Miles Davis Breaks for a Smoke

This chapter will be about pausing—it will focus mostly on waiting in performance and how this strategy can benefit the performance, and how as well it can benefit an audience’s experience of the performance—and how the power of the pausing can engender pleasure in the listeners. Pausing looks to the resumption of activity and is a period of waiting that takes place within, and sometimes at the beginning of some longer activity. This sort of pausing is also characterized by anticipation. That’s something the performer may feel, but it’s something that the audience seem to feel just as much, sometimes even more. This sort of a pause is a very exciting experience for the listener and the viewer, in music, in speaking, and in art.