It's been more than ten years since I studied water rescue, but I still remember the definition of panic that was drilled into us at the start of the course:
This will serve as an initial definition of stage fright, a malady that strikes all performers at all levels of experience. It is something that cannot be controlled or prevented. It is an autonomous reaction to the performing situation that is ingrained in the human animal. But it is possible to understand and work with it, to turn it to advantage.
My use of a definition from a water safety course is not accidental. In many ways, performing music is like swimming. The matrix of creative, erotic performance is the collective unconscious, a vast pool of energy that in dreams and mythology is often represented as a body of water.(1)
To play music is to dive into this collective ocean and bring back this primal energy, communicating its essence to the audience. Playing in public can be like drowning, and produces the same physiological effects. Consider the following description:
"Pounding heart and rapid pulse, tenseness of muscles, dryness of throat or mouth, "nervous perspiration," or "cold sweat," "butterflies in the stomach," sense of unreality, need. to urinate, trembling, confusion, weakness, loss of memory, nausea, inability to concentrate . . ."(2)
Any performing musician could verify that these are the symptoms of stage fright, but this description is taken from an account of symptoms of fear experienced by Army pilots on bombing runs during World War II. It is a generalized physiological reaction to fear, often referred to as the "fight or flight" syndrome, that has evolved over millions of years in vertebrates as a means of ensuring survival. For the musician this system seems more curse than blessing, but stage fright is necessary evil that serves a very useful purpose.
How this primal fear affects us is largely determined by our attitude to it. Understanding the role that fear plays in the performer-audience relationship can help to make the phenomenon more bearable, though it will by no means abolish it.
One of the worst effects of stage fright is a side effect of the survival system. The overriding emphasis on the physical need to run or fight short-circuits the higher functions, leaving emotions and concentration confused and paralyzed. I find also that the motor nerves to my fingers are compromised. They feel numb, won't respond smoothly to my attempts at moving them. The anecdote I related in the previous chapter contains a description of this problem. However, in that situation I was not conscious of "stage fright." Instead, I felt connected to the audience, embraced in the Eros possibilities of the performance situation. I think that, while I experienced no fear, the same physiological reaction was taking place. I have since found that this syndrome is related to strong doses of Eros in general (3).
Why does the experience of appearing on a stage in front of an audience (or even in front of a microphone with no visible audience) inspire a fear reaction whose evolutionary purpose is to serve in times of mortal danger? Is there something about the feeling of being isolated, singled out by the crowd, that is inherently threatening? Is there an expectation that the crowd will turn and become vicious?
It is often instructive, when rooting around in the most primitive parts of the mind, to delve into myth, for myths hold the key to the mental functions that have become instinctual or unconscious. So, I turned to the myth of Prometheus. (4)
Prometheus was neither man nor god, but something in between, a Titan. His most famous act was to steal fire from the gods and give it to man. Here is a metaphor for the performing musician. To bring music to our audience, we dip into the primal source of life - Eros, or god-energy and bring it to our listeners. In so doing, we are larger than man, but not yet god. - i.e. we become an intermediary, a being who participates in both spheres. To participate in and communicate Eros without identifying with it is the task we as musicians are called to accomplish.
Prometheus for his action was, condemned to hang for eternity while wild birds repeatedly tore out his liver as it regenerated. Here at last we have something to inspire fear. The myth tells us that the act of bringing fire from the gods is punishable by a living death. But, by the sacrifice, the myth goes on to say, Prometheus gave man the ability to create the arts.
The parallel myth in the Judeo-Christian tradition is that of the primal human Adam. By participating in the knowledge of the god-energy (the fruit of knowledge of good and evil), he faces a punishment of death, for himself and his progeny, for ever.
There is an important distinction that must be made here between being a vehicle for Eros energy, and actually identifying with it. To identify with the gods is to invite death.
Artists in general belong to a class that includes the priesthood; a group of people who are especially chosen and trained to serve the needs of the commerce between god and man(5). Unlike Prometheus, Adam, and Christ, all of whom sacrificed their bodies to assume godhood, the musician/priest is given his task by the gods themselves and so, as long as he remembers his humanity, he participates in the transmission of god. energy in a way that leaves the human form intact.
In Exodus, chapters 19 and 20, Moses ascends the mount of Sinai in order to meet with Yahweh and bring back His commandment. As a chosen representative, he is allowed to climb the mount and enter the presence of Eros, but all others are warned not to approach, lest they die as a result of contact with the primordial energy. This raises an important point: the human body cannot withstand contact with pure Eros energy, yet another reason why the body rebels when it is to be used as a channel for this force.
A friend once arranged for me to perform at an unfamiliar club in Los Angeles. I would. have no chance to see the space before the performance, so it was a complete unknown.
