Starting in the middle of a musical sentence and moving in both directions at once.
John ColtraneRead
I'd like to point out to people the divine in a musical language that transcends words. I want to speak to their souls.
Interpretation
Coltrane expresses the power of music to communicate profound emotions and connect with the inner selves of listeners.
In this quote, John Coltrane emphasizes the transcendental nature of music, suggesting that it serves as a language capable of expressing the divine and reaching beyond mere words. He aims to use music as a means to connect with people on a spiritual level, appealing to their souls and evoking deep emotional responses.
In practice
In a speech at a music festival emphasizing the importance of creativity.
Starting in the middle of a musical sentence and moving in both directions at once.
When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people.
I start from one point and go as far as possible. But, unfortunately, I never lose my way. I 'localize,' which is to say that I think always in a given space. I rarely think of the whole of a solo, and only very briefly. I always return to the small part of the solo that I was in the process of playing.
In the year of 1957, I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening, which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life.
Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music for the first time, as if I had never heard it before.
My goal is to live the truly religious life, and express it in my music. If you live it, when you play there's no problem because the music is part of the whole thing. To be a musician is really something. It goes very, very deep. My music is the spiritual expression of what I am - my faith, my knowledge, my being.
Some may find them merely diverting melodies. Others may find them incitements to Red revolution. And who will say if either or both is wrong? Not I.
There is nothing harder to estimate than a writer's time, nothing harder to keep track of. There are moments—moments of sustained creation—when his time is fairly valuable; and there are hours and hours when a writer's time isn't worth the paper he is not writing anything on.
San Francisco itself is art, above all literary art. Every block is a short story, every hill a novel. Every home a poem, every dweller within immortal. That is the whole truth.
There is something about giving everything to your profession. In Italian, an obsession is not necessarily negative. It's the art of putting all your energy into one thing; it's the art of transforming even what you eat for lunch into architecture.
For me, music and life are all about style.
If all your life means to you is water running over rocks, then photograph it, but I want to create something that would not have existed without me.
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