One fact that suggests that this is indeed “the age of reality,” as LKJ once put it, is that the album here pictured did not establish a new religion:
This music is much like those galactic clouds of dust and gas; clouds that were ejaculated from the lives of earlier stars. The molecular materials, particulate matter, atomic stuff of these clouds form new stars, new points of fusion in the vacuum from which all comes and to which all returns. And in the beginning of what now is everything, matter became matter because it preferred not being matter. That instinct—the preference that made the universe, gasses, dust, and stars possible—is with us (within us) to this day. It is the source of all religions. Which gets us to The Black Saint and Sinner Lady. In this music, not only do we have the materials for religious belief, for the experience of something that feels total—and truth is always the whole truth—but also a celebration of the preference to be, to exist, to thrive. Here we hear the most gravid passions of Mingus’s genius and it is a wonder that a new faith in the future did not condense within the rich and erotic cloud of his music. Ours must truly be the sober age of “science and technology.”