Talking to Wayne Shorter was an experience. He kept surprising me with responses that seemed cryptic, if not far-fetched, but then would land on terra firma with spot-on imitations of his friends Miles Davis, Art Blakey and Sonny Rollins. He was enigmatic, but also an entertainer; he knew what he was doing.

Conversing with him was a trip, like listening to his music. For Shorter, being a musician is just a way of being in the world, or just of being, period — things happen because HE happens. He speaks philosophically, and in the language of music, but the subject always is life.

I phoned the saxophonist and composer at his home in the West Hollywood Hills. We spoke for an hour, and the conversation became the grist for a profile of Shorter that I wrote to precede his quartet’s performances last week at the SFJazz Center in San Francisco. (You can read the profile here: www.mercurynews.com/music/ci_25409525/wayne-shorter-jazz-legend-master-composer-innovator.)

Now, here is more of our conversation:

Q Wayne, you always talk about movies in your interviews. What have you been watching lately?

A I just saw “All Quiet on the Western Front” and last week “A Farewell to Arms.” And there’s another movie called “The Execution of Private Slovik” and another movie that Kirk Douglas played in, “Paths of Glory.”

Q Will you explain your fascination with movies? Do they spur your imagination, your creativity?

A Movies would be like a broad painted canvas … or a mystical process which cannot really be explained, like, “What is electricity?” Along with the images that go on the screen, there’s a corridor of dialogue that can happen through motion pictures, whether you’re aware of it or not.

Q Who’s having the dialogue?

A Well, here’s what happened: One day a masseuse was at our house, and her horse had died, and she was really down. And after she went home, I turned on the TV, and the end of “National Velvet” was on, and, right after that, “The Red Pony.” I called her and said, “Listen, your horse passed away, and something’s on the movie screen — two horse movies, some kind of dialogue is going on.”

Q You’re saying that there’s a connection?

A Comedy has a lot of stuff in it, too; I’m going to look at things more with humor and get out of the icebox of seriousness. But there’s a lot of stuff — books. And it’s all aimed at the human condition, extending ourselves and evolving more and more and more to be eternally human. And with all these devices — a movie can be like an app, a vehicle that takes you down the path of your journey in life.

So can a book. Check out Alexander Dumas. Check out Victor Hugo’s novel “The Man who Laughs,” … where they broke the little kid’s jaw in the circus and made him look like he was smiling all the time.

I’m looking at reams and reams of books I have right in front of me on my shelves. I have eight or nine books written on the history of Africa, written by African scholars. I haven’t read them all yet, but they were given to me by the man who was the head of Amnesty (International) in France. Two times we went to something there called the “Philosophy Week,” me and Herbie (Hancock). And before we went on the stage to perform, we had a Q&A, and I was asked by the moderator, “Is there such a thing as a mistake?” And then we played some music, and those questions and answers kept their meaning.

Q Are you saying that the conversation had an effect on your performance? Do you think you played differently as a result of it?

A I think the audience was listening to us in another way…. I always say that music is a small drop in the ocean of life. I was told a long time ago that your horn, or whatever instrument you play, is a means to be in the world.

And then when you really explore music and see that it is a reflection of all kinds of aspects of humanity — then you will no longer be a musician. You will be a statesman. And I think in that sense Louis Armstrong was one of the first, with his State Department (touring). And Benny Goodman went to Russia. Ellington went to England.

So one time, we went to Japan, a whole bunch of us: Carlos Santana, Herbie, (guitarist) Lionel Loueke. And we went to Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the memorial time, and we said, “We’re not just doing concerts; this is for ‘no more nuclear.'” So we came up with a name, calling ourselves “Emissaries of Peace.” And then when people came into the concert hall, they were all handed a card that said, “You are an emissary of peace.”

We were in Turkey last year when they had International Jazz Day. A lot of us were there: the musicians from Turkey and also Branford Marsalis, Milton Nascimento, John McLaughlin, Hugh Masekela. We performed in this old church. John McLaughlin played one of ‘Trane’s things, and Milton played “Bridges” with Esperanza (Spalding) backing him up. There were a lot of musicians that went down, musicians from Russia, from Morocco, celebrating the creative process. And the last one was Hugh Masekela. He did that tune of his, the famous one. What’s it called?

Q “Grazing in the Grass”?

A Yeah. And when he ended it, he screamed into the microphone — broadcast around the world! I saw him coming off the stage, and I said, “Hugh, that scream — that’s what jazz is about, right?” (Laughs.)

On the way back to the hotel, I was looking for a saxophone case, a nice small one. And one of the Turkish diplomats, he says, “Ah, wait!” He jumps out and goes down an alleyway — came back with a beautiful soprano case. It was this kind of exchange, voluntarily; he’s not asking for anything. Now when I walk around with this case, musicians go, “Hey, nice!” It’s not glittering and all that, but it has a nice stitch with black leather.

Q You have a lot of energy, Wayne — still traveling around the world.

A I’m 80. Hey, when you get to be 80 you say, “The door is right down the hall.” There it is. But there’s more stuff I’ve got to do.

My brother Alan, who passed away in ’87 — we used to say that to each other and laugh about it: “Is the door down there?” “Yes, the door’s down there.” (Laughs.)

