Back at Improv Boston

After an almost three month hiatus surrounding the birth of our lovely daughter Anica, I was back at Imrov Boston for the last two weeks, and what a pleasure it was, let me tell you. As actor Aaron Crutchfield so aptly put it, the company is like a dojo, where you practice your craft in its most immediate and tangible forms. And he’s right: in improvised theater (as in the music that goes along with it), we play out dozens of story ideas in our 75-minute shows. There’s no time to think critically or let internal editors stop us from where our instant vision takes us. “Offers” as they are called must be delivered and supported with absolute conviction and belief. It’s like being in a real-time sketch pad that washes itself away every few minutes.
Aaron played both shows my first week back along with Don Scheurman, Elyse Becker, Paul Dome, and Cliff Zawasky… a great cast of seasoned veteran fast thinkers. This past weekend’s shows included Paul again, along with Erin McGhee, Katie Proulx, Mat Gagne, Matt McLaughlin, and renowned improv guru Joe Bill.
Both weekends reminded me of what an important part of my work underscoring improv theater is: it keeps the improvisational approach relevant, and I can sense this bubbling feeling when I get back in my studio to compose music that will stick around for a few minutes. I’m not sure I can describe what the connection is, but I know that when the improv mentality is fresh, I can produce more music faster than when I haven’t been there for a while. Front and center for me is the simple idea (and this goes back to my studies with Bob Brookmeyer) that you have to have material captured in order to edit it, and you have to trust your array of editing approaches enough to be sure that you can take rough, raw material and turn it into something special. The surprising result is that often the first thing that comes out is the best anyway… but I’ve got to be in the right frame of mind to make that happen.

Teaching & Writing

A last minute teaching assignment took me once again to the hub of animation in the U.S. Naturally, though, I was too wiped after teaching teachers about bringing music into their classrooms to stand up and that eliminated the possibility of going into town.

I don’t know what it is about teaching all weekend with nary a break that makes it hard to stand up, think, or decide on dinner. Nevertheless, I wandered into Barnes and Noble on Saturday night in some strip mall somewhere near Potter Springs. I think that’s where I was. It’s all a blur, as it always is. I’ll be back again at the beginning of next month.

My return brought me headfirst into the Maine winter and the snow right now is delightful. Arresting, really. And I’m couped up in my studio, happily making music for the upcoming Portland Stage production of “Iron Kisses”. So I’ve been taking stabs at composing gossamer and wispy music of grief and melancholy. Good thing those are flavors I love to live in. Director Risa Brainin has been a joy to work with, and the three-thousand miles between us haven’t stop us from getting inside each other’s thinking and moving towards a rich collaboration. Samples later…

Go Outside

I continue to be impressed by the preschool teacher at the Friends school where I teach music here in Portland. She takes her little ones out for recess, even in the rain, and she makes sure they bring raincoats on rainy days with this in mind. She knows that humans won’t melt if they get wet. She knows that human beings need to be outside and to touch nature. An article in the recent issue of the Press Herald echoed her sentiments about people needing be outside, to interact emotionally with nature, and to develop a gut-level relationship with the world around them. It appears that many of us here in the U.S. suffer from Nature-Deficit Disorder, a term coined by author and educator Richard Louv. We don't go outside, and worse, we don't let our kids play freely in the neighborhoods. Instead we over-protect, over-schedule, and allow them a steady diet of technology.

I wouldn't be as keyed into this issue if we hadn't up and moved to Maine, where real natural beauty is turned up a notch or two, and is always beckoning from around the corner. I’m spending more time outside in nature than I did in Boston or D.C., and it doesn’t mean going camping, kayaking or any of those other much-lauded outdoor activities. I’m gardening and building a studio, as well as squeezing in walks by lighthouses and through woods. If I get this blog written in the next half hour, I’m going to try to get out to Mackworth for the sunrise.

Through it all, I feel the importance of contact with real, natural things. Living things. Simply going outside is one of the most important things a person can do anymore. For more on that, check out Louv’s book Last Child in the Woods.

But I am a real technology lover. I could go for days working in a dark studio, ignoring beautiful breezes and sunshine, and never know the difference. I not only have the kind of gadget-fancy and gear-lust that many of my peers do, but I also marvel at the way technology has put creative tools in the hands of so many and has allowed an increasing number of people to share ideas. We are all aware of the success of YouTube and MySpace for these reasons, and you don’t need me to tell you how cool it is to create a things like web-sites and movies with computers. You know this already. It is likely that you do this a lot.

What I’m interested in is finding a balance between LIVING in the idea-world of computers and breathing through the real world of the outside. This is particularly relevant as I raise my two kids in a house of laptops and electronic music composition tools. Now that I have kids, what I do in these arenas models what I think is important, AND I have to be vigilant and thoughtful in the way I introduce technology to them.

For example, I’ve started “doing Spanish” on the computer with my two-year old son, Charlie. He will sit on my lap and watch (or click) as I match pictures to Spanish words. We have a fine time, and who can argue with passively learning a language at that age? Well, the other night, after a while with Spanish, he was starting to get interested in really using the mouse and soon was directing the pointer ALL OVER the screen. So I opened up a drawing program to see what would happen.

The next thing I knew we were making all kinds of squiggles and shapes on the screen. It was a blast choosing colors for the squiggles and that went on for a while. Now he wants to do it more. But he’s still learning to draw with crayons! So, for now, we’re putting a hold on computer drawing for Charlie.

But limiting children’s access to technology is not what all this is about. I don’t see using computers to make creative work as a problem AT ALL. (Constant multi-tasked media viewing is another thing entirely.) In fact, the article on Nature-Deficit Disorder points an equally scolding finger at parents’ over-protectiveness which limits children’s free outdoor play. I guess what I’m thinking through here is how to continue to craft a life which is intrinsically linked to technology without shutting out nature. How to live deeply in the real world while developing ideas which rely on and leverage computers. And this doesn’t mean bringing my laptop to pretty places.

When it comes down it, it’s about deciding whether to develop certain products I have imagined which will be compelling computer-based music creation tools for people of all ages and skill levels. These are tools which will help people with no musical background create their own music doing more sophisticated things than just combining pre-fab loops. Not only will they facilitate instant music creation, but they will help the user understand what is going on under the hood musically. And they will certainly offer a compelling alternative to a walk outside.