Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time

by Sheila Liming

As much as jamming is about improvisation, it also about education. My years of jamming with Tom and others like him have rested upon an invisible scaffold formed from listening and learning. The same, I want to argue, is true where hanging out is concerned: being with someone, or with a whole group of someones, and transforming that act of being into something that is worthwhile and meaningful, requires listening but also assiduous digestion—the thoughtful processing of whatever one has heard. That kind of digestion gets easier over time, through repeated exposure. The knowledge base that is fed from each successive instance grows more solid so that, after a while, improvisation feels like a more stable enterprise, less threatening and less risky. But all of this takes years. It cannot be forced into instant formation, over the course of a few interactions.

When I moved to North Dakota, away from my friend Tom and the whole old man jam band (who I still miss dearly), I didn’t leave them behind. I took them with me in the form of knowledge and song. Two thousand miles later, I took to jamming with a young man named Michael, a student of mine with a devastating gift for all things string-related. Now he plays with a big-time Chicago-based bluegrass outfit, through which, though he likely doesn’t know it, he is continuing to scatter little bits of my old friends’ influences. The point is that the jam, unlike the performance, lives on, even when it leaves our hands, and even when we no longer find ourselves able to be a part of it.

Because we live on opposite coasts, I only get to see her about once a year and so, when I do, I try to let it happen under her terms. I don’t care if that means running errands with her, or sitting by her side in a doctor’s waiting room because one kid has an earache. The goal, for me, is simply to settle in and occupy whatever opportunities may present themselves. This requires making myself as flexible as possible and, to the best of my ability, muting any and all expectations. I find that if I do this, then I am rewarded with an opportunity of the rarest kind: the chance to see my friend exactly as she is now, her world, and her life, which is the truest form of intimacy I can conceive of.