improv

before it gets to be july and i get totally out of habit with this, i'll post a quickie about improv.
that was apparently the them of last week, when i attended my first ever improv comedy show on tuesday and a jazz concert featuring, saxophonist, wayne shorter on friday.

obviously, both shows spoke to the act of improv in their own way, but both were hard to believe. the improv show was split into two acts, the first being bassprov. it's a two-red-necks-sitting-in-a-boat-lines-lying-fat-chewing spiel. that night they were joined by a third. they took 3 suggestions from the audience, the lights dimmed, and they took off. (well, after the lights came back up.) perhaps the most impressive thing was that they were able to circulate back to the starting point of the conversation without reusing the same jokes.

the jazz concert was also my first time at symphony center. we sat so far up you had to hold on with two hands to the handrail when walking down the stairs because the vertigo was so bad. that's a pretty good metaphor for the concert. i was way in over my head but fascinated. the guy's 75 years old and not only did he not take an intermission he didn't stop playing for an 1h45m. unbelievable.

being a musician that was trained in a strict classical style, a poet that reads from the page, and more or less a person that hides from spontaneity, i admire those who can improvise. tonight at my first fiddle lesson, my teacher drew an interesting comparison. he said that although it's true, improvising consists of playing from your mind not the page, it's a lot like speaking. there are certain patterns and ideas you follow. it's not like each time you play you're coming up with something completely new, just like each time you speak you don't create new words. so this seems to crack the code to improv a tiny bit, but it's still greek to me.