Musicians Day Quotes

Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. there is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there.

My kids are starting to notice I'm a little different from the other dads. "Why don't you have a straight job like everyone else?" they asked me the other day. I told them this story: In the forest, there was a crooked tree and a straight tree. Every day, the straight tree would say to the crooked tree, "Look at me...I'm tall, and I'm straight, and I'm handsome. Look at you...you're all crooked and bent over. No one wants to look at you." And they grew up in that forest together. And then one day the loggers came, and they saw the crooked tree and the straight tree, and they said, "Just cut the straight trees and leave the rest." So the loggers turned all the straight trees into lumber and toothpicks and paper. And the crooked tree is still there, growing stronger and stranger every day.

You read and write and sing and experience, thinking that one day these things will build the character you admire to live as. You love and lose and bleed best you can, to the extreme, hoping that one day the world will read you like the poem you want to be.

You can't change the wind but you can set your sails.

To do something that you feel in your heart that's great, you need to make a lot of mistakes. Anything that's successful is a series of mistakes.

A guy walks up to me and asks, "What's Punk?". So I kick over a garbage can and say. "That's punk!". So he kicks over the garbage can and says, "That's Punk?", and I say, "No that's trendy!

‎The day you become old is the day you're not looking for new experiences anymore.

I've gone through stages where I hate my body so much that I won't even wear shorts and a bra in my house because if I pass a mirror, that's the end of my day.

Attack your instruments. Don't let them attack you.

It's Lucy Gray and I'm not really from Twelve," she said. "My people are Covey. Musicians by trade. We just took a wrong turn one day and were obliged to stay.

I mean, reality sucks. The world is a cancer, and shits so bad it’s scary. Everything’s filthy. But you know what? One day, it’s not going to be here. So be glad you know what life is. You’re alive. Live.

I'm a musician. I write songs. I just hope when the day is done I've been able to tear a little corner off of the darkness.

It hurt me to be away from him. Some days I went crazy wondering what he was doing. And when I couldn't handle it, I practiced music. I really had Aspen to thank for me being the musician that I was. He drove me to distraction. And that was bad.

I have a daughter and she's the greatest thing that ever happened to me. She gives me a good excuse to watch cartoons.

Those bands, you plan your life around them. You plan vacations around concert dates. You save babysitting money for records. You live for those days when Creem magazine arrives in your dusty mailbox and you frantically flip through it for any information on your favorites. The bands, the musicians that you love, they love you back. And when they quit, when they fall apart, when they die—they ruin that future you thought they’d always be a part of.

Life when one first arrives is a continual mortification as one's romantic illusions are successively shattered and the musical treasure-house of one's imagination crumbles before the hopelessness of the reality. Every day fresh experiences bring fresh disappointments.

The world accommodates you for fitting in, but only rewards you for standing out.

I have a friend, an aspiring musician, whose sister said to her one day, quite reasonably, “What happens if you never get anything out of this? What happens if you pursue your passion forever, but success never comes? How will you feel then, having wasted your entire life for nothing?” My friend, with equal reason, replied, “If you can’t see what I’m already getting out of this, then I’ll never be able to explain it to you.” When it’s for love, you will always do it anyhow.

Write all the time. I believe in writing every day, at least a thousand words a day. We have a strange idea about writing: that it can be done, and done well, without a great deal of effort. Dancers practice every day, musicians practice every day, even when they are at the peak of their careers – especially then. Somehow, we don’t take writing as seriously. But writing – writing wonderfully – takes just as much dedication.

Poets to Come POETS to come! orators, singers, musicians to come! Not to-day is to justify me, and answer what I am for; But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known, Arouse! Arouse for you must justify me you must answer. I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future, I but advance a moment, only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness. I am a man who, sauntering along, without fully stopping, turns a casual look upon you, and then averts his face, Leaving it to you to prove and define it, Expecting the main things from you.

Having a moment of clarity was one thing; I'd had moments like that before. It had to be followed with a dedicated push of daily exercise. It's a trite axiom, but practice DOES make perfect. If you want to be a strong swimmer or an accomplished musician, you have to practice. It's the same with sobriety, though the stakes are higher. If you don't practice your program every day, you're putting yourself in a position where you could fly out of the orbit one more time.

Just start by creating your day. Then create your life.

On arrival at Orly Airport, Fritz and Magda hired a taxi which drove them to the city. They saw before them a metropolis crowned with triumphal architecture and magnificent monuments. The first Parisian landmark that caught their eye was the majestic Eiffel Tower and, in the background, on a distant hill, the white church of Montmartre. They immediately opted that their hotel could wait and asked the driver to take them around the city, though they knew that this would cost them a whole day's budget. What they began to see was simply spectacular: wide areas edified with splendid monuments, fantastic fountains, enchanting gardens and bronze statues representing the best exponents who flourished in the city, amongst whom artists, philosophers, musicians and great writers. The River Seine fascinated them, with boatloads of tourists all eager to see as much as they could of the city. They also admired a number of bridges, amongst which the flamboyant Pont Alexandre III. The driver, a friendly, balding man of about fifty, with moustaches à la Clemenceau, informed them that quite nearby there was the famous Pont Neuf which, ironically, was the first to be built way back in 1607. They continued their tour...

Hocking was slender in the way that writers and musicians are sometimes slender: not out of any desire or design but rather because his days were spent being consumed rather than consuming.

Quiet birds rob the universe of beautiful symphonies.

Music was never a noun for you, it was always a verb. The only verb. You music-ed through the days and nights of your life.

My eyes had been closed for a few minutes when he said it: "I love you," he muttered, so quiet, like a prayer whispered into my neck. "Hmm?" I was nearly asleep myself, edges blurring; I was one hundred percent sure I'd misheard. "I love you." He said it again, clearer this time, right into my ear, breath tickling. I felt like a hydrogen bomb. I tried to be very still, but I knew he could feel my entire body tensing, a runner ready to begin a race -- Get set-- Go. I opened my mouth, shut it again. Oh God. I did love him, is the awfulness of it. I'd loved Sawyer since the seventh grade, when Allie and I began keeping a list of the places we spotted him. I loved his quick, blistered musician hands and the honest soul he kept hidden safe under all his bravado, and I loved how I was still, every day, learning him. I loved his silly, secret goofy side and the way he had of making me feel like I was a tall tree, just from the way he looked at my face. I loved Sawyer LeGrande so much that sometimes I couldn't sit still for the fullness of it, but when I opened up my mouth to tell him so, nothing came out. I could do anything for him, I realized suddenly. I could give him anything. But not that. If I said that to him, I knew I could never get it back. "Go to sleep," I whispered, and he didn't say it again.

If you wait for a better time to create, better than this very moment, if you wait until you feel settled, divinely inspired, perfectly centered, unburdened of your usual worries, or free of your own skin, forget about it. You will still be waiting tomorrow and the next day, wondering why you never managed to begin, wondering

The primary math of the real world is one and one equals two. The layman (as, often, do I) swings that every day. He goes to the job, does his work, pays his bills and comes home. One plus one equals two. It keeps the world spinning. But artists, musicians, con men, poets, mystics and such are paid to turn that math on its head, to rub two sticks together and bring forth fire. Everybody performs this alchemy somewhere in their life, but it’s hard to hold on to and easy to forget. People don’t come to rock shows to learn something. They come to be reminded of something they already know and feel deep down in their gut. That's when the world is at its best, when we are at our best, when life feels fullest, one and one equals three. It’s the essential equation of love, art, rock ’n’ roll and rock ’n’ roll bands. It’s the reason the universe will never be fully comprehensible, love will continue to be ecstatic, confounding, and true rock ’n’ roll will never die.

And if the day I die they ask me just how heaven was, I'll be glad I spent it with you.

Musicians had been assholes since the day the lute was invented.

Along with people in other creative professions, such as artists and musicians, many scientists experience this transcendence. I do so every day. For one, it's impossible to look an ape in the eye and not see oneself. There are other animals with frontally oriented eyes, but none that give you the shock of recognitions of the ape's. Looking back at you is not so much an animal but a personality as solid and willful as yourself.

Angel, you got checkout girls in these here grocery stores cain’t feed their own kids right, jazz musicians workin’ for the post office because music don’t pay the charge of admission to a nightclub. You might love your work but one day you wake up and find that your work don’t love you.

