Playing Scared
Page 21
Looking back, I see the gap that’s always existed between who I think I am and the reality of what I am. Forty years ago, as an au pair in Italy, I happened to find a letter written by the signora, describing me as “gentile, pero poco timida”—nice, but a little shy. Her opinion shocked me. I—the loudmouth of my family, the one who fought and won most dinnertime debates, if only through the force of my voice—timida? My private and public personae were more different than I wished to admit.
We all dance so freely when alone in our bedrooms. The danger lies in stepping out from behind the closed door. Early in my year’s journey, I heard of a man who hoarded five pianos, two of them grands, in a double-wide trailer. He refused to play for anybody but himself; he collected pianos the way some people collect figurines. The image of those imprisoned pianos haunted me. It seemed pathetic, his music making like the proverbial tree falling in the forest. What was the good of all that music if there was no one to hear it? The image spurred me on to break out of my own double-wide trailer.
I’m out.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A few years ago I was visiting my friend Amy Linn in Missoula when, deep into a bottle of wine, we began swapping stories about stage fright. I described my piano disasters, she told me about her equestrian ones. That conversation set in motion a project that would consume me for the next three years. Amy’s smarts and creative vision have inspired me from the beginning. Her early readings were invaluable, and when I got lost in a thicket of words, she helped me find my way out.
This project leaned on the expertise of many different people, beginning with my piano teachers: Landis Gwynn, whose uncontained passion for Bach and Beethoven first brought me back to classical music; Lynn Kidder, my ballast whenever I feared I was reaching too high; and especially Ellen Tryba Chen, who pushed, prodded, and refused to accept anything less than excellence. Or at least my version of it.
Sport psychologist Noa Kageyama was incredibly generous, coaching me in weekly sessions that went on for months. Don Greene emerged in the final stages of my journey and gave me a mysterious boost that I still wonder at. Other psychologists, notably John Beebe, Susan Raeburn, and Ron Thompson, gave freely of their time and insights. And I benefited from the wisdom of several concert pianists: Frederic Chiu, Gwendolyn Mok, and Ruth Slenczynska, who shared their thoughts and stories about the act of performing. I’m also grateful to John Orlando, whose fearless reflections on a lifetime of performance anxiety touched me deeply.
Many friends and family read the manuscript in its various permutations. My gratitude goes to Amy Beddoe, Irene Borger, Jennifer Eberhardt, Donka Farkas, and Jill Wolfson. A big thank-you to Mary Offermann, who not only read every word and questioned every comma, but also listened to me expound on my latest piano discovery on our weekly rain-or-shine trip to the Santa Cruz farmers’ market. Thanks also to Jim LaMarche and Christine Z. Mason for being willing to step in and help at a minute’s notice. Debbie Katz appeared at a critical juncture and gave enormous support and encouragement. And a special thank-you to Kit Seelye, whose critical eye and sound judgment have kept me honest for the past thirty years.
Thanks to my agent, Michael Bourrett, who shepherded this book from the initial query, and my editor, Jacqueline Johnson, whose judgments about style and organization have proven correct time and again. Every author should have an editor like her.
Thank you to my sister, Syma Solovitch, who read, laughed, and assured me that “Mummy would have loved it.” Her caring, intelligence, and rapier wit nurtured me throughout the final stages. My brother, Joseph—always an anchor—helped me recall details of childhood. A big thank-you to my sons, Ben, Max, and Jesse, whose self-aplomb onstage set a high standard. My favorite music making has always been with them. As an editor, Max has an eye for detail that is as sharp and nuanced as his aptitude for memorizing a Bach partita.
And last, but most of all, to Rich, for whom there are no words. He knows.
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
1 Hugh Grant interview, Entertainment Weekly, August 14, 2009; Paul McCartney interview, NME, November 25, 2009; Adele interview, Rolling Stone, April 28, 2011; Christopher Nupen, Andrés Segovia: In Portrait (Guildford, UK: Allegro Films, 2012); Elizabeth Silverthorne, Sarah Bernhardt (Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishing, 2003), 47; David Amos, “Horowitz, Other Greats, Suffered from Stage Fright,” San Diego Jewish World, May 23, 2014.
