Exhaustive Notes on Practice and Improvisation in Life and Art

Bibliographical and Production Context

  • Publication Details:

    • Title and Subtitle: Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art
    • Author: Stephen Nachmanovitch
    • Publisher: A Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam Book, published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York (200200 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 1001610016; Telephone: (212) 951−8891(212)\text{ }951-8891; Web: http://www.putnam.com/putnam)
    • Copyright and Legal Information: Copyright 19901990 by Stephen Nachmanovitch. All rights reserved under the 19761976 Copyright Act. Book design by Deborah Daly. Manufactured in the United States of America.
    • Cataloging Data: ISBN 0−87477−578−70-87477-578-7; Library of Congress Classification BH301.C84N33 19901990; Dewey Decimal 153.3′5–dc20153.3'5\text{--}dc20; CIP 89−4930389-49303

  • Permissions and Acknowledgments:

    • Constance Crown for Hands by Rico Lebrun
    • Walter Gruen for Musica Solar by Remedios Varo
    • Ben Berzinsky for the photograph of a Carlo Bergonzi violin, c. 17701770
    • The late Arnold Fawcus of the Trianon Press, Paris, for permission to photograph William Blake books
    • Artist Rights Society, Inc. (ARS N.Y./SPADEM) for Two Children Drawing and Dawn Song by Pablo Picasso
    • Charles E. Tuttle Co. (Tokyo, Japan) for Tomikichiro Tokuriki's Riding the Bull Home
    • North Point Press for an excerpt from Wendell Berry's essay Poetry and Marriage
    • M. C. Escher Heirs/Cordon Art (Baarn, Holland) for M. C. Escher's Encounter (19891989
    • Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. for:
      • Excerpts from "Burnt Norton" and "Little Gidding" in Four Quartets (19431943 by T. S. Eliot, renewed 19711971 by Esme Valerie Eliot)
      • Excerpt from The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life (Introduction by Carl Jung, translated and explained by Richard Wilhelm)
      • Excerpt from A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf (19291929, renewed 19571957 by Leonard Woolf)

Foundational Principles of Artistic Practice

  • Core Epigraphs:

    • Igor Stravinsky: "The very act of putting my work on paper, of, as we say, kneading the dough, is for me inseparable from the pleasure of creation. So far as I am concerned, I cannot separate the spiritual effort from the psychological and physical effort; they confront me on the same level and do not present a hierarchy."
    • The Blue Cliff Record: "Unless you have been thoroughly drenched in perspiration you cannot expect to see a palace of pearls on a blade of grass."

  • Learning and Execution:

    • Learning occurs exclusively through action and direct practice across all disciplines, including instruments, sports, and visual or performing arts.
    • A major distinction exists between imagined or planned projects and actual execution; this parallels the contrast between a fantasized romance and an actual relationship with a complex human being.
    • Exalted feelings, creative proclivities, and glorious inspirations do not constitute creativity unless concrete creations are produced in reality.

The Paradox of "Practice Makes Perfect" and the Expressive Gap

  • The Problem of Institutional Practice:

    • Conservatories and music departments typically feature corridors lined with tiny, soundproofed practice rooms equipped with pianos and music stands.
    • An illustrative anecdote describes a practice room converted into an office with a sign taped on the door: "THIS IS NO LONGER A PRACTICE ROOM." Beneath it, a scribbled addition read: "NOW IT'S PERFECT!"
    • The traditional cliché "practice makes perfect" creates a artificial divide between practice and actual performance ("the real thing"). When practice is separated from real execution, both become artificial.
    • This artificial split leads to pedantic, boring drills that cause many students to hate music, instruments (such as the piano or violin), literature, mathematics, or the concept of productive work.

  • Navigating the Expressive Gap:

    • The most agonizing aspect of creative work is encountering the gap between inner feeling and outer expression—a zone of the unknown where feeling is deepest but expression is most inarticulate.
    • This is illustrated by the flute player's master who remarked, "Something lacking."
    • Technique can function either as a bridge across this gap or as a barrier that widens it.
    • Viewing technique as a fixed entity to be acquired creates a trap where excessive competence leads to rigidity, distancing the artist from the freshness of the present situation and entrenching work in rigid professionalism.

Eastern versus Western Paradigms of Practice

  • Western Paradigm:

    • Focuses on skill acquisition framed by a strict work ethic.
    • Requires enduring present struggle, boredom, or hardship in exchange for future rewards.

  • Eastern Paradigm:

    • Focuses on creating, actualizing, or revealing the complete person already inherently present.
    • Emphasizes self-sufficient, complete practice that serves as its own end rather than a means to a separate goal.
    • In Zen training, routine activities such as sweeping the floor, eating, or walking are treated directly as practice.

  • Unifying Practice and Performance:

    • Breaking down artificial categories between exercises and real music makes every played tone both an exploration of technique and a full expression of spirit.
    • Sustaining creative vitality requires continuously playing with a beginner's bow, beginner's breath, and beginner's body to recover initial innocence, curiosity, and desire.
    • Process-oriented practice demonstrates that practice is not merely necessary to art—practice is art.

Transforming Boredom and Generating Uninhibited Flow

  • Personalizing Exercises:

    • Contextual labels such as "boredom," "fascination," "play," "drudgery," "high drama," and "seduction" are constructed frames applied to actions and perceptions.
    • Boredom should neither be tolerated nor fled; it must be actively transformed.
    • Example Scale Transformation: A boring scale of 88 tones can be transformed instantly into an improvisation by altering the sequence of the tones, changing the rhythm, or changing the tone color.
    • Combining raw material with feedback judgment allows musicians, dancers, painters, and actors to personalize basic techniques into engaging practice.