Disciplines are small and by themselves inconsequential (like the scales that professional musicians play every day), attracting no notice and deserving no prize, humbling us in advance of the occasions when our work will be recognized and applauded. Disciplines are difficult, revealing all too clearly our laziness and foolishness, preparing us for the times when fruit seems to burst from our smallest efforts.

I'm pretty sure that when babies are born in Oregon, they leave the hospital with birth certificates - and teeny-tiny sleeping bags. Everyone in the state camps. The hippies and the rednecks. The hunters and the tree huggers. Rich people. Poor people. Even rock musicians. Especially rock musicians. Our band had perfected the art of punk-rock camping, throwing a bunch of crap into the van with, like, an hour's notice and just driving out into the mountains, where we'd drink beer, burn food, jam on our instruments around the campfire, and sack out under the open sky. Sometimes, on tour, back in the early hardscrabble days, we'd even camp as an alternative to crashing in another crowded, roach-infested rock 'n' roll house. I don't know if it's because no matter where you live, the wilderness is never that far off, but it just seemed like everyone in Oregon camped.

People listen to music for different reasons. Some people, -its background music— but other people need it to survive. Other people need music to get things out and maybe that’s just where I’m coming from, you know, when things weren’t easy for me, growing up. You know, music, I felt, saved my life. Pete Townshend, wherever you are, Pete, you saved my life. You know, whether he knows it or not. I wouldn’t be here. And I had absolutely nothing else besides music. And so that’s still, you know, that’s in me, and so if we’re gonna play, if we’re gonna get up and play, or write a song, you know, write about something that means something. You know, why write about, you know, 'Oh, pretty day', or, 'Pretty girl' or 'Pretty people', there’s nothing… people have different reasons for listening and playing. I need to —for me-, it’s much more.. religious!

We put the fun in dysfunctional.

The tremendous leisure industry that has arisen in the last few generations has been designed to help fill free time with enjoyable experiences. Nevertheless, instead of using our physical and mental resources to experience flow, most of us spend many hours each week watching celebrated athletes playing in enormous stadiums. Instead of making music, we listen to platinum records cut by millionaire musicians. Instead of making art, we go to admire paintings that brought in the highest bids at the latest auction. We do not run risks acting on our beliefs, but occupy hours each day watching actors who pretend to have adventures, engaged in mock-meaningful action.

I had zero idea of what I was doing.. I honestly had no idea where to start. All I knew was I had something I craved to say.. I wanted to create art that lived on longer than I do. Perseverance and teaching yourself, every day through stress and hard work proves shit really does progress without you realizing. One minute you're an amateur, knowing nothing, not even the basics. The next you can put pen to paper, write a song, and create art in such little time! It's crazy beautiful.

Why grace? Because some days, it's the only thing we have in common. Because it's the one thing I'm certain is real. Because it's the reason I'm here. Because it's the oxygen of religious life, or so says a musician friend of mine, who tells me, “Without it, religion will surely suffocate you.” Because so many of us are gasping for air and grasping for God, but fleeing from a kind of religious experience that has little to do with anything sacred or gracious.

The primary math of the real world is one and one equals two. The layman (as, often, do I) swings that every day. He goes to the job, does his work, pays his bills and comes home. One plus one equals two. It keeps the world spinning. But artists, musicians, con men, poets, mystics and such are paid to turn that math on its head, to rub two sticks together and bring forth fire. Everybody performs this alchemy somewhere in their life, but it’s hard to hold on to and easy to forget. People don’t come to rock shows to learn something. They come to be reminded of something they already know and feel deep down in their gut. That when the world is at its best, when we are at our best, when life feels fullest, one and one equals three. It’s the essential equation of love, art, rock ’n’ roll and rock ’n’ roll bands. It’s the reason the universe will never be fully comprehensible, love will continue to be ecstatic, confounding, and true rock ’n’ roll will never die.

A lot of habitually creative people have preparation rituals linked to the setting in which they choose to start their day. By putting themselves into that environment, they start their creative day. The composer Igor Stravinsky did the same thing every morning when he entered his studio to work: He sat at the piano and played a Bach fugue. Perhaps he needed the ritual to feel like a musician, or the playing somehow connected him to musical notes, his vocabulary. Perhaps he was honoring his hero, Bach, and seeking his blessing for the day. Perhaps it was nothing more than a simple method to get his fingers moving, his motor running, his mind thinking music. But repeating the routine each day in the studio induced some click that got him started. In the end, there is no ideal condition for creativity. What works for one person is useless for another. The only criterion is this: Make it easy on yourself. Find a working environment where the prospect of wrestling with your muse doesn't scare you, doesn't shut you down. It should make you want to be there, and once you find it, stick with it. To get the creative habit, you need a working environment that's habit-forming. All preferred working states, no matter how eccentric, have one thing in common: When you enter into them, they compel you to get started.

I swore I’d be the most famous musician in the world.” “Dat’s dangerous, dat kinda swear,” said Cliff. “Oook.” “Isn’t it what every artist wants?” said Buddy. “In my experience,” said Glod, “what every true artist wants, really wants, is to be paid.” “And famous,” said Buddy. “Famous I don’t know about,” said Glod. “It’s hard to be famous and alive. I just want to play music every day and hear someone say, ‘Thanks, that was great, here is some money, same time tomorrow, okay?

Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come! Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for, But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known, Arouse! for you must justify me. I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future, I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.

I wrote every day throughout my twenties. For a while, I had a boyfriend who was a musician, and he practiced every day. He played scales; I wrote small fictional scenes. It was the same idea - to keep your hand in your craft, to stay close to it. On bad days, when I felt no inspiration at all, I would set the kitchen timer for thirty minutes and make myself sit there and scribble something, anything. I had read an interview with John Updike where he said that some of the best novels you've ever read were written in an hour a day; I figured I could always carve out at least thirty minutes somewhere to dedicate myself to my work, no matter what else was going on or how badly I believed the work was going.

An entrepreneur is like a musician creating a new song.

Musicians are some of the most driven, courageous people on the face of the earth. They deal with more day-to-day rejection in one year than most people do in a lifetime. Every day, they face the financial challenge of living a freelance lifestyle, the disrespect of people who think they should get real jobs, and their own fear that they’ll never work again. Every day, they have to ignore the possibility that the vision they have dedicated their lives to is a pipe dream. With every note, they stretch themselves, emotionally and physically, risking criticism and judgement. With every passing year, many of them watch as the other people their age achieve the predictable milestones of normal life – the car, the family, the house, the nest egg. Why? Because musicians are willing to give their entire lives to a moment – to that melody, that lyric, that chord, or that interpretation that will stir the audience’s soul. Musicians are beings who have tasted life’s nectar in that crystal moment when they poured out their creative spirit and touched another’s heart. In that instant, they were as close to magic, God, and perfection as anyone could ever be. And in their own hearts, they know that to dedicate oneself to that moment is worth a thousand lifetimes.

Nobody in this band was a musician when they joined up, but everybody was in some kind of trouble. Play con entusiasmo, as loudly as you can, and trust the good will and bad ear of the gringo hellraiser.

...one or both of those babies could be president one day. Or they could discover the cure for a terrible disease, or one could be a famous musician or even a preacher.' I stopped and considered for a minute, wondering what would impress her more than that. 'Or just be fine and decent men or women, or man and woman, who would be a blessing to you in your old age. There's a purpose for every soul that comes into this world...

So doth the greater glory dim the less: A substitute shines brightly as a king Unto the king be by, and then his state Empties itself, as doth an inland brook Into the main of waters. Music! hark! NERISSA It is your music, madam, of the house. PORTIA Nothing is good, I see, without respect: Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day. NERISSA Silence bestows that virtue on it, madam. PORTIA The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark, When neither is attended, and I think The nightingale, if she should sing by day, When every goose is cackling, would be thought No better a musician than the wren. How many things by season season'd are To their right praise and true perfection! Peace, ho! the moon sleeps with Endymion And would not be awaked. - Acte V, Scene 1

Every day, the prince returned with honeyed words. He brought gifts, hired musicians. Every day, the fairie was gracious and kind, but composed. Still, he wore down her defenses with his charm. And the prince was sincere in his courtship - he somehow forgot how rakish his intentions were. He was a man who lived for the present moment.

