Miles Davis’ Spiritual Senses and Synesthetic Art
Photo art from the Miles Davis Estate.
“A painting is music you can see, and music is a painting you can hear,” Miles Davis says in a quote featured in the epilogue to Dave Chisholm’s Miles Davis and the Search for the Sound, a deeply inspired graphic novel that features Davis’ words alongside Chisholm’s visual art. This line was taken from Davis’ profound and honest 1989 autobiography, Miles, coauthored with poet and author Quincy Troupe.
Among the many gifts of Chisholm’s book is that he seems to tap directly into Davis’ spirit to generate visual representations of Davis’ sounds and life, or that is how it feels to me. Strikingly, the art is fluid even as it sits still on the page, much like a meditative vision can be. As someone who hears visuals and sees sounds myself, I feel as though the fixed-on-page drawings are moving in their sounds and activating kaleidoscopic sonic visions in my mind’s eye.
Chisholm also intersperses quotes from Davis’ words while he was among us as human, further enhancing the gift of the visual representations of Davis’ sound. It is a trifecta effect – words, sounds, and spiritually inspired (to my mind) visuals – that ignites multiple sensorial processes for me as a reader. This experience is akin to the spiritual connection that I feel through the extraordinary portal that is Davis’ music.
In the epilogue, Chisholm features another quote from Davis on receiving signals and inspiration for his art, whether painting or music, not only with his mind but with his whole body.
“Today my mind is concentrating, and my body’s like an antenna” (Davis in Chisholm, p. 147).
One of Davis’ sons, Erin Davis, who is an executor for Davis’ estate, selected Chisholm to bring this project to life. To me, the result is so deep and genuine that it feels as though the spirit of Davis may have guided his son’s hand in this choice of an artist.
As I traveled Chisholm’s book, I found myself newly immersed in reflecting on Davis’ synesthesia – a current term for those whose senses cross and convert sensory input. Examples of synesthesia include tasting shapes, seeing sounds, or hearing visuals.
How much do we know about Davis’ synesthetic repertoire and its relation to his nearly perpetual musical expansion and innovation? Was it related to his spirituality?
From the record Davis left while he was alive, it seems that he readily would share that he could see sound, but he did not tend to elaborate at length, to my knowledge. He also did not necessarily draw those comments into express connection with his mentioning of his spiritual experiences, though his frequent use of the language of feeling appears to offer a bridge between the two sets of phenomena in his commentaries and conversations.
For example, toward the very end of Davis’ autobiography, he reflects:
“Just like Trane’s [John Coltrane’s] style was his own, and Bird’s [Charlie Parker’s] and Diz’s [Dizzy Gillespie] their own, I don’t want to sound like nobody but myself. I want to be myself, whatever that is. But in music, I have such feeling for different phrases, and when I’m really enjoying something, it’s like I’m one with it. The phrase is me. I play things my way and then I try to go above it … I see colors and things when I’m playing … People tell me my sound is like a human voice and that’s what I want it to be” (p. 399.).
He continues the thread on feeling in his next paragraph, where he writes of receiving most of his musical inspiration in the still quiet of the night and in calm spaces.
“My best musical ideas for compositions come to me at night. Duke Ellington was the same way. He wrote all night and slept all day. I guess at night everything is quiet and so you can block what little noise there is out and concentrate. I also think I write better out in California because it’s so quiet out there; I live by the ocean. At least it’s that way for now. I’ll take Malibu over New York when I write” (p. 399).
On the second-to-last page of his autobiography, Davis addresses organized religion, saying it is not really for him. Then, he speaks directly to his spiritual beliefs and experiences in a very open and moving way.
“But I do believe in being spiritual and do believe in spirits. I always have. I believe my mother and father come to visit me. I believe all the musicians that I have known who are now dead do, too. When you work with great musicians, they are always a part of you – people like Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Bird [Charlie Parker], Diz [Dizzy Gillespie], Jack DeJohnette, Philly Joe [Philly Joe Jones]. The ones that are dead I miss a lot, especially as I grow older: Monk [Thelonious Monk], Mingus [Charles Mingus], Freddie Webster, and Fat Girl [Fats Navarro]. When I think about the ones who are dead it makes me mad, so I try not to think about it. But their spirits are walking around in me, so they’re still here and passing it on to others. It’s some spiritual shit and part of what I am today is them. It’s all in me, the things I learned to do from them. Music is about the spirit and the spiritual, and about feeling. I believe their music is still around somewhere, you know. The shit that we played together has to be somewhere around in the air because we blew it there and that shit was magical, was spiritual” (p. 411).
In Davis’ next paragraph, he turns to the dreams that later turned into waking visions, allowing him to still see and converse with his loved ones and fellow musicians who have crossed over to spirit.
“I used to have these dreams where I thought I could see things, see some other stuff, like smoke or clouds, and my mind would make pictures of them. I do that now when I wake up in the morning and want to see my mother or father or Trane or Gil [Gil Evans] or Philly, or whoever. I just say to myself, ‘I want to see them,’ and they’re there and I’m talking to them. Sometimes now when I look in the mirror, I see my father there. This has been happening since he died and wrote that letter. I definitely believe in the spirit, but I don’t think about death; there’s too much for me to do to worry about that” (p. 411).
Though Davis was not consciously thinking about death, the fact that his sharing these windows into his spiritual experiences is positioned right by the ultimate resolution of the book’s beautiful journey makes me wonder if his spirit, or the spirit, or the spirits – however it was for him then – had a proverbial hand in documenting all of this and including the spiritual connection assemblages at the end. Perhaps this landing was spiritually orchestrated as a balm for those who would miss Davis once he passed back to spirit in 1991, about two years after the book was published.
