Unmoved John Coltrane op-ed

Tuesday 9/22/26

Wrote this today for John Coltrane's centennial tomorrow, wasn't able to move it. Didn't do myself any favors delaying until the last moment. Might as well stick it here. Will get back after it it tomorrow.

Be a quester like John Coltrane.

There’s a kind of person, increasingly prevalent in our world, who partakes to perform. They purchase a copy of Crime and Punishment and technically run their eyes over each of its words—which is much different than truly reading—so they can say they did so on social media and will be seen as sophisticated. But if they were denied the chance for this performance, their time would have been given over to something else.

John Coltrane’s music is often used for similar ends, which is contrary to everything Coltrane the artist was. Born in Hamlet, North Carolina on September 23, 1926, Coltrane was a quester, something we should aspire to be in the living of our lives as Coltrane was in his musical journey.

One of the dictates of our stultifying times is that an artist must do one thing. We, the audience, need to know what we’re getting before we get it. Otherwise, so the thinking goes, the artist is sure to be a commercial failure, with people unable to keep up; which is to say, have an open mind and allow themselves the possibility of being blown away in a new way. That’s the stuff of life. Joy and meaning have nothing to do with what’s become an insistence on formula and repetition. Both art and a life well-lived are anti-retread.

Coltrane partnered with Miles Davis in the late 1950s, cutting a series of quickie albums that still thunder as masterpieces. They were the Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen of jazz duos, only you weren’t sure which was which. Having achieved all he believed he could at the moment with Davis, Coltrane paired with Thelonious Monk. The mighty jazz soloist effectively became an apprentice to the medium’s most idiosyncratic composer.

A quester never settles. In hockey, there’s an expression: you’re only as good as your next shift. That’s how Coltrane made his art, just as we’re only as good as the person we are the next day. A day where we can learn more than we did the day prior. Offer more to others. Better serve ourselves without being self-serving.

Coltrane set out as a band leader. He gave us his so-called sheets of sound; a musical version of the aurora borealis raining down in torrents of illumination. Then, the buffeting waves were set aside for a series of albums with his classic Quartet that I’d maintain you owe to yourself to hear during your time on this planet, or else that time will be diminished. Ballads, Live at Birdland, Crescent, A Love Supreme.

But the titan still sought growth. Additional phases. Greater range. He worked with Eric Dolphy, a man I’d call “the jazz whisperer.” History changed when Dolphy was around. In November 1961, the Quartet, augmented with Dolphy, played a series of gigs at the NYC’s Village Vanguard that would be an ideal place to send a visiting alien to give him an idea of the best of us, musically speaking. The quester learned from Dolphy. Coltrane became “freer,” more “out.” He gashed the world—but in a good way—with Ascension in 1965.

Listening to Ascension moves us closer to something beyond ourselves. “Fake” listen to at your own risk; you’re only shortchanging yourself. The path to fulfillment isn’t paved with “likes” and upvotes. Listen as a quester, which ideally is an extension of who we are. Our normal way of being; which is to say, progressing.

Coltrane didn’t do nostalgia. He didn’t fulfill expectations. He didn’t complete an order. He invented. Led. Made it new. He flew in the face of everything one is told an artist must be, and it seemed to work out well for him during his short life that contained lifetimes.

Your next shift, your next solo, your next day, the next time someone needs your help, the next book you read, the next time you’re fully yourself and not a performative echo. If you aren’t questing, you aren’t playing. Get up on the bandstand and blow.