ABSTRACT
Introduction Singing is both everyday and extraordinary. It is common to all cultures and all peoples. Anthropologists tell us that 50,000 years ago in the forests of Eurasia, Neanderthals gathered together to sing (Mithen 2006). Like the breath that supports it, singing is also often taken for granted. The majority of us probably don’t think about singing very much, if at all. Over and above our own occasional efforts, we marvel at, and delight in, the exceptional skills and brilliance of others – whether this be the professional opera singer or our favourite pop idol. Albeit a universal human capacity and preoccupation, singing for a living demands an altogether higher level of training, practice and competence. Professional singers spend years honing their craft, learning how to do it better. Their aim is to reach that state of (apparent) effortless engagement, which characterizes the greatest singers (Pavarotti, Domingo, Callas, Gobbi, Wunderlich, Franklin, Holiday, Sinatra, Wonder, Winehouse and so many more); to reach a point where as Pavarotti said, ‘it is going so strongly, I can’t stop singing’. This, then, is a distinctive and rich empirical context for exploring further the phenomenon of ‘being in the zone’ (bitz); not just because bitz might be thought to be a corequisite for singing of the finest quality, but because the particular learning journey from everyday to extraordinary singing appears to offer wider lessons we all might recognize, concerning how each of us might learn to experience bitz more often in our own lives (whether we sing or not). Despite the chances of achieving singing fame and fortune being very small indeed (see Towse 1995, 1992), many nonetheless seek to make the transition from the everyday singer to extra-ordinary performer. For most, such as myself,1 the route to success is sought through years of investment in singing lessons and a musical training requiring intensive study at a music college or conservatory. (For a handful of people, this journey is fast-tracked through winning a TV talent show, e.g. The X Factor, Pop Idol or The Voice.) Of course, embarking on such a musical training is not open to all, even if the voice is one instrument that costs nothing to carry around and anyone can ‘play’. Whilst it is perfectly possible to learn to sing without a singing teacher, most people who are seriously committed will take lessons with teachers on a one-to-one basis. Being able to afford
such premium lessons presents a significant barrier to entry for many, and no doubt contributes to the prevailing mind-set that such learning is, in some sense, ‘special’. The apprentice-master relationship is central to the process of singing tuition, both in and out of music conservatoires across the world. From a relatively early age, would-be professional singers, whether classical, musical theatre or pop, find their way to a teacher of their choice (just how this happens is worthy of another study altogether). The teacher-pupil bond is central to all that follows. Regardless of what the teacher knows about singing, or, indeed, how good they are themselves at singing, the first essential ingredient for any successful relationship is trust. For the student there has to be a sense that the teacher knows what he or she is talking about, and this must be manifest in either their own approach to singing, or in that of their other students. Typically, they have been professional singers themselves. The singing teacher, one would hope, has considerable experience to call upon – including what it ‘feels like’ to be in the zone. They understand the ups and the downs of a career in music. They are both shaped by, and shape, the ‘singing world’. As such, they hold a powerful hand. The social bond between student and teacher is asymmetric; the student desperately wants to believe in the teacher. It is the teacher’s job to give hope, whilst being realistic, endowing the student with ‘the will to believe’ (see James 1896). Interestingly, few individuals manage to achieve the highest of accolades in both performing and teaching professions. Being very good at singing does not, it seems, progress naturally into being able to teach others how to do it. Maybe this should serve to teach us a preliminary lesson about learning to be in the zone. ‘Being’ and knowing about being are separate things. Whilst singing forms the empirical focus of the chapter, my underlying motivations are rather broader in scope and focus. In an act of ‘defamiliarization’, of ‘making strange’ or rendering visible the overlooked and habitualized aspects of daily life (Lefebvre 1991; Gardiner 2000, 2004, 2006), I seek to question whether bitz might more profitably be understood (especially within a context of learning) as an immanent rather than transcendent process? Immanence and transcendence are ‘correlative terms whose general meaning is indwelling or inherent (internal), and moving or being beyond (external), respectively’ (Hartwig 2007: 254). At issue, therefore, is the extent to which bitz involves a characteristically ‘special’ human capacity to overcome or transcend some existing state or level of consciousness and knowledge (this, I suggest, is the prevailing position maintained across society and throughout much of this book); or whether it is, in fact, a label more suitably applied to a ‘normal’ mode of human behaviour that we have otherwise lost touch with or become alienated from (a position that I will argue finds support from my analysis of learning to sing)? In the second half of the chapter I consider conceptual and practical challenges of learning to be in the zone within the distinctive context of learning to sing. Learning is, I suggest, a necessarily social and relational process, where the idea of ‘witnessing’ is useful for framing further detailed enquiry (‘every breath you take I’ll be watching you’2). On the one hand, the student must be a witness
to their own response to teaching, and on the other, the teacher is an active witness of the student’s progress (see Beuys 2004 and McNiff 1998 on related aspects of witnessing). With regard to the former, I introduce the bitz/bootz paradox: to consciously learn to ‘be in the zone’ would appear to require ‘being out of the zone’ (bootz) to the extent that the learner is both doing/making/performing and following instruction. We associate bitz with fluency and a perceptual concentration that is focused on the activity per se. If we are consciously directing our attention towards the instructions and/or the instructor (our singing teacher) we are putting our minds ‘elsewhere’. Our paradoxical task becomes trying to achieve something (bitz) while not trying to consciously or directly achieve it. The question arises as to how we might develop a form of nondistracting self-monitoring that can receive instruction leading to our being in the zone. Of course, it is important here to reflect further on the nature of the ‘instruction’ itself. The chapter continues with a brief review of two forms of mediation (story-telling and mimesis), highlighting some of the situated challenges facing teachers, before concluding with a summary.
