142 FRED MOTEN

17. Manthia Diawara, "One World in Relation: Édouard Glissant in Conversation With Manthia Diawara;' trans. Christopher Winks, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art CHAPTER 7 2011(28): 15. 18. Diawara, "One World in Relation;' 5· ...... 19. See Polly Greenberg, The Devil Has Slippery Shoes (London: Macmillan, 1969 ). Hear Head Start: With the Child Development Group ofMississippi, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings FW 02690, 2004. First published by Folkways Records in 1967. IS IMPROVISATION PRESENT? ......

BIBLIOGRAPHY MICHAEL GALLOPE Adorno, Theodor W. "On Jazz:' Translated by Jamie Owen Daniel and Richard Leppert. In Essays on Music, edited by Richard Leppert, with translations by Susan H. Gillespie, Jamie Owen Daniel, and Richard Leppert, 470-95. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Andres en, Julie Te tel. "Historiography's Contribution to Theoretical Linguistics:' In Chomskyan (R)evolutions, edited by Douglas Kibbee, 443-469. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2010. Beckett, Samuel. The Unnamable. In Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable: Three Novels by IN October 2002, Jacques Derrida experienced something very extraordinary: he Samuel Beckett. New York: Grave Press, 1965 (first published in French in 1958). attended two screenings of a film entirely devoted to his life and his philosophy. This Braxton, Anthony. Composition Notes: Book A. Lebanon, NH: Frog Peak Music/Synthesis produced sorne atypical situations for him. In the weeks leading up to the premiere, Music, 1988. a wave of American press attention crested, describing the film as "adoring and ador­ Braxton, Anthony. Liner notes for Donna Lee. America 05 067 863-2, compact dise, 2005. First able" (New York Times), "wise and witty" (New York Post), "complex, and highly ambi­ published in 1972. tious" (New York Daily News), "the cinematic equivalent of a mind-expanding drug" Brown, Richard Maxwell. No Duty to Retreat: Violence and Values in American History and (Los Angeles Times), and, perhaps most idiosyncratically, a portrait of"the Mick Jagger Society. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994. of cultural philosophy" (Boston Globe). The film's buzz ran far beyond the circuits of the Chomsky, Noam. "What We Know: On the Universals of Language and Rights:' Boston Review philosopher's academie readers, so much so that Derrida found himself denying a slew 30, nos. 3-4 (Summer 2005): 23-27. Chomsky, No am. Language and Mi nd. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. of interview requests from curious journalists and film critics. Caver, Robert M. "Foreword: Nom os and Narrative:' Harvard Law Review 97, no. 1 (1983): 4-68. So far as I can tell, just one man managed to work around the refusais. Joel Stein, a staff Caver, Robert M. "The Bonds of Constitutional Interpretation: Of the Word, the Deed, and the writer for Time magazine, slipped through the back door of New York City's Film Forum Role:' Georgia Law Review 20 (1986). on the night of the screenings and cornered Derrida with a series of unphilosophical ques­ Diawara, Manthia. "One World in Relation: Édouard Glissant in Conversation with Manthia tions: Do you like this banana bread we're eating? (He loved it.) What are your favorite Diawara;' translated by Christopher Winks. Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art movies? (The Godfather, apparently.) And something like: What is the deal with your 2011(28): 4-19. flowing white hair? (It is something he was understandably anxious about losing. )1 While Greenberg, Polly. The Devil Has Slippery Shoes. London: Macmillan, 1969. Derrida was forthcoming in these answers, ali this real-time interaction about nonaca­ Head Start: With the Child Development Group of Mississippi. Smithsonian Folkways demic topics seems to have annoyed the distinguished French philosopher, who claimed to Recordings FW 02690, 2004. First published by Folkways Records in 1967. find a certain journalistic expectation to drop everything and sound off on whatever topic Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper, 1962. particularly irritating. At least, this is what Stein reported: to the philosopher's chagrin, Lewis, George E. A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music. these days "everyone wants [Derrida] to say something brilliant on love or war or death:' Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. Certainly it is not always easy to sound responsive, clear, focused, genuine, and con­ Lock, Graham. Forces in Motion: The Music and Thoughts ofAnthony Braxton. New York: Da cise in real-time speech acts. But I wonder if there is a serious philosophical question at Capo, 1988. issue here. For Derrida, we might recall, the anxiety about effective communication in Menand, Louis. The Metaphysical Club: A Story ofIdeas in America. New York: Farrar, Strauss real-time performance reflected the philosoph'er's famous suspicion toward the experi­ and Giroux, 2001. ence ofhearing oneself speak, which, in his view, often harbored a metaphysical aura of Wall, Cheryl A. Worrying the Line: Black Women Writers, Lineage, and Literary Tradition. "self-presence:' Over banana bread, and likely with a range of deferrais, ramblings, and Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. transferences in mind, Derrida told Stein bluntly: "It's frustrating. Especially when you have to improvise:' 144 MICHAEL GALLOPE IS IMPROVISATION PRESENT? 145

