The jazz saxophonist Art Pepper, whose addiction to heroin and years in prison are a matter of record, admired but never met his great contemporary, Miles Davis. Davis was, in fact, an ill-spirited, sometimes malicious man, but Pepper wouldn’t hear a word of it. It is not possible, he reasoned, for a bad man to create such sensitive, honest, beautiful things.
Pepper’s own recordings, a testament to suffering and beauty, to despair and something that might well be hope, tempt me in turn. It is not possible, I reason, for a hardened man to make such sensitive, honest, beautiful things.
I don’t know what to make of Pepper. I love him more than any other jazz musician, but I can’t begin to understand him.
Or any of us.
How confounding, that a man as bad as Art Pepper should so yearn for goodness—and believe, against all reason, in the goodness of another like himself!
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