Sticking this here because I may be referring to it multiple times, and the full quote is a bit wordy.

In an interview in 1984, Frank Zappa responded to a question in a way that fits all of this very well:

“Well, I’m specialized. What I do on a guitar has very little to do with what other people do on a guitar. Most of the other guitar solos that you hear performed on stage have been practiced over and over and over again. they go out there and they play the same one every night and it’s really, just, spotless.

My theory is this – I have a basic mechanical knowledge of the operation of the instrument and I got an imagination. and when the time comes up in the song to play a solo, it’s me against the laws of nature. I don’t know what I’m going to play, I don’t know what I’m going to do, I know roughly how long I have to do it, and it’s a game where you have a piece of time and you get to decorate it and, depending on how intuitive the rhythm section is that’s backing you up, you can do things that are literally impossible to imagine – sitting here – but you can see them performed before your very eyes in a live performance situation…”

We are all just decorating time. Some do the same things over and over – some don’t.