A Flowering of Untethered Improvisation...

Open-ended. That's the way forward. Living with an open-ended attitude. I think so. There's possibility in that stance: open-mind, open-arms. We are in a dance with reality, we don't call the tune, the tune is called, and we swing, or flow, or not. "Go with the flow." It seems passive, but I think not. An active attitude of flow. This morning I am listening to Miles Davis' jazz masterpiece recording "Kind of Blue."  (1959). I have also been reading this fabulous book: "The Making of Kind of Blue." An in-depth exploration of one of the landmark acheivements in music, any kind of music. 

So yeah, I have been transported back to 1959, back to a large, high-ceilinged, Columbia recording studio, a converted church in New York City. This recording is still so alive, fresh, and yes open-ended. The names are all legendary: Miles, Coltrane, Cannoball Adderley, Jimmy Cobb, Bill Evans, Paul Chambers. I understand now that it's a prime example of "modal Jazz." Think of music freed from chords, leaning into modes, leading to an open-ended, open-minded flowering of untethered improvisation. It simple, it's cool, it's blue, there is silence and space. That is a super-interesting, ever-renewing, and ever-exploring example for living right there: a flowering of untethered improvisation. Can you use a fabulous work of art as a blue-print for living your life? Yes. I do believe you can.