Random Riffs
Broken Images and the Aesthetics of Imperfection
March
5
2009
In Broken Images He is quick, thinking in clear images; I am slow, thinking in broken images. He becomes dull, trusting to his clear images; I become sharp, mistrusting my broken images, Trusting his images, he assumes their relevance; Mistrusting my images, I question their relevance. Assuming their relevance, he assumes the fact, Questioning their relevance, I question the fact. When the fact fails him, he questions his senses; When the fact fails me, I approve my senses. He continues quick and dull in his clear images; I continue slow and sharp in my broken images. He in a new confusion of his understanding; I in a new understanding of my confusion. Robert Graves Jazz musicians spend long, solitary hours mastering the theoretical and athletic challenges of getting around on their instruments: scales – major, minor, Lydian, Ionian, Mixolydian, Dorian, Aeolian, Phrygian, Locrian, pentatonic, whole-tone, whole-tone/half-tone ... the list goes on; chords and their myriad inversions and voicings; listening to the ancestors and contemporaries who inspire and figuring out the “what” of their artistic interpretations and the “how” of their improvisational techniques. This is the domain in which jazzers build their musical vocabulary and “linguistic” virtuosity.
But while virtuosity may be a necessary condition for the performance of improvised music, it isn’t a sufficient one. To get the “necessary-but-not-sufficient” point, one need only think of people who speak in carefully crafted paragraphs but with whom it’s impossible to have a conversation. (You’ve met them – they talk like brochures.) For these virtuosi, encounters with others are merely opportunities for speechmaking – conversations, after all, are messy and virtuosi abhor messiness. They like their images – like their speeches – clear and unbroken. Jazzers prefer broken images. That makes them great musical conversationalists because, like the really good conversations, the best jazz performances take you places you’ve never been before. And mistakes as well as delightful surprises happen along the way. Whereas the domain of clear images is the domain of “ready-aim-fire” and monologues; the domain of broken images is the domain of “ready-fire-aim and conversations. If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not learning. In fact, if you’re not making mistakes, you’re not trying. In “The Imperfect Art: Reflections on Jazz and Modern Culture”, Ted Gioia has this to say.
Errors will creep in, not only in form but also in execution; the improviser, if he sincerely attempts to be creative, will push himself into areas of expression which his techniques may be unable to handle. Too often the finished product will show moments of rare beauty intermixed with technical mistakes and aimless passages.
Let me tell you a story that illustrates wonderfully the mindset and disposition of the improviser. About a year ago, the musicians of Getting in the Groove and I were doing a jazz vespers at a local church and as the saxophone player began his solo, we began to get a feedback squeal from the hearing aid of an audience member. It was a moment that would have thrown virtuoso monologists completely off their game. Not so for the jazzer who thinks in broken images. Much to the amusement and delight of the musicians and the audience, he simply replicated the squeal and incorporated it into his solo. The musical conversations of jazz musicians are charaterized by this disposition to see interruptions and errors as opportunities for innovation and creativity and not as threats. The organizational theorist, Karl Weick, has this observation.
Although much of what makes successful jazz improvisation does remain a creative mystery, some factors that may contribute to this success are becoming clearer. An important one is how improvising musicians react to failures, flawed execution, dissonant notes, and traps. This mind set is not an apology for failure nor a license to fail. Instead, it is meant to acknowledge and appreciate the fact that failures occur when people make a genuine, deep, committed effort to improvise. I am not talking about sloppy failures or lazy failures, but about failures of reach. How people react to failures of reach can have a decisive effect on their subsequent willingness to improvise.
Peter Senge has said that 21st century organizations will need to develop a capacity for conversation which he sees as having the potential to be their greatest learning tool. If we are to develop that ability, however, we shall have to take a radically different view of failure than that which currently characterizes the culture of many (most?) organizations. In a jazz performance, it’s enough for someone to introduce an idea – perhaps in a fragmentary statement – that others will take up and develop. One’s contribution to the overall improvised performance is not measured in how many complete sentences one makes, but rather in terms of the incomplete sentences that advance the project.
We don’t learn by merely repeating what we already know but only by taking the risks inherent in getting beyond what we already know. Ready-Fire-Aim! “I won’t know what I mean until I’ve heard what I have to say.” Messy? Of course − errors are inherently part of the creative process and real learning. All too often we punish those who reach for something beyond what they know, but we do so at our peril. We must never deny people the right to be wrong. In this creative world of broken images, the self-aggrandizing monologist will be at home practicing scales and waiting beside a phone that never rings. So be it!