By coïncidence, I too found my way to Derridàs attention that night-not as a journal­ moral philosopher and amateur pianist Vladimir Jankélévitch. While there exist, to ist, of course, but as a young undergraduate curious as to whether or not the philosopher be sure, substantial philosophical differences between the two philosophers, both had anything interesting to say about music. In a Q&A session that followed the screen­ understood the experience of time and the problem of technical mediation to be the ing, I raised my hand from the audience and asked Derrida: "What kind of music do you sources of an exceptional aporia for philosophy. And both issues-time and tech­ listen to and why do you listen to it?"2 Stein described Derridàs response in the pages of nical mediation-seem to be crucial factors for a philosophical account of musical Ti me: "Someone asked Derrida what kind of music he likes, and he revealed his love for free improvisation. jazz and told a really long story about how Omette Coleman once got him to read onstage In order to build the discussion up toward my thesis, allow me to begin by summariz­ during a show:' Indeed, as the philosopher subsequentlyirecounted, five years prior, when ing a few of Jankélévitch's central positions. Taking intellectual eues from his mentor, Coleman was in Paris to perform at the La Villette jazz festival in a duo with pianist Joachim Henri Bergson, Jankélévitch understands the flux oflived time, or durée, as creative in a Kühn, he invited Derrida to join in on stage during one of the performances, in which he sense that stands in excess of all understanding or intellection. But he also emphasizes re ad off a prepared text, "Joue-le prénom:'3 By the philosqpher's own admission, however, that the effects of durée are as destructive as they are creative. For just as time is the key it is equallywell known that the audience did not like it; in fact, we are told, their reaction led axis under which one can understand life to be created, developed, and reproduced, it is him to leave the stage early. 4 As Derrida remembered it, " [Coleman's] fans were so unhappy the equally essential axis for the second law of thermodynamics that ensures the even­ they started booing. It was a very unhappy event. It was a very painful experience .... But it tualloss of every life, the forgetting of moral acts, the transgression oflaws, and the eva­ was in the paper the next day, so it was a happy ending:'5 One could speculate as to why this nescence of every musical event. Given the specter of nihilism suggested by the valueless was so. A jazz festival audience may have just wanted what they hoped would be an unfil­ flux of time, Jankélévitch wonders: why do es a moral act, a musical work, or a life come tered version of Coleman. Or they may have bristled at the ide a of a philosopher explaining to exist and sustain itself at all? music that allegedly should be able to speak for itself. In search of a substantial ground for moral, ethical, and aesthetic virtues, But I wonder: did the collaborative failure on the part of the two men mean that they Jankélévitch's philosophy asks us to turn against scientific or logical forms ofknowing had both misunderstood, or underestimated, a certain incompatibility between phi­ in order to arrive at what he described as virtuous or "innocent" meditations that are losophy and improvised music? In light of how musically inclined thinkers like Ernst attuned to temporally dynamic aspects of real-life experience. Consequently, for him, Bloch, Theodor Adorno, Roland Barthes, and Félix Guattari found ways to bring their as for Bergson, philosophy requires a certain attentive fidelity to lived experience: favorite music into dialogue with their philosophical views, might Derrida, who was an expert in literature and philosophy but had little technical background in music, have [T]he generous mind does not remain confined in a blasé memory; it does not provided Coleman's music with a deconstructive manifesta? Or were the other side's impose a summary solfège on the admirable variety of nature .... Intellectual effort expectations at fault: should free jazz's forays into conceptual justification (reflected in signifies that we have kept a means of conquering the data of experience by testing Coleman's responses to Derridàs pre-festival interview, Anthony Braxton's Tri-Axium the originality of things and the resistance of problems, by conserving intact this sen­ sibility to the unexpected that produces the prize of knowledge. For a deep science Writings, or Cecil Taylor's poetry) just steer clear oflecturing in the concert hall, in order do es not happen without a substantial innocence. 7 tolet the music speak on its own terms?6 Whatever the case, a difference of medium seems to present us with a problem. For Jankélévitch, this virtuous attunement or "innocence" toward lived experience Philosophers do not always feel comfortable accounting for music in a conceptually driven is intended to follow through on Bergson's faithful attention to the qualitative mul­ way (let al one performing with it), and vice versa for the musicians untrained in philosophy. tiplicity of durée, or lived time. For both philosophers, knowledge of the real cornes This chapter considers these missed connections as a point of departure. When philosophy through access to intuition. Intuition allows us to overcome the sense that our percep­ has trouble clarifying or deepening our understanding of something that seems to stilllend tion is simply changing from one discrete cognitive state to another; rather, it gives us itself to a conceptual explanation (like Coleman's free jazz), one way forward is to try and access to real becoming-absolute change at every moment, in every direction, regard­ stage the encounter anyway. This is what I would like to attempt here, by re-asking the ques­ less of our awareness. This is what remains resistant to ail forms of spatialization and tion it seems that Derridàs thinking poses to Coleman's music-Is improvisation present? intellection. Of course, readers familiar with Derridàs philosophy will probably quickly re alize that the answer is, in fact, "no:' But it is not a simple "no:' In fact, exactly how his phi­ Becoming does not permit the object to be divided into sectors, according toits cor­ losophy might answer "no" in the particular case of music may help us clarify sorne poreallimits; it is much more the dimension according to which the object undoes challenging conceptual terrain. To explore the structure of this problem, 1 would like itself without end, forms, deforms, transforms, and then re-forms itself. A succession to begin by taking recourse to the work of a philosopher who puzzled over very similar of states of the body, that is, change itself, dissolves the limits fossilized by our mental issues as Derrida but did write frequently and passionately about music-the French habit of splitting and dividing. 8 ~ 146 MICHAEL GALLOPE IS IMPROVISATION PRESENT?

