Unfree Improvisation/Compulsive Freedom
Ray Brassier
Written for a performance with Mattin at Arika's festival episode 4 “Freedom is a Constant Struggle”, 21 April 2013, Tramway,
Glasgow
Thanks to Barry Esson and Byrony McIntyre
What are the conditions for “free improvisation”?
We need to get clear on these two concepts: “free” and “improvisation”.
First freedom. We must distinguish freedom from voluntarism. Voluntarism understands freedom as the property of an act of will
exercised by a self. In order for an act to qualify as free in the voluntarist sense, neither the self nor its act can be determined by
antecedent causes. In this regard, the free act of will erupts ex-nihilo: it is supposed to be un-determined, whether by psychological
dispositions or physical processes. It is the product of a “will” that voluntarism absolutizes into an occult force exercised by a sovereign
self. Freedom is construed as the attribute of the determination generated by this self. Freedom in this sense is objectionably
metaphysical insofar as it invokes entities and forces that are dubitable, at the very least. The alternative is to view freedom as an act of
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metaphysical insofar as it invokes entities and forces that are dubitable, at the very least. The alternative is to view freedom as an act of
self-determination where it is not the self that exerts a determining power through its act, but rather the act that determines itself. In
order to make sense of this, it is necessary to understand the reflexivity at work in the notion of “self-determination” not as that of the
self acting on itself but instead as that of the act acting on itself. I will use the word “act” to mean this act acting on itself. The ability to
act is composed out of two distinct strata of behavior: that of pattern-governed behavior on one level, and that of rule-conforming
behavior on the other. The act results from the superimposition of these two levels; i.e., from the superimposition of rule-conforming
behavior onto pattern-governed behavior. It is the product of the intrication of these two levels, but it cannot be reduced to either.
Pattern-governed behavior is ubiquitous in the biological and physical realms. Physical systems realize complex patterns without
intending them. The pattern is incarnated by the components of the system, each part of which constitutes it, but the constitution is
effectuated by something as mindless as a wiring-diagram. The latter mechanism codes for the pattern, without the structure of the
pattern having to be represented by any part of it. Thus the turns and wiggles performed by a dancing bee occur for a reason—to
communicate information about flowers—without this reason being intended: the bee has no mind with which it can intend to realize the
dance:
What would it mean to say of a bee returning from a clover field that its turnings and wigglings occur because they are part of a
complex dance? Would this commit us to the idea that the bee envisages the dance and acts as it does by virtue of intending to
realize the dance? If we reject this idea, must we refuse to say that the dance pattern as a whole is involved in the occurrence
of each wiggle and turn? Clearly not. It is open to us to give an evolutionary account of the phenomena of the dance, and hence
to interpret the statement that this wiggle occurred because of the complex dance to which it belongs—which appears, as
before, to attribute causal force to an abstraction, and hence tempts us to draw upon the mentalistic language of intention and
purpose—in terms of the survival value to groups of bees of these forms of behavior. In this interpretation, the dance pattern
comes in not as an abstraction, but as exemplified by the behavior of particular bees.1
What does it mean to say that the bee’s wiggling is part of a dance? Or to explain its wiggling by saying that each wiggle occurs
because of the dance? To say this is to say that organic movement happens for a reason—it has an adaptive function—but this reason
(or function) is not represented in the brain of the organism motivated by it. This is to distinguish between doing something for a reason
and doing something because of a reason. The ability to do something because of a reason arises from the capacity to do something
for a reason. Yet it should not be confused with it.
