it is pretty funny when burns (whose series kind of collapses after swing, if you ask me) gets to the bop/beat intersection. you've got some of the most technically flashy and obsessive musicians who ever lived: people with an almost insane degree of craft; indeed i think charlie parker and dizzy gillespie's records are marred by excessive concentration on the display of skill: too much mere virtuosity. then you've got allen ginsberg: it's jazz, man! anyone can do it. all you have to do is blow! spress yoseff! right he was attracted by the idea of improvisation; but what's characteristic about jazz improvisation is that it works by breaking a form of which you have complete mastery. now people can grab whatever they need however they want, and perhaps whether picasso really understood those african masks isn't the most important thing. but this i would have thought is an almost unmakeable mistake: i would have thought it was impossible to listen to those people and really think it all just comes out naturally and immediately. that's why howl is not actually like jazz at all even if it's about jazz. it's often said that modern art abandoned the idea of beauty. right, but also the idea of skill, central to the appreciation of the great artist since the ancients. that was a mistake, i think, even if mere skill can't be all there is.