Carpe Diem Regained

by Roman Krznaric

  What do these instances of spontaneity share? For a start, they involve taking immediate action and not procrastinating, an echo of Horace’s advice in Ode XI to ‘leave as little as possible for tomorrow’. They are about acting freely and being unconstrained, reflecting the Latin origin of spontaneity, which comes from sponte, meaning ‘of one’s own accord, freely, willingly’. Spontaneity is also often associated with abandoning plans and timetables, and breaking social norms and conventions, so we act in ways that are out of the ordinary. When was the last time you rolled down a grassy hillside?

  Some people appear to be naturally spontaneous and possess an effervescent seize-the-moment personality. They are ready and willing to ‘play things by ear’ – a metaphor calling for an unrehearsed and unscripted approach to life. Others are more like the philosopher Immanuel Kant, who was known as ‘the Königsberg clock’ for his unwavering habit of taking his daily walk at precisely 5pm, and always along the same route. Most of us are somewhere in between.

  Yet as I have discussed in an earlier chapter, in historical terms spontaneity is in long-term decline. Western societies have, over the centuries, become increasingly scheduled: we have, for instance, inherited a regimented attitude to time as a legacy of the Industrial Revolution. We are now in an era in which we plot out our lives weeks in advance in our diaries, and focus on ways to efficiently manage our time as we battle against a barrage of emails and information overload, while trying to meet work deadlines and get the kids to swimming class. Spontaneity has been subject to a devastating cultural hijack: instead of ‘just do it’, we ‘just plan it’.

  There may be no greater symbol of this hijacking than an electronic time management system used by over 100,000 lawyers worldwide that logs every six-minute chunk of their time, as a way of increasing productivity and ensuring clients are charged for every possible moment. The software’s name? Carpe Diem. You couldn’t make it up.1

  Spontaneity ranks – alongside presence, hedonism, opportunity and politics – as one of the core approaches to seizing the day that have emerged in Western society.2 In an effort to preserve and revive the spirit of carpe diem, this chapter explores how we should respond to the decline of spontaneity. One reaction has been the rise of impulsive action in digital spheres such as online shopping and instant messaging. Yet this amounts to little more than a superficial compensation for what has been lost, and it is vital to distinguish this tech-led impulsivity from more profound forms of spontaneity. To recover our spontaneous selves we can look for inspiration in realms ranging from traditional Persian music and theatre improvisation to sensory travel and Brazilian football strategy. Spontaneity, we will discover, is far more than an impromptu burst of action: it is – counterintuitively – a skill that can be practised and cultivated.

  On this journey we should travel with the words of the nineteenth-century poet and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson in our pockets. Emerson was a firm believer in the carpe diem ideal: ‘Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly until he knows that every day is Doomsday.’3 At the same time, he saw spontaneity as a wise route to making the most of our precious days. Spontaneity, he wrote, is ‘the essence of genius, the essence of virtue, and the essence of life’.4 Let it be our guide and our aspiration.

  THE RISE OF LAST-MINUTE LIVING

  A recent newspaper article titled ‘How Britons Learned the Art of Last-Minute Living’ notes how ‘mobile technology is erasing the rhythms of life,’ because it enables people to be more spontaneous in their shopping habits. We no longer visit travel agencies and plan our holidays months in advance. Thanks to smartphones and travel websites full of late-booking deals, more than half of people booking short holiday breaks now do so in the week they depart, and around 44% say they have booked a trip on the spur of the moment. ‘These days it’s easier than ever to be spontaneous,’ says Matthew Crummack, CEO of leading British travel firm lastminute.com. ‘The rapid and continuous evolution of technology has given us a wealth of consumer choice, whenever and wherever we need it.’5

  This outbreak of spontaneity extends to a whole culture of instant, one-click shopping online. Suddenly moved to take up yoga? Then take out your phone and buy yourself a yoga mat, pants and top. Fancy watching a film after dinner? Simply stream it from Netflix or Amazon. It can be exciting to book an eleventh-hour holiday or order some yoga gear with next-day delivery, but there is a danger that we are mistaking impulsive consumerism for spontaneity. Last-minute shopping is not just convenient for ourselves, but also remarkably convenient for retailers who are experts at tapping into our impulsive instincts, selling us a narrow form of spontaneity for the benefit of their bottom line. A key by-product of the digital, just-in-time economy is that it enables products and services to be easily sold at the last moment – whether it’s a cheap holiday flight or a discount TV in a pop-up January Sale advertisement. Buying such items on the spur of the moment can give us the feeling of acting spontaneously, making purposeful choices and really living in the now. We click the ‘buy now’ button and are rewarded with a heady rush of dopamine – the brain chemical that gives us a pleasure kick. But do we really want to reduce spontaneity to filling up an electronic shopping basket?

