“LOOSE BUT SPIRITED” HAS BEEN MY MOTTO, for decades, as an improvisational musician. It affirms the value of letting the spirit play — not because precision is a bad thing, but because getting music “tight” too often pushes out the spirit entirely. In improvisational music, the magic happens when the spirit plays the musicians.
To state the obvious, spirit is a mystery, How are we supposed to understand something as spontaneous as musical improvisation? To grasp something as ephemeral as the wind? We aren’t, of course. Instead, we need to open ourselves to the experience of it.
Our word “spirit” comes from the Latin spiritus, which also means breath or wind. The same range of meaning is found in the Greek pneuma and the Hebrew ruach.
What, then, does this constellation of meaning tell us about the spirit? If spirit is breath-like, it’s essential to life, maybe even the essence of life itself. If it’s wind-like, it’s invisible, it’s flowing, it’s ubiquitous, it’s potentially dangerous — and yet, there are few things as comforting as a warm, gentle breeze. (Could Elijah’s “still small voice” have been such a breeze? See 1 Kings 19:11-12, KJV.)
Everything we’ve considered so far points to the immateriality of spirit. Throughout history and in traditions all around the world, spirit is and always has been understood to be the opposite of matter. In other words, spirit is abstract. Not just subtle, but an inner reality perceived by intuition rather than by any of the five senses. Surely, this is why the human spirit is felt to be expressed in intellectual achievements and the advance of reason, in the “high culture” of art, music and literature, and in creativity itself.
The opening of the Bible tells us “a wind from God” (ruach, Gen. 1:2, NRSV) swept over the primal void, just before God began speaking the universe into being. And spoken words are carried on the breath. Could the explicit and implicit references here reveal the spirit as a co-worker in the creation, if not the creative force at work? In any case, the presence of the spirit in this text hints at the sense of numinous awe the ancient biblical author must have experienced in the world.
Indeed, experience seems to be the key, when it comes to the spirit. Spirit may be ephemeral, invisible and immaterial, but it is nonetheless a fact of experience. Believe me, there’s nothing quite so awesome as the experience of being a musician the spirit plays.
Soul Spirit Wisdom 
Wonderful post, Bob! Testify! I recently heard a musician, I forget who it was, ask an intriguing question: where do songs exist before we write them down or play them? Most songwriters say that they feel like they don’t create songs, but discover them. Perhaps this has to do with another feature of spirit: it feels inevitable, or rather, it is a feeling of inevitability – it just seems “meet and right.” Since there is something in our nature that causes us to stand obliquely to reality, to “miss the mark,” the tell-tale sign of the spirit is a kind of rightness, a feeling of being “in the right place at the right time,” to misquote Dr. John. Now, when a group of individuals – a band – all opens up to that inevitability, then, as the Bible says, the spirit is present. I’ve experienced it just like a dome of light that encompasses the stage, within which no one can play a wrong note, everyone is distinct but merged – but which evaporates all-too quickly. Why should it be so, that our wrongfooted-ness so easily overwhelms our ec-stases? A key answer is: lack of attention. How do we improve our attentiveness to the spirit? PRACTICE.
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Thanks, Mark, for carrying on the thoughts so helpfully. The “dome of light” is a wonderful image.
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