JUST WING IT
The ability to improvise may not be a genetic trait, but it is most certainly amongst man’s most treasured possessions. From pick-up basketball to cougar hunting, from poker to pornography, a man’s best move is often the one he’s just come up with, making improvisation the handiest thing since Saran Wrap, which I have no doubt was improvised by some American G.I. looking to keep his dinner warm during an air raid.
Improvisation, it would follow, is the adopted mother of invention, and the patron saint of men in need. Because when you need something, you never have it, and improvisation is often the only thing that separates the men from the AAA members.
Ignobly, improvisation is often attached to the idea of being unprepared, of failing to do something at “the proper time” and therefore “winging it” at the last moment. This is entirely true. But for anyone who has ever made something up at the last moment and got away with it, preparation seems like busywork. How much more badass is it to ace the final on an improvised essay on John Locke and the Enlightenment, rather than be tediously prepared and earn the same mark? Nine times out of 10, you fail the shit out of that final and earn “see me” comments on the improvised essay. But that 10th time, when the grader is either on drugs, hung-over, indifferent, or — gasp — possibly convinced by your improvised essay, you are the man.
Enter Angus MacGyver, the legendary television hero who made a career out of improvising ways to thwart terrorist cells and unpatriotic Americans. The man was so good at improvising, often with laughably outrageous items, that today “MacGyver” is popular slang for “jury-rigging” a solution to a problem out of unlikely parts and procedure. A “MacGyverism” by extension, is the noun for a MacGyver-ed, improvised solution.
This noble, fictional Scottish-American, and his famous improvisational antics only prove my point; improvisation is so cherished that great practitioners are considered borderline folk heroes.
And Angus MacGyver is not alone. Amongst the ranks of man’s best impromtuers are Han Solo, the Rat Protagonist from “Ratatouille,” Gandalf, Winston Churchill, Miles Davis and the entirety of American jazz, Neo, Jesus, Ash Ketchum, Tom Brady, Michael Jordan, and the cast of “60 Minutes.” What would music be like without improvisation? What would sports be like without improvisation? What would life be like without improvisation? The possibilities are too listless and mundane to even consider.
In high school, I once faked a report on Babylonian math from start to finish. I knew nothingwhatsoever about the subject, but explained to my math teacher that I had prepared extensively for my presentation, exhausting the supplies of our school library and taxing even the manuscripts of top historians in the field to complete my comprehensive survey of the field. I worked under some basic rules to control my improv: don’t make up too much too fast, look down often at the papers I had brought with me — which were, incidentally, the lyrics to “Paint It Black” — and stumble from time to time, acting intentionally distracted so as to seem like I was nervous about presenting. It worked. The guy bought everything from the origins of math as a way to count sheep (which still seems vaguely legitimate) to the fact that the Babylonian number 100 was a crescent moon with a crown over it, because it was “the king’s number.”
“Thank you,” said the teacher at the end of the presentation, “thank you for taking me back to my college days when we studied this stuff. I remember it all so clearly.”
I guess I wasn’t the only one making things up.
Zachary McCune just made up this column. How meta is that?
Improvisation, it would follow, is the adopted mother of invention, and the patron saint of men in need. Because when you need something, you never have it, and improvisation is often the only thing that separates the men from the AAA members.
Ignobly, improvisation is often attached to the idea of being unprepared, of failing to do something at “the proper time” and therefore “winging it” at the last moment. This is entirely true. But for anyone who has ever made something up at the last moment and got away with it, preparation seems like busywork. How much more badass is it to ace the final on an improvised essay on John Locke and the Enlightenment, rather than be tediously prepared and earn the same mark? Nine times out of 10, you fail the shit out of that final and earn “see me” comments on the improvised essay. But that 10th time, when the grader is either on drugs, hung-over, indifferent, or — gasp — possibly convinced by your improvised essay, you are the man.
Enter Angus MacGyver, the legendary television hero who made a career out of improvising ways to thwart terrorist cells and unpatriotic Americans. The man was so good at improvising, often with laughably outrageous items, that today “MacGyver” is popular slang for “jury-rigging” a solution to a problem out of unlikely parts and procedure. A “MacGyverism” by extension, is the noun for a MacGyver-ed, improvised solution.
This noble, fictional Scottish-American, and his famous improvisational antics only prove my point; improvisation is so cherished that great practitioners are considered borderline folk heroes.
And Angus MacGyver is not alone. Amongst the ranks of man’s best impromtuers are Han Solo, the Rat Protagonist from “Ratatouille,” Gandalf, Winston Churchill, Miles Davis and the entirety of American jazz, Neo, Jesus, Ash Ketchum, Tom Brady, Michael Jordan, and the cast of “60 Minutes.” What would music be like without improvisation? What would sports be like without improvisation? What would life be like without improvisation? The possibilities are too listless and mundane to even consider.
In high school, I once faked a report on Babylonian math from start to finish. I knew nothingwhatsoever about the subject, but explained to my math teacher that I had prepared extensively for my presentation, exhausting the supplies of our school library and taxing even the manuscripts of top historians in the field to complete my comprehensive survey of the field. I worked under some basic rules to control my improv: don’t make up too much too fast, look down often at the papers I had brought with me — which were, incidentally, the lyrics to “Paint It Black” — and stumble from time to time, acting intentionally distracted so as to seem like I was nervous about presenting. It worked. The guy bought everything from the origins of math as a way to count sheep (which still seems vaguely legitimate) to the fact that the Babylonian number 100 was a crescent moon with a crown over it, because it was “the king’s number.”
“Thank you,” said the teacher at the end of the presentation, “thank you for taking me back to my college days when we studied this stuff. I remember it all so clearly.”
I guess I wasn’t the only one making things up.
Zachary McCune just made up this column. How meta is that?
posted by Zack McCune at
8:09 PM
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