Preparing to cross the finish line...

Three finals down and one more American Lit paper to go...

While I write a five-pager about the postmodern author's recognition of the post-WWII youth counterculture's identification with the progressive musical genres of the time, I will share some good passages with you. I know there are some music lovers out there.

From "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin, on listening to his brother play jazz in a nightclub:

"All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it. And even then, on the rare occasions when something opens within, and the music enters, what we mainly hear, or hear corroborated, are personal, private, vanishing evocations. But the man who creates the music is hearing something else, is dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing order as it hits the air."

"He and his boys up there were keeping it new, at the risk of ruin, destruction, madness, and death, in order to find new ways to make us listen. For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness."

"Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last, that he could help us to be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did."

Now, go listen to some rock 'n roll.