How to Play: The Casual and Profound Philosophies of Miles Davis
On Writing, Art, Fitness, and Becoming Ourselves
“Sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself.”
—Miles Davis
Miles Davis was a jazz trumpeter, and I know very little about jazz, but I know poetry when I see it, and this line is poetry. It describes everything about being an artist.
I recently stumbled into this line, and it really resonated with me, echoing the truths of writing, art, and even fitness.
Art is not simply about doing the art, whether it’s music, painting, writing, or anything, really, that you’re passionate about. It’s about doing it in such a way that it is unmistakably you. The art is a vehicle that delivers your fingerprint, your voice, your soul.
Anyone can write a sentence, just as most people can learn to play a trumpet and read music adequately, and they can do it all in short order. The real work comes after this, where we try to figure out a style that is uniquely ours.
In this way, being an artist is not too dissimilar from building a better body.
The unscientific consensus among bodybuilders is that, with consistency and solid effort, a person can reach something like 80% of their genetic potential within five years. The bulk of these gains come in the first year or so, affectionately referred to as “newbie gains”. The results seem to appear even without much attention and focus, without much ado. We could be doing things almost sporadically and mostly wrong at this time and still make noticeable progress.
However, there are those who are so unserious about the work and the learning during this time that they even delay these easy yet highly motivating payoffs. Inconsistency and half-hearted efforts prevent them from fully experiencing the rapid results, and they remain newbies in perpetuity.
After the rapid movement of the newbie period, progress will slow substantially. Some perceive this as a fixed plateau, one that has no movement or can’t be moved past. They feel stuck, even going so far as questioning their abilities, sometimes giving up and quitting altogether. “I guess I don’t have what it takes,” they might say.
The truth is that we’ve moved into the intermediate phase, where we have to be more focused and attentive. We must do more things right and do them more consistently as compared to that first, newbie stage. We’ve gotten the basics down, but now we’re just starting to figure out who we are, what we want, and where we want to go. We’re just starting to get a glimpse of what we can look like, a glimpse of our potential.
Like the newbie stage, the intermediate period can last forever if we allow it. If we lose motivation or structure and become inconsistent, then yes, we are mostly treading water, which is not terrible. We’re maintaining what we’ve already achieved. We’re moving, staying afloat, but we’re not making any meaningful progress. In years five through ten, with consistency and a bit more attention to detail and nuance, a person can achieve another 10-15% of their genetic potential. Yes, more work, time, energy, for fewer results.
After that, the gulf widens even more, and we’re in the advanced stage. For every three years of work after that, it might only result in 1% improvement. And as we keep inching forward, the goal line also keeps inching farther away because, in truth, the goal line is unreachable.
And that’s okay. By the time we’ve hit the advanced stage, we’ve discovered as much of ourselves as we’re probably going to. It takes a while to look like yourself. Here, it’s almost like we’re putting the finishing touches on ourselves, setting up our legacies.
Different writers will communicate the same idea much differently, but we should know who writes what. To put your own “spin” on it is an oversimplification. The words on the page are an extension of yourself; to a serious writer, they are as distinct in identifying you as your driver’s license.
David Foster Wallace is one of my favorite writers. Any one of us can read any sentence he’s written and know that that line is quintessentially DFW and no one else, which is often a combination of observation, wit, humor, insight, and emotion. When we say something like artistic genius, I think that partly means that an artist has found their voice, their sound, much earlier than a standard bell curve would predict, which was also DFW. And if we compare ourselves to these outliers, who seem to have a fast pass to the front of the line, we become dismayed with ourselves. On the other hand, we can look at these artists as models towards what we can achieve.
If you’re a newbie, you’re still learning the basics, but this is when you see the quickest and greatest improvements. Everything here feels like a quantum leap. It’s easy to get cocky and think you’re precocious or some sort of savant. Most of the arrogant ones stay in this phase because hubris prevents them from moving on to the next phase and developing, which requires some dissection, introspection, and reflection.
If you’re in the intermediate phase of your craft, know that this is where the real work is done. This is where you’re really trying to figure out who you are; you’re trying to find your voice, your style, your rhythm. This is where you’re truly forging your identity. Even for the best of us in this phase, it can sometimes take a while to get into the groove. I think this is where the real fun is, though.
If you know who you are, your indelible style, and you’re doing ten times as much work as you were in the beginning but are only getting a one-percent return, congratulations, because you are an advanced artist, and most people will never reach this epoch of their art.
This is the arc of the artist and the arc of the bodybuilder. When developing a craft, skill, or artistic or even an athletic ability, it’s not just about being able to do that thing. It’s also about that thing being a vehicle for self-discovery. You evolve from someone who writes to someone’s who’s a writer; from someone who plays the trumpet to someone’s who’s jazz trumpeter; from someone who lifts weights to someone’s who’s a weightlifter.
Photo by Alora Griffiths on Unsplash
In any art or craft, “Sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself.” More broadly, this line also describes life.
It takes us all a while to grow into the person we will be most of our lives, to self-actualize.
Photo by Michael Starkie on Unsplash
Another line that Davis offers to artists: “Don’t play what’s there. Play what’s not there.”
Newbies can only play what’s there. Intermediates play what’s there but are starting to experiment with what’s not there. The advanced ones see the notes on the music sheet and know where, when, and how to elevate it with their own imprint.
Playing what’s not there is the heart of all writing.
Novice fiction writers often want to explain every obvious detail, but the subtext is where the storytelling is. As you read between the lines, the reader must do the same.
You don’t have to be a minimalist like Raymond Carver, but it helps to see how a pro reads between the lines and plays what’s not there. A quick example is his short story “Little Things”, also published as “Popular Mechanics”.
Also, consider the last line in “Cathedral”, one of his most well-known stories—and I’m not spoiling anything here because you need to read and know the story to get it: “That’s really something.” The reader must infer the meaning of the utterance, the attitude and intention of the character.
Likewise, consider the last lines these characters say to each other in the movie Field of Dreams:
Ray to Joe Jackson: “It was you.”
Joe Jackson to Ray: “No, Ray, it was you.”
It may sound on the nose, but it’s actually quite obscure and oblique. In fiction, readers want to find the breadcrumbs and figure out where they lead to. They want to do the detective work and be able to put the puzzle together on their own.
Let them.
In David Foster Wallace’s nonfiction piece, “The View from Mrs. Thompson’s”, he opens with:
Location: Bloomington, Illinois
Dates: 11-13 September
Subject: Obvious
He then goes on to describe some exchanges he witnesses between people at a gas station and a convenience store. He doesn’t spend a page describing the events themselves, the backstory leading up to it, or the national or international fallout. All of that is obvious. Then, he doesn’t simply describe the town in abstract terms. He allows the conversations he overhears, the way people dress and behave, the immaculately manicured lawns of the homes to stand in as those larger descriptions.
In narrative nonfiction, playing what’s there is just describing what’s going on. Focusing on the details that most of us will not even see is playing what’s not there.
To play what’s not there is like saying, “I’m playing what’s invisible, but I know it’s there.”
Where are you in your craft? Are you a newbie, an intermediate, or an advanced artist or athlete? We all need to warm up into ourselves. Literally, this can mean that we need to warm up in a given session before we get to the real work. You’ll want the blood flowing before you attempt to move a heavy weight.
More figuratively, we need to be patient as we develop, refine, and hone ourselves and our crafts.
We all need to do our thing for a while before we start seeing ourselves in it, and the only way to achieve this is to keep doing it.
“Do not fear mistakes,” Miles Davis also said. “There are none.”
