The Art of Is
Author Stephen Nachmanovitch is a self-described improviser for more than 40 years. A violinist who’s taught workshops all over the world, he’s a strong believer in play as a component of creativity. In this book Nachmanovitch shows how life is like musical improvisation, an ongoing dance with culture, community, and environment. The ability to listen deeply while living is key to being a good improviser and to letting your unique voice be revealed.
“Improvising means coming prepared, but not being attached to the preparation. Everything flows into the creative act in progress. Come prepared, but be willing to accept interruptions and invitations. Trust that the product of your preparation is not your papers and plans, but yourself.”
The book is divided into three parts: Interplay, Thinking as Nature Thinks, and Art and Power. The 22 chapters are individual vignettes relating to the theme of the section. Nachmanovitch is an entertaining storyteller with a hopeful outlook. He sees possibilities everywhere.
One of the most important messages I received from this book is that the secret of improvising is being able to talk (play, express) and listen at the same time. When you think of improv comedy and improvisational music, this is what’s happening. The musicians are playing and at the same time listening and responding to the other musicians in real time. Life works the same way.
To know what you should be doing, you need to listen to what’s needed in the moment.
Nachmanovitch also finds the intimate connection between improvisation, impermanence, and imperfection – subjects all near and dear to my heart. An improviser sees life as dynamic, always changing and evolving. Each moment is fresh and new, requiring a new response.
A favourite chapter of mine was on nouns and verbs. Nachmanovitch often quotes his mentor, the great anthropologist and philosopher Gregory Bateson, whose slogan was to “STAMP OUT NOUNS.” Nouns categorize the world and break it into parts. They also don’t take into account the dynamic and changing nature of everything. Verbs do a much better job at this. So, instead of saying you are a photographer, you could say I photograph or I am photographing. We are all verbs, in the process of living and doing and improvising. Focusing on verbs rather than nouns keeps experience fresh. We’re making decisions in the moment, rather than relying on pre-conceptions, likes and dislikes, or outdated concepts and ideas. Therapists listening to a patient have to do this all the time. Sigmund Freud came up with his own method.
“The technique is a very simple one. It disclaims the use of any special aids, even of note-taking, and simply consists in making no effort to concentrate the attention on anything in particular, and in maintaining in regard to all that one hears the same measure of calm, quiet attentiveness — of “evenly-hovering attention.”
This is mindfulness, being in the moment without judgment. Nachmanovitch says that being in this space and letting the experience unfold is critical, especially for something new to emerge. Being able to be still and listen, to allow space in our minds. This is very much contemplative practice.
This book was thoroughly enjoyable and thought-provoking from beginning to end. In conclusion, I hope that I can live an improvised life, open to whatever twists and turns arise. Improvisation is about doing just that, living each moment as interesting and responding accordingly.
How to Do Nothing
Jenny Odell is a smart, young thinker, artist and writer who teaches at Stanford. She’s been an artist-in-residence at places like the San Francisco dump, Facebook, the Internet Archive, and the San Francisco Planning Department, and has exhibited her art all over the world. This book is an act of resistance, offering an alternative to the cult of productivity.
“To do nothing is to hold yourself still so that you can perceive what is actually there. When the pattern of your attention has changed, you render your reality differently. You begin to move and act in a different kind of world. As I disengaged the map of my attention from the destructive news cycle and rhetoric of productivity, I began to build another one based on that of the more-than-human community, simply through patterns of noticing.”
Odell lays out her premise, that attention is our most precious resource and that being alone, doing nothing but observing or being with nature or people is not only a right but an end in itself. She questions the very meaning of productivity.
Although written like a thesis, it’s highly readable and super interesting. The first half of the book is about disengaging from the attention economy. Odell delves into the history of those who have opted out in the past and why it did or didn’t work. In the second half, she explores possibilities for reengaging with other things, hopefully more meaningful. In particular, reengaging with the people and plants and animals in the places we live. This is called bioregionalism or knowing the ins and outs of your place.
Odell is not anti-technology. She sees the positive tools that are available, including non commercial social networks. She is opposed to how commercial platforms are used to harness our attention and the addictive qualities of these networks. They can prevent us from seeing what’s happening right here where we are.