​A Love Supreme, Pt. I — Acknowledgement​

Written by John Coltrane (1964)​

Certainty never comes quick and rarely stays long. It slips through your fingers and stays hiding around every corner. Behind every last job, every accolade, every face. You faintly remember that you had it once but it’s so easy to forget.

This song reminds you.

A resounding gong pulls you into the yawning abyss and refreshes your memory. A powerful horn cuts through the thick air. Suddenly you’re pushing against the earth’s crust with a thousand pounds of pressure.

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The 19th-century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard routinely fell into depression. By the time he was in his late 20s his entire family had died except his older brother. He was engaged for a year but called it off due to his depression then devoted himself entirely to writing. He knew about changes, uncertainty, and insecurity which is reflected in his work. Wrestling with existential questions about faith, meaning, anxiety, and love he wrote:

“Men believe there are many ways of keeping oneself awake and secure, but there is really only one: the eternal’s ‘you shall.’ Let the thunder of a hundred cannons remind you three times daily.”

When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was he said, “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your reason.” Then he said, “and a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Kierkegaard zooms in on the “you shall.” He points out that the acceptance of the responsibility to love brings peace and security. He writes that, “only when it is a duty to love, only then is love eternally secured against every change, eternally made free in blessed independence, eternally and happily secured against despair.” The only way to find absolute certainty and security is in love and through love. And this song is a recognition of the certainty of love.

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In the mid 1960s John Coltrane was tired of what he was hearing. He had been gaining popularity as a solo artist but wanted to get away from playing the same music over and over. In the summer of 1964 he locked himself in his house in Dix Hills on Long Island for two weeks. His wife Alice Coltrane said that after several weeks of working, “he walked down and there was that joy, that peace in his face.” He recorded A Love Supreme on December 9th 1964 in Englewood, New Jersey.

Coltrane’s message and poem inside the original record sleeve help put this song in the right context. The sheet music also reveals where his head was at when he was writing the song.

Talk to you next week!

Dawson