  It is not only impulsive consumerism that is hijacking the spirit of carpe diem spontaneity: the innocent text message is just as responsible. You might, for instance, invite a friend out to see a band playing in a bar on a Friday night, and suggest meeting at 9pm. But rather than commit to a firm arrangement, your friend says, ‘I’ll text you later if I can make it’. Particularly in the world of Generation Y – those born in the 1980s and 1990s – people tend not to make definite arrangements when it comes to social life: decisions are made ‘spontaneously’ at the last moment. Maybe they’ll come. But maybe they won’t, especially if a better offer comes along. The instant text message has created an epidemic of non-commitment that masquerades as spontaneity.

  What underlies this phenomenon? The answer, to use its social media hashtag, is #FOMO – fear of missing out. Behavioural psychologists define it as ‘a pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent’.6 As cultural critic Steve Poole puts it, FOMO is ‘a generalised attitude of always looking over the shoulder of the person you are talking to in case there is someone more interesting or attractive at the party’.7

  Surveys reveal that 56% of social media users suffer from this new cultural disorder, and that it is most common amongst young adults, especially men.8 Its pervasiveness is unsurprising, with everyone’s ‘friends’ constantly posting messages about the great film they’ve just seen or the wild party they’re at. Jane Austen’s heroines may have worried about missing a dance where they might find a potential suitor, but this is nothing compared to the scores of social events that people today discover they are missing out on when they check their social media feeds, and see lost opportunities cascade down the screen in front of their eyes in a waterfall of unfulfilled possibilities. Suddenly there are simply too many moments to seize.

  Yet the plague of FOMO is not spread by the surfeit of digital information alone. It also arises in a culture that increasingly values ‘being connected’ with others – a desire that social media both satisfies and exacerbates.9 The cost of trying to be connected with everybody at once is to promote superficial relationships both online and offline. In the quest for perfect experiences with as many people as possible we may end up satisfying nobody, not even ourselves, as we flit from one social engagement to another, permanently thinking that there might be a better option. We are losing touch with the ancient Greek ideal of philia – deep friendships based on loyalty and comradeship where we are willing to make sacrifices for others.10 In the pursuit of hyperconnection, what looks like spontaneous action is in fact a failure of commitment that results in our relationships being built on a foundation of sand. ‘Only connect’, wrote the novelist E.M. Forster. Today, we
need something more: ‘Only commit.’

  Shouldn’t we ask more of spontaneity than believing it can be satisfied through impulsive consumerism and last-minute commitment? Emerson, were he alive today, would surely set the bar higher. So how can we reclaim it to satisfy deeper existential needs? For a start, by turning the ideal of spontaneous action on its head by recognising that it can be born from practice and persistence.

  IF YOU WANT TO BE SPONTANEOUS, PRACTISE, PRACTISE, PRACTISE

  ‘Freedom,’ wrote the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm in his 1942 book Fear of Freedom, ‘consists in the spontaneous activity of the total, integrated personality.’ He argues that we are most likely to experience the sense of freedom that lies at the root of genuine wellbeing when we are being spontaneous in our reactions to the people and landscape around us, and also in our own thoughts. This is when we truly exercise free will, and escape from social conventions and being ruled by fear and inhibition. Spontaneity is thus a key to self-realisation. In modern society, according to Fromm, we can most readily observe this trait in truly creative people: ‘the artist can be defined as an individual who can express himself spontaneously’.11

  So what could we learn from artists and other highly creative types about unleashing our spontaneous selves? An initial thought might be that we should take inspiration from creative geniuses like Jackson Pollock, whose innovative method of splattering paint on the canvas with rapid flicks and drips embodied a spontaneous approach to artistic expression. Following his lead, we ought to take chances, break rules, and express ourselves freely on the canvas of our lives.

  The problem with this view, however, is that if you look closely at the life and work of most great artists – Jackson Pollock amongst them – you will find that their capacity for spontaneous expression has usually grown out of years of practice and honing their skills. It has been born from persistent effort and training in traditional techniques that serve as a rite of passage from which they can emerge with creative freedom. Take, for example, a celebrated photograph called ‘Picasso draws a centaur in the air’, one of the best-known depictions of spontaneity in twentieth-century art.

  It shows the bare-chested artist crouching behind what looks like the doodled form of a centaur, drawn with a single white line and seemingly floating in the air before him. The photo was taken in 1949 by Life magazine’s Gjon Mili when he visited Picasso, then in his late sixties, in the South of France. Mili convinced Picasso to conduct a fifteen-minute experiment: Picasso was given a ‘pen’ containing a small electric light, and then asked to use it to ‘sketch’ pictures in the air. Mili photographed the action in a darkened room using two cameras, keeping the shutters open to catch the light streaks swirling through space. Picasso was so thrilled with the experience of drawing with light that he did five sessions, swiftly making around thirty drawings of centaurs, bulls and Greek profiles. Each image was a spontaneous creation that vanished the moment he drew it. It was the ultimate in instantaneous, ephemeral art. Picasso was unable to see the forms he had created – which became known as his ‘light drawings’ – until after the photographs were developed.

  Now pause for a moment and consider a much more conventional work of art, a portrait titled The Old Fisherman, dated 1895. As the art critic John Berger has pointed out, it clearly displays advanced technical skill.12 The shining skin is extraordinarily realistic and the coarse shirt is perfectly rendered. The broad brush strokes help to juxtapose the light and shadow, giving a fleeting quality to the figure, as if his image has been photographically captured at a single instant of time. The fisherman looks down with a serious expression – we can practically see him thinking. In its subtle detail and specificity, the painting is reminiscent of works by Velázquez and other masters.

