Somebody told me that Derrida had written about a certain writer - but that Derrida had then thought this was a mistake. The implication was that to bother reading the thing Derrida had mistakenly written would be a waste of time. No. Following anybody in their mistakes, which is very different from making the same mistake, is the only way you can understand the force of what that writer goes on to write. The force of Derrida; which as he writes, is there before anything means something.

... which reminds me of something I drew attention to at the talk I gave in New York last year.

During a ‘magical’ evening in Stockholm in 1967, at the peak of Davis’ solo during a performance of one of his most well-known tunes, Hancock played a chord that was

‘one hundred per cent, completely, entirely, wrong … I believed I had destroyed the evening … time stood still and I felt totally shattered … you know what happened next? Miles took a breath and played this phrase that made my chord right … how could he turn a wrong chord into a right chord? … Miles didn’t hear it as a wrong chord, he merely heard it as an unexpected chord. He didn’t judge It. I did.’ (2014)