Playing to the Wall - By John Forbis, OHC

Br. John Forbis, OHC 

Almost two decades ago, I did a presentation to a group of people who came to our monastery in Grahamstown, South Africa for a week-long immersion into the Benedictine world. My subject was the mutual influences of monastic music and monastic spirituality upon each other. In discussing Gregorian chant, I tried not to get too technical but focused on the searching, dynamic, even restless quality of the melodic lines. They were always seeming to probe something more than themselves, trying to get at something intangible, ineffable, reflecting often the architecture of monasteries in the Middle Ages.

I then decided to take the idea a step further. I tried to trace the influences of chant forward into musical history all the way to jazz. I finally ended up discussing John Coltrane. He made his greatest and most adventurous recordings in the 50s and early 60s and died too soon after them. 

"My Favorite Things" 1961

The recording I played was his famous interpretation of "My Favorite Things". The saxophonist was certainly influenced by the technical elements of chant using the church modes, which were the musical scales, the building blocks of chant.

But even more so, I wanted to emphasize Coltrane's same restlessness. In many ways, he is not easy to listen to. To me, his playing sounds like he is never satisfied, has never found home, always trying to probe, penetrate through to something beyond him. And he had much musical talent and genius with which to do this. Often he played the same melodic patterns again and again, slightly modifying them, sharping and flatting notes here and there, changing rhythms, beginning the pattern on a different beat or offbeat. His playing was as unnerving and mysterious as prayer. At the same time, in that discomfort and mystery, I have always heard a great humility. His prayer was never settled and never finished.

When I presented this idea to the group, I went as far as to say that because of these reasons he displayed the values and passion of a monk.

Then one time, I read a poignant portrait of Coltrane written by Tom Dowd, the recording engineer for the Atlantic Record sessions. Dowd's description of Coltrane's routine before recording sessions brings me right back to my original conviction of which I won't hesitate to express again. He writes:

"...He would stand in a corner, face the wall, play, stop, change reeds and start again. After a while he would settle on a mouthpiece and reed that felt most comfortable to him, and then he would start to work on the 'runs' that he wanted to use during the session. I would watch him play the same passage over and over again, changing his breathing, his fingering, and experimenting with the most minute changes in his phrasing. Once in a while he would go back to the mouthpiece he had abandoned earlier. He never lost control: every step had a reason and almost everything he played was acceptable to everyone but him. Until he felt comfortable that he had exhausted all of the possibilities, he would continue to play the various permutations.

As the rest of the band members started to arrive, he would nod a greeting but never stop playing. He was deep into another world. He set the atmosphere for the sessions ... "

What I hear in his playing combined with the passage above speaks volumes to me about faith itself. He is the living example of St. Augustine's statement: Our heart is restless until it rests in you. Coltrane's heart was restless and because of that, he was one of the most creative musicians of the 20th Century. I believe faith is the one thing that keeps us from settling for anything less than resting in God.  Monastic life is sometimes a restless life for me, one of constant searching and when I feel that I have found what I am looking for, then, I know I am exactly at the point where I need to start all over again.

The great Trappist monk, Thomas Merton writes about contemplatives in this unsettling way, “The contemplative is one who would rather not know than know. He [she] accepts the love of God on faith, in defiance of all apparent evidence.”

I can now look to Coltrane's example for a source of courage and strength to travel that "dark and unknown path" of not knowing and to keep searching even when I know I will not find what I seek. Writing poetry for me is a contemplative act. In some ways, I am writing the same poem until I get it right and at the same time hoping I never do. Below is my "permutation" of that life-long poem that is never finished inspired by Dowd's tribute above.

Playing to the Wall

He comes

an hour early,

faces the wall and blows a column of air

through furious fingers

and snapping keys.

Others arrive

and he acknowledges them

with a nod, not breaking

his endless patterns.

He clamps down on that reed

tries to bore

inside concrete,

see its own patterns and play them.

But notes bounce hard

against glass and acoustic panels.

If he finds the scale,

the harmony

that shatters the glass

he will have

nothing else to play.

He will have to wrench

the sax from his mouth

and lay it down forever.

So he continues

to pelt the wall.

It caves

just enough

to give room

to breathe

into another voice.