  Who painted the fisherman? Picasso – when he was just fourteen years old.

  Wander through an exhibition of Picasso’s later works – full of almost childlike sketches of doves, dachshunds and flowers – and you will invariably overhear someone exclaim, ‘My five-year-old could have done that!’ But could she have painted the fisherman? What those spectators cannot see is that Picasso had to pass through years of training and artistic practice to arrive at the moment when he could draw and paint with spontaneity and freedom, using just a few lines to bring a dove, a centaur or a sleeping woman to life. As an art student in Barcelona and Madrid, he took classes in classical academic draftsmanship, working with live models and plaster casts of Greek and Roman sculptures, giving him a foundation for his later experiments with the human form. Although chafing against formal instruction, he spent days roaming the Prado, studying the works of Velázquez, Goya and El Greco – all of whom had a major influence on his early style. He had to immerse himself in tradition and convention in order to break free from it. As the Picasso scholar Natasha Staller notes, Picasso became a ‘self-consciously radical artist’ who rejected his early academic education while at the same time remaining deeply influenced by it, in terms of ‘his technical virtuosity, his knowledge of fine materials, his belief in the importance of drawing and the utility of preparatory drawings, his fascination with geometry and perspective.’13

  The point is that Picasso was not born a miraculous unconventional artist filled with the fire of creative spontaneity. He had to become Picasso, and that took practice, application and education. He had to paint the fisherman before he could draw the centaur in the air forty-four years later.

  Spontaneity in art, then, can be understood as an emergent property of practice. We learn it, like any craft or skill. This may be even more obviously the case in music than in the visual arts. The primary musical form embodying spontaneity is improvisation – the creation of a musical work as it is being performed. Improvisation appears, to a greater or lesser extent, in virtually every musical culture, from the Western classical tradition and jazz to Middle Eastern and classical Indian music. It is not only a learned skill, but also rests on conventions or implicit rules. In other words, the freeform nature of improvised musicianship typically takes place within a well-defined structure.

  Amongst Western musicians, budding organists understand the challenges of learning improvisation. ‘You have to study the whole history of music,’ says Daniel Roth, organist at Saint-Sulpice in Paris, and ‘have a thorough knowledge of harmony and music theory even to be able to start.’14 Similarly, in the Karnatak music of southern India, where the skill of improvisation is highly revered, young musicians are taught the rules of improvising by practising a series of exercises to help them juxtapose rhythmic and melodic structures with the melodic grammar of a rāga. Amongst the formal rules is always to return to the point of departure. Such learned spontaneity is equally apparent in Iran, where improvisation techniques are based on memorising a repertoire of 250 to 300 short pieces known as the radif. Developing a true mastery of the radif – which may be sung or played on traditional Persian instruments such as the guitar-like tar – can take literally years of practice, so any part of it can be performed at any given moment.

  What about jazz? Most jazz styles – apart from tightly scored big bands – put improvisation at their core. But for all the spontaneity that one can hear in a jazz performance, there are tacit rules when it comes to improvising. The cornerstone is a collection of popular songs known as ‘Standards’, which provide not just the melodic material but also the chord changes, the underlying harmonic progressions over which musicians improvise. My partner, an accomplished jazz singer and saxophonist, has initiated me (an utterly unaccomplished musician) into the secret language of jazz improvisation. The band starts by playing the ‘head’ or melody together, then each musician takes a solo, improvising over the chord changes. Soloists sometimes ‘trade fours’ with each other, taking it in turns to play four-bar solos with a call and response that bounces off the other. Many jazz musicians develop a repertoire of favourite phrases or ‘licks’ – musical fragments that are woven into their improvisations. Saxophonist Charlie Parker had at least
100 licks up his sleeve that he would artfully work and rework into his solos. Improvisation at its best becomes an exchange between the musicians resembling a conversation, such as the almost comic back and forth between Charles Mingus’s double bass and Eric Dolphy’s bass clarinet in their 1960 recording ‘What Love’ (based on the popular tune ‘What Is This Thing Called Love’).

  When it comes to art and music, it is clear that spontaneity arises from practice and application – which is hardly what most people believe spontaneity is all about. We can think of it as ‘prepared spontaneity’.15 So too in life more generally we might think about applying the idea of prepared spontaneity. There are certain realms where it might be difficult: when it comes to big decisions like choosing a career or if we should have children, we have rarely had much opportunity to practice. But there are other areas where we may have developed particular skills, which lend themselves to expressing deeply learned spontaneity, whether it’s cooking a meal, throwing a pot or telling a story. When I play tennis, and instinctively and unexpectedly volley the ball cross court for a winner, my free and spontaneous action occurs within the strictures of the rules of the game, and it’s the fact that I have been practising and playing competitively for three decades that gives me the confidence and skill to occasionally wing it and do something unpredictable.