Suddenly It’s Now

In the words of my friend Stephen Nachmanovich, improvisation is the Art of Is. It is the art of presence, of being here, now. The art of now is not about the pursuit of purpose but about “the dance.” Dance, which I once heard described a vertical expression of a horizontal inclination, is all about desire. Not purpose, not longing, pure desire, expressed here and now. That’s what the improviser pursues. Embracing embodied emotion, not denying desire, nor putting it off, the improviser finds the present moment. Perhaps it’s that theme which attracted me to one of my favorite Paul Spooner automata, “Suddenly It’s Now.”