Time and Space

Last class, we equated time and space as being equally vital to music.  I'd think that time and space is also vital to a balanced life.  Each moment in our lives, be it triumph, or despair, seems to play out within the confines of certain parameters or contexts of our existence that only we, as individuals, can place the exact meaning of.  We need time and space to develop our minds, skills, and character.  

Everyone experiences the constraints of time and space within their lives- and this seems to be magnified in an urban environment.  There's never enough of time or space in the city, yet this is still the preferred space of many ambitious people who dare to follow their dreams.  Stephen Nachmanovitch, in Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art, notes "Sometimes we damn the limits, but without them art is not possible (p. 81)". 

This is an important revelation to me.  I find myself railing against the clock on most days, perpetually wishing for more time to do "better" work.  Would it truly be better? Nachmanovitch challenges me to question this. I have difficulty trusting in myself to deliver quality work if I don't have (what I consider to be) enough time to think it through.  This is problematic, though, because I realize that this style of working often relegates me to the role of perpetual editor rather than fearless creator. Some days (like today), there will never be enough time in the day, and yet I will still have to deliver something of substance.  My fear-based fixation on quality can be paralyzing at times.

"Working within the limits of the medium [in my case, time limits] forces us to change our own limits" (p. 84).  The very timing of this idea's entry into my consciousness is rather apropos!  I can't change how much time I have at my disposal, but I can strive to release my relentless quest for ever-illusive perfection.

I've been thinking about time and space a lot, and with that in mind, I filmed portions of a cab ride at dusk. I'm constrained by the limits of keeping a steady hand within the space of a speeding cab, but when I reviewed and edited my footage, I was struck by how time and space gets manipulated by a cabbie on a schedule.  Some stop signs and traffic lights impose a longer rest than others, and the driver will lunge forward recklessly in an effort to reclaim some of that missing time, much like a pianist might approach a Chopin work. 

Perhaps I can  create an improvisatory work out of some of this footage, where musicians and dancers could freely imitate the moods of the street scene in a tempo that corresponds to the cab speed, and come to rest on predetermined, tonal chord voicings for those pauses.  I'll have to think about this idea some more.

Border Crossings and Boundary Processes

As I work toward a conception of expanded music, I realize that our class readings, discussions, and introductions to contact improvisation are really pushing me to consider how my own personal borders are demarcated, and why.

Etienne Wenger's scholarly work in Communities of Practice and Social Learning Systems defines boundaries as places where "competence and experience tend to diverge," noting the tension between these two elements is where the greatest potential for learning takes place.  He argues, "Radically new insights often arise at the boundaries between communities" (Wenger, 2000, pp. 233-234). 

Wenger goes on to mention the importance of people acting as brokers to negotiating the boundaries between different social learning systems (2000, p. 235).  The success of an overarching social system depends on the strength of the bridge between each community of practice.

One stellar example of such a broker is Dr. Richard Kogan, a Juilliard-trained concert pianist and a Harvard-trained psychiatrist.  He walks the line between music and medicine to explore how creativity and well being intersect within the output of some of the world's most celebrated classical composers. 

I had an opportunity to speak with Dr. Kogan last Tuesday before his presentation on George Gershwin at Molloy College.  We had an interesting conversation about the practice of medicine as an art, the challenges imposed by a move toward hyper specialization within disciplines, and expanding the boundaries of conventional music education to encompass adult learning, which is a research interest of mine.  He believes, as do I, in the value and power of interdisciplinary boundary crossing. 

This notion for is well-supported by Stephen Nachmanovitch in Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art, who warns "...technique can get too solid- we can become so used to knowing how it should be done that we become distanced from the freshness of today's situation" (p. 67).  Nachmanovitch further inspires with the observation, "The only road to strength is vulnerability" (p. 64). It is essential that we all examine our own positions on the vulnerability scale and see how we can find the freshness in our own present.