Melted Honey; Sax and Sex
51
to unlearn afterwards. So that’s why we have to pay attention
to the tiniest things, like how your mouth sits on the
mouthpiece."*
Clearly, then, the players themselves, upon entering rehearsal time and
space, attempt to keep the touches they make to instrument body well within
their self-conscious attentions. As these attentions slip, or as the attentions are
focused on incorrect intersections, the conductor steps in to redirect flagging
self-attentions, or to correct the manipulations upon which the attentions are
focused. Directing the players to notice the points at which their bodies intersect
with instrument objects is the primary activity in which the conductor engages in
all rehearsals. It is the conductor who directs, or redirects, the players’ attentions
to the points at which their bodies intersect with those of instruments. As players
come to notice the points at which they and their bodily processes end and the
points at which their instruments begin, their directed self-attentions serve to
place them as player-subjects and their instruments as objects on either side of a
thick ontological divide which is maintained throughout ^ e rehearsal period.
The process that band members go through in order to rehearse can be
understood as a kind of invitation to reflection that ushers in what Danger has
called the “present” body.^ Present bodies invite reflection and allow a person to
discover their own activity “in shaping the world as it is discovered through our
perception.”^ Compton describes the invitation to reflection that gives rise to the
present body when he tells of his twisted ankle. Compton describes a
hypothetical situation in which he casts himself as a man hurrying to a meeting
for which he is rather late. Trying to get to his meeting as soon as he can,
Compton is apt “not to notice the details of those things aroimd me. Instead of
appearing to me clearly the things in my environment remain indistinct and
undifferentiated from their background.”^ Unreflexively engaged in this
habitual, carelessly rapid walking project, Compton suddenly twists his ankle:
It now occurs to me that I cannot walk to my meeting in my
habitual way as my ankle is sore and tender. I find myself
moving at a slower pace, painfully aware of my injury. The
cracks and imevenness of the sidewalk do not interest me in
the same way as before, for, if anything, they interest me
much more. I quite literally do not experience the sidewalk, or
the rest of the world for that matter, in the same way.®
Similarly, when band members rehearse, the terrains of their instruments interest
them much more than they do during what can be described as the habitual
experiences of performing^
As Compton notes, the world is shaped for us through our perception of
it. According to Abram, perception is: “reciprocity, the ongoing interchange