“Improvising is all about human relationship. It is about listening, responding, connecting, and being generous. When a group of free players gets together and unfolds a coherent and interesting piece without a prior plan or template, it is like watching separate beings become integrated into a single nervous system. It is a partnership, with each other and with the audience, in the deepest sense of the word. I even get this feeling when I am playing or hearing a solo improvisation. Each tone and gesture can be seen as an invitation to deepen the information and feelings that are unfolding. The discipline of improvisation involves sensing invitations, accepting them, and supporting each other. There is not much room to be egotistical or greedy for attention. Leadership might be clearly visible at one moment and subtler at others, but it is fluid and shared; it slides around from person to person, like a fugue. We are able engage in the give-and-take of communication. Exchange, flow, listening, responding: our improvising can become a mini-economy, a mini-ecology, a template, in fact, for a self-organizing form of democracy.” –Stephen Nachmanovitch

I read the above passage today and it comes from Stephen Nachmanovitch’s book, The Art of Is: Improvising as a Way of Life. So far it’s just a lovely and profound book.

Interestingly, and somewhat indirectly related to the quote (but of course also kind of related), I heard philosophical theologian, Marjorie Suchocki, being interviewed on Homebrewed Christianity today as well; such a good interview! Paraphrasing Marjorie’s interview, she mentions how during her philosophy classes she always felt like she was looking through the eyes of all these men (and they were always men!), but when she read Whitehead she felt as though he was looking through hers, seeing things as she saw them. I certainly resonate with her on Whitehead and process thought being a better perpectival fit! And the Whiteheadian/process-relational philosophy and improvisation connection starts to come together very nicely when we recall Richard Lubbock’s wonderful articulation of Whitehead’s cosmos (which I have referenced on this blog more times than I can count):

“Whitehead’s cosmos suggests a musical performance; a free-wheeling jazz festival; an ensemble of countless players, some good, some bad, all improvising as hard as they can go. They play, not for the glory of God, or to celebrate some spiritual ideal of Art; they play only because they enjoy it. Unfortunately the musicians don’t always agree on which chords to strike, and they even disagree about what tunes they want to play. And so ugly fights frequently break out amongst the artists, and they smash their instruments over each others’ heads. Often they smash each others’ heads. But rising like a wraith among the screeches, squawks and thwacks, you will hear the cadences and counterpoint of supernal music, almost too lovely to bear.”

Improvisation is an art form that I’ve been fascinated with for as long as I can remember. And although I have no improvisational training I am coming to realize that I’m good at it because, as Nachmanovitch has been saying in his book, and as Whitehead seems to have also intuited, I’ve been doing it all the time, all along.

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Illustration above by Hiroshi Manabe

Tags:artimprovisationNachmanovitchphilosophyprocess philosophyRichard Lubbockwhitehead