  • Safe Spaces and Profligacy:

    • Improvisation can achieve structural wholeness equal to planned composition, but artists require designated spaces safe from criticism or consequences to express uncensored unconscious material.
    • Therapeutic Context: Therapy offers confidentiality to explore deep psychological matters.
    • Studio Context: The art studio provides a safe space to test and discard work repeatedly.
    • Johannes Brahms noted that the mark of an artist is how much work is thrown away.
    • Nature's Profligacy: A frog lays several million (10610^6) eggs at a sitting, yielding only a few dozen tadpoles and a tiny fraction of mature frogs. Artistic practice can mirror this profligate scale.

  • Techniques for Uncensored Expression:

    • Automatic Writing: Uncensored writing where words flow continuously without immediate judgment, reserving editing for later.
    • Brainstorming: The collective social variant of automatic writing, where groups generate ideas without fear of foolishness or shame.
    • Free Association: The therapeutic method of surfacing preconscious and unconscious material in a free-form manner.
    • Automatic Drawing ("Handstorming"): The visual arts equivalent of automatic writing.
    • Blind Touch Typing: Typing with closed eyes directly from heart to fingertips without cognitive or visual interference, correcting errors later via computer software.
    • Merging Modes: Progressively merging the mode of free play with the mode of critical judgment (e.g., gradually opening eyes while writing to allow technical skill, literary knowledge, and craftsmanship to integrate with the raw output).

Micro-Focus, Kinesthetic Entrainment, and Compulsive Play

  • Micro-Aspect Focus and Nonsense Ore:

    • Kinesthetic tactile awareness (e.g., feeling keys on a computer keyboard, a yellow pad, or restaurant napkins) deepens creative ease.
    • Singsong iteration of apparent nonsense (such as in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake) acts as the raw ore from which creative work is refined.
    • Before improvising on primary instruments, artists can explore core sound dynamics using voices, bodies, household objects, simple percussion, or interacting rhythmically with dogs.
    • Focusing intently on micro-aspects of technique (e.g., handwriting clarity, keystroke accuracy, or subtle variations in violin finger pressure) entrains body, speech, and mind into a single stream of activity.

  • Commitment and Balance:

    • Artistic execution demands balancing uninhibited play with absolute commitment.
    • T. S. Eliot stated that each word and action "is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat."
    • Artist Rico Lebrun stated: "I am never agitated in executing forms, but travel rather as if the terrain of the paper was land-mined. When this journey is completed, a drawing is born."
    • In effective practice, Thomas Edison's formula of inspiration and perspiration merges so that perspiration itself becomes inspiring.

  • Play (Lila) and Mastery:

    • Mastery develops from practice driven by compulsive experimentation (the impish side of lila) and wonder (the godlike side of lila).
    • This intrinsic drive manifests when an athlete runs one more lap, a musician plays one more fugue, or a potter throws one more pot.
    • This drive stems from the inner child wanting to play a few minutes longer, rather than from Calvinist superego demands, guilt, or obligation.
    • Computer programming demonstrates this interactive, real-time feedback loop (writing, testing, fixing, re-fixing), functioning like a life-giving addiction.

Unconscious Skill, Rituals, and the Sacred Space (Temenos)

  • Skill Integration and Unconscious Surfacing:

    • Skills must be repeated until execution becomes automatic (e.g., riding a bicycle without conscious step analysis, or a pianist executing complex pieces by Beethoven or the blues while conversing about fish prices).
    • When technical skill conceals itself through unconscious mastery, it surfaces dream and mythic material into articulate form.

  • Ritual and Context-Markers:

    • Practice involves ritual as a form of galumphing—adding ornamental elaboration to ordinary actions to render them distinct and sacred.
    • Example: Washing hands before handling a Stradivarius violin serves as a context-marker, shifting the practitioner from routine daily existence into a sacred creative frame.

  • Preparations for the Play Space (Temenos):

    • General Preparations: Cultivating physical, intellectual, libidinal, and spiritual energy through exercise, nutrition, adequate sleep, dream recording, meditation, and broad reading. Creative blocks can be broken using humor, friendship, and nature.
    • The Temenos: Originating from the ancient Greek concept of a magic circle or delimited sacred space where special rules apply and extraordinary events occur. Cleaning and organizing the studio clears mind and body.
    • Reframing Creative Blocks: Blocks should be viewed as part of the initial tuning procedure rather than an anomaly. Attempts to conquer inertia directly are futile; inertia should be converted into meditation and stillness, allowing thermal momentum to build naturally.
    • Water Glass Meditation: When overwhelmed, empty the work table, polish the surface, place a clear glass of clean water on it, and observe the water as a visual model for mental stillness and clarity.
    • Tool Maintenance: Maintaining an intimate, long-term relationship with instruments and tools shifts creative perspective and unlocks outmoded ideas.
    • Structure of Practice Sessions: Practice sessions naturally flow through three phases: invocation, work, and thanks.
    • Performance and Home Practice: Preparing performance stages (cleaning, hiding wiring, adjusting lights and ventilation) mirrors private home sessions, where artists must treat their solitary practice with the same care and respect given to a live audience.