Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art

The most dangerous trap is to get into a contest of strength between “will power” and “won’t power.”

psychiatrist Donald Winnicott came to clarify the aim of psychological healing as “bringing the patient from a state of not being able to play into a state of being able to play.... It is in playing and only in playing that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that t

“The whole difference between construction and creation,” wrote G. K. Chesterton, “is this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.”54

I eventually learned to treat each solitary writing session at home the same way I treat a live performance. In other words, I learned to treat myself with the same care and respect I give to an audience. This was not a trivial lesson. These rituals and preparations function to discharge and clear obscurations and nervous doubts, to invoke our muse

My general preparations include everything I do to be healthy and ready for surprises, with a full palette of resources available. I need energy to acquire skill, energy to practice, energy to keep going through the inevitable setbacks, energy to keep going when things look good and I am tempted to sit back and relax. I need physical energy, intell

Full-blown artistic creativity takes place when a trained and skilled grown-up is able to tap the source of clear, unbroken play-consciousness of the small child within.

There is, in fact, no such thing as a “note” in music. A note is an abstract symbol representing a tone, which is an actual sound. You can play thousands of so-called B’s or C’s and they will all be different. Nothing can be standardized. Each vibratory event is unique.

Attempts to conquer inertia are, by definition, futile. Start instead from the inertia as a focal point, develop it into a meditation, an exaggerated stillness. Let heat and momentum arise as a natural reverberation from the stillness.

literary writing is not to “make a point”; it is to provoke imaginative states.

our sensitivity diminishes in proportion to the total amount of stimulation. If there are two candles lit in a room, we easily notice the difference in brightness when a third candle is lit. But if there are fifty candles burning, we are unlikely to notice the difference made by a fifty-first. If there is less total stimulation, each small change m