Improvisation and the Quantum of Consciousness

Inside the brain’s secret portal to remembering the future.

Few things in life are more vivifying than a shimmering reminder that we can still surprise ourselves — those rare moments when the urn of the self cracks and out pours something more fully alive: truer than any narrative, more authentic than any performative personhood, unfettered from identity and expectation and all the other scripts we live by.

It is both thrilling and terrifying to be so reminded that we know ourselves only incom...