Creative improv is so fun. I love to improvise and create spontaneously.
I am realizing more and more how much I work this way in many ways. I do it when I rap, I do it when I play piano, I do it when I write, and of course, I do it when I improvise comedy scenes. The spirit of spontaneity is so important to my creativity.
I remember when I was a kid, I heard about Mozart, who of course impressed me greatly. He could improvise and compose on the spot, beautiful works of art that cohered and rhymed, in a musical sense, with stylistic aplomb. When I studied classical music as a teenager, I remember making the assumption that these composers improvised their music, on the spot. And certainly many great composers did do just that: Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, to name a few. Yet I was so improvisation oriented that I underestimated the power of planning in composition as in other things.
When I was a bit older, I got entranced by Eminem and freestyle rapping. How could these guys come up with great rhymes “off the dome?” Again, I was drawn to a spontaneous, in-the-moment art form. Again, I was entranced by improvisation.
There is a certain freedom that I feel from improvisation. This weekend I was hanging out with family for a yearly vacation we have done for many years now. We like to perform and play games, and every year for a few years now we have done a talent show. Everything I performed was entirely improvised… and I had more fun with this show than I can remember having at any of the previous years’.
I find that creative improvisation is a great antidote to being in my head, overthinking things, or trying to be perfect. Inherently, improvisation is about being “in the moment,” therefore it is free of some abstract, hard-to-reach ideal. It is inherently in the here and now, and that is enough.
Perhaps it is the perfect antidote to the over thinker 🙂
Long live improv!