I recently watched the Miles Davis documentary recently made by PBS (also available on netflix). It re-ignited my life-long hero worship of Miles, reminded me why I chose to learn the trumpet as a kid, reminded me how much of an influence he has been on the core values of artistic expression I still aspire to in my own very small way. Although it was the In A Silent Way/Bitches Brew era that forever changed the way I think about music when I was a teen, in my mid-life it has been his final burst of creative energy in the 1980s that fascinates me.

One reason I keep coming back to Miles' late 80s energy is his outfits. The outfits are amazing. He became more open to talking about his process - somehow more humble and open about himself while shrouded in loud, garish and funky avant garde haute couture. His paintings... reflecting a sort of afro-funk post modernism and a sense of a return to a willfully playful naïveté . Underneath, above, around and beyond all of it is the music - a fascinating, nuanced and airy approach to the modern synthesized sounds of the times. It might be so much projection onto the past, but he seemed unafraid to embrace the tepid, mauve MIDI tones of the day and still come up with something subtle, elusive and sublime.  Under the pressure to live up to the caricature of himself as an "intense, dangerous and adventurous auteur", humbled by health problems, bursting out of a depression that lasted years....he becomes playfully funky, bemused and inspired by his new context.

Its an inspiring display of renewal and a return to the joy of growth into the unknown.