New people enroll in the songwriting class. Some write similar sounding letters apologizing for their lack of talent or lack of experience or just go on about lack of everything, all vying to win Juno for most self critical. This should be part of the class. We find ourselves alive on a planet floating in space among who knows how many other planets among how many galaxies among how many universes. Don’t they know cicadas live underground for a dozen years? That if you play with a piece of string a cat will believe it is alive and try catching it? That something makes the heart beat forever or you’re dead? Don’t they get it? Nobody knows anything. When they apologize for their positions, who are they comparing themselves to? Do they really think Justin Bieber, EXO and Ariana Grande will never have hemorrhoids? Don’t they know in the artwork for the White Album there’ a badly covered up pimple on John Lennon’s forehead? Don’t they know we’re all the same poor schmuck and there’s no such thing as a songwriter different than who they already are…like right now? They’re being conned and their doing it to themselves. At the grocery store, after you buy your food and just before you reach the exit, there is a silent auction, a print by Norval Morrisseau. It says something like 1 of 115 copies “limited edition”. It can just as easily not be a limited edition. It’s a fancy photocopy no matter how you slice it. The green-banded broodsac and other parasitic cons are unrelenting but the rot is more creepy when people can’t confront the fact that it is their own brain doing this to themselves.