I've noticed lately that a lot of music is like those little workbenches we had as kids...they had a bunch of different shaped holes and little pegs in the same shapes to match the holes.  The key is to put the same shaped peg in the same shaped hole...round peg/round hole, square peg/square hole.  There is a really simple beauty to this.  And a lot of music follows the same principle:  if it fits, it must be right.  This is not a bad thing.  It has a great synergy, and well, frankly, it works.  But I've come to re-realize lately that, although I can play music following this principle (I can be groovy, funky, jazzy, whatever is called for; well, usually...), what excites me like nothing else is to take that square peg, and bang it into that round hole until I make it fit! (And it still feels groovy, funky, jazzy or whatever...and I really like the whatever.)  To take ideas and concepts that would never seem to work together and force them into some sort of symbiotic submission.

Recently, I've been having more and more opportunities to explore who I am as a musician, sometimes with new people, sometimes with people that I've had musical chemistry with for years.  These people have allowed  a freedom of expression that I thought would always just be a memory of old days...Now, I've still been able to experiment with this thoughout my career; in fact one of my most validating moments was going to a blues jam and being called to the stage.  I told the host that I didn't know his songs, and didn't play the ones that I knew.  He answered, "That's ok...I'm tired of playing them the way they're supposed to go anyhow."  Round hole, square peg.  In fact, both blues bands I've had the oppertunity to work in had more fusion-y rhythm sections that blues.  And it worked.  We picked our places, but we were able to express who we were musically.  Maybe this time, a bunch of little bitty square pegs rubberbanded together/round hole.

This is what works for me.  There is safety in putting the round peg in the round hole and the square peg...(you get the point)...but there is an energy that is lacking.  When you walk that razor's edge between brilliance and disaster...there is nothing more electrifying (or terrifying).  There is a kinetic energy in playing the unexpected, sometimes even the inappropriate, but if you pull it off and turn it into art, it borders the transcendant.  This is what made Monk dance around the piano.  This is what Dexter Gordon meant by "a masterpiece by midnite".  Not something cute.  Not something ordinarily pretty (like happy little trees) a bonifide MASTERPIECE.  Something between Rembrandt and Jackson Pollack.  Something that transcends the ordinary.  Something that may shock some, but oh, how it awes others!

Many people I have played with understand this.  They understand that order means little without chaos to contrast it.  They understand and respect one another enough to realize that player A's tangent may not make it to the 1 this time, but yeah, eventually, we'll line it up again.  And if it falls off into disaster, well, there's someone else to clean up the mess until  we can get it back together, and hopefully, have the guts to try it again.  It's basically just tension and release...to the extreme...and sometime without the release....

These are just the musings and rantings of old mad hatter.  But those of you that have allowed and even embraced my madness, I thank you.  Meanwhile, I'll just be trying to force this 2x4 into this little bitty half inch hole...watch out for splinters!!!