Get out of the solitary artist rut

Community performance and experiencing awe

As a junior and senior in high school, back in the late 90’s, I woke up at 5:30 every morning. It wasn’t because I had a hunch that productivity influencers would start recommending the practice around 2014, but because I had someplace important to be at 6:30 a.m., Monday to Friday. 

That place was my high school’s choir room, and it was a place of profound human beauty, despite the smell of our raging, hormone-drenched bodies. We met there for “zero” period, an hour before classes started. In that sacred spot, a ragtag group of pimple-faced teenagers regularly transmuted their awkward bodies into instruments of beauty through ecstatic, swelling crescendos of voices in perfect harmony. 

To experience this evanescent human symphony is a kind of magical rapture that not only compels teenagers to willingly give up sleep, but which can spiritually sustain a person through a lifetime.

So powerful were my experiences in that choir room that one of the first things I did when confronted with the reality of the suffering in Gaza was look through my collection of old cassette tapes for a recording of a specific concert in 1998, during which I recall us having sung such a moving rendition of O Magnum Mysterium that I couldn’t help but close my eyes while singing, feeling the shivers travel down my spine and the tears roll down my cheek. I needed to once again hear the sound of a group of humans making something stunningly beautiful together. It brought me hope. (And made me cry again.)

Until recently, I had attributed those moments of profound awe to experiences of perfection. And it's true, I don’t have that same feeling of awe when someone is out of tune. 

But perfection can’t be the only ingredient in this recipe for awe. For example, I’m not sure a group of professional musicians could have produced the same gobsmacked effect on each other as a group of dear friends/frenemies on the cusp of adulthood.

Perhaps it was because we were not perfect all the time. Perhaps it was because, more often than not, someone would reliably sing something too sharp. Or because that stunningly erudite musician-boy I had a crush on eventually became a stunningly loutish ex-boyfriend. Or because, on a whole, we spent enough time together that we knew each other’s big dreams and big fears. Perhaps it was because we were learning together, not coming together already knowing everything.  

Perhaps it was because humans are meant to be in community.

I think that what I’ve been overlooking in my recipe for awe is the foundation of imperfection inherent in community art that makes those moments of perfection truly sparkle. 

Human relationships aren’t easy. They aren’t perfect. Ensemble performances are filled with tiny mistakes. Costumes rip. Someone forgets a cue. Notes aren’t exact. But while all those imperfections pepper the experience, it’s human connection, in all its messiness, that is the real force undergirding those moments of blissful perfection that pop up and send shivers down your spine.

Perfection, therefore, can’t be the goal. To be relatable, the best community art must be a little rough around the edges. 

This last holiday season, I had the opportunity to work behind the scenes in my daughter’s ballet studio’s production of The Nutcracker. To be honest, I could have volunteered for sewing duty the previous year as well, but part of me didn’t relish the idea of giving up my free time to do quick alterations and repairs on the fly. 

Since becoming a mom, I have gravitated toward solitary creative acts: pursuits that helped me to nurture and ground myself. As a busy mom of little ones, making something with my hands, on my own time, was a way to center myself, to anchor myself in the physical reality of fiber during a phase of life when day-to-day logic was a wispy ether between my fingers. It was a refuge, an escape.

And now, though I’m not in the all-consuming period of early motherhood, the solitary making-of-beautiful-things is still a way for me to feel a sense of agency in a chaotic world. 

Which is why, I think, it took me a beat to work through my hesitation to offer my sewing skills to such a lively (ahem, chaotic) youth ballet production. Goodbye, agency. Goodbye, time. Goodbye, creativity. I resigned myself to offer my skills in the same spirit my paternal grandmother probably brought to her marriage: file it under “Sacrifice for the Good of the Kids.”

I diligently re-hemmed a group of twelve seriously slippery satin circle underskirts for the dancers in the snow scene. I shortened the Snow Queen’s bodice. I previously had no clue what an ascot was, but I designed one for a Party Boy costume. All this was done with headphones in my ears at home, listening to some good music and podcasts. Would I rather have been working on my own creative project? Probably. But this was nice and solitary, and a fine way to spend a bunch of hours on the weekend if you’re an introvert like me. 

Behind the scenes with a Nutcracker ballet party kid, plus now you know that an ascot is just a fancy tie.

The human messiness and magic didn’t really start until tech week and performance days, though the energy had been building for my daughter since rehearsals began months prior. Suddenly, the set was built out of nothing, thanks to many hands working together. The musicians showed up and the dancers danced and danced and danced. The audience applauded. Little children waited with big eyes for autographs from middle-grade performers. 

The whole while, I was there behind the scenes, unceremoniously stuffing boning back inside a ballet costume’s worn channel, closing it with a benediction of curse words and strong stitches. 

And the last time the curtain fell in front of those young dancers, I felt a tug at my heart - a familiar “gosh, isn’t it beautiful to be human?” feeling. My daughter cried on the drive home, so sad that the rush of the performance was over, but more than anything, so despairing that she wouldn’t be spending so much time with the cast, her friends.

I was not dancing a principal role. No one really knew I was there, besides the director and whoever had a costume emergency. But it felt really good to work behind the scenes, in a small way, to help make something bigger happen. (And let me set the record straight - alterations and repairs on the fly are very creative - in a problem-solving kind of way - endeavors!)

It helped me get out of my narrow, creativity-as-self-care mindset and helped me experience the wonder of creativity-as-community-care. Unsurprisingly, I actually emerged from that performance run with my own cup more filled than it would have been if I had spent the time working on my own stuff.

Of course, I’m not saying that you should abandon your solitary artistic pursuits (I am obsessed with mine!) I would like to pose the question: 

How might participating in a community performance enhance your current creative practice? 

For me, it’s a wonderful way to experience the transcendent bliss of human creativity.

“Each of us has a spark of life inside us, and our highest endeavor ought to be to set off that spark in one another.”

— Kenny Ausube