Willful Performance
n. the skillful ability to rearrange one’s Attentional Hierarchy.
Willful Performance is an advanced concept of Soma Literacy. In novice interactions (which include a majority of mundane acts) we are all tossed about, nudged, and manipulated by our active environments. Because the body yearns for harmony with our worlds, we are in a near constant game of reacting to the provocations coming at us. However, the skillful performer is accomplished in noting the ways that our environments and our default dispositions are manipulating our bodies-in-action. This actor can possess greater range and vision and make choices in time that exert an individual willfulness over the world. It is possible in many cases to willfully choose what I see, what I hear, what I think, or how I feel.
A visually literate actor can choose what to see in the painting or the nature walk. The aurally literate actor may note the pitch and timbre and analyze the event through the multiple sounded variables. Aural literacy is also demonstrated in the skill needed to separate out one talking voice from all of the cacophony in a loud crowd. The soma literate actor not only recognizes the bodied cadences experienced in time, entrained to the actor’s world, but can also choose which of the constant overlapping cadences they would prefer to entrain to, by resetting their attentional hierarchy.