Improvisation and silence. Not long ago I had the luck to do an improvisatory performance with the poets Jackson Mac Low and Charles Bernstein.We performed Jackson's *Simultaneity*. As Jackson tried various suggestions in turning Charles and I to this performance of his piece- one suggestion struck me deeply: " Real silences!"

Perhaps the famed and mythical "silence" of the Freudian psychoanalysti is related to a wish to create an improvisatory atmosphere in which "free association" could occur unhampered by "directorial comments" and narrative expectation.
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