The truth of performance

I’ve got to the point now where I can play my latest piece of piano music quite well – the moonlight sonata. Today I practised it again and started to listen to my own output. I was beginning to enjoy hearing my own piano playing – but almost immediately I ran into problems and forgot to sharpen a note. In that I unearthed a problem that I realise I have been struggling with since very young – the problem of enjoying ones own performance.

I’m a bit older and my mind clearly a bit more aware because today I saw the struggle clearly where as a child - and adolescent particularly – it was a foggy confusion. When we try to enjoy - or be aware of - our own performance we fluff it. The temptation and fascination with being aware of oneself – some kind of fatal interest in narcissism – rips the content out of what we are doing, distracts us and destroys what we were doing. This is the story of my life. I do nothing because the quest of my life has been to track down this illusive “self” – a Poohish like search for the mythical Woozle (i.e. A.A.Milne’s Pooh who went following a Woozle’s tracks only to find they were his own). What good argues my immature self is there in a life lived like an animal, looking outward always and never in knowledge of its self?

But now after the SRH enquiry and Buddhism I am convinced it is a fools search. The self IS the outward world – outward is the only way. Even when we look “inward” really we are just looking outward. Looking IS outward. Stare at ones eyes in a mirror and tell me what lies “inward”?

The only notable thing about “inward” is that it negates and distracts outward. To try and listen to oneself while one plays is actually selfish if there is anyone else in the room. As performer we must concentrate on “outward” and never be distracted into absorbing as “inward”. If we have offered our self as the meal at a feast we cannot then take a seat and take part in the meal! Our life must always be lived outward, to turn inward is selfish.

This explains an experience my father noticed and that I never understood. He gave an important presentation at a conference, but returning from the podium he had no recollection of what he had just done. To his surprise he was welcomed back by his company with much congratulation for it had been an excellent speech. I have had this experience many times: for example on the tube once with “my muse” I absorbed into some animated explanation of something and returning to the world afterwards I was met by her shining eyes clearly entranced by whatever I had said or done. This is the way – when we turn outward completely, we give completely and we perform perfectly.

Temptation to prey upon the fruits of one’s own labours, to contemplate and enjoy oneself is to feast on ones tail like the Ouroboros and die of starvation.