{ mf'n } origin story
Chapter 1: Meisner and The Actor's Workshop
I studied acting in college and trained with Eliza VanCort at The Actor's Workshop of Ithaca. There I studied the Meisner technique, a tool for actors developed by Sanford Meisner during the 1930s. Through repetition exercises, improvised scenework, and emotional preparation (or "emotional preps"), actors learn to remain fully and authentically present in a scene while still maintaining a heightened level of emotion. I used songs and playlists for all of my preps - joy, grief, anger, arousal - it didn't matter what the emotion was, I could always find a song or a set of songs that matched it so perfectly it felt like my iPod was doing half the work for me backstage.
Chapter 2: Aphantasia and Karaoke Nights
Full disclosure, this is a really short origin story. Like, this is the last chapter. Because once I discovered what aphantasia was, I started making a lot of connections and having a lot of realizations that weren't necessarily bad, but weren't exactly a delight to hear either. Turns out the reason I was drawn to using music for my emotional preps is because almost everyone else in the class was doing it in their heads - meaning they were conjuring up images or scenes from their own experiences in order to heighten their emotional state before going onstage. I am not exaggerating when I say that until the age of 34, I thought you all were being facetious when you said you "saw" things in your head.
Aphantasia is a total lack of (voluntary) mind's eye, which means if you tell me to close my eyes and picture a tree, I can hear the word 'tree' and if I wanted to, I could hear a brief (or lengthy) description of a tree, but that's it. And even though I didn't have a name for it until my adult years, I unknowingly compensated for it by gravitating towards music. Not just for emotional prep work during college, but I was always the one who suggested karaoke. Now that I think about it, there was something about being able to see the lyrics, even if it was a song I knew by heart, that made the experience more enjoyable. Again, not exaggerating here but for most of my teens and 20's I would've taken a karaoke night over an actual concert night any day of the week. And now, with a better understanding of what aphantasia is and how it affects me, I can see this and so many other preferences of mine for what they really are/were - seeking visuals in environments where they're usually in your head.