Forgiveness for Miles

Back in New York, I taught a writing class for undergraduate music majors at my university. Most of them were jazz players who had come to New York, as artists in all disciplines do, from far and wide. They were full of ambition, and dreamt of making lives as musicians in the city that calls to jazz players like Mecca calls to Muslims; New York is, after all, the storied Jazz City whose legendary players, clubs, and myths are no less mystical than those of the cosmology of that other city. (It is even harder, unfortunately, to make a living in jazz than it is in classical music; all my students worked "bread gigs" in addition to playing in clubs and attending college full-time.)

I tried to tailor my teaching I gave to the needs and interests of this special set of students. For instance, when teaching about footnotes and citations, I told my class that, during the time he was married to actress Cicely Tyson, Miles Davis was reputed to have abused her physically. I offered this rumor as an example of something for which a writer would need to cite solid sources, lest he commit a gross breach of ethics, or even an act of slander; for rumor, as tempting as it is to believe, is not fact.

In actual fact, I had first heard this unfortunate rumor from an old boyfriend, a jazz musician who knew someone who knew Miles (always the way, of course). I have no idea if it's true, though everyone knows that Miles Davis was not a nice man. And so I was moved and delighted today to read the following poem, by Philip Bryant, on The Writer's Almanac; it's called "Miles: Prince of Darkness."

I remember my father's stories
about him being cold, fitful,
reproachful, surly, rude, cruel,
unbearable, spiteful, arrogant, hateful.
But then he'd play
Some Day My Prince Will Come
in a swirl of bright spring colors
that come after a heavy rain
making the world anew again
and like the sometimes-tyrannical king
who is truly repentant of his transgressions
steps out onto the balcony
to greet his subjects
and they find it in their hearts
to forgive him for his sins
yet once again.

I loved that poem. And I loved that class and those students.

The last assignment I gave each semester was a record review; they could write about any CD in their collections. Every semester someone would write about Kind of Blue, and I recall with particular fondness how one of them -- a Hasidic jazz drummer whose goal was to fuse nigunim, the devotional songs of the Lubavitcher, with jazz -- explained with marvelous skill why it was such a great album by playing snippets of the solos from "So What," the album's first track. The reason Kind of Blue was great (and that Miles was great, and that Coltrane was great, etc.) was the remarkable succinctness and simplicity of their playing.

I think there's a lot of truth to that. And I pray that we'll all be truly repentant and truly forgiven like Miles in the poem, and that, in spite of our own personal darkness, we'll all give something beautiful to the world, like Miles in real life.

(Above: John Coltrane and Miles Davis during the recording of Kind of Blue, 1959.)

The Womb and the Garden

In the late 1990s, a wealthy and eccentric widow gave me a small scholarship to further my voice training. I took the money and sought out the New York City opera coaches whose auras had the most sheen at the time. I had some interesting experiences, and got lots of advice, all of it different. One Famous Coach told me that if I sang repertoire that was just a little too light for my voice, I'd "work everywhere." Another plied me with martinis and explained his sudden infatuation (of which I was assuredly not the only object) by saying that I was the only soprano he'd ever met (I had not yet made the switch to mezzo-soprano) who could carry on a conversation about something other than her hair and her gowns, and who knew how to pronounce HUAC correctly. When I went to use this Famous Coach's bathroom, I found a Duane Reade bag hastily tossed on the floor with a giant box of Trojans spilling out of it. This same Famous Coach, after my first marriage ended, told me, with perhaps a touch of bitterness, that I had lost my ambition, and that if I didn't get it back, the only thing I'd ever be known for was the guys with whom I'd "hooked up."

But the most interesting of the Famous Coaches was an unusually funny, kind, maternal, self-effacing middle-aged woman. She worked almost exclusively with the breath, trying to tailor the way her clients breathed to the sound, size, and ethos of their voices and musicalities. I wonder what she's doing now; she really was a wonderul person. At that time, she was trying to have a baby, and I hope it happened, as she would have been a wonderful mother.

I worked with her during a terrible time in my life, the year when my first marriage was ending. She knew what was going on, and asked me one day, "Do you want a stack of programs at the end of your life?" "Yes," I said, not really understanding why she thought any singer wouldn't. "Is that ALL you want?" she asked more pointedly. "Ummmm . . . no," I conceded, none too convinced myself. "Then don't f*ck up," was her reply. That was surely the best piece of advice I got during my time of fancy, expensive vocal coaching, and one that I wish I had taken.

She told me something else that has stayed with me: the Hasidim believe that when we are gestating in the womb, we know everything that is going to happen in our lives. But at birth, God lays His hand on our heads, and we forget everything, because if we remembered we couldn't bear it. The mark of this action of God is the soft spot on the newborn's head.

I wonder if, according to the Hasidic legend, the infant in utero is like Adam just after he's eaten the fruit, before being rebuked by God; and if the newborn baby is like Adam after the fall.