Tried leading four nine year old girls across the street so we could keep their friend company because her parents had not yet shown up. She remained in the fenced-in after school holding area, alone. Her friends felt sorry for her. They skipped and followed me except Svetlana who defiantly yelled at me I can’t cross the street without my mother. No peer pressure would change the crystallized inner knowledge of right and wrong inside her. I wonder how long it will last, maybe forever. Someone made a crack about me during Blue Rodeo days, they implied I was an innocent who might lose his musicality and become jaded. I understood all about being jaded, they couldn’t consider a person might make creative choices despite that. I listened to an interview with John Cage from NPR forty years ago, and he mentioned an old woman in Chicago once remarked to him, his adventurous aesthetic will change once he’s old. When he recounted this he was about seventy and proud to point out running faucets, engaged lawnmowers and whistles blowing were still vital in the music he made. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"