This is an odd piece which turned out to be largely personal psychotherapy. I’ll understand if you don’t really want to go wandering through my mind with me. It’s kinda dark and scary in there and, as mentioned, there are times even I don’t want to be there.
The other night our family watched the video of The Piano Guys’ concert at Red Butte Gardens. At one point cellist Steven Sharp Nelson played a piece with full symphony backup. He’s usually quite fun to watch when he plays because he has an expressive face, and he clearly loves what he’s doing. But as the piece grew more dramatic I recognized some expressions that weren’t normal for him. He was getting emotional over the experience. At the end of the piece we could make out that he had been crying.
I envied him for a couple reasons. First, because he’s a cellist, not a vocalist. He can get emotional and still play just fine. When I would get emotional during a piece my throat would close up and I couldn’t sing. Not good, and one of the main reasons I prefer to perform in choirs. No one notices if I check out for a while. The second reason was because I recognized what he was going through, and it’s been a while since I experienced that. He was having a musical moment, when the power and intensity of the performance overwhelmed the fact that he had performed and practiced this piece hundreds of times, and spoke to him. I loved experiencing those moments as a performer.
A few songs later they played “Bring Him Home” from the musical “Les Miserables”, and it was my turn to cry. That song has a powerful emotional connection for me, and it only seems to increase with age and life experience. It only took about eight notes of the introduction to get me.
I enjoy art that has the ability to trigger emotion (most emotions, anyway; not revulsion, nausea, shock, etc). But I hate being alone in a crowd in my reactions. It’s one thing to get emotional while performing a song with a hundred of my closest friends. Even if they’re not feeling it as strongly as I am, I know they’re experiencing…something…with me. It’s entirely different to be crying in a movie and having all my kids are staring at me. It’s definitely not a shared experience. No connections are made–if anything I feel further alienated.
Perhaps I get emotional over art because it’s got to come out sometime. I feel like I wear a mask most of the time. I don’t like showing an emotional response in my daily interactions, except for humor. Humor is acceptable. Most everything else is not. I don’t know where I learned this, but in most cases the more negative the emotion the more I try to keep it inside. It might come from being bullied in younger years.
The last thing you want to do is let the bullies know they’re getting to you. So you put on the mask so that they don’t know they’re hitting the target. It’s not even so much what they’re saying as that they’re targeting you in the first place. You learn from experience that showing any response at all will just prolong the torment, so you learn to act like you’re not hearing them. You keep your head down and you escape at the first opportunity.
Art has often allowed me a release, I suppose. It’s an acceptable outlet for emotion, and even if it’s not the emotions I have stored up, it’s okay to transmute them and let them out in some other form. But it also means that I prefer to enjoy art alone. No one else needs to witness my emotional purging. No one else really experiences it the same way I do anyway. I’ve learned that through the years. People may enjoy the same music or the same movie, but it’s very, very rare that someone experiences the exact same response for the exact same reasons. My response can be deeply personal and unique, and I would almost rather someone was ambivalent than enjoy the same thing for different reasons. If I do find someone who “gets it” there’s an instant bond that goes more deeply than perhaps either of us appreciate.
My daughter and I enjoy the same musical group. But I quickly learned we like it for very different reasons. The songs she likes are not often the ones I like. We can connect over that music, but it’s a low-level connection. My son, however, gets emotional over the same scene in the same movie, and I’m pretty sure he “gets it.” Boom. Instant bond.
The older I get the more I’m learning just how much I live inside my own head. Perhaps it would be easier to connect with other people if I just tried more. Perhaps if I had more practice I could learn how to find and cultivate more low-level connection points. I don’t know. All I know is that for the most part I don’t mind living in my head. It’s a great place to be–most of the time. Sometimes something negative gets in there and won’t leave, and it’s not a fun place to be. I’ve yet to develop the level of control necessary to drive it out, and far too often I have to just wait until it gets bored and leaves on its own.
Other times it just gets lonely in there. How I wish I could find more people who “get it”, and more people who “get” large portions of me, not just a few random points.
The ironic thing is that I suspect there are a great many people out there who are the same way. But just wanting to be understood is not enough, usually. Being understood in all the right ways, at all the right connection-points is rare and cannot be forced. And it’s wonderful when it happens.
So just what am I trying to say here? I don’t know. This post started in one direction and then veered off into sensitive territory. All I can say is this, I suppose: If you’re one of those people with whom I have connected, know that you are rare and appreciated. I don’t let just anyone into my head. Most people never get past the front gate.