Music.
I've sung it, played it, written it, arranged it, listened to it, studied it, lived it and breathed it. I've relished and despised the appurtenances thereunto. I've long since outlived my reputation. What I'm sitting on is something less than laurels. The crummy vanity records, the endless nights in gin-mills preserved forever on cheap tape, the washed-out Polaroids of beer-joint combos -- all of these scream out at me what I knew all along: I was never any great shakes. Still, I look upon it all with some satisfaction. Music has been the one thing that I have really understood. The only thing that made any sense. So that's what I did. Today,I go to my computer and command it to reproduce the sounds I fell in love with. The sounds that came from that little tow-headed boy's record player many years ago. It is as a soothing balm. The voices of dead singers echo into a digital infinity. I have made the journey, all the way from the old days into the future, and back again. I smile wistfully. "We used to play that song..."
