A client and I were recently talking about communication, marveling at how often simple conversations go wrong, the meaning getting incomprehensibly lost in translation...
On the surface, communication seems obvious. One person speaks and another listens. Switch, then repeat. Yet there's much more to it than that. So much more, that I spend an entire chapter of The Art of Singing discussing the issue.
To begin, it's often an incredible challenge to be certain that what you say is an accurate reflection of what you truly feel and think. It requires a self-awareness and candor that many people either haven't fully developed, or have lost touch with thanks to our all-too-automatic conversational responses.
As well, effective communication demands that you ensure that your accurately expressed experience translates correctly to the person with whom you're speaking. Many people stop at verifying that what they say makes sense, rather than go the distance to ensure that it has been properly received.
In addition to the content of what is being delivered- and whether that content is favorable or not to the listener- the matters of tone, body language, energy, and intention must also be accounted for and in alignment.
While this may seem like a comprehensive survey of effective communication, there is yet another consideration to be made. As important as the language you choose, the message you craft and deliver, the physical and energetic contexts in which you do so, and the assurance of its receipt, is ascertaining the actual number of entities involved in a conversation.
It may sound like simple addition, but look closely. When two people are talking, they aren't alone. Both bring to the table their present, deliberate selves, as well as the aspects that have been formed, often unwittingly and unconsciously, by their conditioning and past experiences.
Consider a recent decision you made. See if you can recall the different and likely disparate messages from the part of you that knows who you truly are and where you stand in the world, and the part which is still caught up in less than ideal thoughts and patterns from long ago.
One person was engaged in this ‘conversation', yet two entities were communicating. Enter another person, and four ‘people' are now reacting to what is being said (and not said), each with their own very distinct agendas and perceptions.
No wonder things get so confusing!
In singing, as in all artistic endeavors, it is even more complicated, as there are actually three energies wrestling for the spotlight in the performing and learning arenas: the present-day person, the collection of that person's past pains, fears and experiences, and the voice.
Certainly singing is about the physical instrument, and its development and training are important. But the technicality of the voice is only one aspect of the entity that is The Singer. To speak to it alone- no matter how comprehensively- results in a one-dimensional and ineffective approach.
Voice instruction, if it wants to have legitimate and long-term results, cannot focus exclusively on technical development. It must also involve and listen to the strengths and hopes of the human being doing the singing, as well as the fears and issues that oftentimes push that person both forward and back. They have as much of a say in vocal training as the instrument being developed.
This is true for all creative education; to isolate the art from the artist is to draw a line between being soulful and the soul itself. It cannot be done.
