Blogtalmud: a riff on a riff by Mark Downham

Small print: this article represents my own views and not necessarily those of my employer. Indeed many of my colleagues are sporty types so unlikely to be interested in this sort of nonsense.

Blogtalmud. A genre where I take someone else's blog in its entirety and intersperse it with my own reactions and comments (it's a bit like a reaction video, YouTube is replete with this sort of thing:

On the talmudic writing slab today a blog by Britain's answer to Netflix Chaos Monkey , renowned pneumatologist , sponsored artist of Dictionary.com and possibly the most intimidating intellect on LinkedIn, Mark Downham.

Mark's blog is titled "Riffing with Extreme Metaphors and other Marginalia" and you can find the full text here . I have left Mark's text as normal (though I added a few links) and mine is in italics with a ??. Let the fun begin!

Riffing is musical slang for spontaneous improvisations around repeated chord progressions within a work, which you can find in Jazz music for instance, where the singer or instrumentalist invents and improvises solo melodies and lines over the chord progression – composing on the spot in a freestyle way (a chord is two or more different notes that are played together simultaneously, but what if we kick this through the adaptation – exaptation continuum and change it to riffing with two or more ideas, texts, conversations, frameworks, models or paradigms until something radically new emerges?)

??What cracks me up is Mark has taken the trouble to explain what a chord is but just assumes everyone is familiar with "adaptation – exaptation continuum" – good work! On a serious note, yes Mark and I both love to riff with ideas etc. much like I imagine the Glass Bead Game would be played. This is one of my favourite novels by Herman Hesse in which the elite are carted-off to a spectacular monastery of the intellect to riff with ideas to their heart's content. The protagonist, Joseph Knecht, joins as an adolescent and eventually rises in rank to Magister Ludi, keeper of the eponymous game. The power of the imagination -- we all have one but we frequently self-edit or avoid taking risks and this is learnt, reinforced behaviour. Learning to use our imagination and being non-judgemental about the results I feel is largely missing from our education system and yet as Mark points out this is where innovation comes from.

Riffing has already been changed and morphed in “stand-up” comedy to mean the spontaneous and extemporaneous verbal exploration of a particular subject, thus moving the meaning away from the original jazz sense of a repeated chord that a soloist improvises over, to instead indicate the improvisation itself – the process of improvising on a series of ideas in a freestyle progression so that it becomes a form of drifting or flow state.?Similarly, improvisational theatre (or “improv” for short), is a form of live performance in which the plot, characters and dialogue of the scene are created on the spur of the moment.

??For flow see the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi , and importantly learn his name is pronounced "me high, chicks sent me high". He died recently and I understand J.Brian Hennessy has met him. The important thing to understand is the following diagram of challenge vs. skill:

In other words we can only flow at things we are good at that are also challenging. When working with teams I try to change the game where I can to increase the chance of members and the team as a whole being in a flow state. One technique I use is to match work to current skill level.

“Riffing is a style of critical inquiry that fills [and fills in] the gaps. It plays with the spaces between concepts”?– Paidi O’Reilly

??Cool. I would say Paidi's definition is one of many. Creativity is a slippery thing and it can get bored and leave the party if its parameters are too tightly defined - or not tightly enough -- it's a capricious little minx. Glass Bead Game styles I employ most frequently include looking for the connection, similarities and differences between things, Trust and Shannon Information Theory for example:

It's like my brain subconsciously is going "what does this remind me of?" This sort of thing often flows/riffs for me because I have fed my brain with stuff and have a knack with spotting patterns. But to a lesser or greater extent we can all do it.

“I intentionally use riffing, gamification, improv, comedy and entertainment to trigger perceptual shifts, create bandwidth, wavelength, frequency, resonance and spark flashes of insight” – Mark Downham

??We'll be the judge of that, Mark! But teasing aside that is what Mark does, he moves the point of reference around, moving between different sense-making frameworks and genres, changing the channels like WIFI Wardriving . Critics(*) of Mark's oeuvre can tend to interpret what he is up to from one frame of reference when he has Bye Felicia 'd that tired old sense-making context and switched to another. This can mean committing the error of taking him too seriously or not seriously enough. It's like fighting with an MMA champ when you only know Judo. You go to bow at the start of the bout and as you do so they kick you in the face. A famous example of this:

Mark's approach is one of the myriad benefits of cultivated ADHD IMHO (and being fluent in more than one thing; you need to master 35 different disciplines to be a watchmaker George Daniels used to say). This is a very powerful skill to have. It give rhetorical flexibility, it gives you Sente . I would say stand-up comedians are skilled at this. Donald Trump is a master, though he uses a very different repertoire. In the best meaning of the word, Mark is also a Jester , the fool , the first and most important card of the tarot.

