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KEYBOARD SCHOOL Woodshed | By joel forrester
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Embracing Change
In Real Time
believe that every living human has a personal
I sense of time, a signature as unique as any of
the more usual means of individual identification.
What singles out musicians and dancers is
our developed ability to express this sense.
If you’re reading this, you’re likely a musician;
I am, too. As musicians, our lives are
important to the species as a whole. Don’t let
anyone tell you that you’re marginal; don’t allow
public indifference to prey on you; don’t let commerce
trivialize your calling. I repeat: Our lives
are important. Don’t let your daily struggles
erode this certainty.
This is important, because without individual
expression of time, time would become terminally
confused with its measurement: the clock
would rule the planet. It already does for those
who don’t dance or play. For the unlistening ear,
music is at best a trip: a moment outside of time,
blessed recreation. For us, music is our lives: We
live time—a wild gift, a serious responsibility.
Time is our language.
Your personal sense of time exists both prior
to your experience in life and accompanies
you every step of the way—it has everything to
do with your choices, your destiny. When your
chops are together on your instrument and your
voice is truly your own, your temporal distinction
can help any listener whose personality is
submerged in patterns of authority, whose sense
of herself depends on what others tell her. What
people think they want is recreation, entertainment;
but what they really both need and desire is
to be themselves. We can help with that.
It might take years for you to find your voice.
That can’t bother you. The searching is the finding.
Everybody starts out imitating someone else.
The point is never to give in to the allure that surrounds
imitating yourself. Forget it—that’s how
you sounded yesterday. That’s another reason to
take yourself seriously as a musician: You operate
in a medium that embodies change. People
need encouragement to change. We certainly can
help them with that, too.
But there are additional depths to be sounded.
Living as a musician is a gift; our souls know
a freedom not granted to others; and the most
important thing we can offer, in return, has to do
with memory.
There is more to memory than informationretrieval.
The hardest thing to remember is the
fact that your life is limited. I believe that all definition
arises out of an awareness that our lives
will end. Death defines us, and we learn from
that. But we also pass much of the waking day
hiding from this awareness. Novelist Anthony
Powell once had a character title his autobiography
Camel Ride to the Tomb, something he once
Drummer Denis
Charles (1933–’98):
“Man, this
whole scene is
‘temporary!’”
saw as a kid on a sign outside an Egyptian airport.
I played with drummer Denis Charles for
25 years; I once warned him about the temporary
nature of a weekly gig we had; he answered
with an open-arm gesture meant to include all
creation and said, “Man, this whole scene is
‘temporary!’”
A musician focuses her memory on the present.
Her memory allows her to make a moment
of that present. That moment can be shared by all
who hear what she plays. Life is every bit as temporary,
but we are no longer on the “camel ride.”
The musical moment involves a tacit acceptance
of death; it does not hide from death by killing
time. Music needs time to breathe.
My guide here has always been Austrian
musicologist Victor Zuckerkandl, who described
hearing the succeeding tones in a melody as a
matter of “freedom in prospect, necessity in retrospect.”
This involves memory as a dynamic
process. Again, that’s functionally obvious to
a musician; he needn’t think about it. And it’s
always been important.
But never more so than today, when we are
inundated with information, most of it visual. At
the same time, there is a consensus that our species
must soon go through a change in order to
survive; and our most honest critics say it is the
inability to deal with death that holds us back. All
the more important, then, for those gifted with
music to live “melodic” lives; that is: open to the
moment, if only momentarily.
Any musician knows that there’s more to
existence than the visual world, more to memory
than data. The eye may justly be considered
the window to the soul, but the ear is the portal.
We are heralds, we musicians. We can help
humankind make the next big change. And just
by being ourselves. DB
Joel Forrester is a bebop and stride pianist who
lives in New York. He Has written 1,600 tunes,
including the theme to NPR’s “Fresh Air.” His latest
release is Down The Road on the Ride Symbol
label. With Phillip Johnston, he co-leads the
Microscopic Septet.
Valerie Wilmer
62 DOWNBEAT SEPTEMBER 2011