A little slice of reality

One of the most basic concepts in Buddhism is that nothing lasts forever. In fact everything changes: whether arguing the certainty of change lasts forever is valid I don't know. I've never asked, and personally I'm not a Buddhist. I like some of the more entertainingly mind-boggling concepts, but Buddhism is not for me.

So anyway, nothing lasts forever. There's a Japanese saying, 一期一会 (Ichi go ichi e), meaning roughly "one place one meeting". It means that a particularly moment will not be repeated. You can do the same activity a thousand times, but each time will not be the same.

So what am I talking about here? Improvisational music, actually. An improvisational piece will last only as long as it's played, and then it's gone. It won't be heard ever again, unless someone recorded it. Sure you can say the same about any music: the live performance is going to be subtly different each time after all, but improvisational surely more so than others. I've been writing an improvisational piece lately. Aside from a few bars it's almost entirely off the cuff, and as a result can be entirely different two different performances. This is nothing new, it's been done many times before. But a thought occurred to me, yaknow? Nothing lasts forever. An entirely improvised piece is in a very real way an embodiment of this philosophy. It's a little slice of reality delivered aurally. And there's something really really cool about that.