Coltrane

Listening to John Coltrane’s last music—tapes found a couple of months ago in the basement of a home in Seattle—it’s almost as if I don’t deserve to hear it. I know it’s not meant that way, but that’s the way I often feel when I listen to Coltrane; that it’s a profound gift and I can hear all the giving in it but it sometimes sounds much too powerful to receive.

Listening to Coltrane, at some point I’m able to hear that there are two types of artists: the ones who imitate art, and the ones who imitate life.

Listening to late Coltrane I know that my heart’s good but that I just haven’t discovered all of it; there’s a lot more to be found there.

Excerpt from Antoine’s Alphabet: Watteau and His World, a book by Jed Perl, Vintage Books, 2008.