I love to get a chance to play—and sing it . . .

This has been bouncing around the inside of my head—the relatively uncluttered area I hear most people use to hold a functioning brain—like the lyrics of a song you hate for sometime now, and I'm hoping that by putting it into actual words it will do what most of my thoughts do when I try to formalize them into a coherent bit of writing, and evaporate into nothingness. When I worked I would often have this problem. For hours, or days and far too many nights, I would have a thought or image hovering in my consciousness just in front of the stuff I really needed or wanted to think about. Back then these interloping thoughts were usually snatches of conversations some secret part of me wished to have with either faculty—especially department chairs—or upper management or both.

Granted the current recurring thought has nothing to do with most faculties' lack of awareness of how modern business must, by necessity, operate or how books are actually printed and distributed. ("Yes, I imagine that book would be perfect for your class. But it is published by a small monastery in Tibet that only has contact with the outside one day a week and demands unblemished, black goats for payment. I can assure you we won't be able to have it here next week for the first day of class.") Nor does have to do with being given two completely contradictory, mutually inoperable directives within the space of two sentences. ("Um, let me get this right. You want me to hire three more people, and lower my payroll by 15%. Are you even aware of what you are saying?" "I didn't say it would be easy.")

He sings out a song which is soft but it's clear . . .

The other night (2 August 2008 to be exact) we went to the Dodge Theater for a James Taylor concert. I will be honest and admit that I was almost more excited about seeing Steve Gadd play live than I was about seeing Mr Taylor. Far back in the pre-dawn mists of my youth I was a fairly mediocre drummer, and forty-five years later I still fall into an almost Zen like state when listening to a master play the drums. Men like Joe Morello, Carl Palmer, Mitch Mitchel, Art Blakey were my gods. Later on I discovered Kodo and Babatunde Olatunji and the wonderfully joyful, mysterious, playful sexy Latin rhythyms of men like Kevin Ricard and Tony Shogren of Sambaguru. I may not have the talent to perform at those levels, but I know the craft well enough to be able to be truly awed by those who do. And Steve Gadd is, to me, perhaps the finest drummer working today, and I really wanted to see him work.

It seems like a mighty long time . . .

It was in 1965. I'm pretty sure it was on a Sunday morning, but I can't remember if it was in late April or early May. Early in the morning my mother dropped me off in the circle drive in front of the main entrance of the high school. She took my suitcase out of the trunk for me, and put it on the side walk next to those of my classmates. She asked me one last time if I was sure I would be all right, and then got back in the car and drove home.