Education Quote by Paul Desmond

Desmond’s line lands with the sly confidence of a working jazz musician who’s watched a thousand people chase “rules” as if rules could substitute for ears. “Writing is like jazz” isn’t a cute metaphor; it’s a shot across the bow of any workshop culture that promises a plug-and-play formula for voice. Jazz can be diagrammed - scales, changes, substitutions, time - and so can writing: grammar, structure, scene, argument. You can absolutely learn the parts. But the thing you came for, the thing that makes it art rather than competent assembly, doesn’t transfer cleanly from teacher to student.

The subtext is apprenticeship over instruction. You don’t become a jazz player by being told what swing is; you become one by listening until your body internalizes the pocket, by imitating, failing in public, and developing taste. Desmond is pointing to the same private labor in writing: reading voraciously, drafting badly, revising with ruthless attention, and slowly building an instinct for rhythm, omission, and surprise. The teacher can set the conditions, name the tools, widen the map. They can’t hand you the internal metronome.

Context matters: Desmond came out of a mid-century jazz world where conservatory respectability was arriving, but the music’s authority still lived in bandstands, jam sessions, and recordings. His sentence defends jazz’s lived knowledge - and smuggles in a democratic promise. If it “can be learned,” it’s open to outsiders. If it “can’t be taught,” you’re responsible for earning it.