Ornette Coleman Freely Espousing
Speaking of hearing and singing, James Schuyler’s poetic description of listening to the song of a cardinal perfectly captures my experience of listening to jazz, which I neither “know” as a musician nor a music critic–I’m the least musically inclined person I know. I started listening to jazz more frequently in the past couple of years as an aide to writing. I have a hard time writing in silence, but can’t write with vocal music either. “Simple and right from the heart to the heart…from the throat to the ear” is how I listen to Ornette Coleman, for instance, freely espousing through fog and mist, a song at the edge of sound’s grammar.