Getting Off The Couch

Making an album

I recently received an important lesson about musical improvisation— and life. I was sitting on the couch in Amos Hoffman’s living room at 11 o’clock on a weekday morning. Amos is a masterful guitarist and oud player who has dedicated his whole being to music. We were holding our instruments, and had just begun to work on a song. I asked him a question about how to structure a solo over a certain chord progression.

Musicians performing in Orpheus. Photo credit Kate Joyce

“Look at the TV across the room,” he instructed, nodding at the sleeping device. “There are a lot of ways to get from here to there. I could walk straight to it. I could go into the dining room and loop back. I could bore a hole through the ground, delve deep to the earth’s molten core, and ascend to the TV. I could rocket to the moon and parachute back to this device two meters from where we’re sitting.”

For me this was more than a lesson about musical improvisation; it was a parable. There’s no single way to get anywhere. The most stirring improvisation might take a thoughtfully variegating path; the same might be said about life.

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Middle Age presents itself as a funnel that conveys you along an ever-narrowing trajectory towards an ever clearer destination. The pressures of career, mortgage, relationships, dependents, responsibilities generally allow for less experimentation, and demand more regimentation. Many in my generation know how to embrace the weight of responsibility and practice existential discipline. But this can have the side effect of numbing our enthusiasm, even dulling our dreams.

A few months ago I was fortunate to escape the centripetal swirling pull of the funnel. I co-wrote and played music in a theatrical production. Thanks to supportive collaborators, an institutional grant, and a flexible employer, I was able to dance my way off the couch. And the dance continues. I’m excited to announce that this week I’m headed into the studio to record an album based on the soundtrack from Orpheus. Having the idea was simple; making it reality was more difficult. There are a lot of ways to get from the couch of our comfort to the TV of our dreams. This journey out of comfort and into possibility has taught me a lot about the benefits of improvisation not just to music, but to life.

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Being part of a creative performance is thrilling. It animates you, in the literal sense of “imparting a soul.” My artist friends know this: they live it regularly. And they’re used to the comedown. One day my wife observed me in rehearsal playing the mandolin, talking to a group of actors about gestures in the ancient world, encouraging the dancers, and huddling with the other directors to discuss blocking. Afterwards Mara asked me with a mixture of curiosity and concern “you’re going to go back to just being a history professor after this?”

In her uncanny way, she was prophetic. In February, after the curtain fell and the lights went out after the final performance I crashed.

Out for a walk together one balmy evening a few weeks ago, I sulked and bemoaned that in the wake of Orpheus my musical progress was stalled. “My dreams are dust,” I thought to myself, as self-pitying thoughts eerily echoed the words spoken by the protagonist in the play I helped write.

Ever an optimist, and the exemplification of someone who knows a thousand ways to get from A to B, Mara said, “Why not make an album? Build on Orpheus’s momentum, lay the foundation for future transdisciplinary collaborative work, extend your creativity as a historian, and strengthen social and communal bonds in Columbia’s artistic community and beyond.”

Mara has spent most of her career building infrastructure to support people’s individual and collective dreams. The Electric Web is the most recent iteration. It’s a collective of people who support each operationally and creatively, spinning the thread of infrastructure and community. The Hack Foundation serves as the project’s fiscal sponsor, clearing the path for grassroots arts and culture projects like this that serve the public good (and 50% of their team are teens learning financial literacy in the process).

Mara helped me write up a proposal and create an easy way to donate. These tax-deductible contributions go directly toward paying musicians, covering studio costs, and underwriting a tour to educational and faith-based centers in 2027. The next step was finding support.

I had never attempted an ambitious undertaking outside of the university. It was a new experience to advocate for a group project that was seeded inside an institution, but was ready to take on a new form, and needed additional support. I reached out to friends, family, and local community leaders. The response was heartening. The enthusiasm and generosity of spirit lifted me up and made me see what’s possible when we improvise together to get from A to B. The process has helped me understand that money for the arts is both a material exchange and an energetic one.

We’ll be recording this week with an expanded band including bass, percussion and clarinet. We’re inspired to activate and disseminate this underappreciated aspect of Jewish and Mediterranean cultural history to broader audiences, and we anticipate an animating energy return once we hit the road.

To the many readers of this Substack who have cheered me on in building bridges between my own work and broader community outreach, I want to say thank you. There are lots of ways to get from the couch to the TV. Ovid, like all artists, knew this. This journey started in 2021 when Kate Joyce invited me to work with her on Metamorphoses. I chose to translate the intractable first line of Ovid’s masterpiece as “imagination manifests transformations.” Six years later, enmeshed in a wider web, I understand that imagination is improvisation.