The capacity to be motivated by a reason is a disposition rooted in more rudimentary dispositional mechanisms. Both rule-governed and
pattern-governed behavior are generated by conditioning: just as pattern-governed behavior is the relaying of biologically determined
dispositions, so rule-conforming behavior is the relaying of culturally acquired dispositions. Insofar as behavior is dispositionally
conditioned, one must have acquired the relevant dispositions to be able to act. But although both are dispositional, neither biological habit
nor social custom is rigidly deterministic. They are adaptive mechanisms, capable of re-calibrating when confronted with un-anticipated
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nor social custom is rigidly deterministic. They are adaptive mechanisms, capable of re-calibrating when confronted with un-anticipated
circumstances. This kind of adaptive improvisation is common throughout the biological and cultural domains. It is necessary but not
sufficient to constitute an act. But it is not free. Yet the free act is not opposed to biological habit or social convention; these provide its
enabling conditions—but only if the relevant dispositions are properly configured. Instinct and conformity are biological and social
dispositions respectively. They correspond to the levels of pattern-governed and rule-governed behavior. Just as rules are a sub-species
of patterns, conventions are a sub-species of instinct. But one must acquire the ability to conform to a rule before one can become able
to act because of a rule: the ability to obey is the prerequisite for the ability to command. Where these are absent, the tyranny of instinct
holds sway. Selfhood is tyrannical precisely insofar as it is merely a congerie of drives. The act supplants the tyranny of the impulsive
self with the rule of the subject. But it is the act itself that is subject. It is no-one’s. Through its self-determination, subjective compulsion
takes over from selfish impulse. This de-personalization is the condition for action. It compels it. For this self-determination to occur,
mechanisms must acquire the ability to represent the rules governing their own behavior in such a way as to perceive the governing
pattern as such. There is a transition from the level of rule-governed dispositional response to the level where the rule is recognized as a
rule. This recognition changes the rule from a constraint into a motivating reason for action. Through this transformation, mechanisms
learn to perceive the configuration determining their behavior as a reason for acting. Recognition requires an involution wherein the
code-generating pattern is responded to as code by a sequence of the pattern itself. Recognizing the code that generates rule-governed
conformity converts mechanical impulse into the compulsion to act. The involution that grounds recognition is a purely mechanical
reflexivity. Acquiring the appropriate recognitional capacities is a matter of possessing the right sorts of competence. This involution of
competences is the key to the transformation through which selfish impulsion gives way to anonymous compulsion. This is the key to a
materialistic understanding of autonomy.
Autonomy is badly misconstrued when it is castigated as an individualistic or libertarian fetish. Autonomy understood as a selfdetermining act is the destitution of selfhood and the subjectivation of the rule. The “oneself” that subjects itself to the rule is the
anonymous agent of the act. To be subjected is to act in conformity with a rule that applies indiscriminately to anyone and everyone.
One does not bind one’s self to the rule; the subject is the act’s acting upon itself, its self-determination. The act is the only subject. It
remains faceless. But it can only be triggered under very specific circumstances. Acknowledgement of the rule generates the condition
for deviating from or failing to act in accordance with the rule that constitutes subjectivity. This acknowledgement is triggered by the
relevant recognitional mechanism; it requires no appeal to the awareness of a conscious self.
The ideal of “free improvisation” is paradoxical: in order for improvisation to be free in the requisite sense, it must be a self-determining
act, but this requires the involution of a series of mechanisms. It is this involutive process that is the agent of the act—one that is not
necessarily human. It should not be confused for the improviser’s self, which is rather the greatest obstacle to the emergence of the act.
The improviser must be prepared to act as an agent—in the sense in which one acts as a covert operative—on behalf of whatever
mechanisms are capable of effecting the acceleration or confrontation required for releasing the act. The latter arises at the point of
intrication between rules and patterns, reasons and causes. It is the key that unlocks the mystery of how objectivity generates
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intrication between rules and patterns, reasons and causes. It is the key that unlocks the mystery of how objectivity generates
subjectivity. The subject as agent of the act is the point of involution at which objectivity determines its own determination: agency is a
second-order process whereby neurobiological or socioeconomic determinants (for example) generate their own determination. In this
sense, recognizing the un-freedom of voluntary activity is the gateway to compulsive freedom.
1
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1 Wilfrid Sellars ‘Some Reflections on Language Games’, 208.
