Tag Archives: improvisation

Oct7

living in the material world

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I watched the second half of Martin Scorcese’s HBO documentary on George Harrison last night.  Inscrutable, whimsical, beautiful.  The dark horse, the spiritual man.

My take away is that he lived the improvisation life – he let himself be moved, changed, followed the call, dove deep, came up different.  The through line was looking for the deepest place that his music could take him.

I loved the image of him pulling Ravi Shankar along a path through the brush to the edge of the thrashing Pacific, and both of them gazing down into that wildness.

Have you found the deepest place that your _________(fill in the blank)__________ can take you?  Are you on the path?

 

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Sep8

Falling, the edge

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This morning as I sipped my coffee, a bank of fog came tumbling over the crest of Indian Mountain.  A light wind tattered the edge, and then the fog thickened again.  It was as if the clouds and the wind were playing, conversing.  Below, the swamp maples are dressed for fall.

Today I am interested in the edges of things.  The edge of my cup as the sun carves an arc of light onto its surface.  The warm edges of my body meeting the coolness of the air.  The way we experience one moment (sipping coffee) falling, edging into the next (taking out the trash).  The way summer is falling.

Just now, as you are sitting, what edges are you aware of?  Can you let that feeling become clearer?  And then can you soften that edge, so that your body and whatever you are touching dissolve into each other – like the fog and the wind in the picture?

 

Sep3

Cow Licks (an herbivore post)

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#4725 is licking my elbow – I am trying to keep him from licking the lens.  I stopped along a curving upstate New York road to admire at these cows and a huge flock of birds in a field.  The minute I stepped out of the car, they began to approach.  Curious cows.  First one, then two more, then a group.  I love cows, love their eyes, their softness, their nature.  For the last three years I have visited the cows at the Putney School in Vermont, and that is where I discovered the delights of cows.  How they love to have the bump on their head scratched, and how they investigate you with their long rough tongues, how herdish they are. Cows usually approach in bunches, gangs, bevies.

I had wanted to create a dance for cows and the dance students at Putney, but we could never quite pull it together.  My friend Ann Carlson did make a dance with cows.  Dancing with another species is a way to listen; to let go of telling and speaking, and shift into feeling and moving.  It is a significantly different  from petting, grooming, walking, milking, riding.  The questions are different, and the answers always changing.  By dancing I don’t mean formal balletic movement, but improvising, playing, investigating.  A great example of inter-species dancing:  playing ultimate frisbee with a dog!

Aug14

Improvisation Life

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Ingrid Schatz, who has danced with me for the past 15 years, told me of a recent study showing that movement improvisation has been shown to be the greatest antidote to dementia!  Nearly four years ago I lost my mother to Alzheimer’s disease, after eight years of losing her piece by piece in excruciating increments.  I wonder what might have been different had I engaged her in some kind of movement play.  Improvising turns on the brain’s circuitry, creating new pathways and connections.  Improvising, we don’t now where we are going, we are traveling through time and space without a map, following the wild and ragged heart of the body.  Horse Dancing at its best, really.  The continual, present-centered, unfolding bodily conversation with yourself, a horse, a lover.  A way to get unstuck from the rote, the habitual, the usual.  Try this:  take five minutes sometime today and lie down in a quiet spot and just let your body move in any way that it wants.  Little, big, fast, slow – doesn’t matter.  No editor, no instructor, no judge.  Listen to the body.  Let it speak.