Some music is just imagined
This is an insight that has been repeated by artists, too. Pablo Picasso: “Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.” James Baldwin: “Perhaps the primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.” Bob Dylan: “To be creative you’ve got to be u... See more
Substack • Notes | Substack
Coltrane, on the other hand, “felt that his music could explicitly evoke and render something racial in its sound, just as he felt it could explicitly render something spiritual in its sound, both of which he felt would be obvious to a listener.”32
Leonard Brown • John Coltrane and Black America's Quest for Freedom: Spirituality and the Music
In this sense, Coltrane’s sound of freedom, his infamous quest for perfection and ceaseless search for the “right sound” is, I think, neither mysterious nor otherworldly—but rather it is, I believe, the actual work of making freedom, grounded in the routine and everyday practice of doing and living.