About eight years a go I realized something in music that had so much emotional resonance and individuality that I finally felt connected to the flute again. It drew me in with sonic vocabulary that I had never heard and unusual musical forms that somehow worked. It was something my classical music education never taught or exposed. It was improvisation.
Improvising forces me to work only with the materials in front of me- a pitch, a tambre, a key click, or the acoustics of a room. This allows my imagination to run wild. Paradoxically, it also means imposing my own rules in order to make it coherent. I prepare the ingredients, and attempt to cook something delicious without a recipe.
Ultimately, it means trusting the process. It means that in the moment before the first note, I attempt to forget everything I think I know about music and then just listen. Oddly, the closer I get to pure listening, the more interesting and meaningful the sounds become. The music unfolds itself effortlessly, like a dream you wake up to wondering how you conjured something so epic, a story that seemed outside of you.