A Space for Rabbits

Much of my practice as a creative being — musician, technologist — is about cultivating a space where positive surprises are more likely. Where creativity, which is nothing but welcome surprise, has room to arrive.

I think of my creativity like a rabbit. When the environment is safe and clear, they’ll come out and nibble some grass, sun themselves, and even leap and play. When danger is in the air, no rabbit is to be seen.

This can be very hard to do, because it almost always involves building a space around nothing, and studiously guarding its nothingness. Like having to engineer a hurricane just to have the eye. The zeitgeist is squarely against this — yet I observe few rabbits in the zeitgeist’s yard.

With long practice, one can create a space where the rabbits lounge all the livelong day. My main form has been musical improvisation. I sit down, breathe, and play. Music comes out, and it surprises me. I am a rabbit in the sunny yard, and I am the yard, and I am somehow the sun. The experience of this cannot be fully described, monetized, or transmitted.

I will offer this — the experience is not one of perfect clarity. It is inherently uncertain — it is a game. I might have a hunch, but I don’t know what’s going to happen. That’s the point. I hold my intentions loosely, and with dread seriousness.

Enjoy the sun. Ears up.