Random Riffs
My Muse and Me: Getting to Know Her
July
22
2009
A few years ago a friend who repatriates British art saw this painting hanging on my living room wall. "That's 25, 000," she said. "What's 25,000?” I asked. "The Cooper cows," she replied. "25,000 dollars?” I croaked. "No, 25,000 pounds!" But when we looked more closely, where we expected to see Thomas Sydney Cooper’s signature, we saw, instead, “After Cooper” and the name of some unknown schmuck. Very likely a student − a talented imitator, mind you – but not the master himself. I later discovered that the “real” Cooper’s cows are hanging in London’s Tate Gallery. My cows continue to hang in my living room. They look mournful; but then cows do, don’t they? Surely it can’t be because they weren’t painted by Cooper. Or perhaps I’m projecting my disappointment. This Random Riff is about imitations and real things.
This is going to be one of those “ready-fire-aim” undertakings. I have something in mind − the “ready” part – but not much beyond that. I’ll begin by setting up this essay with the part on which I have a relatively firm grasp. As for the rest, a robust tentativeness would seem to be in order.
Unlike the talented copyist who raised then dashed my hopes when he turned out not to be Thomas Sydney Cooper, the gap between me and my idols – Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett, Ahmad Jamal, to name a few − is too great for me to bridge. (My good friend and great jazz pianist, Joe Sealy, put it well when he spoke at a tribute to Oscar and thanked him for setting the bar so high thereby making it possible for the rest of us to walk under it!) At a point in time, it occurred to me that while imitation would certainly be a significant technical achievement, it would be a limited artistic one. And the reason is simple: these guys are already taken! Oscar’s taken Oscar; Bill’s taken Bill; Keith’s taken Keith; Ahmad’s taken Ahmad. And each of their distinctive voices and artistic sensibilities has emerged out of a life-long relationship with his own muse. In a nutshell, they’re not available!
The jazz pianist Walter Bishop Jr. has this to say about imitation.
It all goes from imitation to assimilation to innovation. You move from the imitation stage to the assimilation stage when you take little bits of things from different people and weld them into an identifiable style – creating your own style. Once you’ve created your own sound and you have a good sense of the history of the music, then you think of where the music hasn’t gone and where it can go – and that’s innovation.
So I found myself imagining Oscar, Bill, Keith and Ahmad and their muses going through this imitation, assimilation, innovation thing together and it occurred to me that there are no shortcuts – you can’t stop at imitation. Paul Berliner, in “Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of improvisation”, talks about this.
Some view too close an imitation of the master as an ethical issue. Arthur Rames stopped trying to duplicate “exactly what other artists played” because he realized that “they were all playing out of their experiences, their lives – the things that happened to them.” Even though he could “relate in a general way to most of it” he decided that jazz performance is “too personal” to try to duplicate what other artists “were saying.”
So it occurs to me that the imitator is pissing off any number of muses by stealing the product of their work with their artists. So if I’m trying to imitate, say, Ahmad Jamal, I’m not going to get any help from his muse. I’m on my own and it’s why, perhaps, imitations are soulless. (Maybe that's why Cooper’s copyist’s cows look mournful – they’re soulless.) But, bottom line, the muse I’m really pissing off is my own – she’s on the sidelines with nothing to do. “Hey, Brian, what about me? I’ve got some ideas if you’d only listen. Forget those other guys – they’re already taken. But you’re available and so am I.”
And so that’s what I’ve been doing – developing a long-ignored relationship with my own muse. I have to tell you that this is no walk in the park – she’s one demanding woman! She’s putting musical ideas in my head that I can’t play. So I’m back to practicing scales and arpeggios. Basic stuff. But I’m motivated and applying myself to technique in a way that I never would have had the project been one of imitation. The driving force is from within and no longer from without. And that makes all the difference in the world. I can’t ever be Oscar or Bill or Keith or Ahmad, but I can be Brian.
So this experience gets me musing about leadership. Some time ago I saw an interview that Charlie Rose had with a senior business executive whose name I’ve forgotten. They were talking about leadership and the interviewee said that while he didn’t believe leadership could be taught, he did believe it could be learned. An interesting distinction I thought and one that resonated with the shift from without to within. Clearly teaching is “without” and learning is “within”. But I’m going to save talk of muses and leadership for the August Random Riff. Don’t want to get too ambitious - it is summertime after all.
Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer Those days of soda and pretzels and beer Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer Dust off the sun and moon and sing a song of cheer