2 Anne Edwards, Streisand: A Biography (Boston: Little, Brown, 1997); Laurence Olivier, Confessions of an Actor: An Autobiography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985); Richard David Story, Nightlife, New York Magazine, September 13, 1993; Marianne Bahmann, Coping with the Limelight: A Manual on Stage Fright (n.p.: BookSurge, 2009); John Lahr, “Petrified,” New Yorker, August 28, 2006, 38–42; Phillip D. Atteberry, “Remembering Ella,” Mississippi Rag, April 1996; Alan Zilberman, “Interview: Jesse Eisenberg Talks About ‘Now You See Me’ and Never Watching Movies,” Washington City Paper, May 23, 2013; Joseph Murphy, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind (Radford, Va.: Wilder Publications, 2008); NBC News, September 12, 2007, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/20727420/ns/health-mental_health/t/even-stars-get-stage-fright/; “About This Person: Movies & TV,” http://www.nytimes.com/movies/person/91479/Mel-Gibson/biography; Ronald Blum, “Luciano Pavarotti: A Tenor Like No Other,” USA Today, September 6, 2007; Alexis Petridis, “The Astonishing Genius of Brian Wilson,” Guardian, June 24, 2011 http://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/jun/24/brian-wilson-interview; Carol Burnett, This Time Together: Laughter and Reflection (New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2010).
3 “What Are Americans Afraid Of?,” Bruskin Report 53 (July 1973).
Chapter 2: BLINDED BY THE LIGHT: A SHORT HISTORY
1 Exodus 4:10–16.
2 Carl Gustav Jung, Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934, vol. 1, ed. Claire Douglas (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997).
3 Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (New York: Scholastic Paperbacks, 1999), 196.
4 Jay-Z, Fresh Air, NPR, November 16, 2010, http://www.npr.org/2010/11/16/131334322/the-fresh-air-interview-jay-z-decoded.
5 Jon McKenzie, Perform or Else: From Discipline to Performance (New York: Routledge, 2001), 3.
6 Glen O. Gabbard, “Stage Fright,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 60 (1979): 383.
7 Susan Dominus, “What Happened to the Girls in Le Roy,” New York Times Magazine, March 7, 2012.
8 Quentin Letts, “The Terror That Turns Our Acting Giants to Jelly,” Daily Mail, August 27, 2013.
9 Harry Lee Poe and Rebecca Whitten Poe, eds., The Good, the True, and the Beautiful: Meditations (St. Louis, Mo.: Chalice Press, 2008).
10 Nicholas Ridout, Stage Fright, Animals, and Other Theatrical Problems (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 52.
11 Constantin Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares, trans. Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood (New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1973).
12 Stephen Aaron, Stage Fright: Its Role in Acting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 122–23.
Chapter 3: TOUCHING A TARANTULA
1 Lahr, “Petrified,” 36–42.
2 Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha: A Novel (New York: Vintage Books, 1999), 144.
3 Charles Rosen, Critical Entertainments: Music Old and New (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), 9–10.
Chapter 6: REVENGE OF THE AMYGDALA
1 Robert D. Richardson, William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), 237.
2 William James, “What Is an Emotion?,” Mind, vol. 9, (1884): 188–205.
3 Joseph LeDoux, The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 154.
4 James McGaugh, Memory and Emotion: The Making of Lasting Memories (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003).
5 LeDoux, Emotional Brain, 180–81.
6 Richard A. Gabriel, No More Heroes: Madness and Psychiatry in War (New York: Hill and
Wang, 1987), 137.
7 Ibid., 139.
8 Nicolas Rasmussen, “Medical Science and the Military: The Allies’ Use of Amphetamine During World War II,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 42, no. 2 (Autumn 2011): 205–33.
9 C. O. Brantigan, T. A. Brantigan, and N. Joseph, “Beta-Blockade and Musical Performance,” Lancet 2 (October 21, 1978): 896.
10 C. O. Brantigan, T. A. Brantigan, and N. Joseph, “Effect of Beta Blockade and Beta Stimulation on Stage Fright,” American Journal of Medicine 72 (January 1982).
Chapter 7: MIND GAMES
1 Bruno Monsaingeon, Mademoiselle: Conversations with Nadia Boulanger (Manchester, UK: Carcanet Press, 1985), 35.
2 Richard J. Davidson and Sharon Begley, The Emotional Life of Your Brain (New York: Hudson Street Press, 2012), 11.
3 Dianna T. Kenny, The Psychology of Music Performance Anxiety (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 268.
