| But no sooner have I gotten started with this "it's
all nuance" business than I find myself sympathizing with a
position that's usually utterly noxious to me: the "why write
about it when you can feel it" position, better and rightly
known as the last refuge of the man who can't articulate his responses
to art. Why not write about music, or about love, or about the uncategorizable
feeling that sets in when the immanence of winter becomes clear for
the one hundred thousandth year in a row? So I would usually say,
anyhow. But there's something seductive in Ayler's often very harsh
phrases that seems to call for some reflexive purity: reaction ("whoa," "mmmm," "aaaggh")
instead of response, awe instead of analysis. |