As the quieting begins here on this little crackerbarrel to meditate on certain things... Impermanence among them but also gratitude for the mysteries that lead one inevitably from point A to point Z. I'm sure that veterans of this board will remember Kent and his theories of how my little voice of dissent was silenced by various conspiracies, and as the old joke goes, well some of them were true. But oddly enough, it is to those who attacked me, who surveilled me, who slandered me, who shut me down that I am the most grateful. Because it is to them that I owe the deepest debt, it is they who gave me the greatest gift, the gift of silence. For those of us in the noise business, in the ego business, in the business of imposing our sorry thoughts upon those too bruised to speak for themselves business, silence is often considered a failure. A failure of nerve perhaps, or a failure of vision. But I will tell you all in absolute confidence that I am speaking the truth that silence is indeed golden. For in silence, one finds the possibility of love, true love, and one finds the possibility of salvation. If a person is always conspiring with himself to speak he denies himself the capacity to listen. And so denies himself the only hope he may have of liberating himself. Songwriting, for me, has always been at its heart a very private dialog, a dialog between myself and... an unforgiving god whom I'm not in a position to discuss. But regardless of that, sharing songs has always seemed to me on some level like pornography, or prostitution--the monetizing and publicizing of something that should by its very nature be private and unspoken. A grotesquerie, and a trap. So I say write your own song. Shoot your own basket. Create your own dance. Make your own love. I wont listen, or pay attention, but I'd only cheapen it if I did.