the quality of our work, our attention, our collective Aim has led us to this moment, yet we are not its authors. We receive it like a blessing. It feels like grace… there is an unmistakable recognition that something magical, beyond us, more than us, is in progress - the uprightness of individual presence, of collective work, of communion with one another and with silence… We are not just the product of a world whose suffering brings us down, shrinks us, hardens us, and dims our lights. We are also spirit… In this world, as we find it now, what could be more important than work that has the power to help us rediscover, possibly even restore, the dignity, value, and fullness of our own humanity?
RF: Yep. This is what has kept me going through the years. IMO E’s excellent insight is an example of the performance wishing-to-be, to know itself through the performers and audients; and an example of how our experience might be if we were a “proper” human being, if this were our station in being. E’s state enabled her to visit this place, and see the reality within/behind the performance. Something like, the performance leant over and took E into its confidence.
E: We receive it like a blessing. It feels like grace.
RF: This is also my experience. GC performances are an act of worship, regardless of location. When this is a church – hooray!
JGB’s scheme of energies: each of these can be experienced as entirely different worlds. Our present discussion is taking place mostly in the Sensitive world…
Creative
Sensitive Conscious
Automatic
… reasonably engaging, discussing, and considering the views and experiences of others. Were we to be living in the Conscious world, we would probably not be having this discussion: there would be no problem to discuss.
My experience: living in parallel worlds simultaneously.
The juxtaposition of Sensitive and Automatic worlds is far harder, with the weight of the Automatic – prejudice, fixed opinion, maintaining the status quo – fixing everything where it is. Hence the need to argue for civil and human rights, gender equality, equal opportunity, equitable distribution of resources et al. Living in Automatic is life in the Basement.
Eternity
Anticipation Holding a Wider
Present Moment
Expectation
Expectation belongs to the Automatic world, anticipation the Sensitive, holding a Wider Present Moment to the Conscious. My professional life has been weighed down by the ongoing demands of expectation: like swimming in murky water with weights attached to all limbs. The management of expectation – freeing from and re-directing - is also work. The question is ongoing: how may I use this to serve my practice?
