A group of psychologists at the University of Florida "asked a bunch of volunteers to publicly perform the R.E.M. song, "It's the End of the World As We Know It." This song is very challenging, with rapid-fire lyrics. And the volunteers were all Harvard students, so presumably educable but not necessarily great singers.
They let all of the volunteers practice the song once in private before performing it. But they only gave half the volunteers the printed lyrics for this practice session. The other half got the lyrics for the actual performance. The idea was that having the lyrics would make the performance easier, so that some would do better in the real event than they did in rehearsal, and some would do worse. Or at least they would judge themselves that way, based on their two performances. And they did.
It is an interesting piece, but ultimately unsatisfying, as it leaves the question of why we even bother to care about our private/public personae. Much of it, seems to me, to be based on fear and ultimately a lack of confidence – insecurity – about who we really are as people. Our society demands so much from us in so many different settings and situations that we turn into taffy just trying to figure out what is “correct” when and where. The ultimate goal of life, to me, is to be happy and content – why else are antidepressant prescriptions written like money is printed and sales in the tens of billions of dollars – and that happiness and contentment lies in finding one’s own singular and true voice that plays with emotional, spiritual and intellectual constancy no matter the when and the where.
One of the reasons that I so love Jazz music is the fact that, once the performers play the “head” of a piece – the part of the song that forms the melodic core of the tune – the rest of the pieces that are played are completely, like life, improvised on the spot. One can hear the same “head” over and over again, but never hear the same complete song again, as the verbal and nonverbal communication within the band and the sounds that come from each player’s instrument are coming from the totality of who that person is as a human being then and there, the sum total of his or her genetics, experiences and consequent emotions, all of which are bared naked before the eyes of the audience. Nothing except for a small piece is really ever planned. I suggest to the reader that they find a copy of John Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things”, which some, most, may recognize as something that Julie Andrews sang in “The Sound of Music”. When Coltrane plays his soprano (h/t to Mitch Shiner) saxophone and his band (Elvin Jones on drums, McCoy Tyner on the piano and Jimmy Garrison on the bass) launch into a 29 minute exploratory improvisation of the notes and rhythms that float naturally from that original music, one can only wonder why it is that the listening public does not appreciate the emotional and intellectual genius of this genre of music or any other music that can be played and which is not fully notated and written down, forcing the artist to be an artist who must mean, intend, every note, every strike of the drum-head and cymbal.
Perhaps it is our desire as people to think that we are in control of what it is that we are doing. When one realizes that control is an invented and magnified figment of our self-importance, a stain on human consciousness, we are allowed to be truly free to express ourselves and who we really are in ways that are not only truly meaningful to ourselves, but to others as well, thus negating the problem posed in the piece: the differences between the private and public personae dramatis and the essence of the problem of being our own worst critic.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/135943
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