Lately my screensaver has been a photo of my grade 2 class. I never get tired of those two rows of six year old faces and wide smile promises. There\u2019s three or four who I know nothing about, I Googled once or twice but found no trace of them, but I know all the others, one is my cousin, one\u2019s a guy I liked a lot who took his life four decades later, one\u2019s the first girl who ever invited me over for lunch which made me wonder at the time if it meant we might end up married, one\u2019s a guy who was so hostile on Facebook about political opinions I blocked him, and one\u2019s a girl who later started a band and moved to china and wrote a book about the dorian mode and how it is a way to align one’s inner ear. one’s a corporate head. one’s a drummer in los angeles or so his sister told me 15 years ago though he never was a musician when we were wee. .I’m standing next to a kid who later beat me up when we were closer to ten. He picked me to fight because he thought he could win and prove himself, he was right. I think he became a successful financial planner in the states, probably his whole life the same strategy. I froze when it started. I had no idea how to fight or fight back. am I also still using the same strategy? the one who took his life is the one I zero in on more often because we were close and later into Neil Young which was so life affirming and valuable. The spell of Neil, especially Stars n’ Bars. Maybe the reason I like the picture so much is because all those six year old identities, which I really did know once upon a time, I know none of now. there’s something eerily similar about that and the fact you might learn life lessons from art and artists, from people you actually never met in person who you don’t have a real relationship with, except you do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"