Improvisation as a life's work
 

Prevost 158: "The meeting of two human beings generates interactions of the highest complexity. Nothing could be more courageous, in artistic activity, than to risk a performance with no foreknowledge of the outcome and no certainty of personal and collective responses. It takes a rare kind of foolhardiness to risk all in this way. As a direct confrontational exercise for a beginner, a novice, or the experienced player, such a display of [lack of?] inhibition might have psychological benefits [...] But to base an aesthetic, a life's work, upon such a premise demands courage or foolishness. Such a spirit of freedom may be in tune with the times and may herald some wider flowering of human expression. At other times it may be popularly perceived as a madness at the margins of cultural life."

> from Edwin Prevost's No Sound Is Innocent: AMM and the Practice of Self-Invention (1995)

> tagged with #improvisation

> created March 17, 2026 at 9:01:54 AM


> part of unfinished everything


search unfinished everything


unfinished everything is an original work / ongoing project (1997-present) by jeremy p. bushnell

selection, arrangement, and original text available for creative reuse under this licensing arrangement

authors' quoted words are their own.


home |@jpb.bsky.social