The words of Justice Stewart, by way of Nico Jacobellis, are apt: "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it".
For film director John Schlesinger, who has died aged 77, the response was equally apt: "I couldn't bear the idea of not working," admitting that this attitude sometimes led to his acceptance of inferior projects.
While the modernist comparison with Pollock is apt, I would argue the term "free jazz" is a continuing misnomer — for all its humanistic abandon, Coleman's music is deeply grounded in structure and concept.
SCOTT It's interesting — and apt, I think — that discussions of the health of cinema as an art form so frequently turn into discussions about technologies of distribution and the habits of consumption they create.
When I saw the two fish lying side by side in the pan, with cucumber salad on the side, the comparison seemed so apt I couldn't help joking about it.
When people say something apt, I often have a difficult time getting the sound of it out of my ear — it seems to have an extra legitimacy because it happened — and sometimes it comes out on the page, seeming true and clear to me, because I heard it.
Once my traveling subconscious got to the train terminal (never was a title so apt) I fought my way through long lines of waiting crowds to the street to freeze and wait several minutes more for a bus parked 50 feet away to end its driver's coffee break and allow us to board and drive uptown.
(If you want a crash course - the term is doubly apt - I recommend a special report on finance in the latest Economist and a recent lecture by the head of Britain's Financial Services Authority, Adair Turner, available on the FSA website). On the evidence we have so far, the following could plausibly be asked to interrogate themselves on their share of the responsibility.
If I visit a restaurant that received two or three stars some time ago and my visit suggests that the rating remains apt, I usually elect not to make the multiple visits that a full review requires, not to write a new review and not to devote one of the year's 52 spots to telling readers that the song remains the same.
As I came down the steps at Heathrow the Egyptian woman's signature tune seemed apt: "I'm coming home, I've done my time".
