I took your life.

I took you from your mother when you were too young to know anything else.
I imprisoned you and shaped your behaviour.
I fed you crust of bread and water.
I teased you.
I left you alone and went out into the world for my own pleasure.
I put you in the hands of strangers when you were sick.
I do things to you that you do not understand, and I claim they're for your own good.
I often ignore you.
And I will decide the hour of your death.

You can make music without notes.

Practice makes perfect; editing makes excellence.

Everyone leaves things unfinished, but a legacy is complete.

There may be 22 other Daves, but there’s only one Dave #23.

An island of happiness eventually is surrounded by sweet water.

Silence is a powerful word.

Live what you write.

There are some places you need:

One where everybody knows you.
One where you are a star.
One where you can be yourself without shame.
One nobody else knows.
One where you can go other places.
One you've never seen but could.
One you'd like to visit again.

Imagine it. A playwright presented it beautifully in a piece called "Cathedral"; we watched it last night. The description of how the vision appeared, what shape it took, and how it existed in the solid world--all were evoked with child's wonder. A play is like music that way: it is the world in a bead of water on a spiderweb. In one important way, it's like a rainbow.

A stained glass window is painstaking work. It isn't enough to colour and frost the glass, nor to assemble all the pieces, or even to frame it. There must be context. If it is the only window, a place of honor, centered and high; if one of many, spaced; but principally where it can catch the light. The fulfillment of its purpose waxes and wanes with the weather. Also, it must be in a location whose inhabitants will understand--and be enriched by--its message.

Crystal shatters under impact, but how much more fragile is something that can be marred with a word? A cough, a child's impatient sigh, a chair squeaking against the floor--anything louder than a tear is destructive. It's hard, hard to see music. Perhaps the people who mar it aren't able to see it, but I think it's because they aren't trying. It's a false temptation to call it evil; it's just the way people are, and if they make it more difficult to achieve, we work harder. Sometimes it has to be done by excluding people. After all, there always is an audience, and rainbows are beyond the reach of vandals.

I taught the river your name,
And it told the sea.
Now every fish knows of you,
And fossils in sandstone will speak
So the world will not forget.

You gave the wind your fragrance,
And it told me.
Now every cell listens for you,
And twitches of nerves will move
So the distance will not separate.

The stars sought out your eyes,
And they showed me.
Now every night feels like you,
And worlds afar will turn
So they may watch
Our meeting.

Let me tell you how I see you.
Your eyes are iris
Your voice is violet
Your lips are lilac, mmmm;
Your smile is cobalt and your touch, tungsten light
Your heart is coral sea,
Or cerullean, or a shade I haven't seen;
Your mind and body are the whole spectrum.
We live between the sky and ocean,
And you are every blue emotion.

The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine. -J. B. S. Haldane

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You’ve seen them, but never straight-on. They touch the corner of your eye, they whisper in your ear before you turn, they are the scent that is gone when you feel the breeze. They never slow down, splining from one almost-maybe to the next; and in each one they are a flashbulb that starts to fade before you even realize it happened.

I’m talking about inspirations and intuitions, stuff that can become art or understanding if tamed. But the same description covers people we see occasionally, who move and age between strobes. Around those evanescent kernels we build a memory that might be something like the real person, to be scattered next time we meet them.

You can modify iterative equations to turn back on themselves, to body forth their scattered travel. For a person, you can cross paths more often by adjusting orbits. Ideas are more subtle. You can form nets of context to catch some—never knowing which ones—or you can collect retinal images until they combine into something new; and you can send out your own ideas in the hope they’ll make friends and return.

I’m going to experiment with idea-affinity applied to people.

When people speak of unrequited love
They never had experience of you
And for this burning I desire no salve
Nor heed the purple wounds that may accrue

For artistry I have, and treasures steal
Depriving gripping beasts of sparkling hoard
To decorate your neck with tempered steel
And cross emotion's drink at shallow ford

Yet all the output of my factories
Is puppets searching for a fitting hand
There is no magic wrought by faculties
That do not feel but merely understand

For human passion is the guiding force
Of music, and you are its only source.

Come lie with me; come live with me.
Let your father be satisfied:
I will provide food and shelter and clothing,
insurance and transportation.
Tell your mother I will
make you laugh, push you forward,
take you out in your nice dresses,
hold you,
and fill your life with music.
For yourself have my love,
but not happiness.
These things may bring it,
but to live,
you must pursue it yourself.

The facade of the building is a flat storefront between an architecture partnership and a porn shop. It's brown with a black and white sign advertising the current special. The shingle hangs over the door with the logo swinging like a stiff flag.

When you walk in, the walls are real-estate white and the stairs are unpainted, unstained wood with beveled edges. Holding the simple handrail, you walk down into a carpeted lobby with nice wood bar and ticket booth, a simple wood throne to the side, and pictures of past successes hanging on the brick wall. Staff pass to and fro preparing for the line of customers that has already formed.

Through a black velvet curtain under a wood archway you enter the main room. Oak and mahogany tables, round and square, on a stone floor are set with padded wood chairs. Most of the tables and chairs have a small plaque memorializing someone who contributed. A balcony stretches across the back of the double-high ceilinged room and ends in catwalks that connect to the upper part of the stage.

The stage is the center of attention. Also wood, it has the elements for any play: a door, an archway, a balcony, a ramp, winding stairs, short steps, wide flat areas, pillars someone could hide behind, an even dozen entrances including some that let the actors enter the audience. When you are here, the play is the whole world.

