I found a clip from a NBC Today Show interview with Miles from 1982. Bryant Gumbel did the interview. It is an interesting confirmation of something I'm working on just now--call it 'carnal knowing' which has to do not with sex, as some readers might imagine, but with bodily knowing. This is the kind of learning, knowing, that takes practice to acquire but practice does not mean you acquire it. It is part of my current long-term research project and something I've mentioned in this space before. My point is that this form of knowing applies just as much to presiding at communion, preaching, etc. in ministry but that it has been undervalued because of the kind of knowing dominant in higher education: disengaged, rational, 'from the shoulders up'.
BG: Do you know right off the bat which musicians you like, who is good and who is not, who is not going to work out and who is gonna be with you . . .
MD: Yea, I get that feelin'.
BG: What do you look for? Can you tell us? Is it something you can describe or is it . . .
MD: First thing I look at in a musician is [undecipherable], what he wears, how he talks, how he walks, and when he lifts, picks up the instrument, his approach to the instrument, you know, he doesn't stumble with it, you know, they pick it up like it is part of their body, just an extension of their body, you know what I'm saying, then you can almost tell how he's gonna play.
p.s. if you listen to the interview, get a load of his view of contemporary music and the food analogy!
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