technique
something i've been thinking about recently: correctness vs. casualness. lauren did a phone interview about a play of hers that's being produced this winter, and it was transcribed and edited and sent to her for review before publication. she asked me to look it over. she really liked the way it sounded casual and off-the-cuff and was glad that sentence fragments and conversational sentence structure had been retained. i was willing to tolerate those things for the most part, but there were places we disagreed. i wanted to alter punctuation to clarify sentence structure, arguing that the reader knows what's coming next and how to read the sentence based on punctuation clues. she wanted to leave it the way she said it, without pauses, which sounded realer.
that night she told me that a man we'd met at that evening's party spoke as if he had his tongue pierced, though she couldn't see any jewelry; his tongue, apparently, didn't quite touch the roof of his mouth when he talked. i love when she points these things out to me. i'm oblivious. she also said he pronounced "i'll" like "all" and that it sounded terrible and made her hyperaware of every time she says it like "all" and how bad she must sound. i thought that was absurd; "all" is what we recognize and "i'll" pronounced like "aisle" sounds hypercorrect and like the pronunciation is being emphasized to make some mysterious point. she felt that the "aisle" sound makes it crystal clear what word one is saying and is thus preferable. it was the inverse to our earlier argument. mine, earlier, was the argument of a copyediter, and hers, this time, was the argument of a theater person.
i've been listening to roomful of teeth lately, and last night i listened to some opera. a thing i find off-putting about some of the former and most of the latter is how crisply everything is enunciated. it doesn't sound real, and i don't like the artificial, forced quality. i'm accustomed to folk music, on the opposite end of the spectrum. but classical art is all about the rigorous technique, right? that's one of the things that's being showcased. and meanwhile lauren finds ballet hard to appreciate because it's so unnatural. i understand that intellectually, but i love and appreciate how unnaturally beautiful it is.
i'm wondering how someone with classical training goes about shedding technique to become more casual, more real, more approachable and relatable to a layperson. like, if i have ballet training and i want to include movement in a circus piece that doesn't look like classical ballet, how can i retain skills i spent so many years on without moving in a way that's alienating and disconnected from the circus skills? i suppose it's a question i've been asking since high school: if i know how to create beautiful, elaborate braided hairstyles that are sleek and tidy and perfect, but i know that for casual wear, one is supposed to leave out tendrils and wisps, how can i disregard actions and techniques that feel to me like doing things right and well? how can i allow myself to do something sloppily?
that night she told me that a man we'd met at that evening's party spoke as if he had his tongue pierced, though she couldn't see any jewelry; his tongue, apparently, didn't quite touch the roof of his mouth when he talked. i love when she points these things out to me. i'm oblivious. she also said he pronounced "i'll" like "all" and that it sounded terrible and made her hyperaware of every time she says it like "all" and how bad she must sound. i thought that was absurd; "all" is what we recognize and "i'll" pronounced like "aisle" sounds hypercorrect and like the pronunciation is being emphasized to make some mysterious point. she felt that the "aisle" sound makes it crystal clear what word one is saying and is thus preferable. it was the inverse to our earlier argument. mine, earlier, was the argument of a copyediter, and hers, this time, was the argument of a theater person.
i've been listening to roomful of teeth lately, and last night i listened to some opera. a thing i find off-putting about some of the former and most of the latter is how crisply everything is enunciated. it doesn't sound real, and i don't like the artificial, forced quality. i'm accustomed to folk music, on the opposite end of the spectrum. but classical art is all about the rigorous technique, right? that's one of the things that's being showcased. and meanwhile lauren finds ballet hard to appreciate because it's so unnatural. i understand that intellectually, but i love and appreciate how unnaturally beautiful it is.
i'm wondering how someone with classical training goes about shedding technique to become more casual, more real, more approachable and relatable to a layperson. like, if i have ballet training and i want to include movement in a circus piece that doesn't look like classical ballet, how can i retain skills i spent so many years on without moving in a way that's alienating and disconnected from the circus skills? i suppose it's a question i've been asking since high school: if i know how to create beautiful, elaborate braided hairstyles that are sleek and tidy and perfect, but i know that for casual wear, one is supposed to leave out tendrils and wisps, how can i disregard actions and techniques that feel to me like doing things right and well? how can i allow myself to do something sloppily?