But whereas Bergson's concept of durée, first staged in Time and Pree Will (1889 ), led hirn interval can the instant become known to experience. It is something of a paradox: a to forward a speculative philosophy of memory and cognition (Matter and Memory, positive instant cannot become present to our experience without the negative media­ 1896) and a philosophy of evolution (Creative Evolution, 1907 ), Jankélévitch's philosophy tion of two other moments that span a minimal interval. focuses on our lived experience of durée. In particular, he is interested in the knotty and The co-implied nature of positivity and negativity at work in the consciousness of an paradoxical issues that structure the possibility of focusing on the instant as a point of instant is not restricted to the sphere of perception. In the opening chapter of Le Pardon attentive fidelity. (1967), the irreversible degradation of living matter is integrated with Bergson's durée: In the Philosophie première of 1953, Jankélévitch explored this logic through an "The decay of living organisms, if it is accelerated by physical or chemical agents, results inquiry into how experience negotiates metaphysictl forms of knowledge. There, he above all from a qualitative and irreversible entropy that is essential to a lived becom­ ventures that just as the conscious mind cornes to isolate the absolute productivity of ing:'10 Just as it is with organisms, soit is with the effect of our memory upon our experi­ the creative instant, consciousness itself paradoxically seems to face phenomenological ence of the coming now; an irreversible future of incessant alteration also means that occlusion. "We can take, in the smallest being of the instant, only a consciousness itself no pure expectations uncontaminated by memory (and its effacement) are possible: almost inexistent, which is to say trans-discursive and'"intuitive: not so much a kind of "[B]ecoming retains memories, alteration, slowed down by the weight of the past, and Gnostic clarity, it [the almost inexistent] is the only positive science of sur-truth [survé­ implies the decay of this past, for the return to the status quo ante is impossible .... "11 rité] that might be given to us to daim:' Here, even as we try to isolate the "smallest The negative character of time ( decay, loss, evanescence, mediation of creativ­ being of the instant;' our experience of time do es not give us any kind of "Gnostic clar­ ity by memory and idiom) will be key to his account of musical improvisation. For ity" on the exact nature of the instant itself. Instead, a contradiction presents itself: our Jankélévitch, improvising is not simply based in positive access to the instant of musi­ efforts at absolute knowledge of the instant (or "sur-truth [survérité] ") are incessantly cal creativity. Rather, improvisation carries the existential burdens of evanescence, loss, structured by memory, cognition, and intervallic structures of temporality. This leaves and silence; negativity constitutes "all that is melancholy in temporality:'12 In one of us with access only to the uncertain and approximate poetry of the "almost inexistent:' Jankélévitch's books on music, we can see the logic explicitly at work. As he says, impro­ He continues: "A discursive and chronic knowledge of sur-truth is a way of contradic­ visational fidelity toward the becoming of the lived instant requires not a submersion tion, and, therefore, a knowledge [savoir] founded on memory and on the continua­ within the embodied present, but a hyperactive attentiveness to the micro-timing of tion of an interval condemning itselfhere to negativity:'9 This "knowledge founded on remembrance and anticipation around the lived instant. memory" occludes the absolute perception of the instant as a moment of self-present consciousness by rendering it subject to "the continuation of an interval condemning Depending on whether it is antecedent or consequent, tension toward the instant itself to negativity:' The instant cannot be presented as a form of absolute knowledge after rehabilitation or at the instant before, improvisation would be expectation of without recourse to a mediating network of remembered or "absent" temporal intervals. the future or a minimum retrospectivity. In the first case, it refers to the urgent future of action or the immanent future of passion, which is to say to what is immediate/y The lack of sustained knowledge of the lived instant might be visualized with the fol­ subsequent: it awaits the ar rival or the advent of the future that happens, and it is this lowing diagram (Figure 7.1). Here, the now is represented by a singular point on a con­ adventure; a second too late, this coming would not be next, but far; a second later it tinuum of experienced time stretching off to the right. Below the continuum are two would be too late, and this future would be a present. The second case is that of the arrows representing an absent interval of time. Only through the mediation of this lower smallest possible delay, that which cornes immediate/y after the minimum reaction time of reflexes; a second too late and it would be too early and the improviser would find itself nose-to-nose with its present; a second too late and the recent past would pass far behind. Between the two distances-the past and the future-improvisation "most closely" follows (or preceeds) a conjuncture that is just barely future or almost present, just barely present or almost past.13

------~------_.T~e What we see characterized here is the temporal structure of a committed "adventure" of improvised time, something I will refer to as a theory of complexjemporality. Rather

Just after than a meditative channeling of a spontaneously expressive now, complex temporal­ ity makes clear that improvisation is the product of an intervallic network that ties the Just before coming now to the nearest possible anticipation of the future and the nearest possible Interval recollection of the past. The measure of an improviser's skill (or virtue) shows up in the

FIGURE 7.1 Fidelity to Jankélévitch's Instant. degree to which one maintains attentive fidelity toward the nearest possible moment MICHAEL GALLOPE IS IMPROVISATION PRESENT? 149

