Politics & Power Quote by Keith Jarrett

Jarrett draws a hard line between competence and voltage. He dismisses "ideas" and "presentation" not because they don't matter, but because they're the safe parts of artistry: the parts you can refine without risking yourself. "Electric player" here isn't just about amplification or instruments; it's a metaphor for the kind of musician who can light up a room. Jarrett implies that electricity comes from transaction. You don't simply perform; you sell something intimate.

The political analogy is the knife. In politics, the public rarely buys policy on policy; they buy the candidate as a body and a story. Jarrett's "skin or your heart" names the two common currencies: surface and soul. Skin is image, attitude, erotic charisma, the stylized pose that can be packaged. Heart is vulnerability, the messy interior that can't be faked for long without collapse. He's pointing at an uncomfortable truth in music culture, especially post-60s: authenticity became both a moral demand and a marketing strategy.

Context matters because Jarrett is the anti-product in a product-driven era. His infamous intolerance for noisy audiences and his preference for the acoustic piano read like resistance to spectacle. Yet even he admits the economy of attention: to be "electric" you must risk exposure. The subtext is almost puritanical: if the audience feels nothing, it's because you didn't pay the price. That price isn't technical mastery. It's giving up privacy onstage, letting listeners take a piece of you and call it entertainment.