A few days ago I went running at noon, in the rain. It was raining so hard I dug my emergency raincoat out from behind the seat of my pickup and wore it for the entire five miles. While running (actually, more walking, nowadays) I listened to a podcast interview with jazz pianist Keith Jarrett, about his 2005 concert in New York at Carnegie Hall.
Jarrett played with Art Blakey and Miles Davis, but is best known for his improvisational solo piano recordings. Cyndi and I used to listen to a cassette, “The Köln Concert� (1975), one of the best-selling jazz albums of all time. I remember listening to it many times when we lived in our first home, a mobile home, in Brownfield, Texas.
Jarrett’s podcast interview included music from the Carnegie Hall concert, and I have to say that it was great to listen to jazz and hear his comments, with the rain falling down. Rain can be hypnotic, and the repeated physical movement or running and walking is meditative, and the three influences combined to give me one of my most inspirational outings in months.
I know that some people love to listen to Keith Jarrett, and some don’t like him at all. One of his trademarks is his frequent, highly audible vocalization (grunting, groaning, and tuneless singing), while he is playing the piano. Some listeners find this to be extremely distracting. It doesn’t bother me that much. What I like is the fact he can play an entire concert, solo piano, entirely improvisational. I can’t imagine that. Jarrett has commented that his best performances were during the times where he had the least amount of preconception of what he was going to play at the next moment. I guess I live so much of my life within predictable structure, the same things week after week, day after day, the idea of improvisation captures my imagination.
I have been trying to understand how to pursue God with all my heart and all my mind and all my soul, having spent most of my energy to date on the mental part. Listening to an improvisational jazz musician like Jarrett helps me understand what it means to love God with all my ways.
Jarrett uses his mind to play the piano. He knows every black and white key intimately, and knows how to combine them to shape a melody and pursue a mood. He knows, not only how to play a G-major chord, but how the playing of a G-major chord will effect his audience.
Jarrett also plays the piano with his entire body. I’ve never seen him playing, either live, or on TV, but I know from reading concert reviews that he is very physically active, writhing, gyrating, and almost dancing on the piano bench. And he uses his ears to tell him what is happening with the audience, and responds to it with his playing.
And I know from listening to the Koln Concert recording, and now the Carnegie Hall recording, that his music is very passionate and soulful, and emotional.
So I am not trying to be a jazz reviewer, but I am trying to listen to someone like Jarrett describe his music, and learn from him how to live with all parts of my life. I don’t want to grow stale as I get older. I want to add to my influences, and broaden my horizons.
Ken Gire wrote “If faith is the substance of things unseen, maybe we come closer to spiritual things with our imagination than our intellects� (Windows of the Soul). Maybe, like Keith Jarrett, I come closer to spiritual things when I am more improvisational and less structured, when I use my imagination more than my logic.
I know this essay is rambling too much, but that’s how thoughts go when running in the rain. Somehow the rarity of rain sets my mind off on new paths of thought.
Last year I reread a book about writing by one of my favorite authors, Natalie Goldberg, and she talked about how hard it had become to explain the experiences of her life. I wrote in the margin of my book: “The longer I seek after God, the harder it is to explain what I’m learning, or gaining. But the deeper I can go.� I didn’t mean deeper as in, the deep things of God, but deeper within my own heart and soul … closer to the bone. If someone wants to know what I am learning I hope they can see it in my life, even as it gets harder to explain. I hope to add more improvisation into my life. I hope to love God more with my body, and soul, and spirit, and not just with my mind. And I hope I get a lot more runs in the rain.