“A song – at least in my view – should not be didactic… there should be “holes” in it, into which the listener can insert his own comprehension and experience” – Peter Hammill.

??This is a well known art truism dating back to Aristotle and earlier. And with anything that is created on the spot the sense of the audience in the mind of the creator can drift in and out. Sometimes we are entertainers playing to the audience and sometime we are on a roll doing it whether you are there or not. It's nothing personal it's how our minds work sometimes. This is again something critics (*) and the perplexed can miss - not all flashes of insight are designed to be immediately understandable and publishable in a peer-reviewed journal or beginner's guide. Sometimes we are chasing the dragon. And sometimes it is chasing us.

Drifting is a form of critical inquiry where we explore and test “ambiences and atmospheric changes” with the intention of creating new situations. The Drift as an activity is deliberately attuned to the affective, bodily play of surfaces, textures, and atmospheres as we encounter them in different environments, places and spaces as we?drift?through them.

“Riffing and Drifting are the new R&D (Research and Development)” – Paidi O’Reilly

??Not so new. I think all creatives drift. What is new is this transferring from the arts to science and business. I am not sure I understand Mark's definition - it sounds like translated French. Actually it sounds like Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.

In positive psychology, a flow state, also known as “being in the zone”, is an autotelic perceptual state in which a person performing some activity like riffing, drifting or improv, is fully immersed in a feeling of energised focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterised by the complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting transformation in one’s sense of time, space, presence and ontological purpose.

??Yeah I jumped the gun on that. As J.Brian would say flow is about Be-ing - it emerges without effort.

The Discoveries made by Roustabouts and other Circus workers

“[The practice of Riffing with texts and ideas] seems similar at first glance to “heckling”, an old method of text interaction, and the roots of “riffing” certainly seem to lie in the heckle. Important differences exist, however. Examining the origins of the word “heckling” reveals one vital difference: the term was originally used to describe the process of finding fault in [woven] cloth. Heckling is also often associated with live performance: theatre and stand-up comedy. The heckler tries to destroy the text and establish dominance. The riffer, on the other hand, seems more influenced by the jazz technique it takes its name from; a riff settles over the existing text, creating a new thing, dependent on the previous work, but greater than it. The distinction is one of harmony versus discord” – Ora McWilliams, and Joshua Richardson. ‘Double Poaching and the Subversive Operations of Riffing: ‘You kids with your hoola hoops and your Rosenbergs and your Communist agendas.’

??Re: heckling. Great non sequitur , in fact one for the ages, world class. Good work! Yes, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and those Communist agendas ...

“I consider Riffing to be a perceptual state of “higher-level inner sense-making” that spontaneously creates novel forms of communication, connection and entanglement. The Riffer drifts and flows with the text as it changes shape, exapts and morphs into something radically new.” – Mark Downham

??Yes I can go with that. To state another way it is the spontaneous and effortless result of prior work. Charlie Parker used to say he would learn all the theory, practice it then forget it all and just play.

摸着石头过河 – Crossing the River by feeling the stones…. in essence, sensemaking, which simultaneously involves reaching out, feeling, sensing and exploring the flow and ripple of the river in the white spaces between the stones, as the river is always changing, but then it is water in an ever flowing state.

??Its being in the moment--cf. mindfulness .

Sensemaking is a form of situational awareness. Sensemaking is a form of “mindfulness” and real mindfulness is not passive and reflective, it is a positively energetic and active field of heightened awareness. Sensemaking in action expresses itself in linguistic descriptors like “sensing”, “feeling” and “reaching” as we become aware of the energetic flows and presences in the atmospheres, environments, conversations, contact and touchpoints all around us in a heightened state of awareness that something is happening, shifting and changing and we which are in process of cognitively mapping and processing. We become able to see the emergent patterns in everything around us and reach out and feel the subtle shifts in flow, nuance, energy and the invisible yet tangible presences that are in active states of communication in the conversations, environments and contexts we enter, dwell, reference, and interact with as move through them.