I am a confused Musician who got sidetracked into this goddamn Word business for so long that I never got back to music - except maybe when I find myself oddly alone in a quiet room with only a typewriter to strum on and a yen to write a song. Who knows why? Maybe I just feel like singing - so I type. These quick electric keys are my Instrument, my harp, my RCA glass-tube microphone, and my fine soprano saxophone all at once. That is my music, for good or ill, and on some nights it will make me feel like a god. Veni, Vidi, Vici... That is when the fun starts...

What am I going to do? I wish I knew the answer, Sienna. The man your going to marry is walking this earth. He's alive right now, somewhere. He could be in Australia, backpacking with friends; he could be working in a bar in China; he could be a hotshot American lawyer; he could be a musician; he could be going about his life in London at this very moment... Any day now, your paths could cross. She smiled when I said this, like it brought her comfort.

When I was a senior in high school, I was playing in this local band in our town, and I really wanted to be a musician for a living, and it didn’t look like that was going to happen with my band. So, I enrolled in college and stuff. My senior year had ended, and I was going through the anxiety of like, ‘I guess I’m an adult now kind of’ and I was really yearning for a direction. And, I remember like sitting in my back one day, and I was praying alone, and I remember God said, just give up. Just let go of this worry and this need for direction and I will give you direction.

The grassy park was lined with dozens of kissing booths. Twinkle lights draped back-and-forth between tall trees, making a canopy of stars above the red and pink tables below. People were lined up at each booth, applying lipstick and perfume as they readied for their purchased kisses. Behind the booths stood a large white gazebo housing a group of musicians. As a love song filled the air, couples intertwined their bodies and swayed to the melody. Here and there, children ran about wearing red hats and eating lip-shaped chocolates, while women waited impatiently for quickie makeovers under a flashy pink tent. The park was littered with couples kissing behind trees and making out on park benches. And paper stars were everywhere; in trees, on the ground, above heads, inside mouths…. It was like Valentine’s Day. On crack.

I’m the lady by day, and I’m Gaga by night. And I’m always going to be that way, because it’s a testament to your discipline as a musician. I do like to drink, I like to get crazy, I like to go out with my friends, and I like to sing rock and roll. I used to go-go dance! And I like to be inspired by young artists, people like Millie who are outrageously hard, disciplined individuals. But at the end of the day I’m a classically trained pianist and I’m a singer, and that’s what allows the girl that goes out at night to also go on stage with Tony Bennett at Lincoln Center. Because I know how to do it.

Phrases offered to the grief-stricken, such as “time heals all wounds” and “the day will come when you reach closure” irritated him, and there were times when he sat silent, seeming half-buried in some sediment of sorrow. “Closure? When someone beloved dies there is no ‘closure.’” He disliked television programs featuring tornado chasers squealing “Big one! Big one!” and despised the rat-infested warrens of the Internet, riddled with misinformation and chicanery. He did not like old foreign movies where, when people parted, one stood in the middle of the road and waved. He thought people with cell phones should be immolated along with those who overcooked pasta. Calendars, especially the scenic types with their glowing views of a world without telephone lines, rusting cars or burger stands, enraged him, but he despised the kittens, motorcycles, famous women and jazz musicians of the special-interest calendars as well. “Why not photographs of feral cats? Why not diseases?” he said furiously. Wal-Mart trucks on the highway received his curses and perfumed women in elevators invited his acid comment that they smelled of animal musk glands. For years he had been writing an essay entitled “This Land Is NOT Your Land.

The city of Paris, France, became a place of refuge for biracial Americans during slavery and at the time of the Harlem Renaissance for black musicians, fine artists, writers and others seeking opportunities to practice their craft free from American racism.

To those of us gathered here today, Matthew Connell filled a number of different roles in our lives. Matthew was a son, a brother, a father and a friend. Matthew's last days in his young life were bleak, suffering ones. Yet, we must remember the real Matthew, the loving young man who had a great lust for life. A keen musician, Matthew loved to entertain friends with his guitar playing... Renton could not make eye contact with Spud, standing next to him in the pew, as nervous laughter gripped him. Matty was the shitest guitarest he'd known, and could only play the Doors' 'Roadhouse Blues' and a few Clash and Status Quo numbers with any sort of proficiency. He tried hard to do the riff from 'Clash City Rockers', but could never quite master it. Nonetheless, Matty loved that Fender Strat. It was the last thing he sold, holding onto it after the amplifier had been flogged off in order to fill his veins with shite. Perr Matty, Renton thought. How well did any of us really know him? How well can anybody really know anybody else?

Probably more than any concrete vice or failing Amory despised his own personality - he loathed knowing that to-morrow and the thousand days after he would sell pompously at a compliment and sulk at an ill word like a third-rate musician or a first-class actor.

It appears that some part of Slothrop ran into the AWOL Džabajev one night in the heart of downtown Niederschaumdorf. (Some believe that fragments of Slothrop have grown into consistent personae of their own. If so, there's no telling which of the Zone's present-day population are offshoots of his original scattering. There's supposed to be a last photograph of him on the only record album ever put out by The Fool, an English rock group—seven musicians posed, in the arrogant style of the early Stones, near an old rocket-bomb site, out in the East End, or South of the River. It is spring, and French thyme blossoms in amazing white lacework across the cape of green that now hides and softens the true shape of the old rubble. There is no way to tell which of the faces is Slothrop's: the only printed credit that might apply to him is "Harmonica, kazoo—a friend." But knowing his Tarot, we would expect to look among the Humility, among the gray and preterite souls, to look for him adrift in the hostile light of the sky, the darkness of the sea. . . .)

A good bricklayer can lay his last brick of the day, point up, wash up, turn his back on his day’s work, and every single one of the joints between the bricks will be exactly 15mm. Why? Because he’s done it so many times, that’s why. It’s repetitive. It’s probably the same for a good hairdresser, a mechanic, a musician, a prostitute and I’m sure Masai Warriors hunting lions in the heart of the Masai Mara.

And remember that whatever discipline you are in, whether you are a musician or a photographer, a fine artist or a cartoonist, a writer, a dancer, a designer, whatever you do you have one thing that's unique. You have the ability to make art. And for me, and for so many of the people I have known, that's been a lifesaver. The ultimate lifesaver. It gets you through good times and it gets you through the other ones. Life is sometimes hard. Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do. Make good art. I'm serious. Husband runs off with a politician? Make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by mutated boa constrictor? Make good art. IRS on your trail? Make good art. Cat exploded? Make good art. Somebody on the Internet thinks what you do is stupid or evil or it's all been done before? Make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, and eventually time will take the sting away, but that doesn't matter. Do what only you do best. Make good art. Make it on the good days too.

For many months there day and night, at the morning and the evening checks, innumerable execution orders were read out. In a temperature of fifty below zero [Fahrenheit] the musicians from among the non-political offenders played a flourish before and after each order was read. The smoking gasoline torches ripped apart the darkness…. The thin sheet on which the order was written was covered with hoarfrost, and some chief or other who was reading the order would brush the snowflakes from it with his sleeve so as to decipher and shout out the name of the next man on the list of those shot.

Hi everyone. I just want to thank you so much. This is such a big deal, not only for us, but for all other independent musicians and artists that spend most of their time struggling, and this, the fact that we’re standing here tonight, the fact that we’re able to hold this, it’s just to prove no matter how far out your dreams are, it’s possible. And, you know, fair play to those who dare to dream and don’t give up. And this song was written from a perspective of hope, and hope at the end of the day connects us all, no matter how different we are. And so thank you so much, who helped us along way. Thank you.

Rich Mullins, one of my favorite writers and musicians, said that when he was a kid he’d walk down the church aisle and be “born again again” or “rededicate” his life to Christ every year at camp. In college he’d do it about every six months, then quarterly; by the time he was in his forties it was “about four times a day.”3 Repentance is not usually a moment wrought in high drama. It is the steady drumbeat of a life in Christ and, therefore, a day in Christ.

Picture a guy; he’s been surfing all day, the sun’s going down, and he grabs his guitar which he then carries to his favourite place where the waves crash against the rocks. And he just sits there, watching the sunset and composing songs with his guitar. Now, how ‘off tha rip’ is a surfer / musician like this?

