apple juice. graham crackers.
and fingerpaint.

what are you craving right now?  ¶ 23:19

  i was sitting at the grand piano, and taylor was behind me with his coronet. we were playing "what is this thing called love," and when we were satisfied with our go-around of the tune, he turned to me and basically told me that i play so many right notes, i've got it all wrong.
so then he had me go into some free improvisation with him. we ended up going at that for 15 minutes before the music subsided.
and again, i got the same feedback - i was just a little too scared to go completely over the edge with him, a little too timid to play fortissimo, to play extended lines... what i was doing was so correct, it was, again, all wrong.
taylor then had me play a 12 bar blues using just one note. no bassline, no comping. just one note. and that's when it all started to come together for me.
with each chorus i was allowed to add one note... at the climax of it all, i was banging down an accompaniment with sololines that extended across all of the changes, across the entire sweep of the piano.
wow.
so this thinking has been sticking with me all day - that sometimes if you do things so right, what youre doing is terribly incorrect. thinking in the box really, truly does hurt you.
i remember when the monterey jazz festival clinicians told us that it was "wrong" to linger on the sharp 4th when you were soloing on a blues. fuck it.
ive trapped myself in so many different boxes that i dont even hear what im playing. when he and i were going through the spontaneous composition exercise, i heard the music. i heard the entire composition, and then shared it with the huge soundroom we were in.
as much as ive played the "right" notes, i dont think i ever heard what i was playing as clearly as i did today.
and even beyond music - we're told so many times what is right and what is wrong, you cant decide for yourself. it is when you have a blank slate in front of you, perhaps without even a medium with which to write on it, that creativity is most pure, most earnest. most expressive. the entire process is organic.
it leads me to think about what im doing with my life, what i *should* be doing, what i *could* be doing. im worried about playing the wrong notes. i need to stop doing that. i need to tap my internal thoughts and feelings as purely as i tapped my music today.
what the hell am i doing? maybe its time i got a little dissonant in contrast to the world around me.
that's what stands out the most, after all.  ¶ 16:25

  sometimes i wonder if he understands that my sleep suffers when we cant talk ourselves into muffled whispers and sighs under down comforters.
sometimes i worry that if he doesnt know, it's because he doesnt feel the same way back.
other times, i worry that it's because he's trying to resist.
(which one i should dread more?)
i love his friendship. he makes me happy... warm. :)
i hope he knows, mostly, that he makes me feel more human.
and if he does realize this, he should certainly understand its value.  ¶ 17:45