A Love Supreme

It's 1950, and a little African American girl from Philadelphia travels into the future to see what life will bring two decades from now. Filtering from a nearby bookshop she overhears the most beautiful jazz piece she's ever heard, and wanders inside to ask what album is playing. A Love Supreme, the shop owner tells her, and he explains that its melodies tell a story that no book ever could, and it's origins illustrate a devastatingly raw account of the human soul. She is in awe that such a beautiful and haunting song could ever exist, and purchases the record for her good friend, John Coltrane, so that he can witness for himself the haunting melodies and sheets of sound which he's destined to one day actualise. 

She journeys back to 1950 and excitedly brings him the record so he may begin mastering his beautiful future-piece. As he sets the needle down, a subtle knowingness washes over him. However, as he listens further into Acknowledgement, the little girl notices his brow furrow as he becomes deeply lost in contemplation. He simply cannot fathom how he could ever elicit such a transcendental soundscape. He picks up the sax, and over the following few weeks attempts to master it but cannot seem to match the musical genius he hears on the album. He becomes frustrated and puts the record away to confront at a later time. 

Years pass, and the album is long forgotten, sitting at the bottom of a box put away. During these years, Coltrane succumbs to heroin addiction, and faces the loss of numerous friends at the hands of drug addiction rampant in the jazz scene at the time. All the while, racial tensions and social oppression constantly challenge his fortitude. His soul becomes stripped of its lustre and hardens, and he fails to see the light against his own darkness, although humility slowly grows inside him like a seed. 

Over time, Coltrane sees that he can use his music as an outlet for the racial persecution which runs deep within the veins of his generation. As the early howls from his sax scream of the violence, sadness, oppression, and perseverance of his people, they later transgress into the sweet sound of enlightenment, pure joy and fearlessness. He had to immerse within the sorrows of his journey to recognise the supreme love of life as it should be lived. Only after the sorrow had carved a hole large enough for joy, understanding and clarity to fill in could he play his opus. He played and played, his song a spark that alights within those who have the ability to deeply listen. The little girl smiles, not because she foreshadowed to him what he would become, but because she realised that the grandeur of life can only be truly experienced as an outward reflection of what is within.