Our insect musicians are roused to their greatest activity during the monsoons. At dusk the air seems to tinkle and murmur to their music. To the shrilling of the grasshoppers is added the staccato notes of the crickets, while in the grass and on the trees myriads of lesser artistes are producing a variety of sounds. As musicians, the cicadas are in a class of their own. Throughout the monsoons their screaming chorus rings through the forest. A shower, far from dampening their ardour, only rouses them to a deafening crescendo of effort. As with most insect musicians, the males do the performing, the females remain silent. This moved one chauvinistic Greek poet to exclaim: ‘Happy the cicadas, for they have voiceless wives!’ To which I would respond by saying, ‘Pity the female cicadas, for they have singing husbands!’ Probably the most familiar and homely of insect singers are the crickets. I won’t attempt to go into detail on how the cricket produces its music, except to say that its louder notes are produced by a rapid vibration of the wings, the right wing usually working over the left, the edge of one acting on the file of the other to produce a shrill, long-sustained note, like a violinist gone mad. Cicadas, on the other hand, use their abdominal muscles to produce their sound.

My gaze returns to earth and when it does, it’s her eyes I see. Not the way I used to see them—around every corner, behind my own closed lids at the start of each day. Not in the way I used to imagine them in the eyes of every other girl I laid on top of. No, this time it really is her eyes. A photo of her, dressed in black, a cello leaning against one shoulder like a tired child. Her hair is up in one of those buns that seem to be a requisite for classical musicians. She used to wear it up like that for recitals and chamber music concerts, but with little pieces hanging down, to soften the severity of the look. There are no tendrils in this photo. I peer closer at the sign. YOUNG CONCERT SERIES PRESENTS MIA HALL.

If a choreographer had been underneath the plastic sheet on a rainy day or night, he would certainly have reproduced the scene: twenty-five people, short and tall, on their feet, each holding a tin can to collect the water that dripped off the roof, sometimes in torrents, sometimes drop by drop. If a musician had been there, he would have heard the orchestration of all that water striking the sides of the tins. If a filmmaker had been there, he would have captured the beauty of the silent and spontaneous complicity between wretched people. But there was only us, standing on a floor that was slowly sinking into the clay.

Our mind is nothing but accumulated thoughts-good or evil recorded from the day the child is born. For memory or thought to work, a brain is needed. Software cannot work without a hardware. When a computer is damaged can we believe that its software is still somewhere in the sky? How can memory or thinking faculty exist outside brain? The neurotransmitters are responsible for the thought process and memory retention and retrival. All are elecrochemical impulses which cannot travel to sky. Our personality, individuality etc. are result of the accumulated thoughts in our brain. It is quality and nature of accumulated thoughts which decides if one is to become a scientist,poet or a terrorist. A guitar in the hands of a layman does not make any sense. If it is in the hands of a musician melodious tunes can come out. A child in the hands of lovable and intelligent parents go to heights.

There will be rebels. They will live in the shadows. They will be the renegade painters, sculptors, poets, writers, journalists, musicians, actors, dancers, organizers, activists, mystics, intellectuals and other outcasts who are willing to accept personal sacrifice. They will not surrender their integrity, creativity, independence and finally their souls. They will speak the truth. The state will have little tolerance of them. They will be poor. The wider society will be conditioned by mass propaganda to write them off as parasites or traitors. They will keep alive what is left of dignity and freedom. Perhaps one day they will rise up and triumph. But one does not live in poverty and on the margins of society because of the certainty of success. One lives like that because to collaborate with radical evil is to betray all that is good and beautiful. It is to become a captive. It is to give up the moral autonomy that makes us human. The rebels will be our hope.

EVERYWHERE I TURNED, EVERYWHERE I went, everybody had something to say about love. Mothers, fathers, teachers, singers, musicians, poets, writers, friends. It was like the air. It was like the ocean. It was like the sun. It was like the leaves on a tree in summer. It was like the rain that broke the drought. It was the soft sound of the water flowing through a stream. And it was the sound of the crashing waves against the shore in a storm. Love was why we fought all our battles. Love was what we lived and died for. Love was what we dreamed of as we slept. Love was the air we wanted to breathe in when we woke to greet the day. Love was a torch you carried to lead you out of darkness. Love took you out of exile and carried you to a country called Belonging.

When the Bolide Fragmentation Rate shot up through a certain level on Day 701, marking the formal beginning of the White Sky, a number of cultural organizations launched programs that they had been planning since around the time of the Crater Lake announcement. Many of these were broadcast on shortwave radio, and so Ivy had her pick of programs from Notre Dame, Westminster Abbey, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, Tiananmen Square, the Potala Palace, the Great Pyramids, the Wailing Wall. After sampling all of them she locked her radio dial on Notre Dame, where they were holding the Vigil for the End of the World and would continue doing so until the cathedral fell down in ruins upon the performers’ heads and extinguished all life in the remains of the building. She couldn’t watch it, since video bandwidth was scarce, but she could imagine it well: the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, its ranks swollen by the most prestigious musicians of the Francophone world, all dressed in white tie and tails, ball gowns and tiaras, performing in shifts around the clock, playing a few secular classics but emphasizing the sacred repertoire: masses and requiems. The music was marred by the occasional thud, which she took to be the sonic booms of incoming bolides. In most cases the musicians played right through. Sometimes a singer would skip a beat. An especially big boom produced screams and howls of dismay from the audience, blended with the clank and clatter of shattered stained glass raining to the cathedral’s stone floor. But for the most part the music played sweetly, until it didn’t. Then there was nothing.

Daniel." He looked up. "El-la.I was wondering if you'd catch me." He offered me a cigarette. I gave him a shame-on-you look;he grinned. "This is your band?" I asked. Visible piercings aside, no one looked like that went by the name Ax. "Nope,but I go to school with the lead's sister. Regular guy got food poisoning at a Christmas party last night.I've played with them before." "Weddings?" It wasn't quite how I'd pictured him performing. "Usually clubs, but the last one was a bar mitzvah. Musicians have to eat, too," he added, a little sharply. "Sorry." I wanted to wave the smoke away, but figured that might be adding insult to inury. "I thought you played the guitar." "Guitar, piano, a little violin, but badly, and I'll have to garrote you ith one of the strings if you tell anyone." That's the thing about Daniel. Obviously-the violin being a case in point-I don't know him very well,but he seems to hold a grudge for even less time than Frankie. "Secret's safe with me." He shrugged, telling me he didn't really care. Then, "Nice dress." "Just when I start liking you a litte.." He made his vampire-boy face. I could see why it usually worked. "You like me,Ella. Wanna do something when this is over?" "Tempting," I said. "No, I mean that. But no,thanks. I'm not at my best these days." "You're good," he said quietly, blowing out a stream of smoke. "You'll be fine." "Yeah." I shivered. It was bitter outside. "I should go in." "You should." The cold didn't seem to be bothering him at all, and he wasn't even wearing a jacket over his white dress shirt. I turned to go. "Oh, I think I figured it out, by the way." "Figured out what?" "The question.The one everyone should ask before getting involved with someone. Not 'Will he-slash-she make me happy?' but 'Does it bring out the best in me,being with him?'" "Him-slash-her," Daniel corrected, clearly amused. Then, "Nope. No way. Wasn't me who posed the question to you, Marino.I would never be so Emo." "Of course not.But it was one smart boy." I waved. "Hug Frankie for me." "Will do. Hey.Any requests for the band?" "'Don't Stop Believin'," I shot back. He rolled his eyes. "I'm curious, in that last song-are the words really 'I cut my chest wide open'?" "Yup.Followed by, "They come and watch us bleed.Is it art like I was hoping now?" Avett Brothers. Too gruesome for you?" "You have no idea," I told him. How much I get it.

MY KIDS GREW UP IN A WILD WORLD AND HAVE NAVIGATED ITS ups and downs brilliantly. I would tell them, Happy is only one emotion. All the other feelings are just as important, even sad, even yearning, surprised, disappointed. I promised them that when they were upset or heartbroken, they would feel joy again, but that they must first sit with those difficult feelings—don’t hide from them. Accept them, relish them, then let them go. Honor them. To an artist, an actor, a musician, those feelings are gifts. They’re where art is born. They can be uncomfortable minutes, hours, days, but they will pass.

California nurse Jared Axen was holding a dying hospice patient’s hand when he began to sing an old hymn. The woman, who didn’t speak English, hadn’t been responsive in days. But when Axen sang to her, she squeezed his hand, a response that soothed the woman’s family. Six years later, Axen, a classically trained musician, sings to some of his patients every day. “It gives them their humanity back,” he said. “Music is a common language that helps me connect with my patients.” Many patients also claim to feel better and to need fewer pain medications, Axen said. “It’s become a vital tool for my patients and their families.

