To Thomas ChapinGil Barretto, 22 December, 1997

I am; I am alive; I want to live.
It is there in the music.
It is all there; there, in the music.
It’s him. He’s there in the music.
It is two o’clock. he is; he is alive, he wants to live!

A magician is one who lives between the frames of what the eye can see.
If we slow life down, slower than slow motion.
we may catch sight of something so gossamer it appears almost imperceptible.

The music enters where we are defenseless and having entered, becomes part of us.
Now we carry the germ of it.
Pregnant—an immaculate conception.

A magician knows how to do that.
The unexpected turn, the convulsion, the maelstrom;
the sleeping unconscious is for one instant shocked.

Reality bursts before the intelligence,
permeates the cellular structure and enters the emotion.
Pure. Unaltered.
A magician knows how to do that with music.

We gasp.
The part of us that longs for the experience that we have not yet learned how to distort,
receives a little rain and a little sunshine.
A magician knows how to keep us alive, feeding that which wants to live.

It’s there in the music, the absence of illusion, the dearth of romanticism.
No balm in Gilead for the soul who yearns for the Sargasso of the womb.

The music master is relentless. Our friend is that alchemist.
Nothing about the music is coated for creative consumption.
It stands void of fluff.
The art of the crreative one does not depend upon the faith of the beholder.

Our friend creates music to remind us that this instant will never repeat.
Never exactly as it s now, in its entirety, in its Gestalten.
A photograph, a recording is an imprint, but it is not the original;
it has no odor and does not draw blood.

That in ourselves that has come to despise our yearning for deception loves our friend,
for his art seeks to liberate us and set free
that which longs to burst the chains of pettiness
which yokes our true self to our illusions.

Saint Thomas, set us free.
Deliver us from the crepuscular phantoms of our sleeping mind.
Play upon your pipes which shatter the Dream
and help us to fly with you into the shadowless ray of Creation.

Oh Magician, Alchemist, Conjurer of Pan,
stay by our side, for all our hours are hour of needs.
Help us stay awake.