As I write this, NPR is playing Blue in Green by Miles Davis. I wasn’t expecting it.

I am fully aware that to praise the piece is the very definition of culturally illiterate redundancy, to add one’s name to the bottom of a celestial comment page stretching from Earth to wherever it is that Miles’ spirit rests, to clumsily rehash that which far more experienced critics have expressed with far greater musical lucidity.

Despite all this, I feel nonetheless irrationally compelled to commit this vain act: For me, Blue in Green is peerless. It ensnares my consciousness more wholly than any other music I know, edging out Gershwin and Goldfrapp alike. Bill Evans’ sleepy piano opening is, in my personally empirical roster of artistic merit, among the crowning creative achievements of the 20th Century, of America, of the western world.

Ok, I’m done.