Sublime

On most mornings I’m nudged out of sleep at 5:00 am by the strains of Miles Davis’ “Freddie Freeloader” or one of Bach’s solo cello pieces.

When someone finally got around to asking Sun Ra if he was part of the underground, he declared that he was in the sub-underground.

doing the Japanese and I the English, with background improvisations by Vincent Delgado on the koto and shakuhachi.

Chanting, flute or drum playing, and dancing in demilitarized patterns are ideally natural forms of yoga-meditation, because they silence the hypnotic chattering of thought and give one a direct feeling of shabda—the basic energy or vibration of the universe. This is why Gregorian chant, for example, gives the sense of eternity so absent from meter

Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun or Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet.

Wilson proposed that a booklet of Sonny’s notes be included with the record—a very unusual practice then or now, as musicians are seldom trusted to explain their own work—and he took full advantage of it, filling it with his poetry and various musings. Yet when Sonny suggested the notes be titled “Preparation for Outer Space,” Wilson thought he was