INDIVIDUAL FULFILLMENT 

     “Education in the formal sense is only a part of the society’s larger task of abetting the individual’s intellectual, emotional and moral growth. What we must reach for is a conception of perpetual self-discovery, perpetual reshaping to realize one’s best self, to be the person one could be.”

        From “EXCELLENCE -- can we be equal and excellent too?”  John W. Gardner

It seems there are forces afoot which are leading us away from excellence in a most dramatic way. If this trend does not stop, civilization and freedom as we know it will be drastically changed. This trend is prevalent in all facets of our society. We are concerned here at Vocalway with what affects our singing. Since singing is a microcosm for fulfilling our life’s purpose, we need to become aware that many things we never considered relevant to this quest can begin to derail us—especially influencing the children growing up in this society. It is also geared to that little child within us that wants what it wants without doing the work. We need to become aware of these forces and recommit ourselves to our “intellectual, emotional, and moral growth.”   

In the Friday, November 17^th edition of the New York Post, an article about a new Broadway musical caught my eye. The details are not really important, but in the article the dispute was about replacing the current lead with the actor who originally created it-- to rave reviews-- last year in a Toronto workshop. Seems the producers are sticking with the current actor {male} even though the original actor {female} is now available and willing to help out. {Who knows what dynamics are going on there?} In any case, in this article it was noted that the producer’s statements about the present actor appeared in the New York Times: “He can’t sing, he can’t dance, he’s never really acted before—he’s fabulous.” One can only wonder what the young man is actually fabulous at! What message does this give to young talented singers, actors and dancers who want to appear on the stage—never mind the lead in a Broadway musical? Why the producer is doing this is none of our business, but the message is a very discouraging comment on what we used to consider the road to success--pay your dues, polish your art, and you will succeed. Now we’re getting the message that you don’t need any skills to become a leading man. More frightening is the fact that it has given the actor a chore that he is unable to fulfill, according to our old requirements for the star of a show. It will be interesting to see what happens to Broadway musicals if this one turns out to be a success. 

At the present moment in the United States, the Presidency is in dispute a week after the national elections were held. How it turns out is not important. The amazing fact is that one of the candidates for this rather prestigious job was totally unqualified to even run in the election, but has captured half the votes in this country. These are puzzling times. What message is this giving those of us who believe in individual fulfillment? Do we no longer consider intelligence, dedication, service, self-control and a sense of duty to our country as prerequisites to capturing this honor? What message is this fiasco sending out to our young people? Whose self-interests are being served by running such a candidate? But of course, we’re talking politics here. Times change, and with it our old concepts must be altered—hopefully for the better.

     “In democracy, where individualism and rights of the individual reign supreme, men have no interest higher than self-interest, and self-interest as directed to material comfort and prosperity. Social instability goes hand in hand with instability of desire, with constant movement and constant activity, but all for instant gratification and easily quantifiable and immediately achievable goals. In the early days of the American republic there remained a residue of Protestant and Puritan virtue. Then self-interest was understood to have a cosmic dimension: it had transcendent perspectives, beyond this life, the upshot being that in this life men would on occasion put moral concerns above expediency.”

                          “After Progress—Finding the Old Way Forward”     Anthony O’Hear

Without the requirement of this cosmic dimension, individual fulfillment need not exist anymore. We seemingly do not need to strive for this higher dimension to be successful. If our self-interests are so great, we no longer honor the work it takes to realize one’s best self. Many are now being given the laundry without the ticket. What message does this send to the ones that are striving to become the best they can be? More important, what defines being successful?

