Art Sounds Insane
Ramblings inspired by sitting below a dance performance all weekend.
I’m currently working the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s (LMCC) River to River Festival, which is a festival of art and performances that takes place on Governors Island and various places in Lower Manhattan. My post is on Governors Island which, I have to tell you, I’m jazzed about. Governors Island is one of my absolute favorite places so having a (money making) reason to go there is really *chefs kiss.*
As of this past Friday, myself and another person are manning a gallery—meaning we take people’s names and tell them the exhibit is basically circular. We’ll do that for the next two weekends. It’s a pretty chill gig and feels so much like any number of other festivals or theatre things I’ve done in the past. It’s a whole host of new art and artists to be exposed to! I spent the weekend taping down curtains! I feel like I’m 24 again! …that’s an absolute lie and my joints almost didn’t let me type out the full sentence. There is something very comforting about it though.
Our gallery is situated in the lower part of the Arts Center. On Friday and Saturday, there were dress rehearsals and eventual performances of a dance show. We heard everything going on above our heads. Listening to that, I realized—
Art sounds insane.
To sit below it, to stand outside of it, to glimpse it from around the corner, Art never makes sense. Sometimes, even when you look at it right in the face, Art looks back with a mischievous grin, holding secrets you can know but that you won’t learn in any way you thought you would.
This isn’t the first time I’ve thought about how the doing of Art and the being in the community of Artists sounds. In those instances, I was thinking more about how the chatter sounds to the outside, the vocabulary, the way we talk about craft and process and education. I was thinking more about engaging in the conversations of Arts can feel like a sort of “welcome to the club” if you have a baseline or can feel like an insurmountable distance if you don’t. There are plenty of reasons why it can feel so cool and important to be an Artist with a capital A. There are just as many reasons why as we grow into adulthood we become disconnected from our creative selves. Namely, because we have been taught the only art worth doing is Art with a capital A and if you don’t already have the knowledge, why even try to be an artistic person?
That’s the existential side to this and thoughts for a much longer post and/or real life conversations. Any industry where there is lingo made purposefully inaccessible, the alienation of sound exists. It’s not an Arts specific problem but it certainly is a problem in art, a specific kind of insanity of sound.
But, what really hit me as I sat below the inexplicable sounds of a dance performance being made was that, divorced from all the context, Art sounds truly bonkers.
For two days, there was stomping and jumping and screeching and guttural sounds. There were moments that sounded like ghosts on parade, wooooooo-ing through the night. The moments that were the most unnerving were the quiet moments, the moments when we weren’t sure if they were done with the performance or were waiting to surprise us once again. Despite knowing it was likely the latter, I still jumped a little bit with every surprise sound. I had very little concept of what the space looked like upstairs so that made the movement all the more confusing—sometimes they were right on top of us, sometimes they were clear across the room. I couldn’t get a grip on what they were exploring just from the sound of it. Mostly, I thought it mirrored the way upstairs neighbors are never quiet. Mine, in particular, always seem to be building or moving furniture and/or vacuuming at weird times of day. It made me laugh a little bit. No wonder Art is incredibly confusing while it gets made. Certainly to those on the inside but, especially, to those on the outside.
The most you can know from the outside is that it’s bodies in space making sounds. People making Art are often making themselves inhuman so that they can, eventually, show the deep parts of their humanity and, by extension, parts of your humanity. The writhing on the floor, the jumping over people, the singing of “You are my Sunshine” in weird physical contexts that actors, particularly undergraduate actors, find themselves doing does have a means to an end. Yet, for all those outside classroom and rehearsal hall doors might know, everyone in there is experiencing a horrifying demise—sometimes, that’s not completely incorrect—or, maybe, just all screaming into a refrigerator turned up to its coldest setting.
To physically sit in an audience is both making an offering and receiving a gift. Your presence is the offering and the Artists’ performance is a gift. Even if the Art is still sort of unknowable when you watch it or experience it, there is 100% more context than there is if you’re just hearing it. Listening to a full performance from beyond eyesight or ear shot will never be the same as sitting in a room with other people, a place where all your senses are engaged.
Hearing Art beyond its boundaries has a bit of a “seeing how the sausage gets made” flavor to it. Some people want to know, some don’t but, regardless, if you are anywhere near the process, you will hear and you will learn something whether you want to or not. Don’t pull the curtain! Oh, you have no choice? Well, the Wizard of Oz is just some guy and it’s going to make you feel weird to know that.
There is, on the other hand, something beautiful about knowing the confusing sounds above your head will create Art in the end. Every loud slam that causes you to startle from your seat might actually be a moment that stirs ethereal emotions and creates real connection between you and an Artist, you and the rest of the witnesses, the Arts and the audience. Screeching that sounds like a parliament of owls after a bad night out might actually inspire a shockwave in your soul that unlocks a feeling you were unaware you could feel. It’s the beauty of Art. It’s the devastation of Art. It’s the Art of Art.
Yes, if you’re wondering, I did actually see the performance from whence all the a-wop-bop-a-loo-bops were coming from. No, I don’t necessarily have any great insight or connection between sounds from below and sounds from above. It was a dance piece and if I am inadequate in my knowledge of one Art (hilarious, just one Samantha??), it’s dance. Seeing the performance did, however, give me the context to appreciate the depths and limits of the human body and human voice. It did, of course, make me think at least a little. And it did, in the end, make me consider how people outside of rehearsal rooms of my plays might be thinking about an errant scream or sudden explosion.
Programming Note: There is a chance that there will be no newsletter next week. I’m working again all weekend and while I’d like to think that I’ll write the newsletter during the week and schedule it for Sunday, the data I have from my past tells me that that might not happen. I might still get one written! But, if I don’t, don’t worry. It’s not the sounds (silence) of my impending demise. …probably.
I have been on the subway so much more recently.
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