The ceremony of performance

"Except when he sang. Then he was free, that is, constrained by the ceremony of  performance, the fiction that the entertainer is alone, that he is expressing grief or joy to himself alone. Tom would close his eyes and tip his head back. Squint lines would stream from his eyes, his forehead would wrinkle. The veins would stand out along his throat and when he held a high note his whole body would tremble. One time he proudly showed me the calluses he'd earned by playing the guitar; he let me feel them. Sometimes he didn't play at all but just sounded notes as he worked something out. He had forgotten me. He thought he was alone. He'd drop the slightly foolish smile he usually wore to disarm adolescent envy or adult expectation and he looked angry and much older: I took this to be his true face. As a folk singer Tom was permitted to wail and shout and moan and as his audience I was permitted to look at him ..."

-Edmund White, A Boy's Own Story