Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Truth, Beauty, and Miles Davis

I'm listening to a recording of the Miles Davis Quintet playing 'When I Fall in Love'. It has the most hauntingly beautiful intro (a simple eight cord progression). I keep repeating it to try and wrap my mind around its gorgeousness. This song is hopeful, and optimistic, as it describes a person who is ready and prepared to do 'this thing called love'. And yet, the crushing beauty, that even just the concept of true love holds, has already defeated this person.

When I fall in love it will be forever
Or I'll never fall in love...

When I give my heart it will be completely
Or I'll never give my heart...

I feel that way. Not necessarily about love, but about life, and being totally destroyed by the beauty I have experienced. Though that sounds morbid, its a gorgeous concept, being completely ruined for the ordinary by knowledge of true beauty, and well, of 'truth'. I've had this year, where I've been able to learn about myself, God, beauty, and life, and all while on my own. I've learned that I can trust God. He has given me so many opportunities and experiences. I can be totally fulfilled with just him and me, and the beauty I love and witness is something place within my comprehension by him to love and celebrate.

So I listen to this song (whose beauty makes me tingle) and wonder, how could I ever live a life that doesn't abide fully to the truth I know? How could I ever be satisfied with false relationships, or cheap replications of experience? The proverbial pot boiler rather than Picasso? Does any of this make sense? Maybe not, especially since I'm not even sure what I'm driving at. But somehow, listening to Davis and Coltrane playing this song by Victor Young, this train of thought makes sense. Its sonorous beauty, like a siren, lures me to forever soak in the deep waters of such conceptions of living a life of truth.