I’m dealing now with performance anxiety, and how we might treat ourselves better, and prevent this in our kids. A lot has been written, but I am writing this now with a tinge of rebellion. The occupy wall street movement has got me thinking about my own small way to change commercialism, greed and obliterate the senselessness of the must-have mentality. I ended up with performance anxiety on my mind. Give me a minute and I’ll explain.
There’s the so-called “outcome oriented” performer, who pays attention to the result of the performance. This naturally produces uncomfortable feelings on the stage as they are worried about what the audience or jury might be thinking. Then there are the “process oriented” performers, who are able to do two things. First, they see each performance along a continuum where they set performance goals over a larger span of time. Second, they are involved in the process of making music while performing, bringing their attention back to the music itself. Paraphrasing Stanislavski, in order to get your attention away from the audience, you have to be interested in something on the stage.
All of this is probably not news to anyone, but when I looked into plastic arts, there are some classes that are called process-oriented, and the others are actually called product oriented; where kids as young as two and three are being taught that they need to produce something within the hour to take home. The expectation is that this product will receive praise from mommy which will encourage them to produce more. (By the way, since I moved back to US, I have only found product-oriented classes. The Sammlung Essl near Vienna was process oriented. http://www.essl.museum/kunstvermittlung/kinder.html)
The process-oriented kids are given paper and paint. They are given big brushes, little brushes, lots of color, combs, and sponges, whatever they want. The teacher merely assesses when they look a little bored and puts another type of tool in front of them. She doesn’t say a word. She just puts it there, and they begin to experiment. She feeds them paper and when it dries, they can take it home, or not.
It’s not a mystery to me that these kids like to paint more. It is also not a mystery which kids are retaining more of their inherent creativity. It’s not a mystery how we are creating performance anxiety by presenting music foremost as a commodity. It is logical that we then let self worth, artistic worth and monetary worth become entangled. It makes sense that when we focus on process, the value someone assigns to what we create is secondary.
I’ve actually written a creed:
This is my personal occupation, to see my work and myself as a process and not a product. When I perform, I invite people to share in my process with me. I will do everything I can to dissuade my children and my students from becoming product oriented, measuring self worth by the monetary worth given to the art that they create.
I was going to write a bit more about art and music education here, about impatience and the denial of the necessity of time needed to give artistic tasks. However, I went to a local toy store, here in educated and affluent Brookline, Massachusetts. The pictures say it all. I’ll let them end this post.
I’m wondering about the cutesy misspellings on products for kids, but the progression here is what is a bit humorous.
Now, I don’t know why I should have anything against a saxoflute, except that it is neither “saxo” nor flute, it is a plastic tube.
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