I tell the students on the first day of the lyric class, I can’t teach them how to write a song. I can show you how driving a car works, I can explain the experience, even drive with you, but ultimately you have to drive yourself, you teach yourself from the doing. Last week a student asked are we ever going to learn how to write a song? I reminded him of the exercises, the daily journal, the assignments but I also grasped he doesn’t care about any of it or doesn’t see the connection between any of it. He wants me to show him how like as if we aren’t already writing songs or exploring how they work. I said what did you have for breakfast? He said toast. I made up four rhyming lines about toast. he didn’t care. One time in Hamilton I played a benefit for an animal rights group called PAWS at a church near Locke street. In the middle of playing a freely improvised piano piece an older woman in the audience stood up and commanded me to stop. She yelled out that’s my piano and you’re going to break it! I always knew I risked this happening, like some people would think to play clusters or even dissonance rhythmically and quickly might mean you do not know how to play the piano. She had no doubts i was nuts and going to break her beautiful grand piano. Some people started to boo which made me more fearful. Don’t boo the person who owns the piano and wants to protect it. I assured her I’m a trained pianist but we stopped the piano part of the show. You can’t force someone to see things differently.