Early in the day of the performance, I felt unusually energetic. I woke earlier and felt better than I usually do. As the day wore on, however, the energy built until it was too much. My body became tense. I developed an enormous headache. I felt generally sick, and was unsure about whether I was in fit shape to perform that night. I began to worry. As the time came to go to the club and prepare to play, the standard symptoms of stage fright began. In addition to my headache and hypertension, I got jittery and my stomach churned. I felt flushes of energy rushing through my skull.
When I mounted the stage a transformation occurred. Suddenly, the energy that had manifested as tension became focused. I was lucid. My concentration was superb. My playing was the best it had ever been. To me it felt as though the music and my personality were exploding out of me. I gave the best performance of my life with no feelings of fear, no headache. Every symptom I had disappeared for the time I was on stage. When I left the stage, the tension returned.
in chapter four, I proposed that communicating with two people takes more energy than communicating with one. Here, it seems, I was able to store and channel enough energy to make connection with the crowd. Somehow, I was tapping into Eros energy, and was able to use it for my performance. However, the energy that was necessary for the performance seemed to be too much for me to handle when I wasn't actively passing it on to the audience. The symptoms of fear that I experienced were directly related to the tremendous amounts of energy I was absorbing. In general, I have found that there is often a direct correlation between how nervous I am before a performance and how well I play and relate to my listeners.(6)
When I try to claim the energy as "mine," it no longer works for me. It remains as tension, and isn't available for my use in playing(7). If, instead, I hold a religious attitude towards it, i.e. "the holy spirit is filling me," "god is speaking through me," I can use and channel the energy that is coming to me. While I am not a practicing Christian, the largely Christian culture in which I live makes this an easy way to approach the intangible connection with Eros that occurs around musical performance. For those who do actively practice, religion is a ready-made cultural container for Eros, one that facilitates connection with that energy by providing archetypal models and rituals appropriate to its use.
As I noted in chapter 2, musicians who identify with the god-energy. claiming it as their own, run the risk of living out the myth in their own lives, often to its bitter and sacrificial end.
Another danger to the performer that stems from the contact with Eros-energy is an attitude of the audience that comes about through projection. Projection involves seeing in another things that you fail to recognize in yourself. Normally, this involves relatively trivial things; traits or habits that exist as repressed possibilities in your personal unconscious. The performer, though, through connection with the god archetype, invites projections that involve entities from the collective unconscious. The audience sees the artist as a god figure. This type of projection is what gives rise to the mass adoration and cult status offered to popular musicians; the idea that the entertainer is "larger than life." All performers are occasionally subject to this type of projection.
I was once involved in a relationship with a woman who had this type of projection to me, something I should have realized the first time she came to one of my performances. After the show, she approached me with a new look in her eyes, ecstatically praising me and my music. Flattering as it was, I had a distinct sense that her eyes were looking through me at something else, something that she thought I was because of what she had experienced through my playing. She confirmed my uneasiness when she showed me, a week later, a flyer that she had made and distributed without my knowledge, that described me and my music in a glowing but unrealistic way. She had taken her experience of the Eros in the music, and identified me with that energy, making me into a minor deity. Needless to say the relationship ended badly, with her angry at me for not being who she thought I was.
It is extremely difficult to shake this sort of projection. Trying to reason with the person who sees you as an all-powerful being is impossible. The only way to defuse the projection is to refuse to buy into the image. By being clear about who you are, and resisting the urge to play the part of the divine being that someone thinks you are, you make it impossible for them to keep seeing you this way. This means sacrificing all the trappings of godhood: groupies, hugely inflated concert fees, and the like. For some, this is the main impetus in learning music - to be a star. The idea of being adored as more-than-human, with all the accompanying luxuries, can be extremely attractive, but for humans this-is more than unreasonable - it is fatal.
By refusing to honor this projection, you attract an, audience that is sincerely interested in what you have to offer as a musician. You can become connected to, rather than distanced from, the people who come to hear you play. And you literally stand a better chance of a long and prosperous life if your feet are planted firmly on the earth instead of on a heavenly throne.
Another danger of the projection has to do with the idea of the binary discussed in chapter 2. The two halves of the binary are always balanced. When they become unbalanced, a shift will occur to bring them back to equilibrium. An overwhelmingly positive projection will eventually turn negative, making you into a devil in the eyes of someone who at first thought you a god. It is your most adoring fan who ends up sneaking into your hotel late at night with a concealed gun.(8)
For some, the human container is too weak to withstand the tremendous amounts of Eros energy that are channeled while performing. For them, stage fright becomes a disabling factor that removes them from the situation altogether. A good friend of mine was involved in a band that attracted more and more attention, finally signing with a record company and beginning to tour. Soon thereafter, he began to have panic attacks onstage that were bad enough that he needed medical attention. He eventually had to leave the band. The energy involved was too much for his body and psyche to contain. Jerry was always a very creative person and lived very close to the edge of the unconscious. As a younger man, an experience with psychedelic drugs had opened up the barrier, leaving him plagued with demons for several years. His psychosis was mild enough that he was eventually able to understand and make peace with it, but his being was still too fragile to contain the enormous amounts of Eros he gathered while in the band.