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Ray Brassier & Mattin
Unfree Improvisation/Compulsive Freedom
http://www.confrontrecordings.com
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(ccs 29)
Recorded by Kenny MacLeod at Arika's Festival Episode 4 "Freedom is a Constant Struggle", 21 April 2013,
Tramway, Glasgow.
Thanks to Barry Esson, Bryony McIntyre and Mark Wastell
"I have been thinking back to this performance. I am trying to think about the relationship between choice, freedom
and the subject… The first thing that came to mind is that: I think I disagree with Hannah Arendt about the political she says something like that in order to be granted access to the political sphere, you have to choose to put aside
unreason, irrationality and the messiness of everyday sociality, and demonstrate to the sovereign that you are a
good subject or citizen. I guess then you would be granted access to society, and as such democratic choice. This
seems like begging the sovereign to also grant you sovereignty - which seem to me to cede to them way too much
power. Maybe on those terms, some of us don’t want to be subjects - or some of us don’t believe in democracy.
Maybe the political is very specifically in the messy, infinitely differentiated sociality that exists in apposition to
sovereign power. Or maybe the political is the freedom from certain choices… Or not. I’m not sure. But I am also
wondering if the illusion of freedom of choice (in the way that it captures desire and shackles it to individuality) is the
earliest seduction of the western citizen - a thorn planted in the somatic field of the mind, around which the
subject develops like a callosity". (Barry Esson)
Reviews:
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JUST OUTSIDE by BRIAN OLEWNICK
So. Almost nothing, a bump maybe. A cough. Three minutes in, hints of activity, still obscure. Wondering if Brassier
will play guitar or maybe read. Heavy rain outside, possibly blanketing any sounds from the speakers. Huh, there's
also a low spattering hiss (from the disc) that's not entirely unlike the rain hitting the porch. I've raised the volume a
good bit, reluctantly, anticipating damage to my ears within a few minutes, but that brief emergence of sound has
subsided back into the occasional cough. ok, there you go. A loud-ish, electronic throb, possibly vocal in origin,
appears for ten or so seconds. Back to the coughs.This was recorded in April 2013 in Glasgow. I'm making my first
trip to Scotland in a couple of days, so haven't experienced the weather yet, but I'm imagining frigid temperatures
and phlegmy throats. Very phlegmy. ooh, bee-like activity, maybe sampled strings, looped, segueing into dense
traffic (coughers thus given license to let go, which they do). At this point, I'm enjoying what I perceive as the
structure, though that's obviously still subject to change. There's a strong feeling of presence in space, as well,
always appreciated. Voices embedded in the roar (which, I now think, isn't traffic at all), murky, indecipherable. As
that roar ends, I'm thinking those voices are from people in the performance space, presumably "improvised". :-) A
device is turned on, an engine of some kind perhaps, though it escalates into a very loud alarm-like whine. I've just
located a series of photos taken at the event, some of which show a large fan, wondering if that's what I'm hearing. If
the woman in the photo above is an indication, probably so. (here). Also note that the performance site is "tramway"
and am not sure if that's the name of a space or an actual tramway. Something like that initial vocal throb recurs,
hanging around for a while this time, maybe a minute. [out on the porch for a minute to inspect some cool looking
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clouds, disc sounds continued. Questioning the recording of this, as opposed to the direct experience, but that's an
old one...] Wait. an electronic Donald Duck voice is reading, I'm guessing from Brassier. [took a couple of photos of
aforementioned clouds]. The voice is intelligible but distorted, the content thus abstracted enough to be more easily
heard as noise. It ends abruptly, the engine turns back on.
Back to ancillary noises, minimal. Wondering...oh, there you go, applause (weirdly inappropriate somehow) at the
34-minute mark. I was just going to say that I appreciate not having track timings in place as, the first time through, it
imparts more of a sense of being at the concert, not knowing how long it will last. I had just been wondering, while
imagining the set, how they'd choose to end it. I'm still not sure, having only audio clues to work with. Curious if they'd
been off-stage for a while. No matter, I suppose.For what it's worth I enjoyed the disc, was never bored, found it
workable to both listen and pay attention to the small things around my table.
