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Surrendering to The Now. Improvisation and an embodied approach to serendipity

In this paper I want to call attention to an embodied perspective and the ability to practice serendipity. I draw on Classical Pragmatist philosophy to offer insights for understanding serendipity in immediate experience and its significance for inquiry. In particular, John Dewey’s view of aesthetic experience offers a starting point for developing an articulation of the embodied relation to inquiry from an artistic approach. Dewey proposed that being deeply engaged in inquiry requires not only acting in controlled ways upon the world but also undergoing or surrendering to experience. I use his view of surrender to characterize a receptive yet active state of awareness open to stimuli and the imaginative sensing of possibilities, new perceptions, and new meanings. To illustrate the subject, I draw on my training with movement improvisation and the approach of Surrendering to The Now.