Stage fright has little or nothing to do with shyness. However, shyness does present certain problems to be overcome, and introduces an important psychological issue that bears on musical performance, namely integration of psychological types.
The word "shy," coming from an Old English root meaning "easily frightened," suggests a person who might be easily cowed by fear of performing. in informal usage, it means "lacking," and perhaps this usage is more instructive to my point, for even when the shy person has the guts to mount the stage, he is lacking the ability to reach out to and connect with the audience. He lacks the power of extroversion . Extroversion and introversion are two opposing aspects of psychological type having to do with the way one relates to the world. The extrovert is "turned outward;" he relates well to others and to the outer world, but not well to his inner life, his feelings and dreams. For the introvert, the reverse is true; he is "turned inward."(9)
The words "shy" and "introverted" are not synonymous, but they are almost always found together. The shy person is shy because he is directed inward and has difficulty relating to things outside himself. The problem here is that, while the way to connection to Eros is through introspection, exploring the inner self and its creative aspects, communicating that creativity requires reaching out to share the Eros with others. To be a musician, you have to work in both modes.
A person is never absolutely introverted or absolutely extroverted. However, one of the two modes is usually dominant, causing the other to lie undeveloped.(10). The undeveloped mode is called the inferior function. To fully develop as a musician requires you to develop and integrate the inferior function.. The person needs to learn to be confident and relaxed in his relations with the outside world, while the extrovert needs to learn to listen to the inner world in order to reach the fount of creative waters that nourishes his art.
The way inside for the extrovert is often to be found through meditation or religion. For the introvert, one step towards extroversion is the development of a stage persona.
"Persona" is Latin for "mask." For the introvert trying to learn to function in extroverted ways, this is an apt description. By putting on a mask that expresses your not-yet-developed inferior function, you have a sort of shield behind which the shy person can cower while he learns how to incorporate some of those aspects into his legitimate personality.
The mask that you put on is an image of your shadow, the part of your psyche that contains things that are opposed to your conscious attitude. If you are a shy person, then gregariousness and attention-seeking are qualities of the shadow(11). The shadow carries the inferior function, as well as a host of other qualities that do not concern the present discussion.
Comedian Steve Martin is an excellent example of the use of a stage persona. A shy intellectual in private life, he began his career by assuming the persona of a wild party animal, outrageous to the extreme, and not too bright; all things that were not true of the "real" Steve Martin. As he became more comfortable with his real inner outrageousness his stage personality mellowed and became more real.
The persona is always a means to an end. The point is to identify
and experience the outward-seeking mode in order to develop that
side of yourself. At first, the stage persona is awkward and obvious,
but as you develop your inferior function, you can drop parts
of the mask, letting the genuine expression come through, of which
the mask was a broad exaggeration.
People who we admire and who seem bigger or better than we could become also carry the god-image. They are our heroes. The myth of the hero can shed some light on the nature of music, for this is in some senses a heroic task.
Unlike the priest, who ascends to the heavens, or to whom the gods descend to bring gifts for humans, the hero is called upon to descend to the underworld, land of demons and lost souls. Here he risks his own life in order to bring back something of value that is trapped in the depths. Often the hero is called upon to rescue a maiden. The maiden is the anima, or soul, and is a representative of the creative possibility in the psyche. In combination with the male aspect represented by the hero, the anima produces offspring; creative output.
Like the hero. the musician must often descend to the depths in order to rescue and cultivate his creative potential. This also is an aspect of the terrible feelings that assail the performer before a show. I often get to places where I feel blocked, where I start to lose faith in what I'm doing. I begin to doubt myself and my value as a musician. Depression sets in. I feel lousy and my body lacks energy. Usually, I come out of these funks with a new idea, or with fresh and unique points of view. It is the treasure or anima that I have rescued from the depths, Sometimes this depression will strike me simultaneously with the nervous energy of stage fright. When it does, it is extremely unsettling, having both a lack of energy, and its excess.
The task of making music, then, is dangerous. As musicians, we
are called upon to participate in many collective mythic dramas,
as musician-priest, musician-hero, and as both ourselves and our
opposites. We are in contact with tremendous amounts of energy
that are beyond our power to contain, but which it is our job
to direct and shape. With this knowledge, the "sudden, unreasoning,
overwhelming fear" that we feel when entering the field of
Eros seems entirely reasonable, and we recognize and can respect
the responsibility we carry to give honest and careful form to
a music that reflects our own psyche and our relationship with
the collective.