Le son du grisli (December 2014)
C’est une idée et une pièce « écrite » de Ray Brassier qui met le philosophe en scène avec l’un de ses
partenaires d’Idioms and Idiots, Mattin. Devant public (aveuglé, et qui patiente, commente, tousse beaucoup), le 21
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partenaires d’Idioms and Idiots, Mattin. Devant public (aveuglé, et qui patiente, commente, tousse beaucoup), le 21
avril 2013 à Glasgow.
Inspiré par le thème (Freedom is a Constant Struggle) de l’Arika Festival, Brassier coucha sur le papier ce qu’il
entend par « liberté » et ce qu’il entend par « improvisation ». Tout expliquer, la métaphysique même (What Is Not
Music ?), l’origine ou l'intention du geste improvisé, occupe encore beaucoup d’improvisateurs valables, et en
distrait peut-être davantage, mais trêve… des pas sonnent le début de la performance.
Entre les longs silences qui évoqueront les danses arrêtées de Diego Chamy, des sons préenregistrés ou des
effets joués sur l’instant (soufflerie, sirènes, rumeurs animales, voix transformée qui entame un discours…) se figent,
marquant les stations d’une improvisation en suspens qui, au final, brille par ses doutes et ses « absences ».
Ainsi, pour peu que l’auditeur garde la conscience tranquille après avoir relativisé l’importance (plus encore que la
nouveauté) du texte de Brassier, Unfree Improvisation/Compulsive Freedom, qui offrait déjà davantage à entendre
qu’à voir, pourrait ravir jusqu’à l’amateur rassasié de concepts. Tout en ne changeant rien à ses principes : n’est-ce
pas lui qui toujours décidera des degrés de liberté et de vérité de la musique qui le soumet ?
Ray Brassier, Mattin : Unfree Improvisation/Compulsive Freedom (Confront / Metamkine)
Enregistrement : 21 avril 2013. Edition : 2014.
CD : 01/ Unfree Improvisation/Compulsive Freedom
Guillaume Belhomme
============
VITAL WEEKLY
============
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number 962
-----------week
52
-----------Dec.2014
RAY BRASSIER & MATTIN - UNFREE IMPROVISATION/COMPULSIVE FREEDOM (CDR by Confront)
More from Mattin, following his rather conceptual work from two weeks ago; but perhaps everything he does is very
conceptual, and one of the main questions he asks himself is: what is free improvisation? How does it work, can it
be truly free, is it really improvised and all such semantic and philosophical questions. While listening to the thirty-five
minutes of 'Unfree Improvisation/Compulsive Freedom', which was performed with Ray Brassier on April 21 2013 at
Tramway in Glasgow, you can read Brassier's text about it. Maybe you won't notice the music as such in the first ten
minutes or so, but then you can read really well. Mattin got into the music world via harsh noise, but that's not the
case here. Everything here remains quite soft. I have no idea what kind of sounds or instruments are used, no doubt
none of any kind, and while reading the text, I kept thinking: does all of this lead to some great music? It is surely
interesting to hear (and read), but the silence thing?
I think
I heard that by now. I don't want to get up and having to amplify the really soft bits to see what's going on. Why not
properly master this into a listenable product? Obviously because that's against any of their self-proclaimed rules or
conceptual guidelines. The bits that could be heard worked actually quite well: speed up spoken words, field
recordings (probably something mechanical at Tramway and something captured on tape and brought to the venue),
hiss, radio static, alone or in combination with each other. It works quite well; even as stand-alone music, even when,
overall, I must admit I have my doubts about it. (FdW)
Address: http://www.confrontrecordings.com/
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enemyindustry
philosophy at the edge of the hum an
Compulsive Freedom: Brassier and Improvisation
On March 20, 2015, in Uncategorized, by enemyin1
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Ray Brassier’s “Unfree Improvisation/Compulsive Freedom” (written for the 2013 event at Glasgow’s
Tramway Freedom is a Constant Struggle) is a terse but insightful discussion of the notion of freedom in
improvisation.
