Dear Friends:
In this Museletter, Eric Henning pulls back the curtain on one of the most powerful illusions in our art: the illusion of improvisation. From the quiet precision of Eugene Burger’s impromptu set to the razor-sharp recall of Robin Williams, Eric shows how the appearance of spontaneity is built on a foundation of intense preparation, thoughtful study, and lived experience.
Have you ever watched an artist just create amazing, beautiful art, music, comedy or anything out of thin air on the spur of the moment? Many of those we consider great improvisationalists – jazz players like Miles Davis, comedians like Robin Williams, even great speakers like Winston Churchill – have all impressed the public with their ability to seemingly pull great works out of thin air.
Let me tell you a secret. It’s an illusion.
Let’s begin with a story. At the 1998 World Magic Summit in Washington, DC, I had the privilege of sitting beside the great Eugene Burger as he performed impromptu close up magic after his lecture. He smiled at me, and as he sat down, I noticed that he did several secret things, calmly and unhurriedly, and then he winked at me. He knew he was sharing an important secret.
The secret things he had done had put him so far ahead of the audience that for the next twenty minutes it looked like he was improvising his entire act. But he wasn’t. His act had been carefully crafted to look completely impromptu. This was the greatest illusion he performed that night. How did he achieve this? The same way that all great masters do it – preparation. The good news is that this mastery is available to all of us, but it requires three things: knowledge, skill, and discipline.
Eugene Berger could apparently do “jazz magic” because he had spent years studying and mastering technique, and had performed for real people in the real world for a really long time. He knew what situations could come up, and he had thought deeply about every possibility that could emerge during his performances. Then, with great discipline, he prepared for every single one of those possibilities. This is the work, the invisible work, that makes improvisation appear effortless.
Miles Davis didn’t create his amazing riffs because he flouted the rules, but because he had mastered the rules, and had tried, and failed, so many times, that he had learned what worked on a deep, subconscious, muscle memory level. The things that you hear on his albums were developed through trial and error, endless rehearsals and actual gigs in front of the public before they were ever committed to vinyl.
Likewise, Robin Williams, who created this wonderful persona of an improvisational stream of consciousness comedian, was doing anything but improvisation. He had brilliant writing talent, of course, and was a great performer, but what made him able to create the illusion of improvisation, was his ability to catalog and recall thousands of snippets of comedy gold.
Williams’s comedy bits had been honed and polished to perfection in countless comedy clubs, and later, in his concerts and talk show appearances, it looked like he was simply pulling comedy out of thin air. In reality he had hundreds, if not thousands of bits committed to memory, and an incredibly quick mind that could pull those bits together and connect the dots faster than most of us can. His talent was not improvisation so much as synthesis. I’m not diminishing his talent at all–I’m astonished by it.
Sir Winston Churchill is widely considered one of the greatest speakers of all time, but many people don’t realize he had a tremendous problem speaking at all. From childhood, Churchill had a horrible stutter. Because his mother was American, Churchill knew that he wouldn’t inherit his British father’s title or property, and would probably have to pursue a political career. That meant having to speak in public, so he spent years studying the great speakers of history, learned what they had in common, figured out how to do it, and practiced relentlessly until he could do it himself.
He created a signature slow, deliberate, speaking style that accommodated his stutter while giving him the gravitas he needed to convince his listeners, and his writing was so good that his notes read like poetry, not prose. It’s not a coincidence that Churchill won the Nobel Prize – in Literature. His great talent was not his speaking, it was his writing, and that’s what enabled him to create this illusion of pulling things out of thin air.
You and I each have this potential for greatness.
I believe that every person has the ability to do something that is so good that the world has to sit up and take notice. But in order to develop that talent fully, it requires study, it requires diligent, disciplined practice and rehearsal, until we know our craft so well that it becomes art, and we know our art so well that we can break the rules and still create beauty.
I know someone who is such a great cook that they can walk into somebody’s house, and with whatever it is at hand, create a feast. That didn’t happen by accident. It took many, many years of study. It took being around masters and learning from them. It took applying those lessons every day.
This is the paradox of improvisation: what looks impromptu is the tip of an iceberg of preparation.
You and I can do the same thing in whatever our chosen field is. I urge you to find where your chance of excellence lies. Find your talent and commit to it. Put in the work to study your craft, become a master of the content and technique of your art, and develop your own voice. Then you too, will be able to improvise, or at least create the illusion of improvisation by doing art that flows out of you organically.
I can’t wait to experience what you’ll create.
Eric Henning is an Ambassador for the McBride Magic & Mystery School, and has been performing magic professionally for 53 years. His website is EricHenningMagic.com