Altered still from the 1927 film The Unknown
Life situations often present us with the paradox of needing to blend what we know with what we don't know. We can't follow only what we know, because that is a loop which, in the end, is limiting. We want to spiral out of the mind's loops (so we don't get loopy!) and the only way to do that is by integrating unknown quantities into the loop so it turns into a spiral.
Years ago I read an interview with the keyboard player of the rock band Oasis. He was asked whether he studied music theory. This player, who wrote most of the band's songs, replied that he never studied anything to do with music because he didn't want to ruin his composition concept by polluting it with outside influences.
At the time, I found this odd. I knew from experience that if I did not make conscious efforts to interject new listening experiences and new knowledge into my playing and composing, all I would do is repeat and rearrange the knowledge and ideas I already had.
Today, as I approach that composer’s idea with a more mature perspective, I can see what he was talking about–getting ideas from the subconscious mind as opposed to the conscious mind. More on this in a bit.
Jazz improvisers are in the unique position of facing the wall between the known and the unknown on a daily basis. We use what we know (scales, chords, harmonic and melodic functions, rhythm, compositional devices, etc.) to play what we have never played before, at least not in this exact way.
All that acquired knowledge is, in fact, not assembled like a Lego set. Rather, it’s a toolbox that permits us to execute any idea that arrives to our consciousness, regardless of its difficulty. Often those ideas arrive at the station on the Subconscious Express, but they can also arrive on a tourist bus.
Actually, it's best to forget all about knowledge and technique while improvising. These are things that are supposed to be trained, absorbed, and then automated. The real creativity happens on the spot, in the moment, and you can't be creative if you're struggling to play your instrument, or if you don't hear the changes (chord sequence), or if you don't know what your musical role is at any given moment.
That knowledge comes from training.
During the training process, an improviser's musical knowledge becomes automated, i.e., placed into the subconscious. Then, the conscious mind can be free to orchestrate the improvisation according to the spirit of the moment. It's really no different than countless other processes we automate in daily life, like driving a car, except that the aesthetic of playing music is a lot more complex.
The subconscious mind is the Cuisinart that chops, blends and purees our ideas into a liquid that can be poured into any container.
Despite having learned an immense amount of repertoire over the years–often playing certain songs hundreds of times–we still always try to play new things that we've never played before.
Though as improvisers, the majority of what we play is what we don't know. It's like my colleague's child who asked to see the music for one of our songs. We showed him the lead sheet we were using. It was a normal lead sheet: one page of music, just melody and chords. But we were playing the song for around six or seven minutes. The child looked at this one page of music and said "but where's the rest of it?"
To be able to create masterful spontaneously composed solos on the fly is the height of musical artistry, and it takes far more years to learn how to do it than going to medical school and becoming a doctor or going to law school and becoming a lawyer. Normally we start on our instruments between the ages of five and nine!
When you go to a jazz presentation, you're hearing and seeing the musicians bare their souls to you. They're letting it all hang out, for better or for worse.
One time I did a gig with a group that included the incredible musicians Ingrid Jensen on trumpet and Bobby Avey on piano. Here's what I wrote about it:
I remember that gig I played with Bobby and Ingrid a few years ago, where they were playing so far out and I didn’t know what I was doing and was just trying to hang with the music. Afterwards Mike said ‘I never heard you play better.’ So it could be that “not knowing” is the secret. Except I suspect “not knowing” is just the other side of “knowing,” and really they are the same. Or that one turns into the other and back again with the ease of the ouroboros eating its own tail.
The ouroboros that devours itself, and rebirths itself!
(Incidentally, the 19th century chemist August Kekulé developed his theory of the crystalline-structured benzene ring after daydreaming about an image of the ouroboros. The discovery was of great scientific importance because it predicted “an inexhaustible treasure-trove” of chemical applications based on benzene’s linked carbon rings.)
We absolutely cannot deal only with the known. But how do we invite the unknown into our lives?
No. I think the unknown just kind of barges in, uninvited. Then we have to deal with it.
But for the times when the unknown doesn't crash the party, to live life in an artistic way we have to continually seek out new ideas and new art. Maybe even a new job, and a new dog...
The intersection of the known and the unknown is never static. Because when we make it a point to listen to new things, read books, contemplate visual art or dance or watch certain films (or get a new job and a new dog), we expand. Every new impression helps us spiral out of the loop, and go further into the unknown. Theoretically there is no end to the spiral...it's limitless.