4 Davidson and Begley, Emotional Life of Your Brain, 167.
5 Ibid., 162.
Chapter 8: ME AND MY SHADOW
1 Jung, Visions, 1306.
2 Dorsha Hayes, “The Archetypal Nature of Stage Fright,” Art Psychotherapy 2, nos. 3–4 (1975): 279–81.
3 Ruth Slenczynska and Louis Biancolli, Forbidden Childhood (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1957), 11.
4 Ibid., 48–49.
5 Ibid., 43.
6 Ibid., 58.
7 Ibid., 148.
8 Ibid., 202.
Chapter 9: SO MUCH FOR PERFECTION
1 Charles Nordhoff, The Communistic Societies of the United States from Personal Visit and Observation (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1875), 259–301.
2 Pierrepont Noyes, My Father’s House: An Oneida Boyhood (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1937), 136.
3 Paul L. Hewitt and Gordon L. Flett, “When Does Conscientiousness Become Perfectionism?,” Current Psychiatry 6, no. 7 (July 2007).
4 Jennifer Sey, Chalked Up: My Life in Elite Gymnastics (New York: HarperCollins, 2009).
5 Bonnie E. Robson, “Competition in Sport, Music and Dance,” Medical Problems of Performing Artists 19, no. 4 (December 2004).
6 Donna Krasnow, Lynda Mainwaring, and Gretchen Kerr, “Injury, Stress, and Perfectionism in Young Dancers and Gymnasts,” Journal of Dance Medicine & Science 3, no. 2 (1999): 51–58.
Chapter 10: UM … UM …
1 Karen Kangas Dwyer and Marlina M. Davidson, “Is Public Speaking Really More Feared Than Death?,” Communication Research Reports 29, no. 2 (April–June 2012): 99–107.
2 James C. McCroskey, “Communication Apprehension: What Have We Learned in the Last Four Decades,” Human Communication 12, no. 2 (n.d.): 157–71.
3 Henry Shukman, “The Art of Being Wrong,” Tricycle, Spring 2013.
Chapter 11: CULTURAL ARTIFACTS OF FEAR
1 David Greenberg, Ariel Stravynski, and Yoram Bilu, “Social Phobia in Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Males; Culture-Bound Syndrome or Virtue?,” Mental Health, Religion & Culture 7, no. 4 (2004): 289–305.
2 Stefan G. Hofmann, Anu Asnaani, and Devon E. Hinton, “Cultural Aspects in Social Anxiety and Social Anxiety Disorder,” Depression and Anxiety 27, no. 12 (December 2010): 1117–27.
Chapter 12: GAME PLANS
1 Sian Beilock, Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To (New York: Free Press, 2010), 185.
Chapter 13: TEST DRIVE
1 Gary Graffman, I Really Should Be Practicing (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1981), 145.
INDEX
Aaron, Stephen, (1)
Aaron (Biblical), (1)
An Actor Prepares (Stanislavski), (1)
actors and performance anxiety, (1), (2), (3), (4).
Adderley, Cannonball, (1)
Adele, (1)
Adler, Alfred, (1)
adrenaline, (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (6), (7)
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Twain), (1)
The Age of Innocence (Wharton), (1)
Alcibiades, (1), (2)
alcohol, (1), (2), (3), (4)
Alexander technique, (1), (2)
alpha waves, (1)
Alzheimer’s disease, (1)
Amanita muscaria, (1)
amphetamines, (1)
amygdala, (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (6), (7)
amygdala retraining, (1)
anagnorisis, (1)
Anderson, Chris, (1)
animal baths, (1)
announcers and performance anxiety, (1)
anxiety. See also fear; stage fright
culture-specific. See culture-specific variants of performance anxiety
drugs used to control. See drugs used to control anxiety
in Freudian psychology, (1)
origin of term, (1)
perfectionism and, (1)
in virtual reality therapy, (1)
anxiety contagion, (1)
anxiety disorders, (1), (2). See also social phobias
arachnophobics, (1), (2)