??Yes all of the above but as a term it is getting a bit old. Sense making this sense making that. Those subtle shifts. Do not go gentle into that good night , Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Actually this is a good example of drift: Dylan Thomas just came to mind - my brain made a connection, presumably triggered by Mark's language and the theme of death. Yes it is a non sequitur but you take what the universe gives you and go with the flow.

“We are currently completing a paper that talks about storytelling as a way of being able (in a story world) to shift time, space and identity. We can put ourselves and others in new or old spaces, in previous or future times and we can adjust who we and they become – this ties in with the idea of masks we previously spoke about. This is a powerful design technique. The ‘me of the future’ forces me into cycles of sensetaking, sensebreaking, sensemaking, sensegiving and wayfinding now. My future self is now talking to me. Riffing for me is a free style approach to this” – Paidi O’Reilly

??So Stanislavski and Lee Strasberg . Good with that. Indeed I wrote a blog about it:

A riff picks up on the themes of the original text(s) or “through-line(s)” (a connecting theme, plot, storyline or characteristic in a film, television series, book, or text) and starts to alter and remix them in really interesting ways using an ‘epistemological chopping board’.

??You can buy them at Sainsburys .

‘Having totality means being capable of following “what is,” because “what is” is constantly moving and constantly changing. If one is anchored to a particular view, one will not be able to follow the swift movement of “what is’ – Bruce Lee

??More Bruce please - the master.

“Like the Drift, if you do not enter the Riff, you will never be able to reach out and touch “what is” because it will have already changed, morphed, adapted and exapted again” – Paidi O’Reilly

??True. But after a while this starts to read like Jazz criticism. I don't read Jazz criticism I listen to Bud Powell

With Riffing, you begin to see the relationship between collective free improvisation, the concept of collaborative creativity and the power of co-creation.

Co-creation is no different than jazz or improv. You need to be really present in the moment, resilient enough to embrace adjacent possibility, and committed enough to connect deeply with one another so you can riff, allowing previously unknown solutions to emerge through collaboration, building on each other’s ideas and insights.

??Yup - pick up your horn already, grab some clay. Sharpen your fountain pen and write something.

“Where collaboration sees the solution — “let’s get together and map out the path to this” — co-creation is essentially ‘informed wandering’ [drifting in, with and through the riff, wherever it takes you]” – Kate Inglis, ‘What co-creation looks like: a future-making primer’

??Great quote from Kate - who is she?

Performers doing improv and riffing develop complex non-verbal communication skills for working together proficiently, using creative tension, dialectical spark and collision and collaborating in radical ways, which are the crucial and real characteristics of all improvisation.

??Nice.

“Riffing together has the strong potential to induce a peak experience” – Mark Downham

“During a peak experience, Maslow explained, the individual experiences an expansion of self, a sense of unity, and meaningfulness in life. The experience lingers in one’s consciousness and gives a sense of purpose, integration, self-determination and empathy” – Steven Kotler

I will give you a choice. You can listen to complexity and information uncertainty theorists on the overriding importance of being in a state of aporia, uncertainty and the need to observe and be bound by (enabling) constraints or you can enter the Drift, move into the Riff and come free-running with us.

??Yes. Read about vs. experience. Too much bias toward the former in Complexity right now.

You can decide which choice will engender a sustained and sustainable Peak Experience – if the complexity and information uncertainty theorists are right, follow them or you can come with us into the Drift and all it will do to you, as the Riff unfolds and spirals out all around you, getting into everything like ever extending rhizomes.

??Definitely been reading Deleuze & Guattari.

Complexity and Information uncertainty frameworks like Cynefin and the theorists who actively promote them, rely heavily on the idea of constraints.

??Fighting talk - does Dave know you wrote this? You're right of course ...

