When you write music you may hope to paint a musical picture for the listener.I Love to hear music that gives me a vision,especially one I have never seen before.Free Jazz and improvised music,especially experienced live,.often gives me pictures in my mind that don’t exist in nature.A living dream.The more aggressive the music is,the more intense the vision.I love to tell musicians what I’ve seen after hearing them create.The first time this happened to me was listening to master Joe McPhee play Soprano Sax.He had a dark red,Blue Purple thing happening,and then..

I saw a great big Tree in the middle of a field all alone.Under a clear light blue sky.

Each leaf was a different color.Hundreds of them,.all unique.

As Joe played,.one leaf at a time would slowly break itself off and gently glide to the ground.They were not dead,but simply wanted to leave home.

By the end of the concert we watch the last leaf break free and fall even slower than the others,almost like a dance.On Joe’s last note,the last leaf rests.

It’s not poetry,but the creative world that exists between words and notes.While words can help us tell a story so much easier,notes can help us see things that words just cant express.Notes may contain what Ornette calls the emotion tone.Poets have some to,unless they get carried in away in those crazy “Slams”,when they overload.I’m sure many poets will say that words can give us much that notes cant in reverse.It’s all the same to me as I try to mix everything into everything.

When I was a kid I went into my Grandfathers art studio,he was a great painter who did amazing portraits.

I took a giant bucket and emptied ALL of his Paint,EVERY Color into my cauldron of Color for a special brew of curiosity madness.I mixed it as best I could.It was greenish but eventually turned into a frothy Brown with some dark areas and some with a redish tint that wouldn’t mix.To much Yellow as I recall.

My Grandfather was shocked and angry that I had done this and if not for my Mom I was bout’ to get the BELT.

But days later he was looking at me differently.

Was I crazy? Or did I have some kind of creative force inside me that I would spend my whole life trying to understand?

Maybe this poem,.will help me figure this out:

…..

So Cold

So Dark

So Black

So Blue

I Look up to the surface of the Ocean

So far Above

There is

No.

Light.

…..

Just below the surface

I pierce the Black Glass

Feel the Oynx

And pass through this Mirror of Water..

A ripple in the stillness

Moonlight at Last.

It feels Warm

…..

I wake on the shore of a place far,far from here

The Sun is a different color

She sounds different here

I remember this place..

A place where water only exists as Light

A place where Souls can swim

A gentle voice beckons that I enter

Enter and be healed..

Enter and know the Truth..

Enter to become yourself..

Join me..

Join me in this River of Light.

…..