As Davis was writing, he was still fully in thrall to the music that coursed through his mind-spirit every day. His last two paragraphs focused on the intensifying call of the music in his life, or as his life.
“For me, the urgency to play and create music today is worse than when I started. It’s more intense. It’s like a curse. Man, the music I forget now drives me nuts trying to remember it. I’m driven to it – go to bed thinking about it and wake up thinking about it. It’s always there. And I love that it hasn’t abandoned me; I feel really blessed” (pp. 411-12).
In his last paragraph, Davis talks about the strength he was feeling, both creatively and physically.
“I feel good, because I have never felt this creative. I feel the best is yet to come. Like Prince says when he’s talking about hitting the beat and getting to the music and the rhythm, I’m going to keep ‘getting up on the one,’ brother, I’m just going to try to keep my music getting up on the one, getting up on the one every day I play. Getting up on the one. Later” (p. 412).
In fact, as though to drive home this point, I was moved by the spirit just now in writing this to revisit the end of Chisholm’s epilogue to his graphic novel, with all of the arrayed quoted words from Davis. I was astonished to see the correspondences with the end of his autobiography. Of course, Chisholm selected quotes from throughout the autobiography, and he may well have gone in order, but still, I remain amazed.
After Davis quotes that address his multisensorial experiences of painting and music, along with his fierce devotion to both – “I get obsessed with everything I care about,” Davis says – there is a quote from Davis about his 1986 album, Tutu, “named after Bishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate” (Davis in Chisholm, p. 146). In the quotes, Davis also speaks about working for the first time so much with Marcus Miller, noting “he’s so hip, he even walks in tempo – ain’t never out of tempo in whatever he does” (Davis in Chisholm, p. 147).
I turned the page, and there is a drawing of Davis playing with Prince, reflecting on the artist and then on the continued vitality of “the music called ‘jazz’” (Davis in Chisholm, p. 148).
“In 1987 I was really getting into the music of Prince. He does so many things – he writes and sings and produces and plays music, acts in films, produces and directs them – it’s like he can do it all. He’s a little genius. Prince wrote a song for Tutu, but when he heard what was on there, he didn’t think it fit. He has high musical standards, like me. I’m always thinking about creating. When you’re creating your own shit, man – even the sky ain’t the limit. And if anybody wants to keep creating, they have to be about change. It’s a challenge to go forward into something you know nothing about. I never thought the music called ‘jazz’ was meant to become a museum thing locked under glass like all the other dead things that were once considered artistic” (p. 148).
The Davis quotes on the last three pages of Chisholm’s book then very clearly drive home the points about constant creation and spiritual connection, in ways that are very similar to how Davis concluded his autobiography. The correspondence or resonance of these arrangements is uncanny.
The last three pages begin with an illumined neon “La Grande Halle” sign, affixed toward the top of the exterior of a building glowing with a mint-green light through its walls of windows, set against a nighttime sky. A purple inscription in the sky above tells us that this is “La Grande Halle. Paris, France. July 10, 1991.” Davis would pass back to spirit on September 28 of that year.
Davis’ quoted words issue forth down the page of Chisholm’s art:
“I don’t miss people in the same way other people miss people. So many people have died that I was close to that I guess I just don’t have those kinds of feelings anymore. I won’t be thinking about Gil [Evans] being dead, or any of them. Gil is still in my head – like Trane and Monk and Bird and Red [Garland] and Paul [Chambers]and Wynton [Kelly] – Bill [Evans], Philly Joe, Freddie Webster. All my best friends are dead. But I can hear them – I can put myself in their heads. Part of what I am today is them. I do believe in being spiritual – and I do believe in spirits” (148-49).
The words then continue onto the final two pages, with the Chisholm-drawn Davis’ back toward us as readers. Davis is facing the band on the page, with his head bowed as though he is intently listening to the musicians onstage, while also watching beautiful, technicolor visions arise, larger than life. They seem to be the spirits of many of these great musicians who have entered through the portal or space of the music, cocreating the glorious sounds being played in the venue.
“I believe their music is still around somewhere, you know? The shit that we played together has to be somewhere in the air because we blew it there and that shit was magical” (Davis in Chisholm, pp. 150-51).
The final frame is placed in the bottom righthand corner, where Davis is playing trumpet in cool blue watery hues, as though from the other side of the veil and imparting his wisdom from spirit:
“Music is about the spirit and the spiritual – about feeling. Listen” (Davis in Chisholm, p. 151).
The instruction to listen ends the Chisholm book. “Listen” is also the first word – or the foundation, we might say – in Davis’s 1989 autobiography.
Davis’ message feels unwavering and ever-present, always accessible and resounding beyond time.
About the Author
Lauren Coyle Rosen is a cultural anthropologist, artist, and author who focuses on the roles of spirituality and creative inspiration in art, music, and culture. She is the author of The Spirit of Ani (with Ani DiFranco, forthcoming), Hannibal Lokumbe (with Hannibal Lokumbe, Columbia University Press, 2024), Law in Light (University of California Press, 2024), and Fires of Gold (University of California Press, 2020), as well as eight volumes of poetry. Coyle Rosen is currently a fellow at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at the Hutchins Center at Harvard University. She was a cultural anthropology professor at Princeton University, where she received the President’s Award in Distinguished Teaching. She lives in Washington, DC, and in Philadelphia with her husband, Jeffrey Rosen. She has a JD from Harvard Law School and a PhD in cultural anthropology from the University of Chicago.
