It's why people like Jazz and why deadheads will never stop going to dead shows, it's why there will always be an audience for a live show and maybe even why memories are important at all.

I'm always bitterly disappointed when I go to a show and the band just plays the studio version down to the exact second. I came to the show because I wanted something different from what I knew, I want something that will only be here tonight and that can't be redone at any other venue ever again.

There's no such thing as perfect and if there was wouldn't you get bored? If a master musician composes the most beautiful piece ever and proceeds to play it perfectly at every successive concert for the rest of his career how would you feel about it? Certainly it will forever hold some sort of magic from when it was written and even every time it's played, but can't it be performed one night with just a little more sense of longing and then won't it be beautiful in an altogether different way?

Improvisation is born from the moment and moments can never be completely captured.

I can't speak as a musician, but as a listener I just want to close my eyes and nod and lull along to the waves of the moment. I don't want to think about preservation because then I'm not feeling what's going on at all. When it comes to music thinking should come after.
And if a musician finishes a piece and there is a pang of regret at it's now deceased tangibility then he knows he was successful. Don't the most beautiful things often seem a little sad in your memory? It's because they're already gone and it's the memory that has made them perfect.

That cliché about all art being born from death. If there wasn't a sense of loss what would we cherish at all?

It also depends on what you want from improvisation. Are you trying to compose a piece or to cultivate your ability to merge with the music? In other words, is the important thing for you in this moment the piece of music produced, or the act of improvising?

They're different talents, and different moments, and at any given point one can't be committed to both, as you've beautifully said. So there is the matter of alternating one's practice. When you are walking through the woods with a divining rod in search of water -- if you are thirsty, the moment the rod begins to tremble you set it down and begin to dig. But if you are practicing your skills as a diviner, then you give yourself over to the trembling, you walk a bit further to see what your fingers will discover now...

One needs both sensitivity in life, and water.

This is a beautiful subject.  I'm reminded of the mythological dragon who hoards treasure and virgins that he himself cannot make use of.  Sometimes there's a hard edge to 'keeping' something.

Sometimes you just have to let it bathe you in beauty...or in horror...and then move on and see what grows from that.  Or guide what grows from that.

I'm happy to be in this room with you fine ladies.