Your loves, as mine unto you.

CV of Failures

I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart; I am, I am, I am.

Somehow

There is a Japanese visual art in which the artist is forced to be spontaneous. He must paint on a thin stretched parchment with a special brush and black water paint in such a way that an unnatural or interrupted stroke will destroy the line or break through the parchment. Erasures or changes are impossible. These artists must practice a particular discipline, that of allowing the idea to express itself in communication with their hands in such a direct way that deliberation cannot interfere. The resulting pictures lack the complex composition and textures of ordinary painting, but it is said that those who see well find something captured that escapes explanation. This conviction that direct deed is the most meaningful reflections, I believe, has prompted the evolution of the extremely severe and unique disciplines of the jazz or improvising musician.Group improvisation is a further challenge. Aside from the weighty technical problem of collective coherent thinking, there is the very human, even social need for sympathy from all members to bend for the common result. This most difficult problem, I think, is beautifully met and solved on this recording. As the painter needs his framework of parchment, the improvising musical group needs its framework in time. Miles Davis presents here frameworks which are exquisite in their simplicity and yet contain all that is necessary to stimulate performance with sure reference to the primary conception. Miles conceived these settings only hours before the recording dates and arrived with sketches which indicated to the group what was to be played. Therefore, you will hear something close to pure spontaneity in these performances. The group had never played these pieces prior to the recordings and I think without exception the first complete performance of each was a "take."

Tubing immediately exposes the hypocrisy of other water sports: Traditional boating, from a tube, looks like an artificial, intrusive, arrogant, faux-refreshing extension of the landlocked ego; boaters use the river as a fluid blacktop, another surface to conquer with the aid of a motor. (I shouldn’t even have to mention the blasphemous walk-on-water hubris of skiers.) Tubing, on the other hand, is fluvial Buddhism: It asks you to submit humbly to the river, to meet it on its own terms and have a long talk with it in its native language, rather than just flitting around on top of it. There are no tricks or stunts. You don’t visit, you merge.  It is your motor. Aside from a tube, the only equipment you need is spiritual: respect for the river, an instinct for meditation, and a high regard for inaction.