DL: Well, it's the classic versus romantic view, and whose name do we remember? This guy or Pablo Casals? I think it speaks for itself. what's going to be remembered, I hope, is going to be the intertwining of the present living person whoever it is, whether it's Casals or David Liebman, in the context of the art form, its tradition, its future, its present, and that whole mixture together. I don't see how in jazz you can't infuse it with whomever and whatever you feel and what you are. I'm not denigrating the traditionalists of which, of course, there is a gigantic movement now. You know, play the music as is, Louis [Armstrong], Jellyroll Morton, this whole return to Duke [Ellington] because it's the 100th anniversary of his birth, and in 1999 it's going to be a big deal. I'm not against that- but I'm not that interested in that particularly. I have great respect for it, the "tradition," the rules, and playing it within context and everything, I think it's great, and it has nothing to do with my life. Absolutely nothing. In fact if I was younger, I'd probably be more into it, as I was with Coltrane. But I don't feel it's really related to what I do as an artist or as an individual. I'm past the point where I enter a museum with my head bowed down. It doesn't mean anything to me anymore, except for "that old feeling" of familiarity.

VLS: Does the term "jazz syntax" mean anything to you?

DL: I think the term "syntax" means a vernacular, a way of speaking. And there is a way of speaking. It does come from roots, but it is individualized. I could talk about jazz rhythm (I have a whole video about it) being a thing that we could put on the table and say that's good jazz rhythm, but then I would have to talk about Louis Armstrong's jazz rhythm and Lester Young's jazz rhythm, and like Sonny Rollins, and there could be fifteen interpretations of this so-called understood element. So we really have something called the language, the syntax, the vernacular, and it's immediately transferable to personal creation anyway. So in jazz, it's really hard to be objective from the beginning anyway. Because the art form itself says you're supposed to individualize it. that's the point. Are you supposed to know what the syntax is first? Yes. Do you have to walk before you run? Yes. All that's understood, but your goal is not to repeat or to objectify this thing. It's to take it and have it be a living thing that you put your personality on. And some people don't agree with that as you just depicted, and I can understand that standpoint. It's just that for me that's not the way it is.

VLS: With respect to Coltrane's Meditations, towards the end of his life he was very much into spirituality. Do you have an interest in spirituality? Do you study religious teachings? Do you try to bring a spiritual dimension to the music? Is that a conscious part of your life?

DL: First of all when I was younger, I did spend time studying especially Eastern religion. You know, it was the style of the day, in those days, in the 'sixties, but you know through psychedelics and through whatever, readings, you know, Vivekananda, Ramakrishna, you know, all these guys, poetry, Gibran, etc. We all delved into it- scientology, I delved into, and of course yoga, and everything like that, meditation, macrobiotics. That's the period when you do that, or you should be doing that, checking it out. But my life progressed, there is no time to do that, and the reason is this: I feel that the music speaks absolutely louder than any dogma, any words can speak at all. And in the end, the music is connected- there's a great book by Hazrat Inayat Khan of the Sufis. It's about how music ties into the "realms" and everything like that. It's just an understood, it's a given. Much of art is something you hold in your hand, for example, with poetry- you have the book, you have the words. But music is gone, boom, zip, it's done. And before the tape recorder and the phonograph, it was really gone.

To me it's understood that we're spiritual creatures, that we're all tied in, and the attempt to create is an attempt to put the umbilical chord between you and the Creator, whatever you call it, the Force. And it's an obvious thing- we're all doing, each in his own way. And to tout it, to talk about it, to write about it, to me could be a little off-putting. I'll tell you the truth, I get a little bugged when I see that stuff, because I think it's a little pretentious.

Now, the other thing is that as far as my own religious thing goes, I'm Jewish, culturally, but my wife is Catholic, and I've learned more about the church than I ever knew before. I go to Mass on a holiday, and I know the priest very well. And- it's all the same. But of course the horrible thing is what society does between religions in the name of religion. So therefore, I can't buy the whole religious thing because of the political connotations- but from my standpoint, everybody is a spiritual creature, and an artist's duty is to try to get in touch with that through his work. It's the work and it's the art that will do that. The art itself is way beyond anything that the person can do. So if you're in touch with the art, as Trane was, and as Miles was in his most beautiful moments, as Duke was in his writing, if you're in touch with it, it's just done, understood, and apparent, and there's nothing you need to be said about it, except let's talk about the music the syntax, I love to talk about the music. I'll play you the chords, I will tell you the structure, this is what I want to spend my time on, because I want to get better at that. I want to know more about the details. But about what it creates and the feeling of it, I accept that that's going to be there.

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