“Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.” – Miles Davis
The next time you want to chill out, I mean seriously relax and give your mind a break from the chaotic demands of life on earth, put Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue on your turntable, drop the stylus and then sit back and sip a fat cup of sweet coffee with cream… and close your eyes for the next 46 minutes. OK – you will have to turn the record over about halfway through. For those of you who aren’t audiophiles and don’t own turntables or records, use the tolerable digital alternative – iTunes or Spotify or even (gasp) YouTube. For added benefit to this anti-anxiety exercise, make believe it is 1959, when the record was recorded, and you live in an apartment in New York City, where it was recorded. And smart phones or MacBooks or Whole Foods or, for that matter, disco hasn’t even been invented yet. No one can text you or Facebook tag you or Snapchat you. In fact, if you don’t answer your black rotary phone, no one can leave you a voice message either. Imagine not being connected to anything other than the sounds of Davis’ silky trumpet, John Coltrane’s reedy saxophone, Bill Evans subtle piano – oh, and maybe the sounds of yellow Checker taxis honking down below outside your midtown fire escape windows.
There’s a reason this record is named the greatest jazz album of all time by many and one of the greatest records of the entire 20th century. It is the original. All others are mere followers. It was one of the first recordings that used “modal” music instead of standard chord progressions and melodies. The former allows improvisation indefinitely, the latter ends up repeating musical ideas with codas and repeats. Modes are like an abstract painting where your mind has to fill in the information that’s not there. It’s different than, say, a photograph. That is not to say one is better than the other, but each has its strengths. If you aren’t used to modes, they are an acquired taste. But for me, they’re more human, more suited to relaxing or creating or reading or planning or writing or…just about anything artistic or restful. As a matter of fact, Kind of Blue is playing while I type these thoughts. In a way, I’m resting while I create. Best of both worlds….ahhh.
Since I didn’t come along until the mid 1960’s, it might just be my mind playing some form of romantic, stylistic trick on me, similar to watching a black and white movie from the 50’s. I was never there so all of my information from that place is filtered and limited. If you actually lived in NYC in 1959, then you would have a realistic memory of it. And maybe it wasn’t that romantic or desirable. But I’ll never be able to ride a DeLorean to that time to see what was really there. But I can drop the needle on this record, sit in my favorite chair holding my freshly ground and pressed coffee, close my eyes, and be transported by means of sonic transcendence to someplace I could never be, or perhaps a place that never really existed. Escapism? Possibly. But rest in any form these days is coveted…and required.
learning2breathe 