Past/experience future/math

There are 2 ways to approach flow-like thinking.

(1) Past/experience/feeling or (2) Future/rationality/math

When you’re improvising music – how do you figure out what the next note is? How do you know what the best next thing to say is? What the next best improvised dance move is?

(1) One way to think about it is – well, I know this is how it will sound like, and here’s the sound I want. How do I know? Based on my experience, on the past. You compress experience into a feeling, and act on that feeling.

(2) Another way to think about it is – I think this will work well, even though I don’t have experience with this exact transition, because of my understanding of how things work in general. That’s a rational/mathematical thought process.

(1) leads to expectations
(2) leads to predictions

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