Nutmeg and cardamom, now my favourite spices. Oatmeal no longer complete without nutmeg but it is dangerous. just some dust will do. Transforming breakfast into something approaching civilization. Cardamom best way to perfume the house. Simmer cinnamon sticks, lime leaves, cloves and cardamom pods. Before long it smells like sensible decisions are made here. Then I make the mistake of opening Instagram. Hours of life can disappear. Swipe. Swipe. Swipe. Dogs that skateboard. Someone making lasagna. A debate about trans Israelis of colour. A piano player. A guy pressure-washing a driveway. Time evaporates. Consciousness perfectly happy to be rented out in fifteen-second installments. Entertainment is less about pleasure than temporary relief from unfinished business waiting elsewhere in mind. Occasionally, I notice it while performing. Halfway through a song, the audience content, and then part of mind quietly enters behaving more like unemployed theatre critic.

“Are you sure you remember the second verse?”

“That left hand sounded uncertain.”

“Wouldn’t it be fascinating if you forgot the words right… now?”

Which makes me wonder how many selves we really are. We speak as though there is one captain at the helm, but it often feels like a committee meeting with poor leadership. One member wants to write songs. One wants another bowl of oatmeal. One worries about the future. One replays conversations from 1987. One is perfectly content watching videos of people restoring rusty tools. Another can’t stop asking philosophical questions nobody requested.

Maybe improvisation isn’t simply something musicians do. Maybe it’s what those different voices are constantly doing with one another, negotiating in real time, interrupting, cooperating, sabotaging, forgiving. I’d invite them all into the kitchen, hand them a bowl of oatmeal, fill the house with cardamom, and suggest they take the afternoon off. Especially the heckler. He’s had enough stage time already.