introduction
1957. As good a place as any to start. John William Coltrane, American jazz saxophonist legend, experienced his famous spiritual awakening. Talmadge Holt Farlow, American jazz guitar legend, released his classic album The Swinging Guitar of Tal Farlow. Thelonious Sphere Monk, American jazz piano legend, was gigging with his quartet, which included John Coltrane, at the Five Spot Café in New York, to rave reviews. And I was born.
I experienced other 1957 signs. A ‘lost’ recording of Monk and Coltrane at the Carnegie Hall in 1957 was discovered. A television documentary on Monk I chanced upon, around my birthday, was followed by one on Coltrane.
As the ideas, influences and impressions that mingled in my mind came together, I thought about these musicians and the impact they had made upon me from my teens. That took me to my teens, to my poetry and music. This linked to a long cherished dream of creating a work of poetry and music, which connected to the idea of translating an original piece of creative work through a creative filter, to see what came out the other side.
The work I fell upon was a published poem I had written about St Monans, a fishing village in Fife, Scotland. It was a poem about the person and the place. St Monan was a mysterious figure, who was seen as saint, recluse, hermit, visionary, makar or craftsman-seer, mystic and healer. The poem was written in three parts. As I looked at the poem, the three verses spoke to me, and I saw before me John Coltrane, Tal Farlow and Thelonious Monk: Saint John, Makar Tal and Monk Thelonious.
Spirituality ran through the lives and music of these three men, but so did another link: bebop. Here was my filter; my prism. I would shine a light from St Monans through a bebop prism, and see what poetry and music appeared on the other side.
This was an ambitious project. Apart from the writing and music, I was treading on sacred ground. These three musicians were jazz icons, and bebop itself was a complex, sophisticated movement. Who was I to come along and tinker with the mechanisms of genius?
But what helped and inspired me was the creative revelation of the work. It said that I was being supported in this venture. That my body, mind, heart and soul were in the right place. For example, when I looked at the original poem, sweet signs showed themselves. In the second verse, which I instinctively linked to Tal Farlow, the lines in their coiled calligraphy leapt out. Tal was a sign-writer to trade, and he went back to this profession at the height of his guitar playing, becoming somewhat of a recluse. And coils are essential components of a guitar’s pickups. And Tal’s guitar lines were coiled calligraphy.
I drew up the project and called it this:
THE SPIRITUAL RECLUSE AND THE BEBOP PRISM
A Tone Poem about St Monan in Three Musical Meditations:
(i) John Coltrane and the Elemental Saint
(ii) Tal Farlow and the Hermetic Makar
(iii) Thelonious Monk and the Visionary Monk
I applied to Fife Council for a culture grant and they kindly supported the venture. I described it as follows:
This is a cross-discipline project involving literature, music and performance. Its basis is a poem I published about St Monans in Fringe of Gold: the Fife Anthology, 2008. This poem will be used as a tone poem, as a three-verse textual foundation, for three pieces of original music that I will compose. From these pieces of music, I will write other poetry - the other side of the original poem - through the prism of the musical compositions.
The St Monans poem describes St Monan in three modes: as elemental saint; as hermetic makar; and as visionary monk. My interest in jazz drew me to see the correspondences between these modes and their manifestations in the lives of three jazz greats: the saxophonist John Coltrane, the guitarist Tal Farlow and the pianist Thelonious Monk. I decided to form a project using the St Monans poem as a tone poem foundation for three original pieces of music dedicated to these musicians. From that creative interplay, I saw that the original poem would appear at the other end of this bebop prism, revealing the other side of the poem.
As a creative process, this project is an exploration of the physical and spiritual dynamics between word as music-invocation and music as word-invocation: a mutual, prismatic experience. The project’s aims are to encourage imaginative insight and debate about the creative process, using Fife and her spiritual traditions as an example of the universality of inner and outer seeking and self-expression. It will benefit anyone responsive to the possibilities of creative dialogue, supporting them in their own work and aspirations. The predicted outcome is a meaningful contribution to creative dialogue, with its origins in a Fife experiment.
As the project evolved, I found the poetry and music leading me into strange yet familiar territory. So many unexpected connections arose from this experiment in form and process.
The poems fell into three groupings, headed by the musicians. The original poem used as a foundation, St Monans, consisted of three five line verses. I wrote fifteen new poems, including in each one an original line from the foundation poem. I wrote a sixteenth poem, as the other side of the foundation poem, through the filter of the other poems and music, called st monan.
The music was drawn from the creative correspondences of this interaction. My initial idea to write three musical meditations ended up embracing ten compositions, titled from lines in the foundation poem St Monans. They fell into the three groupings headed by the musicians, with the tenth piece a musical version of the other side of the foundation poem, also called st monan.
What I arrived at is, I think, an exciting result from a unique experiment in exploring a creative work through the transcreative filter of word and music; person and place.
I have gathered all of these filtered light threads together in a twenty-eight page booklet and CD. The poet’s notes at the end are some of my musings about the poems - improvisations from their melodies. The music section and composer’s notes describe what is on the CD and how I managed to get it on the CD!
It has been an honour for me to work on this project, calling on the energies of such musically and poetically creative giants. I am humble before them and thank them for all the gifts they have given us.
If there is one last thing to say, it is that any piece of creativity can lead us to others, linked as they are holographically, prismatically. Whatever you create, it has forms hidden from you yet to be revealed, that can manifest in a multitude of magical ways.
I hope you enjoy this work and take faith from its sincerity.
John Brewster, July 2009
