Improvisation

Improvisation, spontaneous novel creativity, is the nature of reality in Whitehead’s universe. The below creatures are all improvised pieces, or better said, processes.

My interest at the moment is in the notion of creativity and playfulness, the idea that these entities are similar in kind and only differ by degree. Play is a form of creativity that is uninhibited. It is spontaneous and encourages improvisation. But it relies on the feeling that possibility takes priority, that in the words of Whitehead (1929), “it is more important that [it] be interesting than [it] be right”. I then began to think about the things that have influence over our willingness to make mistakes. When did presenting the self as perfect become the goal?

It’s important to become comfortable with the roughness of things, to learn from other’s processes, see the various ways in which things come to be. Not only does this remind us of the importance of perfect mistakes, the things that lead to the emergence of creatures that simply couldn’t be planned, but more importantly, it acknowledges that this is being human; figuring it out as we go, responding and making it up as we move through our experiences.