without ever becoming simply self-present. In this sense, improvisation, with its neces­ subjectivity, allows a sono rous being to overcome the incessant flux of time's "double sary and constitutive blindnesses and uncertainties, represents a faithful and vigilant negation" and acquire a proper and discrete unity. operation that, for Jankélévitch, "leads" presence. Complex temporality is only ever For Derrida, in order for what Hegel describes as the "double-negation'' of the vanish­ "quasi-contemporaneous" in being the nearest possible, without becoming fully con­ ing "now" to not fly on by as a nothingness or an abyss, lived moments must "be" in sorne temporaneous with the arriving instant of the vanishing now. ernpirical sense-they must be structured or "inscribed" by an anticipation (or "pro­ This unpresentability of the instant recurs as a leitmotif in Jankélévitch's broader tention" in the vocabulary of phenomenology) as weil as one's memory or "retention;' philosophy of music.14 In books like Music and the Ineffable, for example, it receives a topic Derrida devotes substantial attention to in his critiques of Edmund Husseri.2° the metaphysical name of Charme, which designatrs the evanescence that ensures This is a familiar thought for Jankélévitch: in his view, "intervallic" inscriptions immedi­ the inexhaustability of musical experience, or its "divine inconsistency:' Be ately before and after the now are the mediating substance of ali improvisation. But the writes: "Charme rejects therefore the question 'Where?' just as it eludes the question Derridian logic of inscription goes further in holding that the instant itself is inscribed. 'What?' Charme, that is not keen on this-or-that, does not lie either here-or-there."lS For Derrida, what Jankélévitch described as "our mental habit of splitting and dividing" For Jankélévitch, the charme of music is not an experience of presence, but rather is does not supervene in a pro cess of secondary intellectual reflection; rather, it divides the based in a paradoxical sense of occlusion inherent to the passing of a lived instant. instant of the now in itself. Charme "is therefore essentially evasive-which is to say that it escapes, invisible, and The following diagram represents an attempt to formalize this structure: the instant intangible and yet always present as are music and fragrances that we can neither see is shown here on the central horizontal axis of time stretching to the right. For decon­ nor touch; it obligates us to an irritating game ofhide and seek:'16 This relentless intan­ struction, the passing now is not merely subject to intervallic mediation as it would gibility of music reflects a property of time itself-a negative absence one finds at the for Jankélévitch's theory of complex temporality. Rather, the instant-in its instanta­ he art of the lived instant. neous being-is subject to spacing, writing, idiom, and many other means of objec­ Derrida, for his part, would likely agree equally that the vanishing now cannot sim­ tive mediation. I have represented this with six radiating fans of symbolic grids that ply be made present to experience. But deconstruction thinks through negativity on a extend outward from the instantaneous no w. Notice further that these mediating grids more constitutive level. Derrida argues that the "negative absence" that makes the lived are also, for Derrida, "sous-rature" -under erasure by virtue of the decay inherent to instant unpresentable is based in more than the mediation of intervallic synthesis; he insists al ways and everywhere that time (or becoming) is always structured by some­ thing that it is not-spatial inscription, or espacement. As he puts it famously in his essay Forms of inscription "Différance":

An interval must separate the present from what it is not in order for the present to be itself, but this interval that constitutes it as present must, by the same token, di vide the present in and of itself, thereby also dividing along with the present, everything th at is thought on the basis of the present, that is, in our metaphysicallanguage, every being, and singularly substance or the subject. In constituting itself, in dividing itself dynamically, this interval is what might be called spacing, the becoming-space of time orthe becoming-time of space (temporization)P

For Derrida, the interval at work in memory or cognition do es not simply occlude the presence of the vanishing now "in an irritating game ofhide and seek;" rather, as Martin Hagglund has recently argued, it mediates ali time from within.18 There are many ways to try and make sense of this very complicated daim, but for the experience of music in particular I think it may be instructive to draw a short parallel here with Hegel's discussion of the temporality of sound as explained in the Lectures on Aesthetics.l9 There, Hegel explains how sound (passing intime) is a phenomenon that is a "double-negation" -a being ceases to be itself in the very instant that it becomes. For Hegel, a sound [Klang] becomes atone [Ton] when an "idea;' a reflection ofinward FIGURE 7.2 Derrida's Instant. MICHAEL GALLOPE IS IMPROVISATION PRESENT? 151 the passage of time. I have represented this erasure with six countervailing arrows of Jankélévitch's instant represents a horizon of creation just as much as it represents the time (Figure p). simultaneous necessity of nonpresence, erasure, and loss. According to his theory of Derrida's emphasis on structural determination, of course, does no! mean that the complex temporality, the creativity of the vanishing now is constitutively occluded and creative instant of improvisation is simply determined or "notated:' Because all forms of structured by memory, synthesis, and the loss of evanescence. Its non-presence is why life are everywhere immediately based in a multiplicity of inscribed traces, for Derrida, improvisation is instead based in an attentive fidelity to the locus oflived experience. any single or proper medium of determination like notation would be subject to decon­ By comparison, Derrida does not understand the instant of lived time to be an struction. In Of Grammatology, Derrida deconstructs the medium of embodied speech instance of creativity. So thorough was his commitment to thinking of time as struc­ because its alleged immediacy facilitates a "metaphysi~s of presence;' an operation that tured by the negativity of space from within that, when he discusses improvisation, he could be applied to alphabetic script or Western musical notation for different reasons­ does so with a pronounced sense of distance from the coming present. Consider the any naturalized medium that might daim to overcome the instabilities of time and beginning of"Joue-le prénom;' the text he prepared for his onstage performance with inscribe the eternal. By contrast, the improvised instant is structured by an undecidable Omette Coleman. Unmoored from an attentive or skilled grounding in the lived instant, multiplicity of inscriptions. Derrida initially presents himself to Coleman, Kühn, and their audience as an impro­ In marked distinction to Bergson and Jankélévitch, what we do not find in Derrida's viser in full-on panic mode: account are any affirmations that this instant is inherently creative, even if inscribing something as a trace in order for it to "be" seems a lot like "creating:'21 One sees conse­ Qu'est-ce qui arrive? What's happening? What's goingto happen, Omette, now, right quences of this in Derrida's method. Sin ce any metaphysical safety zone for time as a now? What's happening tome, here, now, with Omette Coleman? With you? Who? force of creativity might risk making time look like "Go d" or a divine cause, at a forma­ Il faut bien improviser, il faut bien improviser. [It is indeed necessary to improvise, it tive moment of his career Derrida uses the word "différance" to indicate the absence is necessary to improvise weil.] I knew that Omette was going to call on me to join him tonight, he told me so when we met to talk one afternoon last week. This chance of any instance of eternity or immortality outside the finite universe. As Derrida says, frightens me, I have no idea what's going to happen.26 différance constitutes the primordial "becoming-space oftime [spacing] and becoming­ time of space [temporization]" and "the 'active; moving discord of