Improv AtWork and AtLife

Conscious Incompentency

I spent all last week (okay, only 4 days but it seemed like more so I've given myself permission to refer to it as all last week) at a workshop on typology. After much thought, I buy Jung's typology model...although if you have some words of wisdom you'd like to share, by all means do so. I wasn't as sure about Jung's claim that we're born with a preferred type. But after watching 9 month old babies clearly express type during a research project, I can't reject that idea. And since these subjects have been followed for many years and still display the same type preference, it seems as if Jung was also right when he said we couldn't alter our preferred type, although we may get more adept at using all the functions. But I'm off track.

My biggest challenge all week was coming face to face with conscious incompetency - the realization, every day, that there's so much I don't know. I've also got to come to grips with the fact that I'm not gonna be able to "catch up" - ever. According to Bowker - the world's leading provider of bibliographic information - the US published 172,000 new titles in 2005. Yeah, you read that right - 172,000 new books hit the street...in one year! I try to browse through a couple of books a week, but even at that rate, I'm not making much of a dent. I know what you're thinking - how many of those 172,000 tomes are even worth looking at? Since I can only get to about a hundred a year, I don't know. But I have a niggling feeling I'm missing one or two that might be life changing. If you've read one, let me know. The thought of so much knowledge alluding me makes me uncomfortable. But my firm belief in lifelong learning keeps me moving forward...all the while knowing that I will forever live in a world of "conscious incompentency".

This Bank Knows How to Improvise

I'm always looking for articles or short pieces on how companies get outside the box and adapt to doing business in new ways. I found the following in this morning's paper....

"The 14 branches of the Tari Bunia Bank on the South Pacific island of Vanuatu act as traditional banks, but also accommodate local tribesmen by accepting tusks, woven mats, shells, giant rocks and other items for deposit into individual accounts at traditional bartered rates. Bank robberies are rare, thanks to the 'spirits and snakes' guarding the artifacts."

Wow. And I can't even get my local cafe to substitute a short stack for biscuits.

Itzhak Perlman & The Heart of Improvisation

A friend shared the following story with me. It says more about the ability to improvise than anything I've encountered.

On November 18, 1995, violinist Itzhak Perlman came on stage to give a concert at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City. If you've ever been to one of his concerts, you know that getting on stage is no small achievement for him. Stricken with polio as a child, Perlman has braces on both legs and walks with the aid of two crutches. To see him walk across the stage one step at a time, painfully and slowly, can break your heart.

On that evening, as on others, he walked painfully, yet majestically, to his chair. He sat down, put his crutches on the floor next to him, undid the clasps on his legs, tucked one foot back and extended the other foot forward. Then he bent down and picked up his violin, put it under his chin, nodded to the conductor and began to play. But just as he finished the first few bars, the unthinkable happened. One of the strings on his violin broke. You could hear it snap - it went off like gunfire across the room.

The audience sat in stunned silence and waited. They expected Perlman to have to repeat the painful ritual of traversing the stage yet again to retrieve a string or another violin. But he didn't. Instead, he waited a moment, closed his eyes and then signaled to the conductor to begin again. The orchestra began and Perlman picked up where he had left off and played with such passion and power and purity as no one in the audience had ever heard before.

It's not possible to play a symphonic work with just three strings. Even I know that. But that night, Itzhak Perlman refused to know that. People in the audience could see him modulating, changing, re-composing the piece in his head. At one point, it sounded like he was re-tuning the strings to get new sounds from them - sounds the strings had never made before. When the piece was finished, silence filled the room. And then...the audience rose to its feet and cheered.

Itzhak Perlman smiled, wiped the sweat from his brow, raised his bow to quiet the crowd and then said, quietly, "You know, sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left."

What a powerful line. Perhaps that's the definition of life - to make "music" with whatever we have available to us. In other words, to improvise.