Beaming Into and Onto

I watched the Miles Davis doc made by PBS. reminding me why I chose the trumpet as a kid. Although it was In A Silent Way and Bitches Brew that forever changed the way I think about music when I was a teen, here in my 40s its his final burst of creativity in the 1980s that fascinates me.

After years of reclusion, he became somehow more humble and open about himself while draped in loud, garish, funky avant garde garments of the 80s haute couture. His paintings... reflecting a sort of wry sophisticated afro-funk post-modern primitivism, seem willfully and playfully naïve. Underneath, above, around and beyond all of it is the music - a sly lithe and airy approach to the modern synthesized sounds of the times. It might be so much projection onto the past, but he seemed unafraid to embrace the tepid, mauve-hued MIDI tonalities of the day to render musical flurries that are at turns tough, elusive and sublime. Under the pressure to live up to the caricature of himself as an "intense, dangerous and adventurous auteur", humbled by health problems, bursting out of a depression that lasted years....he becomes playfully funky, bemused and inspired by his new context.

All in all, an inspiring display of renewal and a return to the joy of growth into the unknown.

Anyway, here's some of my stupid music.