Afternoon, streetcar in Toronto. Man gets on carrying a guitar case. Finds a seat next to a woman who has too many bags on the ground and on her lap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
WOMAN: Can you fit, ok?
MAN: Yes, I\u2019m ok, thanks.
WOMAN: It sure would be easier if I only had a guitar like you.
MAN: Looks like you have a lot.
WOMAN: Groceries.
MAN: Right.
WOMAN: What sort of music do you play?
MAN: Weird music.
WOMAN: Weird music?
MAN: That\u2019s about my best answer.
WOMAN: Weird like Liberace or weird like Captain Beefheart?
MAN: Both.
WOMAN: Do they have a Juno category for that?
MAN: I wish.
WOMAN: Are you a singer?
MAN: I am, but currently I\u2019m at school for improvisational music.
WOMAN: I went to music school, about fifteen years ago.
MAN: No way.
WOMAN: Way.
MAN: What do you play?
WOMAN: Flute.
MAN: Wow. Is that what you do?
WOMAN: Are you nuts?
MAN: Why do you say that?
WOMAN: How many people do you know that play flute for a living?
MAN: Um\u2026(man looks down to ground, his eyes searching)
WOMAN: I\u2019m an assistant archivist.
MAN: That\u2019s very cool.
WOMAN: What\u2019s very cool about it?
MAN: Well you are doing what you want to do.
WOMAN: Playing the flute is what I really want to do or should I say \u201cwanted\u201d to do.
MAN: I see.
WOMAN: Is it a music school? Is that where you said you are
MAN: I am.
WOMAN: Which one?
MAN: A place out of the University of Guelph called the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation.
WOMAN: Couldn\u2019t they make a longer title?
MAN: It is a mouthful.
WOMAN: A novel full.
MAN: That\u2019s what I\u2019m doing.
WOMAN: What do you mean?
MAN: A novel. My thesis, my dissertation, my major research project. It is a novel.
WOMAN: Music school has sure changed.
MAN: It\u2019s pretty amazing actually.
WOMAN: This is a Masters degree?
MAN: PhD.
WOMAN: A novel huh? Why a novel?
MAN: There are a few reasons.
WOMAN: I have at least 13 more stops to go. Do explain.
MAN: Ok, well first of all, they are a place where people can utilize arts-based methodologies (which is what I\u2019m doing). Second of all, there are a lot of writers there and I started thinking about the connections between fiction and improvisation. Thirdly, I think this thing \u201cimprovisation\u201d is everywhere and everything. Like this conversation is unplanned and neither of us knows what we will say next.
WOMAN: But it\u2019s a PhD. They aren\u2019t going to take you seriously talking like that.
MAN: You would be surprised.
WOMAN: I already am.
MAN: Right.
WOMAN: Now tell me what\u2019s an arts-based methodology? What is that? Who finds that legitimate?
MAN: Good question. Good question. There is knowledge gained or acquired through arts-based disciplines. It is new, but they aren\u2019t the only place that is recognizing the fact that research can be arts based. They do it with dance, music, theatre and combine that with qualitative measurement from interviews or participant observation.
WOMAN: You lost me at good question, good question.
MAN: It\u2019s like things you can teach that aren\u2019t contingent only on words. Arts-based researchers explore problems in the discursive as well as the physically embodied. It can transform audience perceptions, it can create surprise emotionally as well as critically.
WOMAN: I don’t understand but ok, what arts-based discipline are you practicing? Like who are referencing?
MAN: Right. I would say John Cage more than anyone else.
WOMAN: The piano piece where the guy doesn\u2019t play the piano.
MAN: Right.
WOMAN: What the hell was that all about anyway?
MAN: He was calling attention to the fact that sound is all around us, sound is always happening. He was trying to get people to see they are audience members of a great performance. To remember life itself is the show. We can manipulate sounds and call that music, but we could also say the environment, the all and everything of life, is a song as it is.
WOMAN: I\u2019m so glad I left school.
MAN: I don\u2019t make sense?
WOMAN: Maybe in an all day meeting of students and teachers on a Monday following a burrito lunch with chips from Mrs. Vickies \u2013 but no, not on this bus. And you have to admit it is a pretty boring piano piece.
MAN: Well, if you want to understand what he\u2019s doing you have to think differently.
WOMAN: Do you really think through arts-based whatchamacallit, you can get anyone to think differently?
MAN: I don\u2019t know\u2026 but that\u2019s my job. The story I am writing is about someone confronted with certain ideas that hopefully positions the audience to consider the epiphanies that come from understanding improvisation.
WOMAN: What epiphanies?
MAN: About improvisation. About control and letting go because the main character is trying to get revenge on someone, and it doesn\u2019t work out and his belief in controlling things blindsides him. And he also studies improvisation with a great teacher who tries to get him to see how that works musically and he has an epiphany you could say.
WOMAN: uh huh
MAN: Ultimately, he realizes that life itself plays with the same dynamics and that nobody can control anything and that this is the great lesson learned through being humbled by the \u201cnot knowing where things end up\u201d that embodies improvisation, just as it is in life.
WOMAN: Is there a hero?
MAN: Yes.
WOMAN: Good.
MAN: But the hero is a hero for the thing I was just talking about, the thing you find boring.
WOMAN: Your hero is John Cage?
MAN: My hero realizes that trying to control anything is also an illusion.
WOMAN: My IBS could have told you that.
MAN: Thanks.
WOMAN: So you have a snazzy title?
MAN: I don\u2019t have a title yet.
WOMAN: You must have something.
MAN: I do.
WOMAN: Tell it, I only have two more stops.
MAN: In religions you attempt to live as if \u2018someone were watching your every move,\u2019 while in improvisation it is you doing the watching.
WOMAN: That is a horrible title.
MAN: Thank you.
WOMAN: But it does make me think..you have a problem with religion?
MAN: I am not talking about religion.
WOMAN: Oh. For me, you are talking about archiving.
MAN: Am I?
WOMAN: Yes, I think so. In improvisation you are doing the watching so what you mean is like in bad archiving, a person\u2019s bias shows. Like whether they realize it or not if they try to prove their interpretation of the world through what they choose to archive then they are using their bias, they are trying to control the outcome, but better and more useful archiving, in my humble opinion, is accepting all the events and then standing back to admire the living organism of everything, the order as well as the chaos.
MAN: Yeah that is much closer. It is not about a human being controlling things.
WOMAN: Expecting an outcome intrudes upon the very space of improvisation. Yes?
MAN: Yes!
WOMAN: So being compassionate about not judging life as it is. So no hierarchy of beauty or ugliness.
MAN: Yeah.
WOMAN: This is my stop. Could I give you a little advice?
MAN: Please.
WOMAN: What Margaret Atwood said about writing.
MAN: What did she say?
WOMAN: Your job is just to make the reader turn the page.
MAN: I will keep that in mind. Thanks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"