Archive of Articles
Controlled Spontaneity Redux
November 21, 2008
Ritualing is a controllable ride into new ways of being, a way to begin living the symbols that appeal to us, a way to "hang ten" (as the surfers once said) on our traditions, and getting into the spirit of the moment. If any single feeling can create a bond between the ordinary person and the artist, it is this sense of being in the moment. This is not a feeling to be taken for granted, even by an artist; it is one of the greatest feelings we can know, yet it is something we cannot really know. As the Zen wisdom has it, if we think we know, we probably don"t.
The rituals behind most of life's affairs and accomplishments are informal, and even chaotic. The business of governing and educating, of fighting wars and building cities, and of all human endeavors, serious or light, are largely loose affairs. As we all know, things tend to go awry in these pursuits, and through them we all learn to think on our feet, spontaneously.
On the other hand, some of our most subtle and refined traditions -- the scientific method and the practice of law, for instance -- have the most refined rituals. The steps are all clearly laid out, the process is very formal. But, as every scientist and lawyer knows, for all the rules and discipline, the lack of spontaneity is a myth.
In fact, despite the atmosphere of control in the sciences and in the law, the key is to reveal the unexpected, and outmaneuver or even disprove the rules. The ritual framework, far from limiting those who know how to use it, allows the paradigm to change; scientists and lawyers are trained ritualers who excel where the rules are the toughest.
In some ways the purpose of ritual is to maintain the status quo, and it is even a tool of conformity. The purpose of a graduation ceremony is to admonish students that they ought to be exemplary citizens. New recruits in the army go through a lot of tough rituals to teach them to obey commands without question. Even the inauguration of a new President can be seen as a ritual whose purpose is to reassure Americans that the new leader won't change things (at least not too much). In short, rituals exist to reinforce the mores and values of society -- to maintain the order of things.
We really have no choice but to have some faith in what others have figured out before us. If we were to stop and figure out the way to navigate each separate moment of our day we would go crazy before noon. What if we had to learn how to do our job all over again every day? Just as it is part of the function of our senses to filter out unnecessary sensations, it is part of the purpose of ritual to filter out unnecessary actions.
But...knowledge is not necessarily limiting.
Controlled spontaneity has a great deal in common with improvisation. The jazz musician does not improvise out of nothing, but out of a great body of musical knowledge. This knowledge, consisting of musical theory, instrumental technique, jazz history, and performance experience, creates the framework that in many ways limits what the player can do. Most players play within those boundaries, rarely even testing them, but still they are incredibly spontaneous.
Controlled spontaneity, like improvisation, has a tendency to transform the framework out of which it arises. Every once in a while a musician or an artist comes along who transcends the musical and performance boundaries in which they learned their craft.
And here is the really important thing: to many the new music sounds like noise or the new art seems like nonsense, but just enough people can hear it. The new way of hearing or seeing begins to spread through the community. Eventually, a point of critical mass is attained when, in general, the new sounds are appreciated by so many people that the entire paradigm is changed. This is the way culture changes.
The notion that ritual is synonymous with routine, is only a half-definition, at best. Ralph Waldo Emerson declared, in his essay on Self-Reliance: "I would write on the lintels of my door post, WHIM. I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we can't spend the day in explanation." Emerson sensed that there is something constructive about whim, the element of potentiality, even though he couldn't quite put his finger on it. Well, whim allows us to turn the dullness of routine into the spontaneity of controlled crisis.
Be Qualiadelic. Be Conscious. Change the routine.
Return to the archive of articles.