Ornette Coleman, Psychoanalysis, Discourse

Book excerpt: Ornette Coleman, Psychoanalysis, Discourse develops tools from psychoanalysis for the analysis of Ornette Coleman's discourse. In this psychoanalytic, philosophical and musical meditation on what it means to follow, A. L. James presents an approach to the analysis of discourse that is a kind of listening for listening – an attempt to discern in and between the lines of Coleman's speech the implication of new ways to listen, new ways to experience Coleman’s music as movement and space – as Movements in Harmolodic Space. Each chapter of this book is oriented with respect to fragments from Coleman’s discourse, dealing with a piece, or collection of pieces, from Coleman’s work, with particular attention to the implication of relations and relationality. Insofar as Coleman’s discourse about his work also contains allusions to fields beyond music, it develops tools that draw elements and structures from these fields together, finding in their relation echoes and parallels. Ornette Coleman, Psychoanalysis, Discourse will be of great interest to psychoanalysts, musicians, and musicologists. It will be relevant for academics and scholars of psychoanalytic and Lacanian studies, music, and cultural studies.