What I love about jazz is the improvisation, the fact that you never know what's going to happen next.
I wanted to look at the mentality that can breed that sort of intensity, that kind of cutthroat, pressure-cooker feeling, especially a form of music like jazz, that should be - or you'd think should be - all about liberation and improvisation and everything.
One interesting thing about jazz, or art in general, but jazz especially is such an individual art form in the sense that improvisation is such a big part of it, so it feels like it should be less soldiers in an army and more like free spirits melding. And yet, big band jazz has a real military side to it.
In some ways, jazz is the most precise of art forms and the loosest in the sense that it's all about improvisation, but the musicianship required is kind of insane. To actually play with real jazz musicians is a different level of musicianship that almost has no equal in any other form of music in the world.
I do try to keep my show very improvisational. I don't work off a set list; I like to keep it more in the moment. I like to have information about where I'm going, what might be happening in that particular region as well. I like for people to feel like the show is for them.
'Sicario' was a lot of improvisation.
Most of the parts are really gone over and over and over again with Tool. It's a very composed situation. We spend weeks if not months working on all those songs. There's not much room for improvisation.
My dishes tend to have a very carefree style: what's ripe at the farmers market or what's in my fridge, even if I'm cleaning out my fridge. It tends to be a very improvisational style. I major in salads, but a loose definition of salad; it can have a real robust skirt steak on top of it off the grill or quinoa or buckwheat or sprouted almond.
I've always been a spontaneous singer. And all the stuff that you hear on the end of the songs, what they call the ad libs - that just comes out of my head. That's not thought out at all. I have the verses and the choruses, and then after that it's total improvisation.
There are editing procedures for talks just as there are editing procedures in jazz improvisation.
