In the jazz world musicians use the word riffing to describe a kind of improvising. The technique is also used by poets, dancers, painters, authors, composers, comedians, politicians, actors, and even trial lawyers, in any context when improvising or riffing serves a desired result. I am sure you can think of situations you’ve been in where you had to ‘make it up’ for an intentionally desired outcome.
One of my August projects is listening to different pianist’s versions of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. In fact, Bach was a great improvisor riffing on his own themes. For the Goldberg, he composed an Aria maybe three minutes long. Then he created 30 variations using its components. There is one performance in which the delight on the pianist’s face reveals the complete rapture he experiences on each variation almost as if he’s inside Bach’s head.
In Jazz the delight can be similar. Often the performers will literally chuckle or mumble with the audience calling out uh-huhs. Riffing in any genre is ultimately high-level mindful concentration since it really requires an extraordinary command of a body of knowledge. To riff on a song you have to know a lot: melody, words, harmony, rhythm, key, tonality, genre, history, plus. Comparing different artist’s versions of a song reveals how spectacularly different the same melody and harmonies can sound.
Some of my favorite timeless quotes below feel like a riff on our time. Just a way to look at life through different lenses. I hope they give you courage to contemplate and savor some idle quiet moments to just riff about life with gratitude and pleasure no matter what is or isn’t happening. You know the prescription: sit-lie-stand, still the body, attend to your breath, and wakefully contemplate.
Blessings and peace.
I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
– Robert Frost, poet, American Poet Laureate 1958
Of Equality . . . Giving others the same chances and rights as myself . . .
– Walt Whitman, poet, essayist, journalist
I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and made some marmalade. It’s amazing how it cheers one up to shred orange and scrub the floor.
– D.H. Lawrence, novelist, poet, playwright
Three Principles of life:
- Surround yourself w/ people whose eyes light up when they see you coming.
- Slowly, is the fastest way to get to where you want to be.
- The top of the one mountain is the bottom of the next. So keep climbing.
– Andre De Shields, actor, singer, dancer, choreographer
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair. . . But all the time I’se been a’climbin’ on.
Lanston Hughes, poet, novelist, playwright
*The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.
*One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.
– Maya Angelou, memoirist, poet, civil rights activist, performer
Peace is every breath.
– Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen Buddhist monk, peace activist, author, teacher