Random Riffs
Jazz and the Music of the Improvised Life
April
29
2008
“A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.”
Winston Churchill
So are bores! Our lives are comprised of a constant flow of improvised encounters with others where we pursue our interests while accommodating, one way or another; graciously or not, the interests of others. Life as a negotiated give-and-take. In our day-to-day lives we get along reasonably well by being selectively obedient to the laws of the land and a collection of informal rules that we store in a file called “common sense”. Think of them as a kind of standard repertoire of tunes that we play for any number of recurring social and business transactions that we conduct with our fellow citizens.
Think about this. Five days out of seven, millions of us get out of our beds; negotiate early-morning rising rituals with our families; make our way by a variety of environmentally unfriendly means into the downtown cores of big cities; find our places of work; do our business; descend upon the food courts for an hour at lunchtime; go back to our offices and do more business; and then, at the end of the day, find our way home. Quite an impressive ensemble performance when you stop and think about the millions of improvised interpersonal transactions that are required to sustain it.
By and large, these are not virtuoso improvisational performances but merely variations played on familiar themes. From time to time the regular pattern is disrupted as when we order our double mint mocha decaf skim latté and find that our coffee shop is out of skimmed milk and will we, asks the unnervingly bright young person behind the counter, settle for 2%? This calls for a minor adjustment in our routine but we improvise a response that can be found in that section of the repertoire called “coffee, morning, ordering, variations”.
The performance of any one of these standard tunes is unique and the quality of the performance will be a function of how well the parties to the performance know the tune and their improvisational talents. There are, in life as in art, people who have access to the repertoire and possess great improvisational skills. These folks appear to thrive. There are others, however, who, unfamiliar with the repertoire and/or with limited improvisational abilities, struggle. Some, of course, are simply tone deaf! And then, of course, there are those who think that “Good morning. How are you today?” is a real question and that we’re interested in the answer.
But if we want to make a work of art of our lives, (or, as a more modest undertaking, become marginally less boring to ourselves and others) we have to find ways of, as it were, refreshing our standard repertoires; ways of finding new tunes to play and new musicians with whom to play them. Jazz musicians understand this. In fact, a life in jazz is a commitment to a lifelong apprenticeship that involves listening, looking out for and becoming engaged with unfamiliar and alien voices. Following their example, we should make a point of spending time with people who don’t reinforce your prejudices.Not speaking to strangers may be wise advice to give children, but it's something that we'd be smart to grow out of as adults. There is music being played out there that can enrich our lives if we take the time to listen to it.
