When I Discover Who I Am, I'll

When American Life Is Most American It Is Apt To Be Most Theatrical.

For, Like Almost Everyone Else In Our Country, I Started Out With My Share Of Optimism. I Believed In Hard Work And Progress And Action, But Now, After First Being 'for' Society And Then 'against' It, I Assign Myself No Rank Or Any Limit, And Such An Attitude Is Very Much Against The Trend Of The Times. But My World Has Become One Of Infinite Possibilities. What A Phrase - Still It's A Good Phrase And A Good View Of Life, And A Man Shouldn't Accept Any Other; That Much I've Learned Underground. Until Some Gang Succeeds In Putting The World In A Strait Jacket, Its Definition Is Possibility.

In Those Days It Was Either Live With Music Or Die With Noise, And We Chose Rather Desperately To Live.

I Remember That I'm Invisible And Walk Softly So As Not Awake The Sleeping Ones. Sometimes It Is Best Not To Awaken Them; There Are Few Things In The World As Dangerous As Sleepwalkers.

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.