Simply put, within AS, there is a wide range of function. In truth, many AS people will never receive a diagnosis. They will continue to live with other labels or no label at all. At their best, they will be the eccentrics who wow us with their unusual habits and stream-of-consciousness creativity, the inventors who give us wonderfully unique gadgets that whiz and whirl and make our life surprisingly more manageable, the geniuses who discover new mathematical equations, the great musicians and writers and artists who enliven our lives. At their most neutral, they will be the loners who never now quite how to greet us, the aloof who aren't sure they want to greet us, the collectors who know everyone at the flea market by name and date of birth, the non-conformists who cover their cars in bumper stickers, a few of the professors everyone has in college. At their most noticeable, they will be the lost souls who invade our personal space, the regulars at every diner who carry on complete conversations with the group ten tables away, the people who sound suspiciously like robots, the characters who insist they wear the same socks and eat the same breakfast day in and day out, the people who never quite find their way but never quite lose it either.

Runach took the book in hand and went to look for that Bruadarian lass, who was likely having a conversation with the flora and fauna of his grandfather's garden... He just hadn't expected her to be singing. It wasn't loud singing, though he could hear it once he'd wandered the garden long enough to catch sight of her, standing beneath a flowering linden tree, holding a blossom in her hand. Runach came to a skidding halt and gaped at her. Very well, so he had ceased to think of her as plain directly after Gobhann, and he had been struggling to come up with a worthy adjective ever since. He supposed he might spend the rest of his life trying, and never manage it. It was difficult to describe a dream. He had to sit down on the first bench he found, because he couldn't stand any longer. He wondered if the day would come where she ceased to surprise him with the things she did. Her song was nothing he had ever heard before, but for some reason it seemed familiar in a way he couldn't divine. It was enough for the moment to simply sit there and watch as she and the tree--and several of the flowers, it had to be said--engaged in an ethereal bit of music making. It was truthfully the most beautiful thing he had ever heard, and that was saying something, because the musicians who graced his grandfather's hall were unequalled in any Elvish hall he'd ever visited. And then Runach realized why what she was doing sounded so familiar. She was singing in Fadaire. He grasped for the rapidly disappearing shreds of anything resembling coherent thought, but it was useless. All he could do was sit on that very cold bench and listen to a woman who had hardly set foot past her place of incarceration, sing a song in his mother's native tongue, that would have brought any elf in the vicinity to tears if they had heard it. He knew because it was nigh onto bringing him to that place in spite of his sorry, jaded self.

Before leaving the earth altogether, let us as: How does Music stand with respect to its instruments, their pitches, the scales, modes and rows, repeating themselves from octave to octave, the chords, harmonies, and tonalities, the beats, meters, and rhythms, the degrees of amplitude (pianissimo, piano, mezzo-piano, mezzo-forte, forte, fortissimo)? Though the majority go each day to the schools where these matters are taught, they read when time permits of Cape Canaveral, Ghana, and Seoul. And they’ve heard tell of the music synthesizer, magnetic tape. They take for granted the dials on radios and television sets. A tardy art, the art of Music. And why so slow? Is it because, once having learned a notation of pitches and durations, musicians will not give up their Greek? Children have been modern artists for years now. What is it about Music that sends not only the young but adults too as far into the past as they can conveniently go? The module? But our choices never reached around the globe, and in our laziness, when we changed over to the twelve-tone system, we just took the pitches of the previous music as though we were moving into a furnished apartment and had no time to even take the pictures off the walls. What excuse? That nowadays things are happening so quickly that we become thoughtless? Or were we clairvoyant and knew ahead of time that the need for furniture of any kind would disappear? (Whatever you place there in front of you sits established in the air.) The thing that was irrelevant to the structures we formerly made, and this was what kept us breathing, was what took place within them. Their emptiness we took for what it was – a place where anything could happen. That was one of the reasons we were able when circumstances became inviting (chances in consciousness, etc.) to go outside, where breathing is child’s play: no walls, not even the glass ones which, though we could see through them, killed the birds while they were flying.

I've never even attempted to listen to Neil Young - everything I hear is pretty good. I know that one day, I'll be able to sit down and delve into this amazing back catalogue. Until then, there's always the ever-growing superfluous of new musicians. Sometimes I feel so much guilt when I find I absolutely love a new band or singer, as it means, 9 times out of 10, that nobody else will. That's good taste for you. The other side of the coin is - "Ah, James. You have to hear this guy, his name is Felix Maboabbie and he's better than Nick Drake and John Martyn combined - with a touch of John Lennon." And, you know what, they are always, always utterly shite.

Mary was proud of her husband, not merely because he was a musician, but because he was a blacksmith. For, with the true taste of a right woman, she honored the manhood that could do hard work. The day will come, and may I do something to help it hither, when the youth of our country will recognize that, taken in itself, it is a more manly, and therefore in the old true sense a more _gentle_ thing, to follow a good handicraft, if it make the hands black as a coal, than to spend the day in keeping books, and making up accounts, though therein the hands should remain white--or red, as the case may be. Not but that, from a higher point of view still, all work, set by God, and done divinely, is of equal honor; but, where there is a choice, I would gladly see boy of mine choose rather to be a blacksmith, or a watchmaker, or a bookbinder, than a clerk. Production, making, is a higher thing in the scale of reality, than any mere transmission, such as buying and selling. It is, besides, easier to do honest work than to buy and sell honestly. The more honor, of course, to those who are honest under the greater difficulty! But the man who knows how needful the prayer, "Lead us not into temptation," knows that he must not be tempted into temptation even by the glory of duty under difficulty. In humility we must choose the easiest, as we must hold our faces unflinchingly to the hardest, even to the seeming impossible, when it is given us to do.

i wore red lipstick to the grocery store last Monday to buy a carton off eggs and so when the cashier told me that my eyes reminded him of the ocean, i asked if he’s ever drowned in his own sadness, he said my total was $1.89 and that he didn’t know what i meant, i payed in quarters and told him i was an Art major, i told him my boyfriend was a musician and we were saving up for an apartment in the city and how i’d use the walls as canvases and how he’d play his piano on Sunday mornings when the rain tasted like salt, and i told him that i had my first art opening in three weeks and he should stop by and i’d introduce him to this friend i had named Lolita who was really good in bed, he thought i was insane and i wonder if he knew how many times i’ve cried in the shower with my make up smeared and my eyes swollen shut, he said “yeah, yeah, sounds good, have a nice day” and i wonder if he’ll ever know i wanted to really be a poet and that’s why when some man in the parking lot asked if i had a lighter, i dropped my eggs while stumbling to find one, and cried on the way home

Not all of us are born with fingers that move like fucking Ferraris, homie,” he rants in good humour. ​“Some of us are just fuck-ups who look normal and wear shitty clothes because we can’t afford good ones, and we’re angry and we just wanna take out our angst and shit with a guitar. I’m not inspired by how good you are, it’s almost like the opposite. I wanna feel you. "...the kids that I went to school with fucking hated me, and I’d worn the same clothes for five days, and I was tall, skinny and didn’t fit in. I was a basement; where the fuck was I going to learn how to play like Steve Vai? I couldn’t! I was broke. No-one gave a fuck about me. Give me three chords, though, and tell me to show you how I feel, and I bet you I will.

Along with people in other creative professions, such as artists and musicians, many scientists experience this transcendence. I do so every day. For one, it's impossible to look an ape in the eye and not see oneself. There are other animals with frontally oriented eyes, but none that give you the shock of recognition of the ape's. Looking back at you is not so much an animal but a personality as solid and willful as yourself.

It's scary, and downing, that I make my best music when I'm going through my depression... At that moment, all i can see is black, darkness and shadows, but in the bigger picture.. it's a blessing. When I look through all my work, my art, I wouldn't change or take away my depression and anxiety for ANYTHING.. because when i get those days of rainbows, and colors.. i know deep down, i'm only honest when i'm at the deepest of the oceans.. so it's like listening to a different side of my mind, that i never realize exists, until i get that little peek through the blinds, and finally see the sunlight.. THEN on those simple moments, even if they only last a few minutes, i know deep down... maybe i do have a talent. Maybe I have got something, a "gift", that some people call... So really, if it wasn't for my depression, i would never, truly believe I have anything worth giving. So I will NOT sit back and wish i wasn't clinically depressed, I will learn to embrace it, live with it, and talk my brain into believing, and fully knowing, I HAVE A GIFT. I AM WORTHY. I DO HAVE SOMETHING TO GIVE THE WORLD. I will not let my depression or anxiety control me. They can live here(in my mind), but they best know, I AM STILL, AND WILL ALWAYS BE IN CONTROL. .. BUT This is my home, and you're just living under it.

