Looking for an Out Place

This book is called Looking For An Out Place. Nobody knows what this means. I just mean a place that isn't "in." Where you can do what you please. Be yourself without people judging you. And play weird music with poetry, “outside jazz,” a.k.a., free jazz or creative music. The kind Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane are credited with introducing. Music that also owes its existence to Sun Ra, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, the Third Stream and other innovators in African American and European classical music. Not to get away from poetry, but some of these musicians, Ra in particular, “the Black Blake,” I call him, inspired me more than any poet has over the last ten years. (Sun Ra wrote poetry too, by the way.)