the mystery of presence
RIP Wayne Shorter
There are colors we can’t see, but they’re connected to the ones we can.
—Wayne Shorter
Part of an education in music is to listen aimlessly. You need to find your way into things.
There’s one kind of taste, which is received and has the anxious flavor of performance—your childhood best friend’s extremely cool older brother likes the the Jesus Lizard, and you assimilate this information the way a spy might. You read somewhere that Kurt Cobain loved the Shaggs, so you go out and buy Philosophy of the World and pretend you might have known about it anyway.
And then there’s the other kind of taste, which is private and totally unstudied. It comes from hearing something on the radio and asking, “Who is this?” It’s a private relationship before it’s anything else, and there’s really no explaining the connection that you make with a musician in that way. It’s just yes this. And, if later on, you happen to talk to someone who shares your enthusiasm, it’s like you have matching windows in your soul.
Growing up in the sticks and feeling like the real world happens somewhere else will give you a golden ear for picking up the passwords and anthems of a culture you want to be part of. Because it’s all studied. You read liner notes. You try to see who knows who. You tally the bands mentioned in the soundtrack note on the last page of zines and figure out what the patches and logos mean on a leather jacket in a photograph. You don’t live inside vernacular. You aren’t part of the scene. You’re a forensic analyst trying to figure out the inside jokes and scanning the Goodwill for le Tigre sweaters and Sta Prest trousers. Which comes at a cost, of course. Studying a vernacular puts you outside it. You’ll always sound self-conscious, at least to yourself.
I am heavily disposed to that observational dimension—not unusual for writers. And not something I always mind, necessarily. There’s a way of paying attention that allows you to read the world, and you can apply it to ant trails and dogwood trees the same way you apply it to Obey stickers and references to Porky’s III. But it also can make my taste feel unreliable to me. Do I really really like Deafheaven, or am I just into it because my new friend is? One day I was startled to realize how much of my wardrobe was composed of clothes my friends gave me. What the fuck? Is this a weakness of self? Being a mimic is a little bit like being a people-pleaser because it’s so exterior oriented. I have always been terrified of people who proclaim that they HATE FAKE PPL. Because sometimes I wonder if I would even know.
For this reason, I prize the musicians that I have a completely personal relationship with. It’s almost like proof of having a self. I hear something in Charli XCX, the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Big Band, Alice Coltrane, Wayne Shorter, Alvvays, Marnie Stern, Pixies, the Velvet Underground, Jeannie C. Riley and it must be in me, too, because the feeling is recognition. It isn’t being conditioned by my awareness. Just yes this. I know that I’m not cribbing from my extensive taxonomy of passwords. (Just know that, if I wanted to, I could be the most fucking despicable cool girl who ever stalked the aisles of the Taschenbooks store. I’m staying squishy on purpose. You’re welcome.)
Wayne Shorter became my favorite jazz musician over many years. Time after time, when I heard a solo or composition that did something for me, I looked in the liner notes and found him. Which is something, because his career was so expansive. He’s on “Birdland,” which I loved when I was a corny-ass 8th grade jazz band nerd. He’s on “E.S.P.” In my barfly era, when I deliberately got into Steely Dan and switched to rye, he was there on “Aja” for fuck’s sake. He is inextricable from the history of jazz music during his lifetime because for a lot of it, he was actually there.
So many of the genius, landmark-esque jazz compositions don’t really do it for me. I can absolutely appreciate them as formidable technical exercises; they just don’t feel like much. The guys in the CMU jazz ensembles were total theory wonks and would rapturously annotate each other’s solos afterward— “when you played that inversion!” “nice ‘81’ quote bro” “was that Phrygian? you’re crazy dude.” Which is awesome—I love the atmosphere of people sharing enthusiasm. But it wasn’t something that I could relate to. I didn’t think at all when I played. Literally—I blacked out for almost every solo. No fucking clue where it was coming from, but I absolutely wasn’t dropping any clever Easter eggs in my turnarounds.
So, what was it about Wayne Shorter? For one thing, his tone. On tenor anyway, he plays notes that can start and end in a whisper. Sort of a clearing of the throat. I don’t know if I modeled my trombone tone after him consciously, but I tend to prefer a similar sound, with a little air in it. Holding a note until the ragged end, licking your lips and saying another word. “Virgo” is the perfect example of this. And “Miyako.” And another thing, his phrasing stayed just slightly out of the pocket without making you feel nervous.
“Meditative” is kind of a worthless adjective here because it means, what? That random shit is occurring? That the mind is following some keen, glimmering impulse from one moment to the next? That’s what jazz is, anyway. (When we saw Herbie Hancock at the Hollywood Bowl for my birthday, he started off the show by pointing out that, if you have ever gotten your self from one thought to another, you’re in essence a jazz musician.) Meditative, elliptical, oblique—there are lots of words in poetry criticism to describe the quality of evading the practice of “making sense,” but not much reckoning with the reason one would wish to do so.
Wayne Shorter seems to be coming from a middle place. It isn’t ecstatic blackout. It isn’t theory brag. Somehow what he plays feels just like thought. Human thought, passing through moods. But not necessarily in an intellectual way, either. Like, the way that your shopping list will show up in the middle of a thought about something else. All of the rooms that the mind can wander into. Somehow, intelligence has come to mean knowing something instead of knowing that knowing is limited. I fully expect some theory bros to descend and tell me that Wayne Shorter was all about that Phrygian, doyyy. Which, absolutely. Artists who make presence their primary tool are often excellent technicians. But there’s something else. What is it? Space? Silence? Hesitation? I have no idea, but I catch that same feeling in my favorite books—words are a frozen medium in comparison to music, but I suspect that the writers I love approach the moment of uncertainty the same way a jazz musician does. You play and play and play and play so that when someone puts you on the spot, that whole elastic history of your presence is available.
Wayne Shorter was my favorite because his records feel like being with someone and getting to listen to them think. Which, I guess, is exactly the case. Thank god for people who leave pieces of themselves behind, and RIP Wayne Shorter—I really hoped I might run into you in a grocery store in Los Angeles someday. But it’s all right, we can take a drive out to the Costco in Alhambra at least.