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“Once we’re inside a tune, we can do anything with it.” — attr. Keith Jarrett
I want to talk about improvisation, because it’s at the heart of both creative and athletic practice (perhaps because these are just functions of life, that sustained act of spontaneous problem-solving). Improvising doesn’t replace deliberation, incubation, planning, experience, or diligence. It just belongs right alongside them.
I think about improvising a lot in three places: at the piano keyboard, at the writing desk, and in the bike lane—which in New York City is not so much a zone of safe passage as a minefield of ingeniously hazardous obstructions: sinkholes; ruts; people on a vast assortment of vehicles that aren’t bicycles; people on bicycles but wearing noise-canceling headphones; illegally parked Amazon and UPS trucks that block the view of what you will run into if you manage to avoid hitting them; idling Ubers; hard-flung car doors; puddles of something trucked to Manhattan from a Superfund site; shortcutting pedestrians; dining sheds; dogs; shattered glass; giant screws; nails; and construction areas of indeterminate origin, longevity, and purpose. Oh, and once I ran over a razor blade which had been propped edge-up on Bedford Avenue. This is all to say nothing of moving cars.
Lately, weary of my own rage, I’ve been practicing a new frame around how to deal with all of this: “Make it work.” I can’t always get there—sometimes other people’s life-threatening negligence is really too much—but when I can, it turns what is normally a litany of powerless no, goddammits into a game of yes, ands. Yes the truck is in my way, and I’m next to the one sidewalk in the city with no construction scaffolding, so I’m going to take a quick detour. Yes I am blocked by the parental traffic jam in front of this middle school (we are in New York why do you people even have cars????), and wow check out the calves on this dude who is equally stuck on his bike just ahead of me. You can tell just by the description of it as a game that it’s more fun. But it’s also (drumroll, please) a creative exercise.
So: The next emails will be about the elements and uses of improvising. First we’re going to talk about …
Coming Friday: Surrender.
Kindly send me your thoughts, questions, and provocations: dmichaelowen@gmail.com. And say hi on Instagram: @leggy_blond.