And are we not guilty of offensive disparagement in calling chess a game? Is it not also a science and an art, hovering between those categories as Muhammad’s coffin hovered between heaven and earth, a unique link between pairs of opposites: ancient yet eternally new; mechanical in structure, yet made effective only by the imagination; limited to a geometrically fixed space, yet with unlimited combinations; constantly developing, yet sterile; thought that leads nowhere; mathematics calculating nothing; art without works of art; architecture without substance – but nonetheless shown to be more durable in its entity and existence than all books and works of art; the only game that belongs to all nations and all eras, although no one knows what god brought it down to earth to vanquish boredom, sharpen the senses and stretch the mind. Where does it begin and where does it end? Every child can learn its basic rules, every bungler can try his luck at it, yet within that immutable little square it is able to bring forth a particular species of masters who cannot be compared to anyone else, people with a gift solely designed for chess, geniuses in their specific field who unite vision, patience and technique in just the same proportions as do mathematicians, poets, musicians, but in different stratifications and combinations. In the old days of the enthusiasm for physiognomy, a physician like Gall might perhaps have dissected a chess champion’s brain to find out whether some particular twist or turn in the grey matter, a kind of chess muscle or chess bump, is more developed in such chess geniuses than in the skulls of other mortals. And how intrigued such a physiognomist would have been by the case of Czentovic, where that specific genius appeared in a setting of absolute intellectual lethargy, like a single vein of gold in a hundredweight of dull stone. In principle, I had always realized that such a unique, brilliant game must create its own matadors, but how difficult and indeed impossible it is to imagine the life of an intellectually active human being whose world is reduced entirely to the narrow one-way traffic between black and white, who seeks the triumphs of his life in the mere movement to and fro, forward and back of thirty-two chessmen, someone to whom a new opening, moving knight rather than pawn, is a great deed, and his little corner of immortality is tucked away in a book about chess – a human being, an intellectual human being who constantly bends the entire force of his mind on the ridiculous task of forcing a wooden king into the corner of a wooden board, and does it without going mad!

The news that she had gone of course now spread rapidly, and by lunch time Riseholme had made up its mind what to do, and that was hermetically to close its lips for ever on the subject of Lucia. You might think what you pleased, for it was a free country, but silence was best. But this counsel of perfection was not easy to practice next day when the evening paper came. There, for all the world to read were two quite long paragraphs, in "Five o'clock Chit-Chat," over the renowned signature of Hermione, entirely about Lucia and 25 Brompton Square, and there for all the world to see was the reproduction of one of her most elegant photographs, in which she gazed dreamily outwards and a little upwards, with her fingers still pressed on the last chord of (probably) the Moonlight Sonata. . . . She had come up, so Hermione told countless readers, from her Elizabethan country seat at Riseholme (where she was a neighbour of Miss Olga Bracely) and was settling for the season in the beautiful little house in Brompton Square, which was the freehold property of her husband, and had just come to him on the death of his aunt. It was a veritable treasure house of exquisite furniture, with a charming music-room where Lucia had given Hermione a cup of tea from her marvellous Worcester tea service. . . . (At this point Daisy, whose hands were trembling with passion, exclaimed in a loud and injured voice, "The very day she arrived!") Mrs. Lucas (one of the Warwickshire Smythes by birth) was, as all the world knew, a most accomplished musician and Shakespearean scholar, and had made Riseholme a centre of culture and art. But nobody would suspect the blue stocking in the brilliant, beautiful and witty hostess whose presence would lend an added gaiety to the London season.

I had enough of a story churning in my head that combined all the elements of the day—the interview, the concert, the after-party’s private session—when he put his guitar away and asked me if I had ever experimented with homosexuality. Talk about unexpected segues. Letting him know that I had not and wasn’t about to, I successfully changed the subject by asking him to give me a condensed account about traveling to Mississippi in search of Bukka White.

The unchanging Man of history is wonderfully adaptable cloth by his power of endurance and in his capacity for detachment. The fact seems to be that the play of his destiny is too great for his fears and too mysterious for his understanding. Were the trump of the Last Judgement to sound suddenly on a working day the musician at his piano would go on with his performance of Beethoven's Sonata and the cobbler at his stall stick to his last in undisturbed confidence in the virtues of the leather. And with perfect propriety. For what are we to let ourselves be disturbed by an angel's vengeful music too mighty for our ears and too awful for our terrors ? Thus it happens to us to be struck suddenly by the lightning of wrath. The reader will go on reading if the book pleases him and the critic will go on criticizing with that faculty of detachment born perhaps from a sense of infinite littleness and wich is yet the only faculty that seems to assimilate man to the immortal gods.

You never asked about your present.' 'I assumed I wasn't getting one from you.' He pushed off the door frame and shut the door behind him. He took up all the air in the room just by standing there. 'Why?' She shrugged. 'I just did.' He pulled a small box from his jacket and set it on the bed between them. 'Surprise.' Cassian swallowed as she approached, the only sign that this meant something to him. Nesta's hands turned sweaty as she picked the box up, examining it. She didn't open it yet, though. 'I am sorry for how I behaved last Solstice. For how awful I was.' He'd gotten her a present then, too. And she hadn't cared, had been so wretched she'd wanted to hurt him for it. For caring. 'I know,' he said thickly. 'I forgave you a long time ago.' She still couldn't look at him, even as he said, 'Open it.' Her hands shook a little as she did, finding a silver ball nestled in the black velvet box. It was the size of a chicken egg, round save for one area that had been flattened so it might be set upon a surface and not roll. 'What is it?' 'Touch the top. Just a tap.' Throwing a puzzled glance at him, she did so. Music exploded into the room. Nesta leaped back, a hand at her chest as he laughed. But- music was playing from the silver orb. And not just any music, but the waltzes from the ball the other night, pure and free of any crowd chattering, as if she were sitting in a theatre to hear them. 'This isn't the Veritas orb,' she managed to say as the waltz poured out of the ball, so clear and perfect her blood sang again. 'No, it's a Symphonia, a rare device from Helion's court. It can trap music within itself, and play it back for you. It was originally invented to help compose music, but it never caught on, for some reason.' 'How did you get the crowd noise out when you trapped the sound the other night?' she marvelled. His cheeks stained with colour. 'I went back the next day. Asked the musicians at the Hewn City to play it all again for me, plus some of their favourites.' He nodded to the ball. 'And then I went to some of your favourite taverns and found those musicians and had them play...' He trailed off at her bowed head. The tears she couldn't stop. She didn't try to fight them as the music poured into the room. He had done all of this for her. Had found a way for her to have music- always. 'Nesta,' he breathed.

Once there was and once there was not a devout, God-fearing man who lived his entire life according to stoic principles. He died on his fortieth birthday and woke up floating in nothing. Now, mind you, floating in nothing was comforting, light-less, airless, like a mother’s womb. This man was grateful. But then he decided he would love to have sturdy ground beneath his feet, so he would feel more solid himself. Lo and behold, he was standing on earth. He knew it to be earth, for he knew the feel of it. Yet he wanted to see. I desire light, he thought, and light appeared. I want sunlight, not any light, and at night it shall be moonlight. His desires were granted. Let there be grass. I love the feel of grass beneath my feet. And so it was. I no longer wish to be naked. Only robes of the finest silk must touch my skin. And shelter, I need a grand palace whose entrance has double-sided stairs, and the floors must be marble and the carpets Persian. And food, the finest of food. His breakfast was English; his midmorning snack French. His lunch was Chinese. His afternoon tea was Indian. His supper was Italian, and his late-night snack was Lebanese. Libation? He had the best of wines, of course, and champagne. And company, the finest of company. He demanded poets and writers, thinkers and philosophers, hakawatis and musicians, fools and clowns. And then he desired sex. He asked for light-skinned women and dark-skinned, blondes and brunettes, Chinese, South Asian, African, Scandinavian. He asked for them singly and two at a time, and in the evenings he had orgies. He asked for younger girls, after which he asked for older women, just to try. The he tried men, muscular men, skinny men. Then boys. Then boys and girls together. Then he got bored. He tried sex with food. Boys with Chinese, girls with Indian. Redheads with ice cream. Then he tried sex with company. He fucked the poet. Everybody fucked the poet. But again he got bored. The days were endless. Coming up with new ideas became tiring and tiresome. Every desire he could ever think of was satisfied. He had had enough. He walked out of his house, looked up at the glorious sky, and said, “Dear God. I thank You for Your abundance, but I cannot stand it here anymore. I would rather be anywhere else. I would rather be in hell.” And the booming voice from above replied, “And where do you think you are?