It begins with a polemic against the voluntarist conception of freedom. The voluntarist understands free action as the
uncaused expression of a “sovereign self”. Brassier rejects this supernaturalist understanding of freedom. He argues
that we should view freedom not as determination of an act from outside the causal order, but as the selfdetermination of action within the causal order.
According to Brassier, this structure is reflexive. It requires, first of all, a system that acts in conformity to rules but is
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capable of representing and modifying these rules with implications for its future behaviour. Insofar as there is a
“subject” of freedom, then, it is not a “self” but depersonalized acts generated by systems capable of representing
and intervening in the patterns that govern them.
The act is the only subject. It remains faceless. But it can only be triggered under very specific circumstances.
Acknowledgement of the rule generates the condition for deviating from or failing to act in accordance with the
rule that constitutes subjectivity. This acknowledgement is triggered by the relevant recognitional mechanism; it
requires no appeal to the awareness of a conscious self….
Brassier’s proximate inspiration for this model of freedom is Wilfred Sellars’ account of linguistic action in “Some
Reflections on Language Games” (1954) and the psychological nominalism in which it is embedded. This
distinguishes a basic rule-conforming level from a metalinguistic level in which it is possible to examine the virtues of
claims, inferences or the referential scope of terms by semantic ascent: “Intentionality is primarily a property of
candid public speech established via the development of metalinguistic resources that allows a community of
speakers to talk about talk” (Brassier 2013b: 105; Sellars 1954: 226).
So, for Brassier, the capacity to explore the space of possibilities opened up by rules presupposes a capacity to
acknowledge these sources of agency.
There are some difficult foundational questions that could be raised here. Is thought really instituted by linguistic rules
or is language an expression of pre-linguistic intentional contents? Are these rules idiomatic (in the manner of
Davidson’s passing theories) or communal? What is the relationship between the normative dimension of speech
and thought and facts about what thinkers do or are disposed to do?
I’ve addressed these elsewhere, so I won’t belabor them here. My immediate interest, rather, is the extent to which
Brassier’s account of act-reflexivity is applicable to musical improvisation.
Brassier does not provide a detailed account of its musical application in “Unfree Improvisation”. What he does
write, though, is highly suggestive: implying that the act of free improvisation requires some kind of encounter
between rule governed rationality and more idiomatic patterns or causes:
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The ideal of “free improvisation” is paradoxical: in order for improvisation to be free in the requisite sense, it must
be a self-determining act, but this requires the involution of a series of mechanisms. It is this involutive process
that is the agent of the act—one that is not necessarily human. It should not be confused for the improviser’s self,
which is rather the greatest obstacle to the emergence of the act.
In (genuinely) free improvisation, it seems, determinants of action become “for themselves” They enter into the
performance situation as explicit possibilities for action.
This seems to demand that “neurobiological or socioeconomic” determinants of musical or non-musical action can
become musical material, to be manipulated or altered by performers. How is this possible?
Moreover, is there something about improvisation (as opposed to conventional composition) that is peculiarly apt for
generating the compulsive freedom of which Brassier speaks?
After all, his description of the determinants of action in the context of improvisation might apply to the situation of the
composer as well. The composer of notated “art music” or the studio musician editing files in a digital-audio
workstation seems better placed than the improviser to reflect on and develop her musical rule-conforming
behaviour (e.g. exploratory improvisations) than the improviser. She has the ambit to explore the permutations of a
melodic or rhythmic fragment or to eliminate sonic or gestural nuances that are, in hindsight, unproductive. The
composed gesture is always open to reversal or editing and thus to further refinement.
