8. Miles DavisSketches Of Spain
I first found out about this not through the record but through an experimental filmmaker named Bruce Connor. He did a film about an artist called Jay De Feo who had a work called The White Rose – I cannot recommend this film enough. She started this piece in 1957. Eight years later, it weighed 2300 pounds. She was moving out of her studio in San Francisco and to get it out of the apartment, they had to hire workers and cut open the building to get it out with a crane. And the soundtrack is Sketches Of Spain. Even now, talking to you I get goosebumps because there’s something in that film.
She ended up getting lead poisoning from that work – she dedicated herself so seriously to this work that in a way it was partly what killed her. The feeling watching the film is that this is someone who has actually given their life for their art, and how moving that is. I can’t divorce this record from that film. When I hear Sketches Of Spain, that that imagery comes into my head, and also that feeling, of the importance of art.
