"Remember our etymologies: experience means almost the same as experiment, and an expert is one who is good at experiencing in a particular situation. Learning by experience is taking in the successful gleanings from standard artistic practice the improvisations between you and the real world."
–– Eric Booth, American actor, teacher, and author
Source: Eric Booth. The Everyday Work of Art. Naperville, Illinois: Sourcebooks, 1997; p. 152.
via: Commonplace Book 2006-2009, 2007, p. 191.
""My work is really slow and repetitive. ... You have to go through almost excruciating boredom to be spontaneous and creative, to get to a place where the work really flows." For eight hours a day he combines experience and improvisation, As he described the process to an interviewer in 2004, "It is mysterious in a mundane way.""
–– Lance Letscher (b. 1962), American collage artist and Charles Dee Mitchell
Source: Lance Letscher Collage. Introduction by Charles Dee Mitchell. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 2009, p. 6.
via: Day In & Day Out Notebook, 2019, p. 36.
"This skillful man ... has to play some written music which is inferior to his own ideas. Nevertheless his superior ideas are the consequences of those inferior ones."
–– unknown theology student, 1741 re: German composer and musician Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
* Bach played "lesser" music to get his brain going and to stimulate ideas he would use for his own improvisation and composition
Source: Range Widely, blog by David Epstein via: Austin Kleon newsletter, June 30, 2023
via: Sketchbook 33, 2023, p. 68.
"When we got to the part where we had to improvise an argument in a poetic language, I got cold feet. "I can't do this," I said. "I don't know what to say."
"Say anything," he said. "You can't make a mistake when you improvise."
"What if I mess it up? What if I screw up the rhythm?"
"You can't," he said. "It's like drumming. If you miss a beat, you create another."
"In this simple exchange, Sam taught me the secret of improvisation, one that I have accessed my whole life."
–– Patti Smith (b. 1946), American writer, poet, singer-songwriter and musician
Source: Patti Smith. Just Kids. New York: HarperCollins Books, 2010; p. 185. re: writing the play Cowboy Mouth with the American playwright Sam Shepard.
"Improvisation can be either a last resort or an established way of evoking creativity."
–– Mary Catherine Bateson (1939-2021), American cultural anthropologist and writer
via Commonplace Book 2006, p. 110
