One night in the studio, you forced me to improvise. I don't want to. I don't believe I can; even the idea hurts. But you are convinced it is the truest thing I could do, and have never done. I sense you are no longer talking about my music. For a moment, I believe you are talking about me.

My art is the architecture of my soul, built on calculation and foresight, because that is how I learned not to be wounded by life's cruelties. If I were to improvise, I would be defenseless against everything out there, and perhaps against what is inside me. It would turn the rules of my world upside down.

I improvise.

From the ground, it might look like nothing. But from up here, everything that can happen, and even what cannot, is being unleashed.

Before this night, my art did not only reject improvisation; it repudiated me, my cracks, my flaws. And you, with this free impulse, have made me feel loved and taught me to love myself. It has made me fall in love with you for the first time, and with art forever.

Perhaps that is why I ended up in Berlin, the blind alley where every lost soul eventually arrives. My demons were adrift in a psyche fragile to the bone. It still is, and always will be. Thank God.

Yesterday you swore you would tear me from my chrysalis. You won. On a night without chains, in the studio, I reached the summit and breathed the free wind, and I know that I can no longer undertake my descent. Now that I have lived it to the fullest, I will annihilate all compromise and diplomacy that make my freedom bleed.

Now, I am an artist.