YouTube - Miles davis et John Coltrane - So what
I read the Autobiography of Miles Davis when I was seventeen years old. It changed my life. I had never read anything so frank if not crude, so insightful if not revelatory. I had never encountered someone, either in real time or imagined time vis a vis literature that was brutally honest to a fault. He was unflinching in his vision, as a person and musician. He was someone I was both fascinated with, as well as intimidated by given my own inexperience with life.
Twenty years later, I am still scared of Miles. I am afraid that I will be too over reliant on his perspective, too reluctant to share my own understanding of life. I struggle to embrace the courage that I so easily identify with in Miles. Yet, if I have learned anything from Miles, my trepidation would be the opposite of what he sought in himself and elicited in others. He encouraged people to be as real, to be themselves, as he was even if it was not pleasant or nice.
The willingness to be himself, is perhaps, one of his greater legacies. I suppose the greatest lesson I learned from Miles was the value in being myself. Perhaps, it's taken me twenty years to trust what I have to say.
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