What And How Much Had

It Goes A Long Way Back, Some Twenty Years. All My Life I Had Been Looking For Something, And Everywhere I Turned Someone Tried To Tell Me What It Was. I Accepted Their Answers Too, Though They Were Often In Contradiction And Even Self-contradictory. I Was Naive. I Was Looking For Myself And Asking Everyone Except Myself Questions Which I, And Only I, Could Answer. It Took Me A Long Time And Much Painful Boomeranging Of My Expectations To Achieve A Realization Everyone Else Appears To Have Been Born With: That I Am Nobody But Myself. But First I Had To Discover That I Am An Invisible Man!

The Blues Is An Impulse To Keep The Painful Details And Episodes Of A Brutal Experience Alive In One's Aching Consciousness, To Finger Its Jagged Grain, And To Transcend It, Not By The Consolation Of Philosophy But By Squeezing From It A Near-tragic, Near-comic Lyricism. As A Form, The Blues Is An Autobiographical Chronicle Of Personal Catastrophe Expressed Lyrically.

Eclecticism Is The Word. Like A Jazz Musician Who Creates His Own Style Out Of The Styles Around Him, I Play By Ear.

America Is Woven Of Many Strands. I Would Recognise Them And Let It So Remain. Our Fate Is To Become One, And Yet Many. This Is Not Prophecy, But Description.

You Start Saul, And End Up Paul,' My Grandfather Had Often Said. 'when You're A Youngun, You Saul, But Let Life Whup Your Head A Bit And You Starts To Trying To Be Paul - Though You Still Sauls Around On The Side.