"The principle element in a performance is risk, and if you're losing interest then by scaring yourself to death the audience will feel it and boy it'll wake them up"
About this Quote
Risk is Kottke’s antidote to autopilot. He’s talking like a working musician who’s spent enough nights onstage to know that “tight” can turn into “dead” the second the hands start doing what they did yesterday. The line has the blunt pragmatism of a performer who isn’t romanticizing danger for its own sake; he’s describing a craft problem: attention is contagious, and boredom travels faster than virtuosity.
The intent is almost therapeutic. If you’re losing interest, he suggests, don’t wait for inspiration or blame the room. Raise the stakes yourself. “Scaring yourself to death” isn’t melodrama so much as a method: push the tempo, take an improvisational turn, try a fragile passage, change the arrangement midstream. Create a situation where you have to listen again. When the performer is genuinely alert, the audience can sense it in micro-choices - the timing that tightens, the phrasing that risks being ugly, the split-second recovery that feels like a story unfolding live rather than a recital.
The subtext is a quiet critique of competence-as-product. A performance that’s merely accurate treats music like a finished commodity delivered on schedule. Kottke argues for performance as a live negotiation with failure: the possibility that it might not work is what makes it matter. Coming from a guitarist known for intricate, percussive playing, it’s also a reminder that technical mastery isn’t the endgame; it’s the tool you use to dare yourself in public. That dare is what “wakes them up” - not fireworks, but the palpable presence of something at stake.
The intent is almost therapeutic. If you’re losing interest, he suggests, don’t wait for inspiration or blame the room. Raise the stakes yourself. “Scaring yourself to death” isn’t melodrama so much as a method: push the tempo, take an improvisational turn, try a fragile passage, change the arrangement midstream. Create a situation where you have to listen again. When the performer is genuinely alert, the audience can sense it in micro-choices - the timing that tightens, the phrasing that risks being ugly, the split-second recovery that feels like a story unfolding live rather than a recital.
The subtext is a quiet critique of competence-as-product. A performance that’s merely accurate treats music like a finished commodity delivered on schedule. Kottke argues for performance as a live negotiation with failure: the possibility that it might not work is what makes it matter. Coming from a guitarist known for intricate, percussive playing, it’s also a reminder that technical mastery isn’t the endgame; it’s the tool you use to dare yourself in public. That dare is what “wakes them up” - not fireworks, but the palpable presence of something at stake.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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