Good Friends

A reformer cannot afford to have close intimacy with him whom he seeks to reform. True friendship is an identity of souls rarely to be found in this world. Only between like natures can friendship be altogether worthy and enduring. Friends react on one another. Hence in friendship there is very little scope for reform. I am of opinion that all exclusive intimacies are to be avoided; for man takes in vice far more readily than virtue. And he who would be friends with God must remain alone, or make the whole world his friend. I may be wrong, but my effort to cultivate an intimate friendship proved a failure. (Gandhi, AMG, 31-32)

The great Duke Ellington had just such a friend in Billy Strayhorn.  Neither man required reform and both nursed near the breast of Jazz's muse.  Watching them at the piano together composing it becomes clear that they each felt moved by the same phrase or melody.  They could complete each others sentences.  Ellington described him, "my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my brain waves in his head, and his in mine".  Duke was a figure larger than life, a womanizer and a showman.  Billy was an openly gay man in a time when homophobia ruled the minds of the masses.  The music shared transcended their differences and together they changed the nature of jazz.