Jazz Philosophy

1. Jazz teaches us that the sounds as cryptic as a blues band falling down the stairs can be so appealing to those who understands. So does life 🙂 If you think your life is a failure, an unacceptable and uncomprehending, merely sequence of (bad) events, try to listen to jazz. At first it will sound like all the notes are “wrong” and you will think that how can everyone playing jazz does not realize that they sound so “bad” and “wrong” but yet they can keep playing in “harmony”? Can all these wrongness be something good collectively? Well, for those who can appreciate jazz, all the wrongness sounds great. And for those who cannot, how the music can play along with all the “misplaced” and “false” notes can still be appreciated, because it must be something, at least: an evolving mistakes that goes along, can compete and co-exist with others “right” and “nice” sounds 🙂
2. Jazz is paradoxically “beautiful”. It is in chaotic order. Or structurally chaotic. Every player in a jazz band has their own chaotic equations that process different variables, yet they can blend altogether in a “systematic” way. Let’s say if all the instruments improvising with different beat, at one point they will catch up with one another in the same tempo. This, I think if being applied in life, can be interpreted that we can deviate from our route or target in order to do improvisations, exploration etc. but we should always know how to get back to the right track.
3. Jazz is cool. In terms of calm, collected, composed, unemotional. Jazz teaches us to be rational, and logical. It never gets to mellow or too excited. It is always extremely moderate (another paradox), never letting itself gone carried away in melodramatic way. It is too busy being complicated with inventions, improvisations and generating new things, instead of whining and burst into tears, to get the message across. I always use jazz to steam self off when I get angry or upset, or when I need to do things that needs concentration (like writing or coding). In fact, jazz can always “normalize” me. It screen off the “noise” and straighten up my twisted mind (or twist it even more so bad until it get straight).

So for me, jazz is not just a genre of music. It is a way of life. A philosophical way of life 🙂