My perspective on life is now to try to play music that reflects that life and death are part of the same coin. And to know about life, we must really examine the function — like death. Life tells you a lot about what death is, not what people say it is. I’m making strides to have dialogue with life. I’m walking down a garden path, something like that. And you’re looking at the trees, and then you start to look at them through your inner eye. You see that it’s winter now, and spring is coming; spring is always coming, and then fall and winter.

And then the other dialogue is, when it’s rainy and cloudy, the sun is still out. And death is like that. When you are dead, you seem to be dead, but you are alive. We can’t remember ourselves being born. This, to me, has to do with the meaning of faith. I think the strongest meaning of faith that I’ve heard is that faith is to fear nothing….

And to try to play music like that, as Miles said: “You’re talking all that, why don’t you play that? You’re talking all that philosophy — play it!”

Before he died, he was talking to me and Herbie, and he was saying, “What would it be like if we got together again?’ This was after all that stuff that we’d been through, Headhunters and Weather Report. And he was getting serious, too. And I was thinking, “Yeah, that would be really nice.”

He’d already been through the “Bitches Brew” stuff, and Miles was totally open. He was looking at life in a way that he had not looked at it (before) — beyond being Miles Davis the musician, the pacesetter, the designer, the painter…. He was looking at it differently. And the last thing he said to me — we were at the Hollywood Bowl. We were in the dressing room. Miles put his hands on my shoulders, and he was looking me straight in the eye, and he said, “Wayne.” I said, ‘Yeah.” He said, “You need to be exposed.”

Q He didn’t think you were getting the recognition you deserved?

A I took it as plural: “You guys need to be exposed, and what would it be like if we got together, you, me, Herbie, Ron (Carter) and Tony Williams?” who was alive then…. And then he went out on the stage, and I got my seat, and he came out on the stage playing “Happy Birthday” — it was my birthday. And Carlos Santana was in the audience somewhere, and he made a tape.

Q Wayne, your life has been so rich: your friendships with Miles, with Coltrane. Those are two of many, many examples. Do you ever get nostalgic, or maybe feel a sense of awe about what you’ve been through?

A No. You don’t know what’s going to happen. The only thing I can see is that we’re being looked at and being assessed when we don’t know it. Like when we played with Art Blakey in Birdland: We’d be playing, Lee Morgan is standing next to me, and the piano player is taking a solo.

And Lee Morgan would say to me, “There he is.”

“Who?”

“Miles. He’s checking you out.”

Another time we played at the Jazz Gallery, and here comes Robert Mitchum and Shirley MacLaine, alongside the wall. This is after Sonny Rollins came back, after his three-year hiatus, and I think it was Sonny who announced it: “Ladies and gentlemen, we’d like to give a nice welcome to Samuel Barber! (The composer) Samuel Barber’s over there!”

And those things move in such a way — life is an accumulation of the unexpected…. You’re put in a place where you’re going to do it or not, where you’re going to go for it or not. But if you back away, if you find excuses to disappear from a situation, if you strategize so that the spotlight is not on you, because you want to be in your Sunday suit all the time — that’s not how it goes.

Now this group we have now — we go on naked, without rehearsing.

Q Why no rehearsals?

A Because the improvisational process — don’t let that become a godly ritual where you’re doing the process, where you’re playing theoretically, playing a blueprint without the building. That’s some subtle stuff.

Q You don’t want the rules to take over.

A Right. Lots of technique, but there’s no story. I can follow that. But why would I want to follow a tank or a machine going down the street, as opposed to a real live fairy? The real live fairy world — that’s what I want.

They try to say you don’t live happily after this, that fairy tales are false and we must face reality. But sometimes you have to consider that reality might be the fairy tale. We need the Knights of the Round Table today, and we need men and women of noble quests and honor — the “Impossible Dream,” that kind of stuff. I like what Neil deGrasse Tyson, the astrophysicist, says: “The sky is not the limit.”

On my 80th birthday, he sent me a book, signed it. He was on vacation and sent it FedEx.

Q He’s into your music, the host of “Cosmos”?

A I didn’t know he was following what we were doing. And he wrote in there, “Congratulations on your 80th trip around the sun.”

I’m an honorary member of the Planetary Society now. I’ve got a plaque I can put on me, like Star Trek, and I’ve been invited to the Jet Propulsion Lab.

Q You’re not slowing down much, Wayne.

A Somebody in England wrote that “at 80, he refuses to act his age.” I’m going out on a tour again.

Q How are you getting ready?

A I’m practicing. I’m working on my respiratory thing. I’ve been in and out of the doctor’s office.

Q Anything serious?

A No. Allergies. I’ve got these inhalers I’m doing in the morning and evening. What I’ve got to do is play a little bit at a time to build up lung capacity, and that’s inchworms — I can’t be 15 again. There’s a lot of things I have to do, drink a lot of tea.

I’m going to go out slow, and accelerate when we get to April. Then in June, July and August, Herbie and I are going to do a duet thing. And Esperanza and myself and Milton Nascimento, we’re going to do something, too. And I’m going to be writing a clarinet concerto for a prodigy — a former prodigy — named Julian Bliss, from England. He’s now in his early 20s.

There’s more that I’ve got to do with orchestras, writing more stuff for orchestra. Then there’s work I have to do with mixing an album we did with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. It’s coming out with a graphic science fiction novel by a guy name Randy DuBurke, who lives in Switzerland. There’s a lot going on.

Contact Richard Scheinin at 408-920-5069, read his stories and reviews at www.mercurynews.com/richard-scheinin and follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/richardscheinin.