Often I think back to a conversation with my friend Evan. He told me once about an old professor of his who maintained that Romanticism never died, that something like punk-rock was a natural progression of the romantic freedom of the artist, with his or her ability to express himself independently, not at the whim of King of Bishop. It’s a cute, general idea taken out of context, but I always come back to it, in an effort to figure out what it means to have a “romantic” temperamente these days, to contextualize it historically. Why? Because I’m probably a hopeless romantic, one who would seek to take back an idea and restore it to its original meaning. Say “romantic” now and you’ve got people thinking about flavored-coffee commercials. How did that happen, and when?
Brad Mehldau, no livrinho que acompanha o elegiac cycle
