"sittin' in a park in Paris, France
readin' the news and it sure looks bad..."

so begins Joni Mitchell's album, Blue
this is when I fell in love with music, with the romance of music, with letting it calm my mind and send me to sleep or to thinking of rivers covered in ice and California suns and smoky, dark bars bathed in blue "TV screen light."

"I am on a lonely road and I am traveling, traveling, traveling..."

back in a flash to 1971, and the sweet pungent aroma of Jamaican weed which was so harsh on the throat, and smelt like danger and excitement as it crackled and popped in the little silver bowl we'd filled and lit ever so carefully. I was 12 and this was initiation - membership to a generation of people seeking another way.

that was 34 years ago and I've been asleep for over half of it. keeping up, doing, being, sleepwalking. and the news continues to be bad. I just realized that I probably would have moved out of the U.S. after G.W.Bush's second election victory were it not for family commitments and responsibilities, not to mention utter gutlessness.

now I sit with a laptop plugged in next to my college stereo: a Harmon Cardon 330c purchased in Tweeter, Etc. in Harvard Square in 1977, along with a Sanyo turntable, outfitted last year with a new stylus. My friend Michael Aronson advised me on what to buy. That was a few years before I sprung for a tape deck (a Nikko, also sitting next to me.) I think in 1979 my housemate Charlie gave me an amazing gift: a new thing made by Sony called a Walkman. The body was all stainless steel, with two microphones at the top on each side. It played cassettes and could record your voice. And the best was that you listened through tiny little headphones that no one could believe would carry bass tones and loud volume. That was a revelation. I still have that Walkman, though it doesn't work, and there doesn't seem to be anyone alive who knows how to repair it.