petals

Gaugin, because of his kind of savage approach is kind of similar, in a lot of ways, to some of the jazz players who are more kind of primitive kind of sounding- less refined sounding. Think of things like… John Coltrane in some aspects… And I haven’t studied it much- it would be kind of interesting to learn. Because, you know, jazz music, it has kind of an outline to classical music, even though their histories overlap. Comparing the trends in art as opposed to the trends in music, because really, the art that artists create has to do with the time they’re living in. Though a lot people, basically, are in denial about what is really happening so the art doesn’t get accepted until later on, when people are like, “Oh yeah, it was kind of like that then.” But mostly they’re like, “Oh no, everything’s really fine.” But yeah, music tends to lag behind visual art trends as far as, like, expressionism, impressionism, it kind of happened in music later than in the artists that did it. I think it’s a good thing to study, yeah.

SW: Last question. If you could meet any musician/s that have ever lived, who would it be, why, and what would you say to them?

CM: Hmm… if I could meet any of them? Well, that’s tough. I think Bach would probably be the guy to meet, and just kind of pick his brain about theory and see how he thought about his counterpoints and stuff like that, because, I mean, really… I just read this book by Charles Mingus, the great bass player…. not by him but about him…and he’d quoted in interviews saying that, you know, people have been able to copy in improvisation- Bach was a great improviser- people have been able to copy in improvisation somewhat, Beethoven, Mozart, things like that, but nobody really could come close to Bach- he’s just kind of exceptional. But then, I mean, as far as jazz… I don’t know. Maybe Eric Dolphy, who’s made a name for himself on bass clarinet, but a really interesting player… or I bet John Coltrane would be cool to talk to- I would say, “How do you do all that practicing… how’d you get to do that?” Because me, I’m always wishing I did more all the time. Miles Davis, I think he was kind of not very nice, so he probably wouldn’t be too fun to meet, you know, it’d probably be a big let down. You’d walk in all “whoa!” and he’d be “grr”. But you know, if he was civil, he’d be cool to talk to.