Getting Limbic: It's good to work outside of your comfort-zone

Thinking about the balance of an improvisatory approach with everything you've forgotten and all that you know. It applies to more than music.

Earlier this week, I played an improvised set of music as part of a group called "Limbic". There were three of us on stage, I had previously played in a different line-up with one of the musicians (he now lives in the UK and was back visiting). I hadn't even met the other player. We literally shook hands, said hello, then picked up our instruments to perform together. I think, perhaps, this is how all improvised music should be...how truly improvised of us!

We three sat facing a video screen and performed a completely unique and off-the-cuff set, responding to a silent film as it played; effectively we made its soundtrack - but a score that existed one time only, and with very little in the way of preconceived notions.

When asked for a name for the group, I'd suggested Limbic - in fact I'd originally said The Limbic Trio, but group leader Ben wanted to let the word sit on its own and he'll use it for other musical groupings with other people; the name fluid now for any number of members, able to umbrella a duo or quartet.

I liked Limbic for its pun. There's the Limbic System. But the first syllable is 'limb' and we'd be using those, as well as digging deep into both our own limbic systems and the collective one that we'd essentially formed live in the moment and for one night only.

It was scary. Absolutely. The whole thing could have fallen over at any minute. But we had to trust that not many watching and listening would necessarily know that. You carry yourself with confidence, you think of that great Miles Davis line about repeating your mistakes when you make them, do them so many times so as to turn them into what presents as a 'planned thing' instead; you allow yourself the dizzying chance to connect with something by sitting away from it whilst simultaneously leaning all the way in. We are all of us learning on the spot, even as we bring what we know to the event.

Playing a made-up soundtrack to a film you've never seen, live in front of people, as part of a group that's never played before, and might likely never play again in that exact configuration...well, it's a bit like speaking to a PowerPoint, giving an ad-hoc meeting update, being asked for your advice on a matter as it arises, writing an email or a story to address a matter of breaking concern. It's all management of smoke: The scent is detected, the cloud emerges, you form your response. You deal with it. You bring everything you are to it, and all that you know. You are both full of ideas, and empty to face the challenge. You are sitting right there on the limbic lobe, and in the limbus - because that's where we all are most of the time, mixing our olfactory and our new, our very brand new. Bringing our whole selves to everything if and as and when we can.

Last night it felt very good to 'get limbic'. It won't ever happen again, quite like that. But that doesn't actually mean it won't happen. Again and again…

I first shared this as an article on LinkedIn.