I was only beginning to enter into the infinite subtlety of Gregorian chant. It was - and remains - the only public prayer I have ever been able to engage in without feeling like a phony and a jackass. But then, one day in 1965 or so, it was simply abolished. With a stroke of his pen, Pope John XXIII - who had such good ideas about other things - declared that liturgy would henceforth be in the vernacular language of the people. That was, effectively, the end of Latin chant. Then all those monks and nuns who had devoted hours and hours a day began to sicken and fall into depressions, but nobody noticed for a long time. Maybe, as I can well believe, the music toned up their systems in some mysterious way. Or perhaps chant really was a language that God understood. Faced with numerous liturgical scholas shrieking away in the new vernacular hymns, Divinity may have covered its ears and withdrawn, leaving the monks to pine. We parish musicians, illiterate in anything written after the 13th century, stumbled around trying to score liturgies for guitar and bongo drums, trying to make sense of texts like "Eat his body! Drink his blood!" It wasn't because the music got so bad that I quit going to Mass, but it certainly was the beginning of my doubts about papal infallibility.

One night, having spent a few days in peaceful solitude with my thoughts, I walked under the stars and along the cobbled streets and an idea crept all over me like arresting, vibrant blooms of wisteria. I don’t need a dazzlingly charismatic musician to write a line about me in a song. I don’t need a guru to tell me things about myself I think I don’t know. I don’t need to cut all my hair off because a boy told me it would suit me. I don’t need to change my shape to make myself worthy of someone’s love. I don’t need any words or looks or comments from a man to believe I’m visible; to believe I’m here. I don’t need to run away from discomfort and into a male eyeline. That’s not where I come alive. Because I am enough. My heart is enough. The stories and the sentences twisting around my mind are enough. I am fizzing and frothing and buzzing and exploding. I’m bubbling over and burning up. My early-morning walks and my late-night baths are enough. My loud laugh at the pub is enough. My piercing whistle, my singing in the shower, my double-jointed toes are enough. I am a just-pulled pint with a good, frothy head on it. I am my own universe; a galaxy; a solar system. I am the warm-up act, the main event and the backing singers. And if this is it, if this is all there is – just me and the trees and the sky and the seas – I know now that that’s enough. I am enough. I am enough.

Sarah sits up and reaches over, plucking a string on my guitar. It’s propped against the nightstand on her side of the bed. “So . . . do you actually know how to play this thing?” “I do.” She lies down on her side, arm bent, resting her head in her hand, regarding me curiously. “You mean like, ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,’ the ‘ABC’s,’ and such?” I roll my eyes. “You do realize that’s the same song, don’t you?” Her nose scrunches as she thinks about it, and her lips move as she silently sings the tunes in her head. It’s fucking adorable. Then she covers her face and laughs out loud. “Oh my God, I’m an imbecile!” “You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself, but if you say so.” She narrows her eyes. “Bully.” Then she sticks out her tongue. Big mistake. Because it’s soft and pink and very wet . . . and it makes me want to suck on it. And then that makes me think of other pink, soft, and wet places on her sweet-smelling body . . . and then I’m hard. Painfully, achingly hard. Thank God for thick bedcovers. If this innocent, blushing bird realized there was a hot, hard, raging boner in her bed, mere inches away from her, she would either pass out from all the blood rushing to her cheeks or hit the ceiling in shock—clinging to it by her fingernails like a petrified cat over water. “Well, you learn something new every day.” She chuckles. “But you really know how to play the guitar?” “You sound doubtful.” She shrugs. “A lot has been written about you, but I’ve never once heard that you play an instrument.” I lean in close and whisper, “It’s a secret. I’m good at a lot of things that no one knows about.” Her eyes roll again. “Let me guess—you’re fantastic in bed . . . but everybody knows that.” Then she makes like she’s playing the drums and does the sound effects for the punch-line rim shot. “Ba dumb ba, chhhh.” And I laugh hard—almost as hard as my cock is. “Shy, clever, a naughty sense of humor, and a total nutter. That’s a damn strange combo, Titebottum.” “Wait till you get to know me—I’m definitely one of a kind.” The funny thing is, I’m starting to think that’s absolutely true. I rub my hands together, then gesture to the guitar. “Anyway, pass it here. And name a musician. Any musician.” “Umm . . . Ed Sheeran.” I shake my head. “All the girls love Ed Sheeran.” “He’s a great singer. And he has the whole ginger thing going for him,” she teases. “If you were born a prince with red hair? Women everywhere would adore you.” “Women everywhere already adore me.” “If you were a ginger prince, there’d be more.” “All right, hush now smartarse-bottum. And listen.” Then I play “Thinking Out Loud.” About halfway through, I glance over at Sarah. She has the most beautiful smile, and I think something to myself that I’ve never thought in all my twenty-five years: this is how it feels to be Ed Sheeran.

Suddenly Dean stared into the darkness of a corner beyond the bandstand and said, "Sal, God has arrived." I looked. George Shearing. And as always he leaned his blind head on his pale hand, all ears opened like the ears of an elephant, listening to the American sounds and mastering them for his own English summer's-night use. Then they urged him to get up and play. He did. He played innumerable choruses with amazing chords that mounted higher and higher till the sweat splashed all over the piano and everybody listened in awe and fright. They led him off the stand after an hour. He went back to his dark corner, old God Shearing, and the boys said, "There ain't nothin left after that." But the slender leader frowned. "Let's blow anyway." Something would come of it yet. There's always more, a little further - it never ends. They sought to find new phrases after Shearing's explorations; they tried hard. They writhed and twisted and blew. Every now and then a clear harmonic cry gave new suggestions of a tune that would someday be the only tune in the world and would raise men's souls to joy. They found it, they lost, they wrestled for it, they found it again, they laughed, they moaned - and Dean sweated at the table and told them to go, go, go. At nine o'clock in the morning everybody - musicians, girls in slacks, bartenders, and the one little skinny, unhappy trombonist - staggered out of the club into the great roar of Chicago day to sleep until the wild bop night again.

I dial her mum's number, then sit down cross-legged, facing the wall. When she comes on the line, she sounds uncertain, hesitant. 'Hey! Guess where I am?' I ask, my voice loud with false cheer. 'Rami told me. The Wellesly Hospital in Worthing. What's it like?' 'For a loony-bin it's actually quite decent,' I reply. 'I don't have Sky or an en-suite, and the menu isn't exactly à la carte, but you know...' I tail off. There is a silence. 'Do you have your own room?' Jenna asks, 'Oh yeah, yeah. I have a lovely view of the sea between the bars of my window.' She doesn't laugh. 'Have you started' -there is a pause as she searches for the right word -'threatment?' 'Yeah, yeah. We had group therapy today. Tomorrow we'll probably have art therapy - maybe I'll draw you a hourse and a garden. I know, perhaps they'll teach us to make baskets! Isn't that why they call us basket cases?' 'Flynn, stop,' Jennah softly implores. 'And we'll probably have music therapy the day after. Maybe I'll get to play the tambourine. Or the triangle. I've always wanted to play the triangle!' 'Flynn-' 'No, I'm serious! I'll ask for some manuscript paper and see if I can write a composition for tambourine and triangle. Then I can post if off to you to hand in for my next composition assignment.' 'Flynn, listen-' 'Hold on, hold on! I'm making a note to myself now: Find fellow insane musician and start composing the Flynn Laukonen Sonata for Tambourine and Triangle.' 'Flynn-' 'And then, when they let me out, if they ever let me out, perhaps you could pull a few strigns and organize for me and my tambourine buddy to give a recital. I'm not sure where though -how about the subway at Marble Arch tube? Nice and central, good acoustics-' 'What are the other people like?' Jennah cuts in, an edge to her voice. I notice she doesn't use the word patients. Clever Jennah. For a moment there you almost made me forget I was locked up in a mental institution. 'Round the bend, just like me,' I reply. 'I'm in excellent company. We'll be swapping suicide tips in no time at all!' I give a harsh laugh.

