How to Cultivate an “Experimental Disposition.”

In the wonderful Ken Burns documentary, Jazz, Albert Murray says that Duke Ellington had an “experimental disposition.” That phrase caught me. I paused the screen, startled. I want that! How does one cultivate an experimental disposition? How does one approach everyday events and tasks as if we are inventing them in the moment, so that everything feels alive, new, fresh, unexpected?

In his 10 Rules for Students and Teachers, the composer John Cage writes, “consider everything an experiment.”

Artists, musicians, writers, actors, directors, choreographers, creative inventors, and scientists all know that we find gold in the unknown. It can make us uneasy to take on this experimental disposition at first. But when we consciously invite this disposition, and have accumulated experiences surviving it and coming out the other side with new, innovative, startling results, we begin to crave that free-fall feeling.

Every night when I step onto the stage during a run of a play, a thrill goes through me, knowing that anything could happen! Performance is a human endeavor and humans are beautifully flawed—the other actors are human, the audience is human, and nobody can predict what metaphysical reaction will take place! Or what set pieces will fall, what microphones will short out, what props will go missing! I step into the “cloud” as improv actor and scientist, Uri Alon, calls it in his wonderful TED Talk: “Why truly innovative science demands a leap into the unknown.”

Think about how different our brainstorming sessions would be if we welcomed experimentation with open arms? If we walked directly into the cloud? If we could let go of being right, of perfection, of our critical eye, of our need to know the outcome at the onset, and instead bathed in the absolute knowledge of knowing nothing?

This week, let’s cultivate an experimental disposition by welcoming the cloud!