A Shocking Performance

To open a conversation, a usual gambit is to ask what's new. The usual answer is "Not a whole lot." Maybe you saw an amusing movie; maybe you tell the one about the werewolf, the throat singer and the pole dancer. You might have been to a concert where they sounded satisfyingly like their record. On the other hand, you might have been lucky enough to share the room with Bobby McFerrin last night in Potsdam.

I had been looking forward to the show, having heard McFerrin years before, but I had also been working since before dawn--I told my wife to punch me if I started to snore. But nobody, no matter how dozy, can sleep through something which is really new--a program comprised totally of vocal improvisation. Anyone who recalls the forty-minute drum solos of 60s rock remembers how badly such a thing can go wrong. For McFerrin and his twelve accomplices to be so on top of each moment for 90 minutes left me flabbergasted, and more awake than I have been at any time since I touched that bare wire with a socket wrench. In a time when the word genius gets applied to anyone halfway competent, I want a new word for what I saw and heard. To be present while a first-rate mind makes up first-rate work completely on the fly--I can only babble about it. Years from now I will still babble about it.