to be precise

part 2 of gentleness, precision, letting go

Following on my recent post on gentleness, we’re in Part 2 of our 3-legged stool: Gentleness, Precision, Letting Go. If you didn’t read the last one, now’s a good time.

We do the technique precisely - but not too tightly; we do it with gentleness - but not too loosely; and in so doing these two things we find we are able to let go.

Gentleness, Precision, Letting Go.

Let me tell you, it’s hard for me to write about precision. I even procrastinated doing so by an extra week - not following my own posting schedule - so, not being very precise! But I was a perfectionist for so long, I beat myself up for so long, I was overly controlling and restrictive and self-blaming for so long that it is now MUCH EASIER for me to write about gentleness and letting go because I have spent so much damn time working with them.

I don’t particularly want to teach on precision, on discipline, on following all the rules and abiding by a pre-decreed routine. I would much rather go on at length about how we’re not machines, about listening within, about allowing everything to arise and responding to what-is, not what-we’ve-decided or made-so.

Plus, without gentleness and letting go, precision can turn into a dictatorial little task-master. If we have close attention to detail, our inner precision-maker can slip into the critic very easily. We always know when we’re not doing things just so.

And yet.

Without precision, our practice is in danger of getting lazy, lax, loosey-goosey. The adage “not too tight, not too loose” is there for a reason. Precision keeps us from the “too loose” couch vibes where we kinda show up but we’re kinda just sitting there zoning out; we’re up there going through the motions but we’re on auto-pilot, at the end of the song without knowing how we got there. (Did I sing the right words?? I’ve been there.)

On the cushion, Precision means we attend to the instructions as clearly as we can. We take a good posture; we follow the breath as it undulates in and out of the body; we return our mind to the breath when we find that it has wandered. As Pema writes, “this seems simple, but to actually be with that breath and to be there for every breath requires a lot of precision.”

I know I can say for sure that I have never been so precise as to be there for every breath. But the practice, the attempt to do so, sharpens the mind. You know that dull, gross feeling when you look up from your phone after scrolling for an indeterminate length of time? Like you’re not quite sure just how much of your life you just wasted? Being present with precision feels like the opposite of that - like fresh, clear, clean air that comes in and perks everything up.

Onstage, precision looks like doing the do. Like showing up and attending to our technique (and then letting go - which I’ll talk about next time). It looks like staying off the phone backstage so that we actually have the mental headspace to enter the character’s world. It looks like giving yourself a good warmup, whatever that looks like on any given day, so your instrument is ready to play. It looks like showing up for the cattle call audition when it’s cold and wet and you’d rather stay home.

And it means knowing when we’re “on” and when we’re not. It means knowing ourselves well enough to know when we’re actually present, actually “in the moment,” and when we’re faking it, lulling ourselves into believing we’re really there when we’re phoning it in. It means knowing for yourself how things went, whatever feedback you’re given from others.

It means knowing what we’re focusing on when we step onstage, and being able to tell whether we did that or not when we step off. Do we have a specific circumstance, or aspect of the character, or part of the imaginary world that we are training our attention on while we’re onstage? Or are we gearing up to “do the scene” and hoping it “goes well”?

All this kind of knowing only comes from practice, from trying and failing enough times that we can learn ourselves, learn our instrument, our energy inside and out. It comes from paying attention, without judgment. It comes from precision.

The problem arises, as I mentioned in the beginning, when precision turns into perfectionism and criticism. When we’re staked out in our minds like a tiny SWAT team, ready to take down any thoughts that dare wander through. (Always a good time to remember that the point of meditation is not to rid the mind of thoughts.) When we’re so married to making sure our vocal technique is pristine that we can’t let any humanity in.

This is why precision and gentleness go hand in hand. If all we had was precision, it would get very rigid very fast. We need to attend to the technique, yes, but how we do that makes all the difference. If we come offstage and we know precisely what we didn’t do, that’s great, but if we beat ourselves up for failing, we might not want to go back and try again. If we’re super disciplined about getting up to hit all the auditions, but we don’t have the mental & emotional space to actually share who we are in the room, we need to shift things around.

And only we can know how to calibrate that ever-changing ratio of gentleness and precision from day to day.

We’re tasked with creating the same performance night after night. That requires a lot of precision. But the truth is, the performance is never the same. Every stage actor knows this. We are different day to day, the audience is different, that alchemy is never identical from night to night. That is life, that is the true aliveness that people come to live performance to experience.

So how do we be precise enough to hit all the notes with the best of our technique, while leaving room for the ineffable spark that makes a great show? Tune in next time for the final leg of the stool to find out.