Argentinian Writer Cesar Aira on Improvisation and All That Jazz

Cesar Aira has developed a unique style that is improvisational.  He's written about 100 novels (many have been translated into English), and each is about 100 pages. He doesn't edit his work, but he has honed his style and structure. Further, he puts into a story whatever event happens (or whatever character appears) on the sidewalk outside the Buenos Aires coffee shop where he does his writing!  One of his great stories is titled "Cecil Taylor." This story is published in Aira's book of short fiction, Musical Brain published by New Directions Press.  This story defies categories. It begins with a vivid scene on a New York City street, seemingly fiction, and then quickly enters an essayistic passage that meditates on music, biography, and composition which leads to an example, the biographical details of the avant-garde musician Cecil Taylor.  You can read it here: https://bombmagazine.org/articles/cecil-taylor/

The story is about Taylor trying to launch his career in New York City (later, his career skyrocketed). When it came to composing, Taylor was totally improvisational.  He was outspoken and fascinated by and borrowed dance forms and architectural forms as he created music. This story is also about how hard it was for Cecil Taylor to reach a point where his - very original -- music was not rejected. It took awhile for his sound to be accepted by others, and then he was considered a genius. Taylor's story is one of success, but it is success only after a series of extreme and painful rejections in a many jazz clubs and performances.  He changed music, and at first, people did not understand it. They didn't think he was doing music at all. They thought he was a joke. It was not a joke at all.  One of his albums was titled, Unit Structures.  He designed a unit of sound which served as a basis for improvisation for himself and members of his band.  In this interview, he said: "Improvisation is the ability to talk to oneself."  http://miyamasaoka.com/writings-by-miya-masaoka/2000/innovation-improvisation-an-interview-with-cecil-taylor/

Aira has a unique voice like nobody else. His material seems to be generated by the musings of his mind and chance occurrences. Nobody could imitate him. He is a lesson in self-confidence and the amplification of his writing voice. I have taken a quote from the story "Cecil Taylor" and arranged it into line breaks. 

…what counts in literature is detail,

atmosphere, and the right balance between the two. 

The exact detail, which makes things visible, 

and an evocative, overall atmosphere, 

without which the details would be a disjointed inventory. 

Atmosphere 

allows the author to work with forces 

freed of function, and with movements 

in a space that is independent of location, a space 

that finally abolishes the difference 

between the writer and the written: 

the great manifold tunnel in broad daylight ... 

Atmosphere is the three-dimensional 

condition of regionalism, and the medium of music. 

The line breaks allowed me to slow down my reading of it and appreciate what he is saying. So often while teaching poetry, we focus on "details, details, details."  This passage takes a larger perspective. Details create something larger, which Aira calls the atmosphere. I think of this as "the world of the story."  Many writers and readers might not like Cesar Aira's style nor the music of Cecil Taylor, however, both offer original insights into the process of composing and both honor and amplify their own unique voice, and that's a lesson worth learning.