different forces and Here, Derrida's two varying emphases on "bien'' playfully juxtapose the unchosen of differences of forces .... "22 In impersonally marking "the formation of form'' and injunction to improvise against the ethical imperative to doit well. But a skilled negotia­ "articulation;' this general "being-imprinted of the imprint" affirms not vital creation, tion of doing it well is what remains at issue, and Derrida puts his feelings plainly: "This but impersonal production via the nonliving or negative motif of inscription, al ways chance frightens me, I have no idea what's going to happen:' The following remarks, "articulating the living on the non-living in general;' forming a "pure movement that made in an earlier interview, present another version of his views of improvisation produces difference" that operates "before all determination of content:'23 These forces (though purged of the sense of anxiety he expressed onstage with Coleman). More of production ensure that spatialization, mediation, and writing are intrinsic to the soberly, here he emphasizes the hauntingly absent "prescriptions" and "schemas" we structure of any lived time. For Derrida, creative time does not receive metaphysical pri­ improvisers are bound to adopt as mere marionettes of a symbolic order beyond our ority over pro cesses of spacing, articulation, and imprinting; space and time are always control and apprehension: co-implied. Derrida's impersonal economy of co-implied space-time reveals to us the com­ It's not easy to improvise, it's the most difficult thing to do .... [0 ]ne ventriloquizes paratively metaphysical nature of Jankélévitch's commitment to lived experience, or leaves another to speak in one's place the schemas and languages that are already which often retains a hierarchical dichotomy between interval and the instant. For there. There are already a great number of prescriptions that are prescribed in our Jankélévitch, the instant is where a certain creative magic happens; outside all determi­ memory and in our culture .... One can't say whatever one wants, one is obliged nation, it is the precise point where one overcomes structure, idiom, and rules in order more or less to reproduce the stereotypical discourse. And soI believe in improvisa­ to invent, begin, and create.24 In his central text on improvisation, he writes: "You learn tion and I fight for improvisation. But always with the belief that it's impossible .... to prepare, not to invent; to continue, not to begin, to provide, not to create; there are no I am blind to myself.... The one who is improvised here, no I won't ever see him.27 more rules for inventing or improvising than there are for desiring; learning is always according to the interval, never do ne according to the instant:'25 For Derrida, it would seem that amidst a multiplicity ("a great number of prescriptions") What initially appears to be a mutual exclusion between creative moment and prac­ one confronts the reality that no single skilled or measured relationship to the passing ticed idiom in Jankélévitch's thought should, however, be read in context with the sub­ now is constitutive of an improvised experience, effectively resigning one to an "impos­ tleties of the philosopher's broader ontology. The instant is the focus of Jankélévitch's sibility" of remaining fully attentive to one's experience of the lived instant. It is here philosophy not because it is simply the locus of self-present creativity. In my view, that Jankélévitch might ask: Without a sense of attentive fidelity to the passage of the IS IMPROVISATION PRESENT? 153 152 MICHAEL GALLOPE vanishing now, how would one improvisation be deemed more successful than another? explanation ofLiszt's rhapsodie compositional style, rather than an analysis of real time Do es not improvisation require an account of ethical (or skilled) criteria based in the musical negotiations. Conceptually, it would seem, we are left with something of a dilemma: Derrida offers actions of an individual's experience? Or one might ask: How can one think of impro­ visation in a way that follows Derridàs emphasis on inscription without allowing the a theory in which we are "fighting for improvisation" in a situation that must negotiate weight of mediation to excessively question a positive focus on sldll and virtuosity? a haunting multiplicity of structural inscriptions, that leaves us without strong criteria Jankélévitch's account of musical improvisation, in my view, cornes with limitations for the skilled negotiation of real time. And on other side we have Jankélévitch, who that largely stem from his focus on notated compositions. In his most sustained con­ quite effectively and vividly theorizes an attentive fidelity to the vanishing now as an unpresentable horizon of experience, but who does not weigh the effects of structure sideration of the topic, once he elaborates his basic poSition of complex temporality, he turns to a discussion of examples. It is at this point that Jankélévitch turns away from the and inscription as constitutive forms of mediation. topic of real-time improvisation and begins discussing a compositional "Rhapsodie" that Perhaps, in staging a conversation that might bridge this dilemma, we can augment exhibits directly the "initial moment of invention;' a metaphysical "chronos of the real" Jankélévitch's theory of complex temporality (an attentive fidelity to the vanishing now) unleashed from the immanent powers of Franz Liszt's rhapsodie style of composition: with the Derridian injunction that the "intervallic" support systems of real-time tem­ porality (the nearest possible before and after) are constituted not only by an "irritating [Wh en thinking of improvisation) the interest shifts from the finished work to the game ofhide and seek" inherent to the passage of time, but also a broader multiplicity of operation, of the determined form on the undetermined and determining forma­ musical inscriptions. But one would have to stop short of following Derrida in assuming tion. . . . Romantic man wants to creep up on the revealed message of the genius that the weight of inscription questions the very possibility of orienting oneself toward and the "how" of creation. But to him Bergsonism also shows us how one must the lived instant with a sense ofethical skill. When Jankélévitch writes: "Improvisation is invert a doctrinal orcier and an ideal after-the-fact reconstruction in orcier to obtain the returning of mediation to the immediate. Immediate mediation or discursive imme­ the chronos of the real; the musical work, ali the same, is not fabricated with static diacy, improvisation is a sort of instantaneous preparation;' one can then understand themes, it is organized from a dynamic scheme ... before being developed, it was a "mediation" to mean not just Jankélévitch's intervallic synthesis of the instant by the rhapsody. Yet the inventor incapable of explicating his inexplicable invention can nearest possible before and after, but now also Derridàs multiplicity of potential inscrip­ only demonstrate by the fact of doing, that is to say to lead by example: the poet of tions, structures, and idioms that bear upon an improvised act in the full complexity of the worlc exhibits therefore himself the work of the poem.... [H) e represents him­ their historical and discursive textures. 