Interpretation Is All

Versions. I love to play versions of songs I like. Take one of my favorites – Billy Strayhorn’s exquisite “Day Dream.” There are as many versions of it as there are musicians who play it. Bill Charlap, Ellis Larkins, John Hicks, George Cables, Roland Hanna – all marvelous, all different. It’s fun to stack them up, listen to them back-to-back, and compare them. No two are alike – different tempos, different notes, different interpretations. 

And then I think of Susan Sontag’s “Against Interpretation”: “To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world.” I can only shake my head. To be fair, she’s talking about literary criticism, not jazz. She says, “Proust, Joyce, Faulkner, Rilke, Lawrence, Gide ... one could go on citing author after author, the list is endless of those around whom thick encrustations of interpretation have taken hold.”  

Instead of interpretation, Sontag wants transparence: “Transparence is the highest, most liberating value in art – and in criticism – today. Transparence means experiencing the luminousness of the thing in itself, of things being what they are.” Okay, I get it. She’s arguing for a fresh approach, one that scrapes away the barnacles of old interpretation and tries to see “the thing in itself.” Nothing wrong with that. Don’t reduce great artworks to standard interpretations. Seek new ones. All great art is open to new discovery. That’s what John Hicks does in his version of “Day Dream” – blows away the dreaminess and plays it hard, fast. It’s a brilliant interpretation. I love it.