Miles Davis and the New Normal
Disclaimer: I’m not a Miles Davis expert or a pandemic expert. I’m not a social commentary expert either. Now that I think about it, I’m not any kind of expert. That’s the great (and scary) thing about the internet in general and blogs specifically: anybody can say anything about whatever they want to.
Today, this anybody wants to say something about this: the new normal. The phrase has been going around for several months. But I was motivated to write about it after seeing something on Facebook recently. Someone posed these two questions: “What if this is the new normal? Are you OK with that?”
That post really got me thinking. I’m not crazy about the phrase “new normal.” For several reasons. First, the situation we are currently facing isn’t normal in any way, shape or form. It’s totally weird and unprecedented. Sure, there have been pandemics before. Yes, countries have had internal issues that brought them to the brink of disaster. But never has the stew we’ve got cooking happened before. Ever. This is new territory. A unique period of history - as all periods of history are.
Which brings me to my second thought: there is really no such thing as normal.
Normal is a transient, fluid, ever fluctuating condition that is largely influenced by our expectations.
Normal is a relative concept. What’s normal to me is not normal to you. You probably don’t “normally” get up at 4:30AM, guzzle a protein shake, do a five-minute plank, then 100 crunches before working out in the garage with an ancient set of weights. Maybe you get up at 4:30AM, guzzle your shake, and do your crunches BEFORE your planks, THEN head to the garage. See? Totally different normal.
Seriously, we all live different lives and experience very different normals. My normal is nothing at all like the normal of someone in South Sudan or Tajikistan or Belize. It’s even different from my next door neighbor’s normal. Furthermore, our own personal normals change too. COVID-19 aside, my 2020 normal is nothing like what my 2010 normal was. At all.
Normal is a transient, fluid, ever fluctuating condition that is largely influenced by our expectations. It’s constantly being altered and refined by time and circumstances, and is colored by our personal assumptions about how things should be. Normal is always changing because we are always in the process of changing and the world around us is always in the process of changing. That’s life.
Whether or not we’re okay with the way things are right now, in this particular speck on the space/time continuum (the “new normal”), is a moot issue. We might be happy, sad, excited, disappointed, ticked off or somewhere in between. But that doesn’t change our situation.
Which brings me to this: I believe we are currently facing a Miles Davis moment.
As I mentioned above, I’m no expert on the eclectic composer/trumpeter/band leader. But I am a huge fan. Not of his personal life. I know he had major struggles with drugs and wasn’t always the nicest person to be around. Volatile, arrogant, and aloof are just a few of the many adjectives fellow musicians have used to describe him. He was, however, an artistic genius with a radical appetite for taking risks and being relentlessly adventurous. And I think there are a few things we can learn from his approach to music.
The CliffsNotes version of his career goes like this: He started off playing trumpet in the high school band, joined an orchestra, studied at the Institute of Musical Arts, then Julliard School of Music. He dropped out of Julliard in 1945 to take Dizzy Gillespie’s place in Charlie Parker’s quintet.
At this point, Miles was only 19, but had already been exposed to marching band music, orchestral music, classical training, music theory, and was leaping into serious jazz. In particular “bebop” jazz - “fast tempo, complex chord progressions with rapid chord changes and numerous changes of key, requiring instrumental virtuosity, and improvisation based on a combination of harmonic structure, the use of scales, and occasional references to the melody.” Yeah, I googled it.
Next, influenced by the blues and rock and roll of the 1950s, he left Charlie Parker and transitioned to “hard bop” jazz - “incorporating blues and gospel, minor keys, emotive and raw.” (Thanks, Google.)
In the ‘70s, with electric rock becoming a thing, he launched (and basically invented) “fusion” - combining jazz with rock, funk, and rhythm and blues. It was a huge departure from his previous work and most jazz aficionados were horrified by it.
There were many other stages, phases, and divergent sounds that he chased, experimented with, and left in his wake. But those are a few of the major turning points.
So why the abbreviated Miles Davis biography? Because throughout his life, Miles continued to explore. He remained open, and was willing to shift gears and embrace fresh styles. He was always on the lookout for raw material to create new things. He once composed an album (Sketches of Spain) based on a guitar concerto after his wife dragged him to a flamenco dance performance. When he heard Jimi Hendrix, he began hooking a wah pedal to his trumpet. (Note to self: gotta try that!)
“Music is always changing. It changes because of the times and the technology that's available, the material that things are made of... Musicians pick up sounds and incorporate that into their playing, so the music that they make will be different.” - Miles Davis
He was stubbornly resolved not to stop and camp out at any one spot in his journey through life. He kept moving forward and wouldn’t go back. In concerts, he irritated fans by refusing to play any of his older material. (In more than one concert, he didn’t even play his horn!) He was laser focused on his latest, newest musical ideas. He was a true artist - not wanting to get stuck in a rut and duplicate himself.
As a result, there is no Miles Davis sound, per se. Miles with Bird (1940s) sounds nothing like Miles on Kind of Blue (1959) or In a Silent Way (1969). Yeah, he was playing a trumpet in all those settings, but that’s where the similarities end.
For Miles, there was no normal. And I don’t think there should be one for us. Change is inevitable and in this season of extreme and accelerated change, instead of hunkering down, dragging our feet, and riding it out, we need to look for ways to use it as inspiration for the creation of something new - as an opportunity to grow.
I guess if you think about it, every day is a new normal. But the question isn’t are we OK with it. The question is: what are we going to make out of it?