Trump's Dangerous Love of Improvisation
The president’s threat against North Korea on Tuesday was reportedly made off the cuff, the latest instance of an impromptu remark causing chaos and concern.
Trains have long been a staple of Donald Trump’s iconography. Trane, less so. But the recent North Korea crisis provides a moment to consider the parallels between John Coltrane, the iconic tenor saxophonist who died 50 years ago this summer, and the 45th president.
Trump and Coltrane both began their careers in fairly traditional ways, and each got more esoteric as they got older, producing what some listeners found brilliant and what others called incoherent and hard to listen to. Both are prodigious improvisers, tending to whip up new ideas and thoughts on the spot. And both seem unsure where to stop improvising.
“I don't know what it is,” Coltrane once told Miles Davis, in whose, “Why don't you try taking the horn out of your mouth?”
