An old blog post about “I Want to Talk About You,” the track that mesmerized me and made me fall in love with John Coltrane, who’d have been 100 yesterday.
For as long as I can remember, I have gone through a Coltrane phase every summer for at least a few intense days or weeks. Of course, it’s always in summer; hot pavement, sun scorching, a touch of painful and sweaty heat when you get into the car and your legs touch hot leather. That physicality is perfect for Trane, and its link with the music intensifies the closer we get to his final recordings in 1966 and 1967. The intense summer Coltrane heat feels like a reminder that, every year at this time, we’re so close to the sun—the burning orb in the sky that both gives us life and, often, the accompanying discomfort.
I have been thinking for years about writing something on “Transition,” the Coltrane masterpiece that deserves to be far more widely known. I found a very good piece on the album by Bret Primack which contains two very beautiful and provocative observations:
Coltrane “is no longer building cathedrals. He is tearing down the walls to find out what is on the other side… That willingness to abandon mastery in search of something larger is, by itself, one of the most radical artistic decisions of the modern era.”
Comparing “Transition”—which was, incredibly, not judged worthy of release until after Trane’s death—with his universally celebrated “A Love Supreme,” Primack writes,
“A Love Supreme is an arrival. Transition is a departure. And in the history of art, departures are almost always more consequential than arrivals, because they are the works that force the future to reckon with new possibilities.”
David Reaboi
An old blog post about “I Want to Talk About You,” the track that mesmerized me and made me fall in love with John Coltrane, who’d have been 100 yesterday.
For as long as I can remember, I have gone through a Coltrane phase every summer for at least a few intense days or weeks. Of course, it’s always in summer; hot pavement, sun scorching, a touch of painful and sweaty heat when you get into the car and your legs touch hot leather. That physicality is perfect for Trane, and its link with the music intensifies the closer we get to his final recordings in 1966 and 1967. The intense summer Coltrane heat feels like a reminder that, every year at this time, we’re so close to the sun—the burning orb in the sky that both gives us life and, often, the accompanying discomfort.
davereaboi.com/i-want-to-talk-about-you/
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I have been thinking for years about writing something on “Transition,” the Coltrane masterpiece that deserves to be far more widely known. I found a very good piece on the album by Bret Primack which contains two very beautiful and provocative observations:
Coltrane “is no longer building cathedrals. He is tearing down the walls to find out what is on the other side… That willingness to abandon mastery in search of something larger is, by itself, one of the most radical artistic decisions of the modern era.”
Comparing “Transition”—which was, incredibly, not judged worthy of release until after Trane’s death—with his universally celebrated “A Love Supreme,” Primack writes,
“A Love Supreme is an arrival. Transition is a departure. And in the history of art, departures are almost always more consequential than arrivals, because they are the works that force the future to reckon with new possibilities.”
Indeed.
5 days ago | [YT] | 1
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