John Coltrane
Expression

LA RECENSIONE

Ogunde varere. Prayer to the gods.

This delve into the roots of Mother Africa —in this blend of blood, sacredness, and earth— is now John W. Coltrane. And this is his final word.

Meanwhile, inside his liver, it gnawed, eroding and burrowing within, that unwelcome guest, that mixture of pain and death. Always that fire, subtle and mighty, but only a damned destructive fire.

(life is now the eye of a needle, ever more slender)

1967.

The spring in New Jersey, that year, was slow to arrive. There, at Van Gelder Studio, Trane traced new and vague paths on his sheet.

(the last ones, alas)

A pastorale for two flutes, ancient and restless, which immediately scribbles into a questioning flow. And the cosmic dissonances, brought to their most extreme boundary (devoid of boundary), were now and forever abandoned to themselves, tossed there in a corner. The fervor finally yielded to waiting. Perhaps, whatever the times of this longing for the eternal, his malice silenced.

Perhaps.

A more measured expression, herald of sleep and oblivion, now appeared in the haughty and seraphic voice of Trane; but what is expression if not a retained ardor and then expressed, drawn out with force? An unlimited unfolding, that opens, with the accustomed commotion, always on that crest between the inexpressible and the ardent speech. The dissonance, the clangor, is always there. And a concealed, ancestral, and terrible warmth emerges, almost to give a face to what has no face.

A warmth of the maternal womb, an impetuous and tenuous offering.

A fire forever kindled.