Singers need to learn to recognize and develop this flow and to know that it is distinct from the tempo of the music. Like musical tempo, the dramatic tempo can quicken or slow, and we need to take responsibility for manipulating the audience's sense of time. When you are totally absorbed in a play, a film or music, and you don't know what time it is or how long it has been going on, then you'll usually find there is contentment and happiness. When an artist can suspend time like that for an audience, he has succeeded. When we sing art songs, we act, but without props, costumes, scenery or external action.
Songs require the same complete sincerity of delivery.
One must strive to make the dramatic concept more important than the music, because drama precedes music. Music always evolves from drama. Actors need to learn to interpret correctly their internal cues at the moment of transition from pretense to acting, to naturalness. Almost all of us have negative emotional responses to this moment, otherwise we would exist at this level all the time. Breaking through the barrier into the void of the mythic universe within us leaves a residual negative feeling at the everyday level of existence.