archery, (1)
“The Archetypal Nature of Stage Fright” (Hayes), (1)
Ariel Ministries, (1)
Ashkenazy, Vladimir, (1)
athletes and performance anxiety. See sports
attachment theory, (1)
attentiveness, (1), (2), (3). See also mindfulness
audience, internal, (1), (2)
auditory cortex of brain, (1)
Austen, Jane, (1), (2)
autonomic nervous system, (1)
Awakening the Giant Within (Robbins), (1)
Ayduk, Ozlem, (1)
aymat zibur, (1)
Bach, Johann Sebastian
author’s feelings about, (1), (2), (3)
English Suites, (1)
Gwynn and, (1)
inventions, (1), (2), (3)
Keyboard Concerto no. 1 in D Minor, (1)
partitas, (1), (2)
preludes and fugues, (1), (2), (3), (4), (5)
Prelude and Fugue in C Minor, (1), (2), (3), (4)
Rothman and, (1), (2)
Well-Tempered Clavier, (1)
badminton, (1)
Bagatelles (Tcherepnin), (1), (2)
Barron, Doug, (1)
baseball, (1), (2), (3)
basketball, (1), (2)
Battenberg, Mrs. (Larry Smith’s teacher), (1), (2)
Beddoe, Amy, (1), (2)
Beebe, John, (1), (2)
Beethoven, Ludwig van
Gwynn and, (1), (2)
Moonlight Sonata, (1)
Rosen and, (1)
Schnabel and, (1)
Sonata no. 32 in C Minor, op. (1), (2)
Waldstein Sonata, (1)
Begley, Sharon, (1)
Beilock, Sian, (1)
Ben (author’s son), (1), (2), (3)
Benjamin (aymat zibur sufferer), (1), (2), (3)
Berlin Academy of Music, (1)
Bernard, Ethel, (1)
Bernhardt, Sarah, (1)
beta-blockers
author’s use of, (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (6)
Greene’s disapproval of, (1)
memory formation and, (1)
as performance enhancing drug, (1), (2)
prescribed for heart disease and blood pressure, (1), (2), (3)
refusal to use, (1)
side effects, (1)
used for performance anxiety, (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (6), (7)
beta-receptors, (1), (2)
beta waves, (1)
Beth El-Keser Israel Congregation, New Haven, CT, (1)
biofeedback, (1), (2)
biting the apple, (1)
Black, James, (1), (2)
Blackmer, Corinne, (1)
Blass, Steve, (1), (2)
BodyWave, (1)
Bohm, David, (1)
Boston Legal (TV show), (1)
Boulanger, Nadia, (1)
Bowlby, John, (1)
Brahms, Johannes
author’s feelings about, (1), (2), (3)
intermezzos, (1), (2), (3)
Intermezzo in A Major, (1)
Piano Concerto no. (1), (2)
piano trio, (1)
rhapsodies, (1), (2), (3), (4)
Rhapsody in G Minor, (1)
romanzes, (1)
Romanze in F Major, (1), (2)
brain hemisphere balance, (1), (2), (3)
brain plasticity, (1), (2)
Brantigan, Charles, (1)
Brantigan, Thomas, (1)
breathing
fear and, (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (6)
in mindfulness and meditation, (1), (2), (3)
remembering, (1), (2), (3), (4), (5)
in tae kwon do, (1)
as therapy, (1), (2), (3), (4)
Breeders’ Cup Classic, (1)
Brockovich, Erin, (1)
Bronstein, Raphael, (1)
Brown, Eric, (1)
Buddhists, Tibetan, (1), (2), (3), (4)
bullet-proof approach to performance anxiety, (1)
Burnett, Carol, (1), (2)
Burns, Tom, (1)
Busia, Kofi, (1)
Busia, Kofi Abrefa, (1)
“But the World Goes Round” (Minnelli), (1)
Callas, Maria, (1)
Cambodian khyal cap, (1)
Cambodian pul meunuh, (1), (2)
Campbell, Joseph, (1)
Caruso, Enrico, (1)
Casals, Pablo, (1)
Castilano, Edward, (1), (2)
catecholamine storm, (1), (2)
Cats Estate, (1)
centering, (1), (2), (3), (4)
Chalked Up (Sey), (1)
Chan, Angela, (1), (2)
Chaplin, Charlie, (1)
Charney, David, (1)
cheerleaders and mass hysteria, (1)
Chen, Ellen Tryba, (1), (2), (3), (4)
Chen, Otis, (1)
chicken heart, (1)
childbirth, (1)
childhood experiences and performance anxiety, (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (6), (7)
child prodigies, (1)
chiroplasts, (1)
Chiu, Frederic, (1)