A little more on the Golden Rule of Applied Improvisation

[Paul Levy]

Here's my golden rule of applied improvisation:

The skilled applied improviser always improvises the improvisation they are applying.

Inherent in this rule is the notion that, on some occasions, the improvisational step the facilitator will take, will be to break the golden rule.

I've mentioned this because, otherwise, the idea of the word "always" in a golden rule about improvisation might appear to be too fixed and generic. When we decide to NOT improvise, if we are in an improvisational state at the time, then that decision is an improvised one.

And that's the foundation of this rule: That a facilitator should always be in the moment, a sensing mechanism for the potential of that moment, the needs of the situation.

In an improvisational state, our landscape of action stretches to the horizon of possibility in all directions. We are at the centre of a circle, looking outwards and, paradoxically, we are also able to (at least imagine ourselves as able) look inwards from the periphery to the core, to the heart of things, to the focus of the matter. We are both Apollo and Dionysus, micro- and macro-cosmic in orientation and view. In Dante's terms, time becomes space for us, and we become spatially aware of the narrative flow of past into present, and future into past.

I know this sounds like twaddle and poppycock but I think it is because I am a poor poet and the only way of even beginning to characterise the authentically improvisational state would be through the metaphors and rhythms of poetry, or even the tones and tempo of certain kinds of music.

If you can name yourself as in the improvisational state, then you aren't in it, for the naming turns thinking into thought. And thoughts lie, dead, a telling moment in the past, they become artefacts of the living process of thinking. I once read in a western esoteric book that the language of the "spirit" (and it specifically mentioned the departed) as one of adverbs, and a language devoid of nouns - the language, not of things, but of becoming, of process. Despite my earlier warning about my poetic gifts (or lack thereof),  I once wrote this short poem as a response, and, for me, it captures something of the essence of the improvisational state:

In this place there are only tones.
No bodily function yet movement
From thought that flexes
Non-existent muscles.
There are no nouns, only verb
Upon verb, Like fields and valleys,
The language spoken by
The dead, who have cast off all nouns
Is a landscape uttered here.
There are harmonics and rising pitch
That discords as pain, and accords
As love.
In this place there is only tone.
There is communion in notes with a
Melody of Meaning and it is possible
To touch another with the intention
Of a healing song.
Into this place, I unfold my wings of sound-borne light

There's another paradox here, because often, in the true moment, we feel ourselves more physically in ourselves than ever. Yet I believe there is an essential separation; we are, in effect, real-time puppeteers of our physical self. Mind is the string puller in the moment of brain. Some people feel more "earthed", others feel more "consciously floating" or flowing.

Now, to ground this nonsense:

We all carry a bag of tools and games we've used before. We all create default plans for our participants. Yet, I believe the moment of action is sacred, and demands to be a crisp, new page. It may be part of a longer story, or it may stand out as a unique, clean canvas of possibility. The applied improvisation facilitator must be humbly ready to invent, and improvise something that is profoundly new, prepared to drop everything they were thinking of doing up to that moment. And if they do decide to revert to default, or use something from the kit bag, then that decision should equally be one that is improvised, and that is truly  born of the infinity of the now.

More here:

http://www.appliedimprovisation.co.uk