Listening to Keith Jarrett

It’s hard to describe to oth­er peo­ple what it feels for me to lis­ten to Kei­th Jarrett’s music, because it sounds so mys­ti­cal. It’s sor­cery. When it final­ly works and the fire has been lit up, it is an open­ing of one­self, an immense lib­er­a­tion. I am pos­sessed by the music and pos­sess­ing it at the same time. It’s a con­nec­tion to some­thing greater that has been there all along, and the sud­den cer­tain­ty that every­thing so far that has led to this moment has been worth it. It’s a feel­ing a lit­tle like “telling the truth”. Whatever.

A thought­ful mem­ber wrote on the Kei­th Jar­rett dis­cus­sion group that all it takes is atten­tive lis­ten­ing to be tak­en to a dif­fer­ent place. To me, this is true only some of the time. I feel inescapably bound to mak­ing the music appear, some days I can effort­less­ly feed my mind many hours of it and some­times it takes months before I can again lis­ten to Jar­rett impro­vis­ing. It’s a strug­gle, what is record­ed in the audio file seems to be more like the key to some­thing with­in me for which I can’t always find the lock. After twen­ty years of lis­ten­ing I am still con­front­ed to this every time. If I am at the same time play­ing the piano in 1973 and being the entire audi­ence there and lis­ten­ing in my bed­room today, then why do I have so lit­tle com­mand over expe­ri­enc­ing this elevation?

Cer­tain­ly Jar­rett must have his own set of con­fronta­tions and con­flicts too. He is the ulti­mate link between all of us and some­thing beyond, and at the ori­gin of all those ephemer­al “man­i­fes­ta­tions”, for lack of a bet­ter word. But at the same time he is a pro­fes­sion­al per­former, expect­ed by every­one to pro­duce those on order in two-set events that are booked in advance. Lat­er, at com­mer­cial­ly sen­si­ble inter­vals, the mag­ic is pressed into shit­ty lit­tle rec­tan­gu­lar plas­tic box­es wrapped in card­board stamped with a brand of the largest and mean­est music cor­po­ra­tions of the planet.

I think Jarrett’s trou­bled rela­tion­ship with his audi­ences is sin­cere. I don’t believe he is arro­gant. I think the audi­ence and the impro­vi­sa­tion are parts of what makes it all work; that he is torn between want­i­ng to soar with all of us and being, time and time again, dis­ap­point­ed when he finds that two thou­sand humans are just as messy as every­one else could have pre­dict­ed. I saw him reject audi­ences in ways meant to hurt, and I pity him — if only he had Chick Corea’s or Hiro­mi Uehrara’s good spir­its! To make things worse, his rela­tion­ship to tech­nol­o­gy is super­sti­tious, and I find, ill-reflect­ed. But he is walk­ing on the crest of moun­tains, telling us of the oth­er side, and I read­i­ly believe the crest is real­ly sharp and treacherous.

I think of him with kind­ness. Jar­rett recent­ly suf­fered a stroke that left him unable to play. We, and espe­cial­ly him, are orphans now. I wish him well.