In the world of opera singers, this too is becoming a real problem. When singers are young, they can indulge themselves in their own egos and self-interests, egged on by some greedy agent who sells them to the highest bidder. The time of reckoning, however, will come sooner than one expects. How often are we told of a new “Voice of the Century”, and in two or three year’s time, that singer has been replaced by an equally ill-equipped one. Who tells the singer that he/she is ready for a major career? The agent benefits, but where does this leave the richly talented, but poorly advised singer? It seems as if singer need not be trained to his/her highest potential either. How sad to hear most voices these days with no unique color. Most are selling a huge potential with a stage personality to match. Unfortunately, they all sound alike. When you leave the theatre you should still be hearing the “ring” of their voice in your ears. Our attention is now being diverted by sets, costumes, acting, and the PR that preceded the performance. If the audience has been told enough times that this is great singing, the audience tends to believe it. What a thrill these days to hear a unique voice, hopefully in a hall that has not been “acoustically enhanced.” This uniqueness in a voice used to be a requirement for any singer, including the chorus members. For the soloists it was taken for granted. It has now become a rarity.

The performer begins to believe his/her own PR. When this happens, we have a new monster to contend with—narcissism. The actor believes he can actually do what he is not capable of doing, the candidate becomes blind to his own inadequacies, and the singer happily forges ahead, his/her ego floating on a sea of erroneous advice. Narcissism then becomes a more and more paralyzing disease. Most of the time we are so unaware of it that we cannot extricate ourselves from its hold even though the going gets tougher. We have ceased looking at reality. The ego cannot let go of it—it’s too self-serving. But who ultimately pays for this ineptitude? The performer, of course. The agent cares very little about the personal fate of the performer. If the actor fails, he’s replaced. If the candidate fails, we berate him and eventually elect a new one. If the singer fails, we get a new one. Putting people in positions for which they have not done the work has become standard procedure in our society. Individual fulfillment has not been served, even though their bank accounts and so-called success and fame tell us a different story.

Where is this leading our society? Already the death rattle is sounding for music as we have known it in the past. Times always change, but the new horizon looks like a bleak desert ahead of us. Maybe we must reach rock bottom before we rise again to greatness. Like the phoenix who rises out of the dust—we seem to be in the dust now—those  who are on the path to individual fulfillment must rededicate their lives every day to doing the work. No matter what is going on around us, this work must go on. We need to put positive energy back on the planet. Getting instant gratification without doing the work will eventually bring us down to a pitiful, self-serving mediocrity.

Below is an article from the Nov. 20^th issue of New York magazine, this time on an art exhibit presently in New York City 

“For anyone who wants to understand why Damien Hirst is the lightning rod of his artistic generation, his humongous exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea is a good place to begin. This entrepreneurial, foul-mouthed, life of the party—and yes, impressively talented—35-year-old British artist takes for granted that an artist is an entertainer, and he is determined to make ooh—and—aah work that entices visitors to embrace the titillation and melodrama that are the bread and butter of tabloid spectacle. For Hirst, as for other Young British Artists in last year’s “Sensation,” the Brooklyn Museum show that the New York press loved to hate, protecting art’s distinctiveness from mass culture is both futile and self-destructive. Better to tap its frenzied and infectious energy and revel in its brash and voyeuristic pleasures. Like a vaudeville performer, Victorian novelist, or stand-up comic, Hirst will do anything to hold your attention. With his gleaming swords, suspended eyeballs, and rattling Ping-Pong balls, he is eager to show devotees of game shows, lotteries, and whodunits that he’s one of them. Hirst’s bag of circus tricks includes a beach ball suspended—in effect, juggled—by air currents above roughly 70 kitchen knives, forks, and scissors rising like shark fins from a white box. His stock of narrative provocations includes male and female dummies lying under sheets on metal trolleys, with gloves and surgical equipment impatiently scattered beside them and a partially eaten cheese sandwich discarded on one body by a nurse—or was it the surgeon?”

    New York Magazine—Nov. 20, 2000   article on art  “Objets d’Art”  Michael Brenson

The above is a classic example of the narcissism so rampant in our society today. As the last paragraph of that same article states, “Understanding culture may not be all that it’s cracked up to be, however, Hirst still loves it as his world, and for the moment, that world, with matching perversity, loves him back.”  One can understand a limited audience for such triviality, but when more and more people are being attracted to these mindless pursuits that do not elevate us, it has to be saying something for the shallow existence in which these people exist—and they are growing in number. This need to be constantly entertained is a sickness all too prevalent. Calling it “futile to protect art’s distinctiveness from mass culture” is another shocking statement that sends chills up the back of anyone striving for individual fulfillment.  

