Coltrane
notes, learned a lot about the man.. I'd like to share my quotables from
the book.
*Q: what happens if you publish on your blog words from a book w/o
permission?
*A: I don't give a damn.
I present to you, me. Things that define me, I can relate to & what
touched different parts of me. [You can go cop the book too, if you
want. Or not. :-P Enjoy.]
".. individual expression: honor the past while being yourself. If a
genuinely individual expression comes inside a familiar sounding
package, that shouldn't reduce its value." (xv, xvi)
".. making connections between bodies of knowledge that might seem
unrelated." (25)
".. music as sound, and sound as truth emerging from the depths of one's
being.... how deeply music alters the consciousness of those in earshot
of it." (62)
"When Coltrane was really excited about something, he studied it, got
involved, and tried not to think that he had mastered it to the point of
drawing concrete conclusions. It seemed to help him to feel that he
hadn't quite figured it out yet. He lived with negative capability: he
sat on things, mulled them over, got closer to them by trial and error."
(63, 64)
"I start from one point and go as far as possible. But, unfortunately, I
never lose my way. I say unfortunately, because what would interest me
greatly is to discover paths that I'm perhaps not aware of." (65)
".. he records, also, beyond pain or pleasure, the extreme transitions
of the isolated, far driven soul, the soul which is now alone, without
real human contact." (102, 103)
"I don't care what a cat plays. If you're into music, there'll be
something you hear (in that musician) that you might like. One note, one
sound, that you might like." (107)
"I would like to be a saint." (109)
".. the popular vision of Coltrane is that he seemed to ask you,
repeatedly, to alter your life.... Love of God had emboldened him toward
a position of silence about music and about politics." (118)
"In jazz, experience is everything." (134)
"I suppose this is too apocalyptic to put it this way, but..having to
murder evil..you may murder all the good with it if it gets desperate
enough to struggle.... maybe what is extreme and perhaps unique about
America is that for the artist his existence becomes his art, he's
reborn into it and he hardly exists without it.... Art is always done
with both your hands in America. The artist finds new life in it and
almost sheds his other life." (139)
".. art exists so that you can change your consciousness in its
presence.... ..the best black art is crucially different.... It is..
related to daily life, to culture, to public self definition, and to
self realization, with regard to resisting racism." (160)
"The music is in effect telling us about a future existence in which
love and cooperation have replaced strife and oppression. Once we have
achieved a glimpse of that future state, our present mode of life
becomes increasingly tolerable: who could be satisfied with prison after
having breathed the sweet air of true freedom?.... Resistance or
intolerance toward this music is a kind of sclerosis, to open oneself to
it is to admit honesty and greater feeling.... the will to understand is
just more sclerosis." (171)
"If it's truly good and powerful, it deserves to engender a thousand
misunderstandings.... .. life doesn't add up for the living." (174)
"The point seemed to be that phrasing, basically, is breath, and breath
is unending, until the body gives out." (183)
".. someone who has a clear modernist agenda, who discarded "the past"
and rode blindfolded into "the future".... if it were any good it would
speak for itself." (202)
".. Liberator of the spirit from the shackles of form.... Coltrane as a
man prepared to live by his convictions, and one who made a gigantically
strong art while remaining personally humble." (203)
"And you'd better not fall too deeply unto Coltrane if you want to be
yourself." (204)
"Kozmigroov," says the definition at www.freeform.org, "is a
transgressive improvisational music which combines elements of
psychedelia, spirituality, jazz, rock, soul, funk, and African, Latin,
Brazilian, Indian and Asian influences culminating into an all
encompassing cosmic groove.... But the limitation of kozmigroov is that
it is ultimately a record collecter pursuit: it reflexively points
toward the 1960s and early seventies, where there were a creditable
number of people who believed that music was capable of broadening and
altering Western consciousness toward more empathetic and peaceful ends.
(Such people form a tiny minority now.)" (205, 206)
