Sterile Art

How should a performer's personal life affect his performance? Not just musical performance on stage, but performance as a teacher as well? We all know that one's personal goings on can profoundly affect a performance, but should it? Should we focus on the ability to screen out those influences that crash around and on us at a given time so as to perform a piece as we saw it before those crashings? Should we even try as it is certainly a futile operation?

Should we just give in to it...Allow a performance to be overshadowed by external forces acting on us? Is the temporary opportunity to communicate something from ourselves worth distorting a composer's message in the process?

Do we try to use a vestige of this time later when we think that a composer's wishes parallel our own? Are we to method act?

Otis Redding on the jukebox/laptop at the moment. There's a man that can wail and not become annoying. Piercing, yes...Annoying, no.

Rough week.