Many traditions of spiritual and philosophical significance regard spontaneity as a quality indicative of existential maturity. In this regard Western Christianity holds that one must become like a child, innocent, pure of heart, and untouched by the calcification of later life, in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. In the East, the Dzogchen Tradition of Tibetan Buddhism holds one of the three qualities of Dzogchen (the ground and goal of awareness and existence) to be cognizant, spontaneous presence as translated from the Tibetan term lhundrup (Tib. ལྷུན་སྒྲུབ་, Wyl. lhun sgrub). Both illustrate a truth that is honoured in one form or other across the board: the capacity to live authentically in the present, free from contrivance and machination, exists at the heart of a spiritually active intelligence.
In my own creative endeavours, music included, I often strive to experience a quality of awareness that is definitively non-formulaic, whilst utilizing intelligent pattern to meaningful affect. Experiences of creatively fluidity, augmented awareness, and self-integration in music have fuelled my love and devotion to improvisation as an art form and as a central way of life. As an improviser informed by the so-called jazz tradition, one can easily hear in contrast when a player speaks strictly in musical idiom or rote where people play from ideas of the past, from their fingers (muscle memory), or their head (unintegrated musical ideas). In contrast, the most inspiring and transformative playing synthesizes these technical and intellectual patterns in service of a deeper source and objective.
When introspectively examining the cognitive foundations of improvisation, I have found it indispensable to appreciate hearing as the act relating one’s primary awareness to the field of sonic events transpiring in the cosmos and on the instrument. We can speak of varying points on the continuum of sonic cognition ranging from the concrete sensory perception of events to an acoustically grounded meta-awareness (to be aware that one is hearing) and beyond. Meta-cognition recursively folds in on itself, becoming meta-meta-cognition which is aware that that it is aware of hearing, and so on, until finally resolving as a unity in which consciousness and sound are inextricably identified. This point of consciousness as sound is the beginning and end of authentic musical expression, and any accomplished musician has certainly touched upon it. For some, it exists on the periphery, and for others, it is front and centre in their improvisatory or compositional practice. Simply put, the ability to hear and remain present with sound is the sine qua non of the creative processes which characterize the improvisatory art.
Existing within and beyond space and time, this point where sentience and sound converge can liberate the impulses animating the mind, body, and instrument from compulsive action. The ear, firmly planted in the preset, becomes free to listen beyond the precipice of the known. No original creative material can be entirely derived from traditional and idiomatically appropriate musical expression, no matter how valuable it may be, and it is a common theme of great innovators to delve into the confluence of traditional knowledge and the spontaneous origination. Without the ‘freedom from the known’ to use a term of the Indian philosopher Krishnamurti, it is impossible to offer an expression that is meaningfully situated in advance of pre-existing states.
Having spent many years fascinated with the phenomena of genius and with the cognitive parameters required to exercise significant innovation, I have grown to consider the powers of concentration, namely the ability to relate to the subject of focus with utmost immediacy and presence of mind, as a primary catalyst for abilities which are often categorized, incorrectly, as beyond the reach of ordinary capacity. Like any discipline, concentration follows concise and well-defined trends of behaviour which yield a body of self-consistent results, as any serious comparative study on the structure of contemplative states across religious traditions will show. I further believe that such states are quintessential to creative excellence of any kind and have been mastered, either explicitly or intuitively, by significant masters of their respective art.
Let us examine the definitions of origin and originality as they relate to our notion of creativity and innovation in musical practice. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word origin as the point from which something starts, the cause of something. Originality is defined as the quality of being new and interesting in a way that is different from anything that has existed before. In cosmological or metaphysical terms, origin, then, points to the source of being and the beginning of a form of existence or even of existence itself, whether one’s causal interpretation is temporally or a-temporally situated. As it applies to the sphere of music, originality refers to a microcosm of this primary creative emergence which surpasses pre-existing forms, demonstrating an expressed difference in either degree or in kind. This could be the first expression of a particular type of harmony or a newly mastered level of rhythmic expression on a particular instrument, among many other possibilities.
In considering the relationship between the metaphysical perspective of origin as beginning and the artistic perspective of origin as it arises in spontaneous composition to yield original material, we find that the in both cases underlying awareness and subsequent processes are very much akin, and necessarily so. The rationale for this position is founded on the unity the Original Act, not original in the sense of it being temporally first, but in it as being so existentially primary that any subsequent or co-existing manifestation of this Original Act cannot do other than resolve into and as that self-same Act. No two instances of the Original Act can exist without being the Original Act Itself. In this way, to seek creativity is to seek the Creator itself: to express originality is to express the Origin of things and beings. Though the scale of microcosm and macrocosm differ, the Principle of creative agency holds true to the hermetic axiom ‘as above, so below’. As such, the unity of Origin is as much a philosophical position as it is an experientially verifiable fact yielding its essence to sincere contemplative or creative exposition. Regardless of how the process extends in time for composer or improviser, to the extent that either generates original material, each engages in this singular process (whether or not this is something they realize).
Accordingly, the fundamental activity of improviser and composer is one and the same, except inasmuch as the material expression of origination may be projected with variance in time. In one case, origination is immediately extended into the physical sphere through the player and instrument. In the other, it is translated through symbolic notation and the processes for written expression, thus implying temporal delay. It is worthy of mention that the ‘new-ness’ so inextricably bound to the definition of origin is as much substantiated by conceptual rhetoric as it is by the living, experiential reality practiced by composer and improviser alike when they participate in the process of becoming, at the edge of the known and manifest.
Returning to our initial theme of spontaneity, what does this mean in relation to our understanding of origin for creative musical activity? To the extent that an improviser or composer has been initiated into the act of creation, they have become situated outside the matrix of cause and effect by a self-transcending kind of hearing and yet continue to operate therein. This stands in contrast to those who are merely responsible for re-iteration of pre-existing musical content. This singular Act beyond causation must be spontaneous as it is subject to no prior impetus other than its own, wholly self-arising and self-caused. Entering into and ushering the Original Act through their respective instruments, they sing as voices for the Music of the Spheres and unveil the Uncaused to minds yet entrenched in polarity, to the grand appreciation of those familiar with the Muse.
It behoves those of us creatively inclined to discover for ourselves they ways in which our practice can converge with the origin. Musically, we may come to understand and ultimately master how this can occur in the field of hearing and sound (I use these two terms to articulate the occurrence of the subject-object dichotomy in aural form). Navigating inner and outer polarities inevitably leads us through a lemniscate of mind and matter that converges upon and diverges from unity to weave tapestries of harmonious form from the wellspring of music. Needless to say, I believe it is concertedly valuable to develop an awareness of the inherently spontaneous nature of originating action in contexts of compositional or improvisatory activity, deep listening, or in general living: it is well within our realm of capability.