I lived in New York City back in the 1980s, which is when the Bordertown series was created. New York was a different place then -- dirtier, edgier, more dangerous, but also in some ways more exciting. The downtown music scene was exploding -- punk and folk music were everywhere -- and it wasn't as expensive to live there then, so a lot of young artists, musicians, writers, etc. etc. were all living and doing crazy things in scruffy neighborhoods like the East Village. I was a Fantasy Editor for a publishing company back then -- but in those days, "fantasy" to most people meant "imaginary world" books, like Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. A number of the younger writers in the field, however, wanted to create a branch of fantasy that was rooted in contemporary, urban North America, rather than medieval or pastoral Europe. I'd already been working with some of these folks (Charles de Lint, Emma Bull, etc.), who were writing novels that would become the foundations for the current Urban Fantasy field. At the time, these kinds of stories were considered so strange and different, it was actually hard to get them into print. When I was asked by a publishing company to create a shared-world anthology for Young Adult readers, I wanted to create an Urban Fantasy setting that was something like a magical version of New York...but I didn't want it to actually be New York. I want it to be any city and every city -- a place that anyone from anywhere could go to or relate to. The idea of placing it on the border of Elfland came from the fact that I'd just re-read a fantasy classic called The King of Elfland's Daughter by the Irish writer Lord Dunsany. I love stories that take place on the borderlands between two different worlds...and so I borrowed this concept, but adapted it to a modern, punky, urban setting. I drew upon elements of the various cities I knew best -- New York, Boston, London, Dublin, maybe even a little of Mexico City, where I'd been for a little while as a teen -- and scrambled them up and turned them into Bordertown. There actually IS a Mad River in southern Ohio (where I went to college) and I always thought that was a great name, so I imported it to Bordertown. As for the water being red, that came from the river of blood in the Scottish folk ballad "Thomas the Rhymer," which Thomas must cross to get into Elfland. [speaking about the Borderland series she "founded" and how she came up with the setting. Link to source; Q&A with Holly, Ellen & Terri!]

American DEWAR FAMILY Cameron Dewar Ursula “Beep” Dewar, his sister Woody Dewar, his father Bella Dewar, his mother PESHKOV-JAKES FAMILY George Jakes Jacky Jakes, his mother Greg Peshkov, his father Lev Peshkov, his grandfather Marga, his grandmother MARQUAND FAMILY Verena Marquand Percy Marquand, her father Babe Lee, her mother CIA Florence Geary Tony Savino Tim Tedder, semiretired Keith Dorset OTHERS Maria Summers Joseph Hugo, FBI Larry Mawhinney, Pentagon Nelly Fordham, old flame of Greg Peshkov Dennis Wilson, aide to Bobby Kennedy Skip Dickerson, aide to Lyndon Johnson Leopold “Lee” Montgomery, reporter Herb Gould, television journalist on This Day Suzy Cannon, gossip reporter Frank Lindeman, television network owner REAL HISTORICAL CHARACTERS John F. Kennedy, thirty-fifth U.S. president Jackie, his wife Bobby Kennedy, his brother Dave Powers, assistant to President Kennedy Pierre Salinger, President Kennedy’s press officer Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference Lyndon B. Johnson, thirty-sixth U.S. president Richard Nixon, thirty-seventh U.S. president Jimmy Carter, thirty-ninth U.S. president Ronald Reagan, fortieth U.S. president George H. W. Bush, forty-first U.S. president British LECKWITH-WILLIAMS FAMILY Dave Williams Evie Williams, his sister Daisy Williams, his mother Lloyd Williams, M.P., his father Eth Leckwith, Dave’s grandmother MURRAY FAMILY Jasper Murray Anna Murray, his sister Eva Murray, his mother MUSICIANS IN THE GUARDSMEN AND PLUM NELLIE Lenny, Dave Williams’s cousin Lew, drummer Buzz, bass player Geoffrey, lead guitarist OTHERS Earl Fitzherbert, called Fitz Sam Cakebread, friend of Jasper Murray Byron Chesterfield (real name Brian Chesnowitz), music agent Hank Remington (real name Harry Riley), pop star Eric Chapman, record company executive German FRANCK FAMILY Rebecca Hoffmann Carla Franck, Rebecca’s adoptive mother Werner Franck, Rebecca’s adoptive father Walli Franck, son of Carla Lili Franck, daughter of Werner and Carla Maud von Ulrich, née Fitzherbert, Carla’s mother Hans Hoffmann, Rebecca’s husband OTHERS Bernd Held, schoolteacher Karolin Koontz, folksinger Odo Vossler, clergyman REAL HISTORICAL PEOPLE Walter Ulbricht, first secretary of the Socialist Unity Party (Communist) Erich Honecker, Ulbricht’s successor Egon Krenz, successor to Honecker Polish Stanislaw “Staz” Pawlak, army officer Lidka, girlfriend of Cam Dewar Danuta Gorski, Solidarity activist REAL HISTORICAL PEOPLE Anna Walentynowicz, crane driver Lech Wałesa, leader of the trade union Solidarity General Jaruzelski, prime minister Russian DVORKIN-PESHKOV FAMILY Tanya Dvorkin, journalist Dimka Dvorkin, Kremlin aide, Tanya’s twin brother Anya Dvorkin, their mother Grigori Peshkov, their grandfather Katerina Peshkov, their grandmother Vladimir, always called Volodya, their uncle Zoya, Volodya’s wife Nina, Dimka’s girlfriend OTHERS Daniil Antonov, features editor at TASS Pyotr Opotkin, features editor in chief Vasili Yenkov, dissident Natalya Smotrov, official in the Foreign Ministry

During the season, they saw each other and played together almost every day. At the aunt's request, seconded by Professor Valérius, Daaé consented to give the young viscount some violin lessons. In this way, Raoul learned to love the same airs that had charmed Christine's childhood. They also both had the same calm and dreamy little cast of mind. They delighted in stories, in old Breton legends; and their favorite sport was to go and ask for them at the cottage-doors, like beggars: "Ma'am..." or, "Kind gentleman... have you a little story to tell us, please?" And it seldom happened that they did not have one "given" them; for nearly every old Breton grandame has, at least once in her life, seen the "korrigans" dance by moonlight on the heather. But their great treat was, in the twilight, in the great silence of the evening, after the sun had set in the sea, when Daaé came and sat down by them on the roadside and in a low voice, as though fearing lest he should frighten the ghosts whom he loved, told them the legends of the land of the North. And, the moment he stopped, the children would ask for more. There was one story that began: "A king sat in a little boat on one of those deep still lakes that open like a bright eye in the midst of the Norwegian mountains..." And another: "Little Lotte thought of everything and nothing. Her hair was golden as the sun's rays and her soul as clear and blue as her eyes. She wheedled her mother, was kind to her doll, took great care of her frock and her little red shoes and her fiddle, but most of all loved, when she went to sleep, to hear the Angel of Music." While the old man told this story, Raoul looked at Christine's blue eyes and golden hair; and Christine thought that Lotte was very lucky to hear the Angel of Music when she went to sleep. The Angel of Music played a part in all Daddy Daaé's tales; and he maintained that every great musician, every great artist received a visit from the Angel at least once in his life. Sometimes the Angel leans over their cradle, as happened to Lotte, and that is how their are little prodigies who play the fiddle at six better than fifty, which, you must admit, is very wonderful. Sometimes, the Angel comes much later, because the children are naughty and won't learn their lessons or practice their scales. And, sometimes, he does not come at all, because the children have a bad heart or a bad conscience. No one ever sees the Angel; but he is heard by those who are meant to hear him. He often comes when they least expect him, when they are sad or disheartened. Then their ears suddenly perceive celestial harmonies, a divine voice, which they remember all their lives. Persons who are visited by the Angel quiver with a thrill unknown to the rest of mankind. And they can not touch an instrument, or open their mouths to sing, without producing sounds that put all other human sounds to shame. Then people who do not know that the Angel has visited those persons say that they have genius. Little Christine asked her father if he had heard the Angel of Music. But Daddy Daaé shook his head sadly; and then his eyes lit up, as he said: "You will hear him one day, my child! When I am in Heaven, I will send him to you!" Daddy was beginning to cough at that time.