Ethik der Behandlung

Ethic of Care

After our first week of readings, I have a whopper of a question for R. In her email to us, she signed off telling us to 'take care.' In which sense of the word?! I will try, but I am suddenly overwhelmed. Can I care for myself? If yes, is it desirable? Can I care for someone else? If so, am I caught in a perverted state of engrossment? Am I only feigning care to get credit? I am human and therefore intrinsically full of morality, whew,  but unfortunately there is no universal system of ethics; I actually have to be responsible with my capacity for caring!

The Noddings reading leaves me feeling like I did in elementary school (perhaps due to her constant use of teaching as an example): full of potential, but devastatingly untrained and uncoordinated. Hamington and Miller reel me in from my personal crisis, introducing the work of recent scholars who are bringing care ethics onto a bigger playing field, stressing the politicization of care as necessary towards making significant social change and progression.

I am still unable to define what an 'ethic of care' is. I assume, like the act of caring itself, its definition will be subject to change and context. Actually, I can't get past the term 'ethic' to even begin with an ethic of care. Instead, I will attempt once more to define what caring is. It's already a large enough challenge, but perhaps it's not so ridiculous to stop and think about the term 'care' -- even Hamington and Miller say, "Care is such a simple word. Its usage is so vast and diffuse that, like 'love,' care seems to have lost its precision through its widespread application" (xi).

Stop. Actually, defining 'care' is still beyond me. I know it involves many parties (who all actively participate and receive), that it takes many forms (thought, action, providing resources), and stems from multiple sources of motivation (natural, special interest, personal interest). I am sure this will become a common theme--a question for each blog or journal entry. For now, I will focus on care and how it applies to the practice of my daily life and future career.

A singer is a unique sort of musician. We carry our instruments with us. They are part of our physicality. We did not purchase our voice, cannot compare manufacturers, cannot buy a new one if the one we have breaks or gets old. Because of this, we struggle to separate ourselves from the voice. It is easy to see a weakness in the voice as a personal failure. We may often get sucked into egotistical thinking--working more towards making our voices sound good (and therefore defining our self-worth) than actually making music (which I also propose as the singer's potential for caring).

A similar and connected phenomenon is our motivation for singing. Is it self-serving? Who are we trying to serve when we step onstage? Do we really care about the audience or do we just like to sing and act because it's fun for us? Is it our own personal secret, our own revelation? Or is it something larger, and can we communicate something to and with the audience? The reasons and answers vary across the board, with each person.

One popular perspective is that we are musical therapists or doctors. Our profession begs to be equated and respected with those that care for the human body and mind. According to some people, as singers, we are doctors of the soul. Through our voices and acting, we can reach out and repair the human soul. Perhaps we can 'care' through our singing.

The most interesting and pressing question to me is the motivation for 'caring.' To regard singing as a career of care initially strikes me as a stretch. I realize that my reaction comes from looking at singing from the position of being a singer myself. I regard care in singing from the perspective of the potential care-giver. I define the care by my motivations. When I sing a certain phrase, when I make a certain character choice, is my main goal and motivation to move someone in the audience? Certainly, I think this feeling is possible; I have felt it minimally in my performance, but in all honesty, such a motivation is a privilege only for professionals (and successful professionals, at that). It is hard to be selfless in one's work when it is subject to endless criticism, self-criticism (again, hard to separate the voice from oneself),  job insecurity, and demands from various sources (composer, music on the page, director, conductor, colleagues, teachers, orchestra, stage-crew). It is nearly impossible to solely attend to or care for our audience. We are too preoccupied. BUT, of course we want to help people, to move people. There is a lot of vulnerability in opening up to an audience. Does that count? Can putting oneself in a position of vulnerability mark a certain level of dedication for caring?

This leads me to another interesting question. It is possible to care for someone if this someone is fictional? The articles we read on care suggest that there is a certain level of shared human experience and morality. In opera, singers act as historians, literally breathing life (and song) into characters. If there is the possibility for audience members to identify with a character on stage, and if I am in charge of my character, is there the possibility that in delicately caring for my embodiment of a character, I am caring for my audience?