The other night I saw Cat Power perform in the Paradiso in Amsterdam. Though I am not sure if it was in fact a performance. To me, performance connotes more or less an act, taking on a persona on stage that is different from who you are. Chan behaved on that stage like I might in my weaker moments in the safe solitude of my room, mumbling to myself with all the repressed twerks and twitches creeping out. Sometimes, when she was scaling the edge of the podium, she was winking. If you would follow her line of sight you'd see that it wasn't really directed to anyone, just an affectation.
So not a performance, just a presence. She was just there. Her whole countenance was too odd to be a deliberate move, too strange to be acted out. It was what people like to call a naked performance (which, then, to me sounds like an oxymoron), and therefore revealing.
When you think about it, there is something very unnatural about a selected number of persons put on a pedestal (which is what a podium is, really) and preaching to multitudes of people (which is what a performance is, really) as if they were the chosen ones.
In light of that, someone being a little awkward and nonsensical on stage makes perfect sense to me. We prefer our rock stars with a cocky confidence, because rock is after all directly connected to coolness. But every rock star who is completely at ease when he's ‘up there’ is either a good actor or an asshole. Chan Marshall, walking around a little dazed and shellshock, is relatable. The whole night she was singing from the corner of her mouth, almost as if she was sneaking the words in. Or as if she was whispering secrets at us. Unfortunately, no one could hear what she was saying, because she seemed either not able or unwilling to properly sing in one of the two microphones she brought.
On musical grounds then, this was not a great show. As rock and roll, which works on different criteria, it was a little bit better, because provocative. As art, it worked wonders. How many people have not noted that a good criteria for art is that it gets you out of your comfort zone? That is what Cat Power, deliberately or not (probably not), does. You come out of it different than you go in. So then, interestingly enough, in a world brimming with performances everywhere ("all the world's a stage" is becoming more and more true with time), simply being becomes art.