As Gregory Shaw (Professor of Religious Studies at Stonehill College) opines, "How do I practice my rationality in a way that allows the more-than-rational to still be alive in my understanding of things, or even in the way that I explain things?" This is so cool. Because when you're a teacher, your job is communicating knowledge to the students. But Professor Shaw is suggesting that there is a kind of uber-knowledge that exists, that doesn't belong to us, but that we can somehow access and make it part of our presentation.
Also, I think there are two kinds of knowledge. There's some things we know with the mind, and there's other things we know with the body. Knowledge that belongs to the body can't be explained–like walking or breathing. Even playing music can't really be explained. We just do it. It belongs to the realm of things that are known with the whole self, and you don't even know how you know it or how you learned it, it's just part of you. Like, that's the color red how do you know? because it looks like it...this chord is a dominant seventh how do you know? because it sounds like it...humans can't breathe underwater tried it once. doesn’t work...
To organize the songs we know for concerts, we make set lists (the order of the songs). But some of the avant-garde jazz cats, like Milford Graves, don't make set lists. They want to "feel the vibe of the audience" before they know what they're going to play. Me, I wouldn't even THINK of going onstage without a set list. But I will definitely "call an audible," to borrow a football term, if it's appropriate. It's good to have a set list but you don't have to be married to it.
And I have indeed done completely improvised concerts, like the gallery series with Tim Price that we recorded, but I only do that when it's what we have already decided to do. I think I’ll start doing it more.
Composer Walter Thompson creates spontaneous compositions with large ensembles by using hand signals to designate specific musical elements. I love this because it's a perfect synthesis of the known and the unknown. The players react to the hand signals using their musical knowledge, but as the ensemble members blend, no one knows what's going to happen.
A recent article by Nate Chinen features an interview with the free jazz bass virtuoso William Parker, where he discusses the known/unknown dichotomy in terms of the conscious and subconscious levels of mind:
So we were listening by not consciously listening, but listening on a subconscious level. So it was a different way of relating musically. And I think in a high level of music, you’re always listening on a subconscious level. If you listen on a conscious level, you’ll get a conscious result. If you listen on a subconscious level, you’ll get a superhuman result. And so that’s kind of what we’re going for. So I said, well, OK, universal tonality. You’re talking about sound transformed in the tone. Tone leads you to the tone world. Tone world is your subconscious, and you can go further, deeper into yourself, and have the kineticism of music. So you have imagination equals activation equals creativity equals flow of energy. And this works on all art.
I would say that we approach unknown elements by associating them with things we do know. The human wish to name everything, to categorize, to establish hierarchies of things. Perhaps this is the only way we can operate. Because what human being, on this planet, can possibly live in a perpetual state of unknowing?
Even a baby quickly begins to learn about sounds, language and movement. Some say a baby actually begins learning in the womb. It seems clear, then, that “the known” and “the unknown” are just two sides of the same coin–poles of reality that exist on a spectrum, like day and night.
The most interesting moments of the day/night spectrum are their transition periods. That’s why we have so many names for them (some of them quite poetic): sunset, twilight, crepuscule, eventide, gloaming….sunrise, dawn, aurora, morn, cock’s crow… Surely the transitional moments of knowing/not knowing are equally beautiful and generative. Sometimes, we have to realize we’re not the boss.
–Knock knock.
–Who’s there?
–Control Freak. OK, NOW YOU SAY “CONTROL FREAK WHO!”
Incorporating the unknown into our lives requires courage. Perhaps some of us believe we are not that brave. But when we test ourselves, or are tested by Universe, we usually respond with a far greater capacity for courage than we knew we possessed.
In conclusion, let's reference the scholar (and reluctant mystic) Terence McKenna. His conversation with a mushroom yielded the following recipe: “Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed.”
That go me thinking about when I played with a modern dance company. I set up my drums on legs in front of me with the cymbasl perched over them. Everything the dancers and I did was improvised. We never rehearsed what we were going to do. To begin, I would make a sound and they would start to move. I would follow there movements and they would respond to my sounds. Nothing was in a steady time; just sound and movement. The whole piece grew from that and each time it was different.
i did the same thing with a group of artists in a gallery. I played, they painted and we respounded to each other. Again, nothing was planned and nothing was in a steady rhythm.
Sometimes I would set up in front of my window and play with the trees as they moved in the wind.
There's more to music than Rhythm changes.
Another great Sunday missive! I do not know if I agree with Jung here or not. "I believe only what I know (italics). Everything else is hypothesis and beyond that I can leave a lot of things to the Unknown. They do not bother me. But they would begin to bother me, I am sure, if I felt that I ought (italics) to know them."