30 In bridging the two theories, we would restore self, most intimately, in the most initial moment of invention .... [I)t has the name sorne dialectical operation between the lived instant and the inscriptions we actually Improvisation. 28 specify in musical discourse. And then we might have a philosophical apparatus to For Jankélévitch, the rhapsody of improvisation is reflected in compositions by Liszt more fully investigate the speculative life of a musical practice based in "instantaneous that rely lesson thematic development, and more so on rhapsodie transitions that emu­ preparation:' 1 late the dynamics of one's inner creative spirit. In this way, Liszt's Rhapsodie emphasizes Such is the potential middle ground I see between these two positions. A theory of the brute "fact of doing;' and echoes a view espoused by George Steiner in his book Real complex temporality adopted from Jankélévitch and augmented with Derridàs views Presences (1991) for whorn "the poet of the work exhibits therefore himself the work of on inscription can offer us a conceptual basis for understanding improvisation as a furi­ ously active locus of complex mediations. In replacing the interpreted reproduction of the poem:'29 No mediating commentary, criticism, or clarification is necessary, and a notated work with the injunction of consequential real-time decisions, improvisers, therefore nothing more needs (or ought) to be said. But do es Jankélévitch really mean to suggest that improvisation is best thought of us according to this logic, can be understood to affirma constitutive absence at the heart of as music without mediation? Empirically, to be sure, it seems that the philosopher was musical practice itself. According to this view, one improvises onward without a com­ not terribly interested in jazz or other explicitly improvised traditions. But there also monly agreed upon medium like notation or without the regulatory grid of a single may be a deeper philosophical reason Jankélévitch felt comfortable making this move. musical idiom; and that would be the point of improvisation-ta expose the ground For the philosopher is less focused on one problem Derrida takes quite seriously: the of music to our survival instincts, to our idiomatic proclivities, to our historicities, to constitutive role of inscription as a mediator. In his writings on music, Jankélévitch our notably faulty efforts and to our embarrassing mistakes, and, in sorne cases, to our typically thinks of negativity in improvisation through the complex temporality of t~e utterly transformative experiences. vanishing now, often without considering how forms of inscription (or forms of musi­ In the end, perhaps we also geta glimpse of the way in which the affirmations at play cal writing) are structurally intrinsic to the negativity ali improvisation must navigate. in musical improvisation exemplify a basic paradox of lived becoming-that the cre­ My sense is that this selective engagement with the problem of technical mediation is ative singularity or "freedom" that marks the very virtue of this modernist practice is one reason Jankélévitch discusses improvisation in music largely as a philosophical at every instant determined by the threat of impossibility or failure, because all musical IS IMPROVISATION PRESENT? 155 154 MICHAEL GALLOPE 'Jhe speculative weight of this "phonographic" memory reminds us that improvisation improvisation entails the necessity of reproducing something one has already heard or is no~ s~~ply creative singularity, but is rather a structured practice mediated by a vast played. As Coleman himself says, "repetition is as natural as the fact the earth rotates:'3l multlphCity of absent traces: adopted idioms, cultural practices, and traumatic mem­ Both philosophically and musically, this is not a tragedy to be mourned, nor is it the ories. These would be the mediating criteria for creativity, which structure and focus negation of all creativity; rather, it is an affirmation that allows us to think of improvisa­ ur unseen anticipations of the future: "Improvisation must be understood as a mat­ tion as a virtuous exemplification of what it means to live through a risk that inheres in 0 ter of sight and as a matter of time, the time of a look ahead whether that looking is the the passage of time, one that ensures the impossibility of any pure immortal or plenti­ shape of a progressivist line or rounded, turned:'34 Far from being determined in any ful advent of self-presence. It is based in a real instant that is everywhere temporalized strong sense, for .rv:o~e~, the lived musical instant is "rounded, turned" everywhere by an and spaced by absent determinations, a multidimensional network that integrates spa­ unknowable mult!phCity of structures, memories, histories, anticipations, and determi­ tial traces of somatic and socio-technical inscriptions with the synthesis of the coming nations (or, in more strie tly metaphysical terms-spatial "de ath'' or "absence"). present. C~nsider, momentarily, text from a loosely transcribed interview with trumpeter I would conclude by proposing that this position Ïi akin to the poetic commentary and Jazz composer Thad Jones. For Jones, the living present of improvisation and its Fred Moten offers us in his close readings of the black radical tradition. For him, the associated virtues of selfless attunement can induce a sense of corporeal communion, in tradition of free jazz represents neither a utopian musical communion of presence nor apparent excess of any mixed signais or crossed wires: a bout of disorienting anxiety; it is fully mediated, marked by the virtuous singularity of one's active powers of musical anticipation that engage attentive efforts to rewrite H~re the aest~etics o~ presence holds unrestrictedly. You give yourself up, surrender musical rules in real time. Here, Moten evokes a synthesis ofJankélévitch's complex tem­ w1thout u~tenor motives; egoism and spirit of competition yield for generosity, pres­ porality with a broader Derridian insistence on the scope of the musico-cultural pre- ence an~ mterdependence. One develops a presence that is like telepathie intuition scriptions and rules at play: ... dur~ng such moments, improvisation is like the language that develops between two loVIng partners and that usually is called eroticism. 