The Age of Perfection or The Destruction of Creativity?

This guest blog on the Age of Perfection was written by Naomi Lee Schulke following a long conversation with us on authenticity and integrity in the age of AI. Naomi is a Vocal Process Registered Teacher and MT/CCM singing teacher specialising in gender transitioning voices.

 

‘How do you feel about that?’

‘It was okay. I’ve done it better.’

‘What do you think you could do better?’

‘I don’t know. It just wasn’t as good.’

This is a conversation I have had more times that I can count.  The singer, in their own time finds joy and success in the song they have sung but when they sing it in a repertoire session or a singing lesson it feels ‘less good’. Yet often the singer can’t express why. I believe it is largely down to one thing: perfection.  It’s a quest that fills the hearts and minds of so many ambitious humans. The need for exactitude and an error-free life.

Perfection and expectations

But who dictates these failures? In the case of the singers in my studio, I wonder if it’s the expectation of judgement from others in an open arena (group class, workshop, masterclass, performance) that leads them to self-criticism without the ability to pinpoint the problem. I often see a singer’s nerves get the better of them when the levels of adrenalin and cortisol naturally released in stressful situations, is released excessively: our brains misidentifying danger and putting the singer into a fight, flight or freeze situation. Put simply, they ‘choke’.

Perfection is a human concept. The idea that there is one right and essential way to do everything. And the feeling that comes with it, where making a mistake is bad, wrong and shameful. So, I wonder if, when a student brings in a piece in its embryonic stage, that they have worked on with joy in private, whether the fear of criticism – of potentially being seen not to be perfect, prohibits their ability to analyse accurately what they have done. It doesn’t seem to matter how often we hear that mistakes are a necessary tool for improvement (we wouldn’t have penicillin if it weren’t for a mistake) we still chase perfection and dissolve in the face of failure.

Perfection and creativity

What does this mean on a wider scale? Frankly, less tolerance of creativity. We are led to believe, not least via social media, that there is the right way to look, to age, the right colour, gender, sexuality. And when life fails, second by second, to deliver all that we have seen, we are cancelled or cancel ourselves. When did failure become something to be ashamed of?

Too often a singer will stop mid-song because what they sang isn’t ‘right’. They don’t even allow themselves to finish the note or phrase, in turn disabling the opportunity to set it right mid-flight, or even to see how the mistake feels within the larger context of the song. However, there are occasions when a singer is brave – singing on past a voice crack, flat note or wrong lyric. I have borne witness to extraordinary discoveries made from the vulnerability of those mistakes. A note crack on a belted note which the singer absorbs into the narrative and in turn brings their audience closer.

Supporting creativity

When I teach song creation from a devising perspective, I encourage the students to look at what singing is before working out how to create a piece. We reflect on natural vocalisations (babies crying, a woman giving birth, a cry of pain) all the way through to tribal vocalisations responding to their surroundings and angry human exchanges with raised voices, where our pitch, tone and volume invariably betray our feelings. In each of these situations we do not hear mistakes in the vocalisations. They are simply responding to a given situation.

I constantly make odd noises and ‘mistakes’ when I’m teaching. I don’t care! I also don’t believe it makes me a bad teacher. On the occasions that I’m required to demonstrate, it doesn’t always go right. I allow my students to see the flaws in my own creative process in the hope that they will let the bumps and cracks out in their own voices. It’s simple really, if they don’t make mistakes, they can’t identify the sounds they do and do not want to make.

Your challenge

So if you consider yourself a singer, I challenge you: next time you learn a new song, choose your trickiest passage and give yourself three different ideas to try out. Don’t be subtle or careful, just have some fun and see what comes of it, you’ll probably feel better for it.

 

 

You can find out more about Naomi Lee Schulke here

And click here for one of my blogs on perfection written in 2022 – Perfectionism And Me – Singing & Performing As A Perfectionist