This Is The Music Business. 'five Years

The Pause Makes You Think The Song Will End. And Then The Song Isn't Really Over, So You're Relieved. But Then The Song Does Actually End, Because Every Song Ends, Obviously, And That. Time. The. End. Is. For. Real.

The Problem Was Precision, Perfection; The Problem Was Digitization, Which Sucked The Life Out Of Everything That Got Smeared Through Its Microscopic Mesh.

Oh We'll Know Each Other Forever, Bix Says. The Days Of Losing Touch Are Almost Gone.

Rebecca Was An Academic Star. Her New Book Was On The Phenomenon Of Word Casings, A Term She'd Invented For Words That No Longer Had Meaning Outside Quotation Marks. English Was Full Of These Empty Words--"friend" And "real" And "story" And "change"--words That Had Been Shucked Of Their Meanings And Reduced To Husks. Some, Like "identity" And "search" And "cloud," Had Clearly Been Drained Of Life By Their Web Usage. With Others, The Reasons Were More Complex; How Had "american" Become An Ironic Term? How Had "democracy" Come To Be Used In An Arch, Mocking Way?

Her Only Thought Was Of Getting Away, As If She Were Carrying A Live Grenade From Inside The House, So That When It Exploded, It Would Destroy Just Herself.