35 Improvisation-as the word's linguistic roots indicate-is usually understood as speech without foresight. But improvisation ... always also operates as a kind of fore- How can one sympathize with this sentiment, but go on to emphasize the inevitable fric­ shadowing, if not prophetie, description .... [Y] ou need to look ahead with a kind tions that result from such aestheticized versions of erotic "presence?" Moten himself of torque that shapes what's being looked at. You need to do so without constraints draws a philosophicalline, though not a condemning one: "Thus improvisation is never of association, by way of a twisted epoché, or redoubled turn in the prescription and extemporaneous formation and reformation of rules, rather than the following of m~n~fest as a kind of pure presence-it is not the multiplicity of present moments just as 1t IS not governed by an ecstatic temporal frame wherein the present is subsumed by them.32 past and future:' Instead, for Moten, improvisation is only intelligible to the attentive Moten's analysis continues on with a larger speculative totality in mind. For him, the lis~ener .w~o is willing to grasp both the constitutive necessity and unstable multiplicity improvisatory elements of the black radical tradition uncannily re-articulate a "phono­ ~f mscnptw~.that structure the attentive fidelity of an improvisational practice. To the graphie" inscription of a scream uttered over a hundred years prior-specifically one hstener sensitive to the dynamics of mediation, Jones then daims musical telepathy only overheard during a brutal whipping recounted by Frederick Douglass in his 1845 auto­ to acknowledge here that improvisation is "like the language that develops between two biography, Narrative of the Life ofFrederick Douglass, An American Slave. In his analysis, loving partners" -accomplishing not a metaphysical communion or transubstantia­ black improvised traditions are not simple exemplifications of rule bending, but intrin­ tion, but rather a secular negotiation through the erotic economy oflove. sically linked to the speculative recollection of this traumatic sound. He writes: Cecil Ta~lor's.highly self-reflexiv~ spo~en word album, Chinampas (1987), is equally exemplary m this regard. Moten wntes: Performance, ritual, and event are of the idea You cannot help but hear the echo of Aunt Hester's scream as it bears, at the moment of idiom, of the 'anarchie principles' that open the unrepresentable performance of of articulation, a sexual overtone, an invagination constantly reconstituting the Tayl~r's .phrasin( F~r him, inscription is constitutive, entailing necessary absences whole of the voice, the whole ofthe story, redoubled and intensified bythe mediation ~hat m':te cogmtive mterrogation. Indeed, Moten questions the meaning of Taylor's of years, recitations, auditions. That echo haunts, say, Albert Ayler's "Ghosts" or the Improvised movement, which for him rep~esents an attempt to listen philosophically fractured, fracturing climax of James Brown's "Cold Sweat:' ... Where shriek turns ~o th~ a~t of poetic co~struction itself. For Taylor and Moten, mediation, writing, and speech turns song-remote from the impossible comfort of origin-lies the trace of I~scnptwn are not rehed upon as natural or transparent vehicles for aesthetic expres­ our descent.33 Sion, but are rather made explicitly constitutive of the musical act. Notice here how Moten's effort to listen to Taylor virtuously maintains at once an attentive fidelity to MICHAEL GALLOPE IS IMPROVISATION PRESENT? 157 complex temporality and a dutiful form of hermeneutic attention: "What happens in (Dartmouth: Synthesis/Frog Peak, 1985); Cecil Taylor, Chinampas, Leo Records LR 153, the transcription of performance, event, ritual? What happens, which is to say what is 1987,CD. . Vladimir Jankélévitch, Henri Bergson (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, s ), 1. lost, in the recording? ... What is heard there? Whathistoryis heard there? There is one 7 19 9 13 Unless stated otherwise, ali translations are mine. which is not just one among others ... the history of (an) organization, orchestra(tion), s. Vladimir Jankélévitch, Music and the Ineffable, trans. Carolyn Abbate (Princeton: construction. The essence of construction is part of what that phrasing is after; the Princeton University Press, 2003), 93. poem of construction-geometry of a blue ghost-is the poem that is of the music:'36 9· Vla~mir Jank~lévitch, Philosophie première (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 19s6), Far from a simple sense ofliberated freedom or self-presence, Taylor's practice is based 99· [N]ous nen pouvons prendre, dans le moindre-être de l'instant, qu'une conscience in a written "organization, orchestra( tion), construction;' a formai "poem that is of the elle-même presque inexistante, cest-à-dire transdiscursive et intuitive: du moins cette music;' a "history" that is "in the recording" and subject to incessant mediations. In gnose-éclair est-elle la seule science positive de la survérite à laquelle il nous soit donné de saying so, Taylor reflects an injunction one finds somewhere between Jankélévitch and prétendre; un savoir discursive et chronique de la survérite est une manière de contradiction, Derrida-that improvisation constitutes a form of attentive fidelity precisely insofar et, partant, un savoir fondé sur la mémoire et sur la continuation d'intervalle se condamne ici ,. à la négativité:' as the vanishing now is structured by a multiplicity of meaningful inscriptions and 10. Vladimir Jankélévitch, Forgiveness, trans. Andrew Kelley (Chicago: University of Chicago mediations. Press, 2005), 13. Of course, for now these are preliminary inquiries and this chapter only represents n. Jankélévitch, Forgiveness, 21, translation modified. one attempt to understand these difficult questions. But at the very least, I think we 12. Jankélévitch, Music and the Ineffable, 96. might venture at this point that, under analysis, Jankélévitch and Derrida together 13. Vladimir Jankélévitch, Liszt: Rhapsodie et Improvisation (Paris: Flammarion, 1998), 109. reveal conceptual resources that can help us develop a deeper philosophical under­ 14. This aporia of unpresentability is the main point of innovation often credited to standing of improvisation. Specifically, they allow us to see more precisely how impro­ Jankélévitch's philosophyvis-à-vis that of Henri Bergson. See Jean-Christophe Goddard's vised music grounds its sense of virtuosity not on the basis of a singular immediacy entry on Jankélévitch for The Columbia History of Twentieth Century French Thought, or self-presence, but in remaining mediated after having done away with any single ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman, Brian J. Reilly, and M. B. DeBevoise (New York: Columbia proper idiom. This view allows us to affirm an unconditional absence or the lack of University Press, 2006), 552-553. / 15. Vladimir Jankélévitch, Fauré et le inexprimable (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1988), 346. common ground at the heart of musical practice itself. It is an absence that addresses 16. Jankélévitch, Fauré et le inexprimable, 346. a certain question: How can philosophy exp lain the risks taken by a musical practice 17. Jacques Derrida, Margins ofPhilosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago that is based at once on a profound sense of negativity and on a determined act of Press, 1982), 13, emphasis mine. creativity? 18. Martin Hagglund, Radical Atheism: Derrida and the Ti me of Life (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009). 19. G. W F. Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon NOTES Press, 1975), 2: 890. "Since, furthermore, the negativity into which the vibrating material here enters is, on the one side, an Aufheben of the spatial condition which is itself again 1. Joel Stein, "Life with the Father ofDeconstructionism;' Time, November 18, 2002, accessed aufgehoben by the reaction of the body, therefore the expression of this double negation, May 17, 2011, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ article/ o,9171,1003736-2,oo.html. 2. Kirby Dick, Amy Ziering Kofman, and Jacques Derrida, Derrida: Screenplay and Essays on na:nely, Ton, is. an extemality that in its coming-to-be is annihilated again by its very and of itself. Owing to this double negation of extemality, the Film (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), 114. ~XIst~~c~ d1~ap~ears/vanishes 3. Jacques Derrida, "Play-The First Name: 1 July 1997;' trans. Timothy S. Murphy, 1m~hc~t m the pr~nc1p~e of Ton, inner subjectivity corresponds toit bec ause the resounding, Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture 36, no. 2 (2004): 331-340; originally published as wh1~h m. and by Itself IS something more ideal than independently really subsistent corpo­ reality, g1ves up this more ideal existence also and therefore becomes a mode of expression "Joue-Le Prénom;' in Les Inrockuptibles 115 (August 20-September 2, 1997): 41-42. adequate to the inn er life" ( emphasis mine). 4· Cf. Sara Ramshaw, "Deconstructin(g) Jazz Improvisation: Derrida and the Law of the Singular Event;' Critical Studies in Improvisation 1 Études critiques en improvisation, 2o. Cf. Jacques Derrida, Voice and Phenomena, trans. Leonard Lawlor (Evanston, IL: Nor~westem University Press, 2011); accessed May 18, 2011, http://www.criticalimprov.com/ article/viewArticle/81/179· Edmund Husserl's Origin of Geometry, An Intro~u:twn by Jacqu~s Derrida (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989); and 5· Stein, "Life with the Father ofDeconstructionism:' 6. Jacques Derrida and Omette Coleman, "The Other's Language: Jacques Derrida Derndas student thes1s, The Problem of' Genesis in Husserl's Philosophy, trans. Marian Hobson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). Interviews Omette Coleman, 23 June 1997;' trans. Timothy S. Murphy, in "Blue Notes: Toward a New Jazz Discourse;' part 1, ed. Mark Osteen, special issue, Genre: Forms of 21. Fo.r an instructive characterization of Derridâs project as bearing an implicit relation­ Discourse and Culture 37, no. 2 (2004): 319-329, originally published in Les Inrockuptibles ship to a metaphysics of creation, see Peter Hallward, "The One or the Other: French Philosophy TodaY:' Angelaki 8, no. 2 (2003): 1-32. 115 (August 2o-September 2, 1997): 37-40, 43; Anthony Braxton, Tri-Axium Writings MICHAEL GALLOPE IS IMPROVISATION PRESENT? 159

New Jazz Discourse;' edited by Mark Osteen. Part 1. Special issue, 22. Jacques Derrida, "Diffenince;' in Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: Genre: Forms ofDis course University of Chicago Press, 1982), 13, 18. and Culture 37, no. 2 (2004): 319-329. Originally published in Les Inrockuptibles 115 (August o- September 2, 1997). 23. Derrida, OfGrammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins 2 University Press, 1974), 62. pick, Kirby, Amy Ziering Kofman, and Jacques Derrida. Derrida: Screenplay and Essays on the Film. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005. 24. For a second post-Bergsonian account of the creative and poetic instant, cf. Gaston Bachelard, Intuition of the Instant, trans. Eileen Rizo-Patron (Evanston, IL: Northwestern :f{agglund, Martin. Radical Atheism: Derrida and the Time of Life. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013). University Press, 2009. 25. Jankélévitch, Liszt, 107, emphasis and translation mine. fiallward, Peter. "The One or the Other: French Philosophy TodaY:' Angelaki 8, no. 2 26. Derrida, "Play-The First Name, 1 Julp99i' 331-332. i (2003): 1-32. :f{egel, G. W F. Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art. Translated by T. M. Knox. Oxford: Clarendon 27. Derrida, Unpublished Interview (1982), reprinted in Kirby Dick, Amy Ziering Kofman, and Jacques Derrida, Derrida: Screenplay and Essays on the Film (Manchester, Press, 1975. UK: Manchester University Press, 2005). Jankélévitch, Vladimir. Fauré et le inexprimable. Paris: Librairie Plon, 1988. 28. Jankélévitch, Liszt, xx. Jankélévitch, Vladimir. Forgiveness. Translated by Andrew Kelley. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. 29 . George Steiner, Real Presences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). 30. Jankélévitch, Liszt, 107. Jankélévitch, Vladimir. Henri Bergson. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1989. 31. Derrida and Coleman, "The Other's Language;' 323. Jankélévitch, Vladimir. Music and the Ineffable. Translated by Carolyn Abbate. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. 32. Fred Moten, In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 63. Jankélévitch, Vladimir. Philosophie première. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1986. 33· Moten, In the Break, 22. Kritzman, Lawrence D., Brian J. Reilly, and M. B. DeBevoise, eds. The Columbia History of 34· Moten, In the Break, 63-64. Twentiet~ Century French Thought. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007- . K. Oversand, ed. Ola Kai Ledang, 74, quoted Moten, Fred. In the Break: The Aesthetics ofthe Black Radical Tradition. Minneapolis: University 35 Improvisation and the Aesthetics of Presence, in Bj0m Alterhung, "Improvisation on a Triple Theme: Creativity, Jazz Improvisation and of Minnesota Press, 2003. Communication;' Norwegian Journal ofMusicology 30, no. 1 (2004): 106. Oversand, K. Improvisation and the Aesthetics of Presence. Edited by Ola Kai Ledang. Oslo, 36. Moten, In the Break, 43-44. Norway: Solum Forlag, 1987. Ramshaw, Sara. "Deconstructin(g) Jazz Improvisation: Derrida and the Law of the Singular Event:' Critical Studies in Improvisation 1Études critiques en improvisation. Accessed May 18, REFERENCES 2011. http:/ /www.criticalimprov.com/article/viewArticle/81/179· Stein, Joel. "Life with the Father of Deconstructionism:' Ti me, November 18, 2002. Accessed Alterhung, Bj0m. "Improvisation on a Triple Theme: Creativity, Jazz Improvisation and May 17, 2011. http:/ /www.time.com/time/magazine/ article/ 0,9171,1003736-2,oo.html. Communication:' Norwegian Journal ofMusicology 30, no. 1 (2004): 97-118. Steiner, George. Real Presences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Bachelard, Gaston. Intuition of the Instant. Chicago: Northwestem University Press, 2013. Taylor, Cecil. Chinampas. Leo Records CD LR 153, 1987. Braxton, Anthony. Tri-Axium Writings. Dartmouth, NH: Synthesis/Frog Peak, 1985. Derrida, Jacques. Edmund Husserl's Origin of Geometry, An Introduction by Jacques Derrida. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989. Derrida, Jacques. Margins of Philosophy, translated by Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology, translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974. Derrida, Jacques. "Play-The First Name: 1 July 1997;' translated byTimothy S. Murphy. Genre: Forms ofDiscourse and Culture 36, no. 2 (2004): 331-340. Originally published as "Joue-Le Prénom" in Les Inrockuptibles 115 (August 20-September 2, 1997). Derrida, Jacques. The Problem ofGenesis in Husserl's Philosophy. Translated by Marian Hobson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Derrida, Jacques. Speech and Phenomena. Translated by Leonard Lawlor. Evanston, IL: Northwestem University Press, 2011. Derrida, Jacques, and Omette Coleman. "The Other's Language: Jacques Derrida Interviews Omette Coleman, 23 June 1997;' translated by Timothy S. Murphy. In "Blue Notes: Toward a