Thus the improviser seems committed to what Andy Hamilton calls an “aesthetic of imperfection” – in contrast to the
musical perfectionism that privileges the realized work. Hamilton claims that the aesthetics of perfection implies and
is implied by a Platonic account for which the work is only contingently associated with particular times, places or
musical performers (Hamilton 2000: 172). The aesthetics of imperfection, by contrast, celebrates the genesis of a
performance and the embodying of the performer in a specific time and space:
Improvisation makes the performer alive in the moment; it brings one to a state of alertness, even what Ian Carr in
his biography of Keith Jarrett has called the ‘state of grace’. This state is enhanced in a group situation of
interactive empathy. But all players, except those in a large orchestra, have choices inviting spontaneity at the
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point of performance. These begin with the room in which they are playing, its humidity and temperature, who
they are playing with, and so on. (183)
An improvisation consists of irreversible acts that cannot be compositionally refined. They can only be repeated,
developed or overwritten in time. It takes place in a time window limited by the memory and attention of the
improviser, responding to her own playing, to the other players, or (as Brassier recognises) to the real-time
behaviour of machines such as effects processors or midi-filters. Thus the aesthetic importance of the improvising
situation seems to depend on a temporality and spatiality that distinguishes it from the score-bound composition or
studio bound music production.
Yet, if this is right, it might appear to commit Brassier to a vitalist or phenomenological conception of the lived
musical experience foreign to the anti-vitalist, anti-phenomenological tenor of his wider philosophical oeuvre. For this
open, processual time must be counter-posed to the Platonic or structuralist ideal of the perfectionist. The
imperfection and open indeterminacy of performance time must have ontological weight and insistence if Brassier’s
programmatic remarks are to have any pertinence to improvisation as opposed to traditional composition.
This is not intended to be a criticism of Brassier’s position but an attempt at clarification. This commitment to an
embodied, historical, machinic and physical temporality seems implicit in the continuation of the earlier passage
cited from his text:
The improviser must be prepared to act as an agent—in the sense in which one acts as a covert operative—on
behalf of whatever mechanisms are capable of effecting the acceleration or confrontation required for releasing
the act. The latter arises at the point of intrication between rules and patterns, reasons and causes. It is the key
that unlocks the mystery of how objectivity generates subjectivity. The subject as agent of the act is the point of
involution at which objectivity determines its own determination: agency is a second-order process whereby
neurobiological or socioeconomic determinants (for example) generate their own determination. In this sense,
recognizing the un-freedom of voluntary activity is the gateway to compulsive freedom.
The improvising subject, then, is a process in which diverse processes are translated into a musical event or text that
retains an expressive trace of its historical antecedents. As Brassier emphasizes, this process need not be
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understood in terms of human phenomenological time constrained by the “reverbations” of our working memory
(Metzinger 2004: 129) – although this may continue to be the case in practice.
The Derridean connotations of the conjunction “event”/”text”/”trace” are deliberate, since the time of the improvising
event is singular and productive – open to multiple repetitions that determine it in different ways. Improvisation is
usually constrained (if not musically, by time or technical skill or means) but these rarely constitute rules or norms in
the conventional sense. There is no single way in which to develop a simple Lydian phase on a saxophone, a
rhythmic cell, or sample (an audio sample could be filtered, reversed or mangled by reading its entries out of order
with a non-standard function, rather than the usual ramp). So the time of improvisation is a peculiarly naked exposure
to “things”. Not to a sensory or categorical given, but precisely to an absence of a given that can be technologically
remade.
References:
Brassier, Ray 2013a. “Unfree Improvisation/Compulsive Freedom”,
http://www.mattin.org/essays/unfree_improvisation-compulsive_freedom.html (Accessed March 2015)
Brassier, Ray. 2013b. “Nominalism, Naturalism, and Materialism: Sellars’ Critical Ontology”. In Bana Bashour &
Hans D. Muller (eds.), Contemporary Philosophical Naturalism and its Implications. Routledge. 101-114.
Davidon, Donald. 1986. “A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs”. In Truth and Interpretation,
E. LePore (ed.), 433–46. Oxford: Blackwell.
Hamilton, A. (2000). “The art of Improvisation and the Aesthetics of Imperfection”. British Journal of Aesthetics 40
(1):168-185.
