Starting in the middle of a musical sentence and moving in both directions at once.
John ColtraneRead
In any situation that we find in our lives, when there is something that we feel should be better, we must exert effort to try and make it better. So it's the same socially, musically, politically in any department of our lives.
Interpretation
We should actively strive to improve situations in our lives across all aspects.
This quote by John Coltrane emphasizes the importance of taking initiative in improving our circumstances. It suggests that whether in personal, social, musical, or political contexts, we have a responsibility to make positive changes when we recognize the need for betterment.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal growth.
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'd like to point out to people the divine in a musical language that transcends words. I want to speak to their souls.
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.
In order to make a change, I have to exist in a traditionally homophobic space such as hip-hop. If I were to just be this queer rapper who only spoke to queer kids... I don't think I could as effectively make a change for another young, black, queer kid growing up in Texas.
If you feel that strongly about something, you have an obligation to try and change my mind.
I am running into a new year and the old years blow back like a wind that I catch in my hair like strong fingers like all my old promises and it will be hard to let go of what I said to myself about myself when I was sixteen and twenty-six and thirty-six but I am running into a new year and I beg what i love and I leave to forgive me.
Every one of us is called upon, perhaps many times, to start a new life. A frightening diagnosis, a marriage, a move, loss of a job...And onward full-tilt we go, pitched and wrecked and absurdly resolute, driven in spite of everything to make good on a new shore. To be hopeful, to embrace one possibility after another--that is surely the basic instinct...Crying out: High tide! Time to move out into the glorious debris. Time to take this life for what it is.
This is an industry rife with racism, sexism and homophobia. It is so closely woven into the fabric of the business that we have become snowblind to the glaring injustices happening every day.
The world is no longer against us.
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