In my earlier Creation and Production post, I noted that “ceramics, more than almost any other art form, is forced to confront this tension between the creative act and the means of production.” At the time, that “almost” was meant to leave room for other functional art forms, such as furniture design or graphic design. I am now realizing that contemporary music faces this paradox in a different, but just as important way. Music, by its very nature, trades in feeling and spontaneity, and it when it becomes functional (e.g. Muzak) it betrays that nature. However, the tension between mass production and the creative act is very much a part of what musicians have to deal with, both in the sense that they are asked to churn out music in specific styles and in the sense that the work they create will (ideally) be duplicated millions of times over. Perhaps more importantly, if they ever do become successful, that success often hinges on a few recognizable songs, which are played ad nauseum. I recall seeing a Willie Nelson concert in which he introduced “On the Road Again” with the advice never to write a song unless you want to play it at every concert you do for the next twenty years.

But there is a musical movement which takes aim at these demands for repetition and mass production by sticking strictly to improvisation. Purely improvised music destroys many of the control structures that exist in the music industry by conflating creation and production. Through this conflation, improvised music refuses to let audiences demand specific songs, refuses to let a single songwriter or lead musician dominate the performance, and refuses to allow anyone to know what to expect. Ultimately, improvisation allows musicians to demonstrate a method for communities to organize themselves around awareness, feeling, spontaneity — and the personal integrity that comes with these things. Thus, many improvisers see their music as a political act, in the sense that it presents a kind of non-hierarchical politics.

However, improvisation may very well be impossible. As Derrida said in an unpublished interview:

“One can’t say what ever one wants, one is obliged more or less to reproduce the stereotypical discourse. And so I believe in improvisation and I fight for improvisation. But always with the belief that it’s impossible. And there where there is improvisation I am not able to see myself. I am blind to myself. And it’s what I will see, no, I won’t see it. It’s for others to see. The one who is improvised here, no I won’t ever see him.”

And so the improviser fights on in her quixotic task, unable to reach her goal or even to see her own progress towards it. But regardless of Don Quixote’s inability to slay a single giant or hold his beloved Dulcinea in his arms for a single minute, the world was expanded for his having fought the battle.

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