Singing has always been about polish.

But for quite a while now, it has been about polishing entirely the wrong thing.

Once upon a time, being the best singer that one could be meant something slightly different that what it tends to mean today. It used to entail taking the seed that you are equipped with at birth - your physiological material, your talent, your voice - and being willing to walk the longest to find the proper terroir to plant it in, being the least squeamish about dirtying your fingers, doing what was necessary to ensure that the seed grew into the greatest, healthiest, most plentiful plant possible.

These days, being the best singer seems to entail taking that same seed and not walking much at all, but rather placing it inside the most expensive hardwood box attainable - one could be born with it, one could purchase it oneself, it could be bestown upon one - and merely being the best at polishing said box.

What happens then is the opposite of development. And the duty the singer has as a performing artist becomes impossible to perform - however more often than not the singer is completely unaware of their duty anyway, so they never notice.

A singer is not a creator. A singer is a performer.

A singer is not a source of light. A singer is a conduit. A singer is a vehicle. A singer is a prism.

What is supposed to happen, and what used to happen, is that the singer through their development polished not an errant box, but rather the facets of their prism. Thereby they could perform their duty as a performer - namely placing themselves in front of the beam of white light that is the existing artwork, created by someone who is not them, and letting it shine through them in the act of performing it, making it unique to there and then (“what happens in the room is the show”, as Oscar Peterson so perfectly put it) and, should all facets of their prism be polished and functional through development, the light that was once white and unfettered can become so gloriously plentiful and lush that it fills the entire room and every nook and cranny of the consciousness of the audience member.

What instead does happen is that the prism has not been polished, the light does not filter, the duty of the performer is shirked - and the unaware performer performs a misdiagnosis. The undeveloped performer steps out of the path of the light, refers to it rather than furthers it, reflects it rather than conducts it. And rather than disappearing into transporting themselves and the audience, the singer merely performs the toxic antithesis to their duty: they embody artistic death; they open their box and present the seed.

They Do Their Thing. Effectively unchanged as it is, having only ever been polished rather than planted.

Herein lies a danger which can easily dupe the undeveloped performer: it feels safe. It feels like them. More than anything else, since it has remained unaltered their entire lives.

They should know better.

They must know better.

I know better.

I am vastly outnumbered in knowing better.

But thank fuck - I am not completely alone. And there are things that can be done.

I mean to do them.