“…it is important to realize that the notion of a constraint is not a negative one. It is not something which merely limits possibilities, constraints are also enabling. By eliminating certain possibilities, others are introduced” – Paul Cilliers

Forget Paul Cilliers. Enabling constraints are a J.G. Ballard style Manhole 69 phenomenon.

??Finally some J.G Ballard, I was wondering when it would ever come. And yes enabling constraints. Though any type of constraint is also to direct and constrain the drift. All constraints are artificial constructs. Gates that appear to allow some possibilities through while rejecting others but are actually more subtle (or subtle shifts). Physics shows how these are only ever partial truths. Cf. Bell's Theorem:

??Quantum entanglement effects are the hidden orchestrators of complexity.

In the story the “Manhole” refers to the collapsing sense of reality experienced by the test subjects, who are undergoing sleep deprivation induced complexity and information uncertainty experiments, when the gym in which they are ensconced seems to dwindle in size: ‘This, then, was the manhole: a narrow, vertical cubicle, a few feet wide, six deep’. “69” is the number of the door always locked to the test subjects, who ultimately are all huddled together in the centre of the gym, in a space the size of a manhole.

VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) is their Manhole 69.

The Drift is a continuous form of Peak Experience. Riffing is a form of Drifting.

When you enter the Riff, VUCA becomes (Vision, Understanding, Clarity, Agility) because Riffing is a perceptual state of higher-level inner sense-making.

“I am starting to think of our communications as a kind of cognitive sonar. In this system questions bounce off the contours of other people’s thinking and are reflected back, giving one a sense of the psychosocial environment in which they are operating. The collective approach to establishing a shared communication system lends itself to the creative process because it is all about the construction of an information environment, rather than simple right, wrong answers” – David Nixon

Dangerous Bends Ahead

“Riffing is always a form of radical Samzidat manifesto for changing everything” – Mark Downham

??And a chord is two or more notes played simultaneously.

Riffing has an interesting relationship to SCAMPER (an acronym formed from the abbreviation of: Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify (Also magnify and minify), Put to another use, Eliminate, and Reverse. SCAMPER is a lateral thinking technique or perceptual state that you enter when you start riffing and which challenges the status quo or “the way things are done around here” and helps you explore new possibilities and new ways of exapting or radically repurposing things.

??Like it. De Bono good here:

https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/learn-how-to-use-the-best-ideation-methods-scamper#:~:text=SCAMPER%20is%20an%20acronym%20formed,helps%20you%20explore%20new%20possibilities.

https://cynefin.io/wiki/Exaptation

Riffing and SCAMPER spark because they both involve ever shifting and blurring alignments on the adaptation – exaptation continuum and as you reach out and touch each Scamper ‘leverage point’ you can feel things shifting, changing and realigning around you.

“Movement, posture, leverage points – also motion and direction. These are key principles in Meyerhold’s system of biomechanics and they can be applied to riffing”?–?David Nixon

??"I didn't do anything wrong and I promise to never do it again”?–?Richard M. Nixon

Riffing also involves the use of ‘creative abrasion’ and a sense of ‘suture’ or being “stitched into the text” in a new way – you become able to feel yourself in the text.

The act of riffing establishes the place where it is ‘happening’, a whole new set of relationships between people, between the individual and the social group, between the individual and the society, and between the society and the ever-expanding creative spectrum of web space and that involves accepting the possibility of creative abrasion.

Riffing and creative abrasion: “…groups attain flow by staying in the improvisation zone between complete predictability and going too far, between their shared knowledge about conventional situations, and doing something so inconsistent that it just doesn’t make sense” – R. Keith Sawyer, ‘Group creativity: Music, theatre, collaboration’.

??Dave Snowden (*) and others talk about complexity being understood by art first. We learn from this and apply to other domains.

“If you are working on something that you really care about, you do not have to be pushed. The vision pulls you”. – Steve Jobs.

“Creative abrasion sparks constructive collaboration” – Natalie Nixon.

??"Honesty may not be the best policy, but it is worth trying once in a while.' – Richard M. Nixon

“Innovation takes place when different ideas, perceptions, and ways of processing and judging information collide. That, in turn, often requires collaboration among various players who see the world in inherently different ways” – Dorothy Leonard and Susaan Straus.

??Good article ?