Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art
by Stephen Nachmanovitch
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Book Summary Information
Author: Stephen NachmanovitchEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1991-05-01
ISBN: 0874776317
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Tarcher
Book Reviews of Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art
Book Review: Complete Book Review
Summary: 5 Stars
Pages: 197
Chapters: 22
Back Matter (10 pp): notes/sources, bibliography, illustrations list, bio
4 Sections: The Sources; The Work; Obstacles & Openings; The Fruits
Free Play doesn't deal directly with music practice, but it is nevertheless an important book for anyone interested in music (or other arts, or life). I strongly believe that improvisation benefits practice. To me, improvising is an essential musical skill, one possessed by musical greats (Hussein, Bach, Shankar, Beethoven, Duke, Mozart, etc.), and is practiced in musical traditions all over the world, as well as by young children who haven't developed some of the fear associated with improvisation in those overly focused on the written notes. Remember when you drew letters over and over as a young child, taking great care (or not) with the shapes? Now imagine that despite all that practice time forming letters and sounding out words, that you never (ever) spoke extemporaneously. Crazy, right? To me, that's about the same as practicing scales over and over until they're memorized, but then never using that tonal material to improvise. Crazy talk! At the end of this review is a link to an mp3 of my improv group Meh! playing an improvised story with Nachmanovich.
Free Play is a great introduction to what improvisation is and how it can work. The book is chock-a-block with illustrations and anecdotes (including a talking tennis ball), and draws from spiritual traditions including Christianity, Sufism, Shamanism, and Zen. Despite the complexity of the topic, Nachmanovich's style is conversational and interesting and you can tell the man is both excited about and dedicated to his art. It's a short book, with a lot packed into its 200 pages. Some of the questions explored are:
---What is the Muse?
---Where does the play of imagination arise?
---When are sounds music? (or patterns and colors art; or words literature; or instruction teaching)
---How does the passion of life get coded into artwork?
---How do we decode and/or recreate an artwork when the artist is no longer present?
---How does it feel to fall in love with an instrument or an art form?
---Why has there been a split in the West between improvisational and notational music-making?
Some of the themes in the book include but are not limited to:
---playfulness
---love
---concentration
---practice
---skill
---using the power of limits
---using the power of mistakes
---risk
---surrender
---patience
---courage
---trust
The book is broken up into four sections, each of which will be briefly outlined below.
The Sources (6 Chapters: pp. 17-55)
After an introduction by way of a mythic story that chronicles how one musician came to be a Master, the first section continues to expand on what improvisation is and where it might come from, including the reasons why it's important. Nachmanovich explores inspiration, the mind at play, the muse, and the dissolution of the self during acts of creation and the need to get out of our own way in order to let the Art come through us, whether it's sound or some other medium. He covers archetypes like the Fool, the Trickster, the Child and the state of samadhi, when one is ultimately absorbed that the self dissolves into the infinite. Heavy stuff, but handled in a deft and interesting way.
The Work (6 Chapters, pp. 59-111)
This is the strongest section of the book, in my opinion and includes an eponymous chapter on practice. Most valuable for me was Nachmanovich calling our attention to the separation of practice and music-making, a distinction brought up by others, too, and an important thing to think about, as well as notions of perfection and what that might mean, how it can hamstring one's music-making. Also incredibly valuable is his exploration of the power of limits and mistakes. The chapter Playing Together is really about improvising together, and is also worthwhile.
Obstacles & Openings (6 Chapters, pp. 115-160)
This section is about the ways in which the inherent creative impulse we have as children gets buried by living in the world, by criticism, by judgment, addictions (and not just to ingested substances but to ways of thought as well). This is balanced nicely with ways of overcoming some of these challenges, including surrender, patience, perseverance and other useful tactics. Nachmanovich stated in the introduction that one of the purposes of the book is to provide "a block-buster, a wedge for breaking apart creative blocks," and this section fulfills that purpose most directly, while the rest of the book also fulfills the purpose but more indirectly.
The Fruits (4 Chapters, pp. 163-197)
This shortest section of the book explores what it can be like to create with freedom and how this can benefit not only the individual, but everyone and everything. He also explores tangentially, the slippery notion of Quality, and although he wisely doesn't define it, he shows us why it is vitally important, and also delves into why Art is important to living a fulfilling life, whether one creates or enjoys it. The book ends with a celebration of the difficulty of the process and the joy of knowing that through struggle with issues and with ourselves, we can achieve breakthroughs that take us to a higher level of understanding and humanity.
This is a book I highly recommend, especially for those curious about or fearful of improvisation.To hear an mp3 of my free improv group Meh! improvising a musical story with Nachmanovich, go to:
[...]
Summary of Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art
This book is about the inner sources of spontaneous creation. It is about where art in the widest sense comes from. It is about why we create and what we learn when we do. It is about the flow of unhindered creative energy: the joy of making art in all its varied forms.Free Play is directed toward people in any field who want to contact, honor, and strengthen their own creative powers. It integrates material from a wide variety of sources among the arts, sciences, and spiritual traditions of humanity. Filled with unusual quotes, amusing and illuminating anecdotes, and original metaphors, it reveals how inspiration arises within us, how that inspiration may be blocked, derailed or obscured by certain unavoidable facts of life, and how finally it can be liberated - how we can be liberated - to speak or sing, write or paint, dance or play, with our own authentic voice.
The whole enterprise of improvisation in life and art, of recovering free play and awakening creativity, is about being true to ourselves and our visions. It brings us into direct, active contact with boundless creative energies that we may not even know we had.
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