I do want to feel, deeply.
I want to express my feelings – noisily.
I want to process and regulate my feelings.
But I do not want to identify with them, blame them on others, or vent them in a way that inflicts harm.
We all feel rage from time to time, as well as primal emotions like joy, fear, love, sadness. Our ability to feel is a big part of what makes us human. And if we experience powerful, unresolved trauma or unrequited longing, such feelings can take root in our hearts and bodies and torment us, growing in intensity and seeking release.
When emotions become overwhelming, we have a choice as to how we process and regulate them.
I am a singer and an athlete. Vocal expression and vigorous exercise can both provide a cathartic emotional release that supports and invigorates me and, potentially, others as well.
But if I do not understand and experience painful emotions as an internal flow and lack skills and strategies for regulating them, I will instinctively seek an external force to blame for inflicting this pain upon me, and I will attempt to wreak vengeance upon it with all my might. It will become a never-ending crusade, because pain that has taken root within me can never be fully exorcised by attacking someone or something outside of me.
I’m thinking about this in response to yesterday’s New York Times opinion column by Charles Blow, “I Want to Hate…,” a reflection on Donald Trump’s reaction to the conviction and subsequent exoneration of the Central Park Five.
In April 1989, five black teenagers were arrested for the brutal assault and rape of a woman who had been jogging in the park. They were deprived of sleep and food for more than 24 hours, then coerced to falsely confess to the assault; they were convicted and incarcerated. All five were exonerated in 2002 when the actual assailant admitted to committing the assault, his confession supported by strong DNA evidence.
At the time of the attack, Trump took out full-page ads in all four major New York City newspapers calling for these five teenagers to be put to death. Trump’s language in these ads was choked with a seering, impassioned rage. When the truth at last came to light, the Central Park Five were released, and the City settled a suit for their mistaken incarceration for $40 million, Trump continued to seeth and insisted on their guilt, despite its having been disproven. During his presidential campaign in 2016, Trump reiterated his unsubstantiated certainty of their guilt: “They admitted they were guilty. The police doing the original investigation say they were guilty. The fact that that case was settled with so much evidence against them is outrageous. And the woman, so badly injured, will never be the same.”
But Trump cares nothing at all for the truth, for justice, or for the woman in question. He pursues no protection or assistance for other potential victims of violent sexual assault. As he himself stated so passionately, what Trump wants is to hate. He continuously extrudes vitriol towards anyone who disagrees with him, towards minorities, towards marginalized populations, towards those who would inform him of truths that could prove inconvenient for his political agenda or his personal financial bottom line.
I have been continuously and utterly distressed by Trump’s heinous positions issues affecting racial minorities, immigrants, the LGBT community, the disabled, the environment, and most anyone beneath his own tax bracket since he took office. I have looked at my own resources and skill set and despaired that there is nothing at all that I can personally do to have an impact where all of this is concerned. I’m just a singer and a voice teacher struggling to keep my own small business from tanking in the face of the new tax laws and threats to demolish the NEA.
But yesterday I read Blow’s column and I thought, at least I have a thing or two to say about hate. I have strategies for dealing with rage. I know how to teach others to disentangle rage from hate and channel it into beautiful, cathartic singing, so that they and their audiences can experience and process painful emotions and transform them into something beautiful and empowering. So I’d like to offer a few examples of the way violent emotion can be expressed through cathartic, moving music.
Mozart: Die Entführung aus dem Serail: “Solche hergelaufen laffen”
Osmin: David Salsbery Fry, bass
Pedrillo: Scott Bradley Joiner, tenor
Osmin, guardian of Pasha Selim’s harem, is infuriated by those who try to trick him or take advantage of the Pasha’s kind nature. Osmin’s instinctive suspicions are quite justified here, as Pedrillo is indeed plotting to deceive him. Fry’s tone and demeanor are menacing throughout. The trills mimic the way one’s voice can shake with anger, and the concluding nonsensical rant shows how rage often impairs one’s logic. Entführung may be a comic opera, but there is nothing disingenuous about the way Mozart portrays Osmin’s violent anger.
Verdi: Rigoletto, “Cortigiani, vil razza dannata”
Rigoletto: Dmitri Hvorostovsky
This is a performance that beloved baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky gave some six months before his untimely death. I chose it for the remarkable contrast between the joy he exudes upon greeting his audience and the rage and anguish expressed through the aria. Here Rigoletto, who in the past cruelly mocked the grief of courtiers when their women have been exploited by the Duke, gets a taste of his own medicine – his cherished daughter has been abducted for the Duke’s amusement, and he is powerless to help her.
Bizet: Carmen, final scene
Carmen: Elina Garancia
Don Jose: Roberto Alagna
Alagna is admired for the beauty of his voice and frequently embodies romantic leads, but he gives terrifying voice to the murderous rage Don Jose expresses at the end of Carmen. Sexually unmanned by Carmen’s mocking rejection and subsequent preference for the toreador Escamillo, he brutally murders the woman he claimed to have loved.
I considered speculating about how each of these singers’ psychological histories might have contributed to their skill for expressing rage, but there is truly no need to understand the specifics. We all must confront anger, frustration, injustice, self-doubt, and mortality. It is how we respond that ultimately defines us.
Things are going to seriously piss us off from time to time in this life. No matter how brutal and traumatizing our experiences may be, it is up to each of us to work through our pain and do our best to heal from it rather than letting it fester and cause us to inflict pain upon others. I am in no way suggesting that whose who injure us should get a pass – abusive people are to be avoided, and criminal abuse prosecuted – but the kind of rage that can potentially incite us to violence towards others, self-destructive behavior, or scapegoating people with a different skin tone, religious affiliation or sexual preference, must be scrupulously examined, resolved, and, when possible, given healthy creative expression.
Someone like Donald Trump – an angry, vengeful, predatory, racist businessman-turned-politician – will never present himself for voice lessons, or any other expressive outlet or therapeutic process. He desires no resolution or regulation for his rage. He just wants to hate. The same can safely be said of the white supremicists whose favor he continually curries, as well as the NRA members who oppose common sense restrictions on gun sales while rewarding hateful politicians richly for their support.
I honestly don’t know how we can protect ourselves from their hatred or diminish their power to damage our democracy and the threat they pose to our well being.
But we who have the desire to be our best selves must choose to feel deeply, express ourselves courageously, and transform our pain into growth and give it authentic expression. We must never allow the rage we will inevitably feel to express itself as hatred and violence towards others. We must call foul when we witness such expressions of violence.
Art holds the power to transform rage from a noxious poison capable of motivating violence and discrimination, into a purifying crucible for expression. Rather than a luxury or an anaesthetizing entertainment, art may offer our best hope of preserving our own humanity in the face of all this fascism, greed and hatred.
Comments