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BIG_RESERVOIR

                                              May 10, 2012

There's an interview with John
Coltrane, where the interviewer
commented that Sun Ra (and/or John
Gilmore) were going around talking
about Coltrane ripping off their
stuff (or something like that).

Coltrane responded that there
could be some truth in that,
that he'd been listening to               There's a story that
Gilmore (one of Ra's main sax             John Gilmore liked to tell:
guys) quite a lot.                        he was sitting in with a
                                          band he'd never played with
   Coltrane added that he thought         before, and they struck him
   that really, the music was a           as being really tight,
   big reservoir that that they           directly on the beat in a
   all dipped into.                       way that he just wasn't
                                          used to playing.
   The reservoir metaphor is
   interesting: it implies a                  So he figured he couldn't
   common resource that no                    play with them, so he'd have
   one is denied access to.                   to play *against* them.  (I
                                              imagine he was essentially
   It also suggests a resource                doing counter-point on the
   that's replenished, but                    fly), and at the end of the
   through indirect                           set he was surprised by the
   means... the water you use                 famous, and well-established
   evaporates, turns to rain,                 John Coltrane coming up to
   runs downhill through                      Gilmore -- who at the time
   various streams and ends up                was flat broke, living on a
   in some body of water--                    hotdog and candy bar a day --
   though not necessarily the                 and gushing "you got *it*!".
   reservoir you drew from.                   Coltrane then asked
                                              Gilmore to teach "it" to him.

       Complex pathways,                          You can say "John Gilmore
       and untraceable                            taught Coltrane how to
       sources...                                 play", and that's only a
                                                  slight exaggeration.
          (Water metaphors
          *still* beat         No Onion is
          computers.)          going to make
                               me cry about that.

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