Wednesday, May 04, 2005

Impressions explanation

As one can see, my aim with this project was to translate my impressions of Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” and emotions from it onto paper. I listened to the tracks once through and then wrote my first take on it in my journal. I then realized the album’s potential as an in-depth writing assignment, so I listened to it again, recording the words and thoughts that came to mind. I decided to have no filter – like the recording, the process was a one-run ordeal where I just wrote words and phrases that felt and images that I saw. Obviously, parts of speech and proper form didn’t matter.

Finally, it’s important to note that I wrote this before reading Ashley Kahn’s A Love Supreme, which provides a comprehensive analysis of the song and its making.

Thus, as my journal entry shows, my interpretation of Coltrane’s work was different from his intent. Knowing the title, I thought the four parts of “A Love Supreme” were symbolic of four stages of love – the acknowledgement that one loves someone, the resolution to act on those feelings, the pursuit of the love, and the psalm that comes afterward. However, I felt my own interpretation broke down at the last song because the title didn’t really make sense and the entire mood of the song wasn’t the happy-go-lucky feel that defines new couples. In my journal entry, I wrote that it could possibly represent a break-up or divorce, but deep down I felt this wasn’t completely right either.

Oddly enough, my first-instinct writing exercise above turned out to hold the clue to what Coltrane meant by his album. Coltrane, of course, dedicates the album to God, and “A Love Supreme” refers to his love for the Almighty. After reading the book, I went back and looked over what I wrote for “Psalm.” Without realizing the deeper meaning, I had already attributed words such as “heavenly,” “auspicious,” and “mystical” to the piece. I found this very interesting because my rational guess as to what Coltrane was trying to convey with his album was wrong but my natural reaction when listening to it was fairly close to his intent.

Seeing this caused me to start wondering about the nature of art and artist’s intent. In almost all forms of art, the artist and the viewer (or listener) of the art are removed. Though an author may intended to convey a certain theme in his book, a reader may come to an entirely different conclusion of the book’s meaning after reading it. This naturally leads to the question – who is right, the author or the reader? Because that is an age-old question that has no solid answer, I will attempt to apply the question to Coltrane’s work specifically rather than address it as a whole. In this case, I would have been left with my different interpretation had I not read the book. However, my linking the song to the divine hints that maybe Coltrane so skillfully conveyed his intent through his work that his interpretation of the song is nearly universal. Though I am only basing this on the exercise above, I honestly think the song has a divine aspect that is probably apparent to most people who listen to it. Because it was unfiltered and completely spontaneous, writing whatever came to my mind was a unique and interesting way to explore artist’s intent, and I feel it worked well in this case.

A Love Supreme- impressions

Mystical. Anticipating. (0:30) Familiar. Repeating. Growing. (1:05- Sax solo) Melodic. Calm. Sunny day. Jumpy but rhythmic. Clear. Resonant. Smooth. Purposeful. Repeating but different. Blowing wind. Peace. Acceptance. Brief strife. (4:55) Return. Melody. Predictable yet changing. Experiments. (6:08) Chanting. Repetitive. Trance. Hypnotized. (6:43) Return to simplicity. Hushed excitement. Fading. (7:25) Slowing. Thoughtful. Acknowledgement.

Still Thoughtful. (0:21) Explosion. Rhythm. Singing. Repeating. Thinking. (1:52- piano solo) Delicate. Light. Floating. Clouds. Flying. Sky. Clear. Melodic. Dance. Building. Chords. (4:00- sax) Earth. Ground. Grass. Walking. Admiring. People. Carefree. Different. Habit. Everyday. (7:05) Fading. Resolution.

Explosion. Pulsing. Rapid. Avalanche. Chase. Flood. (1:30) Respite. Running through a busy city. Obstacles. Rhythmic. Comfort despite uncertainty. Slowing. (4:19) White-water. Crescendo. Bursting. Alive. Fast. Crazy. Random yet methodical. Morphing. (7:12) Slowing. Denouncement. Change. Turn-around. (7:50- bass solo) Thoughtful. Delicate. Plodding. Tranquil. Contrast. Drawn-out. Introspective. Pursuance.

Tempest. Omen. Auspicious. Love. Peaceful. (1:45) Heavenly. Swelling and Receding. Clear. Meditative. Singular. Message. (4:00) Steady. Unchanging. Floating. Mystical. Poetic. True. Calm. Sun. Grand. (6:30) Beauty. Freedom. Truth. Psalm.

A Love Supreme.

Jazz experiment

Jazz originated in the inner city with Harlem hosting the first major jazz club, Minton’s. As a direct result, those around the music faced many of the same problems that those around hip-hop, for example, face today: drugs, poverty, and violence. In the 40’s and 50’s, drugs were a part of jazz partially because drugs were in the environment where jazz thrived, which is probably why early artists got into them in the first place. After that, a vicious cycle took over – jazz was trapped in a drug-infested area, the inner city, and drugs became a form of validation for artists.

Jazz is one of the most complicated genres in music because it flies in the face of all that classical music theory preaches. Gone are the well-tuned chords and perfect harmonies of the piano. In “Little Rootie Tootie,” Monk plays clashing chords throughout the song, a sin no classical piano player would ever commit. Thus, my conjecture is that the drugs were, and possibly still are, a tool to compose and comprehend jazz. In particular, marijuana is known to alter perception in general and can affect how an artist feels the musical space of a certain song. When listening to jazz, I often wonder how anyone has the mental capacity to arrange jazz pieces. Rock stars, r&b artists, and classical composers have a set of rules (chord progression, music theory, etc.) that they follow to make their music, but jazz doesn’t have any of that. Furthermore, pieces that are improvised are more difficult still to play – the average musician would have a very hard time playing a piece well spontaneously.

To see if my hypothesis held any truth at all, I decided to set up an experiment and test it. I got some friends together and explained my paper and problem to them. They agreed to help me test my hypothesis, that marijuana aids the understanding of and creativity within a musical space. We picked songs of various genres to increase the scope of our experiment. The songs picked were Comfortably Numb (Pink Floyd), Going to Califronia (Led Zeplin), Because (The Beatles), Blueberry Yum Yum (Ludacris), Higher (Twista), and Yeah (Lil’ John). I purposely left a jazz song off the list because I wanted the songs to be ones that everyone was familiar with. The songs were all listened to first once through and then again under the influence of marijuana. The results were clear – marijuana definitely influenced the way the music was perceived.

The most overwhelming feeling was that I was inside the music. The first time through, I felt that we were hearing the music and could pick it apart, but the music was definitely more distant. The second time through was completely different – though it sounds cheesy, I actually felt at one with the music. I could focus in on individual components of the songs and drown out all the other parts instantly. The time of the music also seemed slowed down, making analysis of the songs easier. Furthermore, I attached symbols and meaning to different aspects of the songs much quicker than I normally would have done. Different instruments and sounds seemed louder and oddly distorted but in an audibly pleasing way. From an artist’s standpoint, it would be much easier to immerse oneself in the music and spontaneously harmonize with other instruments after smoking marijuana, provided the loss in dexterity due to it is not too much.

Thus, I concluded that my hypothesis was at least partially correct. Marijuana definitely has the capacity to increase musical creativity. Even if artists didn’t do it while they played, it could possibly have assisted them in composing material. It possibly taps into an unconscious part of the brain that allows the senses, hearing in particular, to be manipulated and sharpened while simultaneously freeing one from standard societal confines. Jazz, a genre nonconformist in nature, would be a prime example of an expansion in musical creativity due to marijuana.