Metzinger, T. 2004. Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Sellars, W. 1954. “Some Reflections on Language Games”. Philosophy of Science 21 (3):204-228.
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Tagged with: Accelerationism • Aesthetics • Materialism • Music • Sound
5 Responses to Compulsive Freedom: Brassier and Improvisation
1.
dmf says:
March 20, 2015 at 8:49 pm
shared this @
http://syntheticzero.net/2015/03/20/compulsive-freedom-brassier-improvisation/
2.
enemyin1 says:
March 21, 2015 at 9:57 am
Cheers for the re-blog. Though is there any chance of placing quote marks round the quoted passages ?
3.
Jozsef says:
March 24, 2015 at 6:50 pm
But he’s just proliferating the supernaturalism from the once and for all of the sovereign self to the one time
each of the self reflexive act. The Blind Brain Theory’s infrastructural story, its recoding of temporal finitude, in
terms of information horizon with informatic closure–causally open, but whose causal history is occluded–more
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forcefully explains away or accounts for the form of the various phenomenalities that mark freedom
(specificially its *beforelessness*) than anything like “semantic ascent”. I’d be curious to see what Sellars has
written about time. I’d suspect it would be tucked away somewhere in what he has written about absolute
processes. Do you have any idea about his views on time, david?
4.
dmf says:
March 24, 2015 at 7:16 pm
sure and done
5.
enemyin1 says:
March 25, 2015 at 10:21 am
Hi Jozsef,
I agree that there is a problem here. It is not clear how mere “aboutness” can explain autonomy. The fact that
an act has a semantic relation to another act such that the first is about the second doesn’t imply anything
about the ability of the first to exert influence on the second. Gary Watson makes a similar point against Harry
Frankfurt’s compatibilist account of autonomy. The fact that one might have higher order desires that some
lower order desire move one to action does not obviously make the lower order desire in question more
properly “one’s own”. Cashing this out in terms of Sellars’ psychological nominalism does not appear to get
around this.
I don’t know much about Brassier’s views on time. He refers occasionally to Sellars idea that the fundamental
constituents of the world (including acts) are processes or episodes. Insofar as he seems like a pretty orthodox
Sellarsian these days, I guess that does commit him to the claim about some kind of fundamental temporality.
And, as I say, I think his remarks are only specially pertinent to improvisation if a) the world is fundamentally
temporal and b) improvisation is always characterised by definite time windows and thus by loss and
indeterminacy.
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But then the nature of act “self-determination” seems less not more clear, now. The freedom of free
improvisation is a function of a situation: the absence of constraint – e.g. from bar structures, modes or chord
sequences. One’s response to a musical event is not prescribed. What counts as going on in “the right way” is
not prescribed. You cannot – for example – lose your place in free form playing. You can play badly, however,
by being insufficiently responsive to the evolving tendencies in the sound. Freedom, here just means that there
are just more ways to screw up and also more ways to get it right.
There may be a sense in which free improvisation is less automatic. When I’ve played be-bop pieces with very
complex chord structures, I found that it’s easy to just ‘play the changes’, working through the formal harmonic
structure in a mechanical way. So good improvisation, it seems, shouldn’t be formal in this sense. It should, at
least, involve a responsiveness to very singular features of the improvising context – specific patterns,
expressive nuances, etc. – rather than abstractly repeatable ones like whether a IV with a sharpened ninth
follows a II with flattened fifth. It should lead to structures that are relatively improbable (because
underdetermined) but “meaningful” (liable to prompt to further elaboration). If this all sounds lame it’s because it
just increases the mystery about the processes that actually generate this order. We’re in the dark. And we’re
more in the dark precisely because of the underdetermination of the sonic process by its seeding events. So –
here’s a thought – maybe the seeming “freedom” of free improvisation consists in the absence of information
about the formative events that produce it relative to less free contexts where we can invoke traditional
harmonic or melodic structures. I’ll try to develop this in later posts.
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