"JEROME KLINKOWITZ: [posing a question suggested by Carl Krampf] When you improvise, do you think of the chord changes or the melody? DONALD BARTHELME: Both. This is an interesting question which I’m unable to answer adequately. If the melody is the skeleton of the particular object, then the chord changes are its wardrobe, its changes of clothes. I tend to pay rather more attention to the latter than to the former. All I want is just a trace of skeleton—three bones from which the rest may be reasoned out."
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“Interview with Jerome Klinkowitz”, p. 200
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Not-Knowing%3A_The_Essays_and_Interviews_of_Donald_Barthelme
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Not-Knowing: The Essays and Interviews of Donald Barthelme
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