It took years to give this place its atmosphere. But this is a lasting legacy created by an unflagging spirit with a vision. The world is nothing but locations, but this, this is a place.

Maybe it was carelessness, or perhaps a triumph of id over sense. I made a calculation error.
For reasons I've forgotten, my class went out for a nice dinner at Red Lobster. I was ten or eleven years old. My parents gave me enough cash for a reasonable meal and admonished me not to forget tax.

So there I was, last in line to check out and get on the bus, dark outside and far from home, and I came up twelve cents short. Through the visions of spending the night dishwashing, if not in jail, I heard a clink. A stranger in line behind me dropped the change on the counter and waved me on.

To him, it was nothing. A dime, two pennies, metal he probably didn't want to carry around anyway. To me, it was life and death. Sometimes little gifts matter a lot; sometimes only a little or not at all. But sometimes is often enough, and kindness, like love, is infinitely transitive.

It's mostly proprietorships, with storefronts on ground level and residence above. Bridges connect buildings on the arcade level, where the people pass like ships in the common rooms.

I frequent several clubs: 1987, busy, anticipating; 1969, at the corner where Haight dead-ends, where I am a member; 1977, extreme, pure, dangerous and innocent; 1953, partly pastel but sometimes dim and smoky with Kerouac holding court; 1926, sepia, carefree and desperate.

There's a lot more to see farther down, but it's hard to get away for a trip. The higher numbers are interesting, fevered 1999 and 2000 in its identity crisis; but they're too close to the new construction. It will be a while before I frequent them.

It's a meandering street. But on the inside of a curve, not far from the end, a one-lane driveway leads back into the woods. There, by a lake, is a cozy shack. I spend most of my time out and about, hobnobbing under torches or disco balls or chandeliers; but in the quiet moments, this is home.

When first remembered, they were a dream, a silly doodle of my imagination. The idea took hold, and I began to imitate the motions. Beyond understanding that it was merely play, I knew it was not quite right. Then, as I flapped my arms, I felt something echoing the movements.
Long disused, weak, cramped, and shy, they resisted my attempts to unfurl. When they opened, and I began to exercise, it hurt. Strands were torn and rebuilt; dead feathers fell and the rest fluttered, and the tugging stung my skin.
Almost immediately I felt a little lift. It was some time, but not as long as I expected, before I finally raised weary feet from the ground. Shakiness, hesitance, and fear molted as grace bloomed. This, yes this, is joy: the awakening of vital powers.

Your voice made an impression early on, even before your beauty. But before that it was your smile, gentle, distant, and sadness was the impurity that gave the crystal its beauty. Yet still that was not first. First it was your silence that you wore like a winter cloak in the cold human world.

You seem to like people and to believe in them. But we each have a part that is apart, the soul in solitude; it takes quite a spirit to venture away from society, and yet a greater one to return.

What little I know is fodder for fantasy, but it is little indeed. Yet I keep coming back to the sound of your voice, and the uncanny sense that tells me you are coming before I can see. Are you persuaded by duets, or shall I simply listen to your unaccompanied melody, heard in the silence, seen in the dark, felt in the distance...

Two people find each other while lost in the wilderness. Maybe one of them can't go home, maybe the other doesn't want to. They're square pegs in the round holes of society. Ultimately they marry and live out their lives, never seeing other people and never having children. They share a very special bond, a love that is the third point in their orbit. After they die, does it remain there? Does it go with them? Where is it?

It seemed so unfair. Everything had been taken from him. He had borne the misfortunes well, but finally it overcame him and he asked for a reason. Then the voice spoke out of the whirlwind and said, "Where were you when the world was created?"

It was simpler in the past. The Earth was flat; Hell was below, Heaven above. But the geometry of astronomy changed. Then the below was a small confined space and above was appropriately infinite. But now we are no longer geocentric, if indeed there is any center at all. What lies outside the expanding universe? In an infinite expanse in all directions, where is there room for Heaven?

Where are you from?
Where are you now?
Where are you going?

It begins as an obsession in the most degenerate corner of your brain. Nothing but excess and phenylethylamine can sate the primal hunger.

Buttermilk. It has to be a buttermilk cake, rich as Devil's food and full and satisfying. And when it comes out of the Ritual of Fire, it must be smothered with frosting made from ground-up fairies and brownie sprites. The sweetness is a poison; you can feel it radiating, soaking into your skin and dissolving your bones. But you must have the frosting. The cake would lunge after you if it weren't held down. Then comes the cold milk snow, with black flecks of vanilla sprinkled like musical notes across an avant-garde conductor's score, melting into rivers of thixotropic cream on the fairy-castle surface.

On the second day it has changed. The frosting has collapsed into fudge, and its weight bears down like a slab of cement. All the moisture is held in, and the cake becomes a compressed brownie. The two pounds of confectioner's sugar and pound of butter per 216 cubic inches are now in 216 cubic centimetres. It's cold now, sleeping in the fridge, sleeping rather than awake so that it can more easily trouble your dreams. It will destroy you... but you must have it.

Far off in the long dark, Aunt Florence smiles the sum of all grins from all the family's birthdays. A new generation has made their first cake

Entertain me without offending me.
Educate me without indocrinating me.
Show me action that is not violence.
Be a role model without being distant.
Be a hero who does not seek attention.
Make yourself better without making someone else feel worse.
Find rainbows without rain.
Dream small, dream big, win some, keep trying.