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Jul 31, 2025, 06:27AM

It’s Hard To Fathom How I Felt

Part 1 and Part 2 of a 2010 Jazz Wax interview with trumpeter and flugelhorn player Clark Terry vs. a 2023 Writer’s Rumpus interview with author Ryan Van Cleave.

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Clark Terry: With this system, you sounded the way an auctioneer talks. I was very excited.

Ryan Van Cleave: That’s the wrong approach, folks.

Terry: Oh, I know. [laughs] Horrible.

Van Cleave: But to answer your first question, yes, I very much was thinking of the narrative voice being inclusive of all living things on the planet.

Terry: The music was beautiful.

•••

Van Cleave: I really appreciate all the good questions! Most importantly, kids love them.

Terry: So they just took a picture of my horn on a bus seat and put that on the cover and used the title for the album.

Van Cleave: That’s a disappointing thing to learn.

Terry: It was very, very difficult—both from how the music developed and the emotion you had to bring to what you were playing.

Van Cleave: You have to break it down and put actual language to all the components of plot, and then give examples and context of causality, exposition, narrative summary, etc.

•••

Terry: It’s hard to fathom how I felt.

Van Cleave: I’d just never considered authorship before.

Terry: All the riverboats used to stop there heading up and down the Mississippi River.

Van Cleave: Thank you for the opportunity.

Terry: I have no idea.

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