“The discussion of liberal democracy and its future thus ineluctably leads us back to the question of culture. What is the state of culture in the lands known as the liberal democracies? One is tempted to answer that, in one sense at least, culture is thriving. Indeed, never before in human history have so many people created so much culture, and been so richly rewarded for doing so. As we go down our mean Walkmanned streets, as we shop in tawdry malls and order from mawkish catalogues, as we watch trivial television programs and go to coarse movies, as bloated new careers continue to be made in mass entertainment, the fact is inescapable: we are veritably drowning in culture.

The question, of course, is what precisely is now meant by this word culture? To begin to answer this question is to confront the conundrums of definition, for the immediate and obvious reply to this question is simple; culture now includes everything, because as a term it now means little more than how people behave. If culture means behaviour, there is indeed a lot of behaving—and misbehaving—going on.

To take comfort in this catchall definition of culture as behaviour is surely to delude ourselves, for such acquiescence only invites a further question: if culture is to be defined merely as behaviour, what place is there for the life of the mind? And here, as we start to address the present state of the life of the mind in our democracies, we find ourselves not only despondent in the present but pessimistic about the future. For those of us who have dedicated our lives to culture construed as the life of the mind, it is hardly too much to say that the word culture now hardly belongs to us at all.”

    “Arguing for Music—Arguing for Culture”    Essays by Samuel Lipman

What happens when our democracies themselves become an entertainment, choosing their Presidents for nothing but their personalities, choosing leading actors for talents no longer connected to their art, or choosing singers for their youth, potential, and stage craft? We are heading in a totally new direction. What is troubling is that even though we can no longer count on doing things the old way anymore, where is this leading us? It is now up to us to create the future, because the present has lost the concept of being connected to a higher power. We seem to be wallowing in a sea of self-serving mediocrity, and must now take positive steps to extricate ourselves from being “despondent in the present and pessimistic about the future.” It is as if we’re in the Dark Ages again. As Anthony O’Hear titles his book, “After Progress—the Old Way Forward.”

Marketing? Let’s see what we can market? What will sell? The “Mongolian Mezzo,” the “Bengalese Bass,” the “Soprano from Sofia,” the “Tasmanian Tenor”—on and on—whether they are competent or not, maybe not even talented, seems to make no difference to the marketing machine. Whatever sells is the bottom line. Again, anything that we can go ooh or aah over seems to sell. Exotic is in. Recordings by any of these people bear little resemblance to their live performances. We also have operatic “cross-over artists” who embarrass themselves by attempting to sing pop songs and jazz. Or the pop singer who has no idea what opera is, but still has the audacity to cut an album of arias. Is the public so desperate for novelty and entertainment that they actually buy these recordings? Worse yet, do they actually listen to them, and allow their children to listen to them?  It is embarrassing to hear some of our best known and respected singers stoop to this level. Is it money? Can’t be. They’re already very wealthy. Narcissism? Yep, you hit it right on the head.      

For the singer, it is time to slow down and get in touch with his/her higher self. Otherwise the most talented will be exploited before they have a true sense of themselves—and become mediocre in the process. Success can come too soon by getting the ego petted by some agent or producer or self-interest group that is not concerned with the performer himself. The performer becomes a tool in their hands. Bringing the truly talented down to the level of today’s lack of standards is unforgivable. We must have a vision for ourselves. Know yourself. In singing, know your voice. It is easy to fall into the trap that leads to narcissism and stops the quest for excellence. Embrace excellence. Without the concept of “perpetual rediscovery and perpetual reshaping” of our lives we will have stopped growing. If we get caught in a narcissistic wasteland we have stifled our talent and blocked the path to individual fulfillment. This is not the easiest and certainly not the quickest way, yet it is the only way to open the door to that world of wonder that always gives back tenfold the energy spent in acquiring it.

 
                                                          CORRECTION!

In the 10^th Edition of Vocalway: “Improper alignment of the body is an absolute requirement for proper singing,” should of course read, “Proper alignment of the body is an absolute requirement for proper singing.”  Sorry about that.