Alexander Technique: Notes on a Performance
Friday February 19, 2010 • Filed in: Alexander Technique | Writing
mary beth listening to recording after the performance. iphone photo: frank m sheldon
In a post a while back, I mentioned that I had had a little insight into an important aspect of the Alexander Technique, and that I would write about it later. The moment is at hand, but first, a little background:
Anyone who has had Alexander lessons learns that our anticipation of something we are about to do, especially if it is challenging, can distort our performance and thus adversely affect the outcome. Probably everyone has had some experience of this. The importance of means, rather than only ends, is central to the Alexander Technique. If we are to become free of old habits that limit what is possible for us, we must shift our attention away from obsessing on the results we so much desire. Instead, we need to first bring our attention to what happens to us as we try to achieve those results.
One aim of the Alexander Technique is to be liberated from the tyranny of habitual reactions. Even a small shift in this direction will leave us more free to act out of response to whatever unique moment we find ourselves in, that is, the true present reality.
My insight came during a recording of a reading I was doing from my novel, The Sea We Know, while accompanied by three members of the House Circle on guitars. The specific challenge was to do it in one take and, regardless of how it went, post the result as a podcast for anyone to hear. This was done to create something like the conditions of a live performance.
The music began, and I started to speak. After a few paragraphs, I misspoke one of the characters names by somehow combining two names into one. When it registered, part of my attention stayed at the point where I had made the error. It was as if part of me had jumped off a train and was left behind. Suddenly, I was less in the present, which meant that I had less attention for what I was doing right now!
This is another wrinkle on what I wrote above. Not only will the reactive anticipation of something we are about to do distract us from performing well, but it seems that dwelling on a mistake made in performance can be just as treacherous. In the first case, our concerns cause us to trip out of the present over the door sill of the future. In the latter, having turned our back on the present, we lag at the door to dwell in the past.
What a waste it was because, of course, I could not change what had happened. Yet I did have the opportunity to redeem it. I let go of the mistake and brought everything I had back to the matter at hand. Instead of spiraling down, I felt myself slide back into “now.” It is not so much something I saw for the first time, but more something I saw anew as if for the first time. It became fresh again.
Almost any performance can be redeemed. How that redemption plays out may not always go the way we think it should, but it will almost certainly be exactly what is best for us in that most unique of all moments, the present.