Folded Thought of the Day:


You could be in a four dollar Bowery hotel room or in some tool 
shed on the outskirts of a small town.  Surrounded by the bits 
and pieces of an aging man's life.  These four walls standing as 
a last refuge, a bit of history, a final rest stop on a life's 
journey.  Whisky bottles and scattered papers, a beaten easy 
chair covered in torn & faded fabric, with a fedora hat hanging 
on a rusty nail and burned photographs in broken frames strewn 
about the room.  A strange looking contraption sits on the wounded 
table -- with big dials, odd meters, a make-shift antenna and a 
handful of giant vacuum tubes coming out the back.  You flip a 
switch on the front panel and watch those tubes come to life...
casting an eerie glow.

As you wait for something to happen you wonder who might have 
occupied this room.  Was it some mad inventor from a time that 
allowed for wild imagination?...or perhaps just the odd fellow 
at the end of the block, the one who always walked slowly by 
your house with packages under his arms, who never had any 
friends but could often be heard conversing to someone in the 
middle of the night.  

You look around for clues but before you can uncover anything 
interesting the machine begins to talk.  Or so it seems.  It's 
actually simply emitting what sounds like some sort of sporting 
event.  But not in any language you understand...or that even 
sounds familiar for that matter.  You hear the wild roarings of 
an excited crowd and the breathless announcements of someone who 
seems to be master of ceremonies.  You then realize what you're 
hearing -- it's a political rally from long ago, a collection of 
followers and leaders that never stood a chance.  A realization 
that comes into focus as you now make out the sounds of police 
cars and heavy boots and swinging clubs and muffled cries. 

What is this machine?  Some combination of radio and recorder, 
seemingly capturing sound waves from the past that nobody 
necessarily took the effort to broadcast.  Only an inherent 
frequency allowing them to be picked up by the inner workings 
of this mysterious receiver.  

With an equal amount of trepidation and excitement, you turn the 
dial to see what else you might pick up.  

Like an approaching neon sign on a lonely highway in the middle of 
a moonless foggy night, you begin to make out the sounds of a pump 
organ, crying out a painful tune.  And a broken voice singing 
about roses and harbors and soldiers and tears and loss.  It's 
not a song that ever climbed any chart or that ever found any 
audience for that matter...until now.  Simply a sad, sweet song 
that someone sang long ago -- alone at the edge of night... 
with verses of unfettered truth and a rhythm that makes peace 
with the human heart.  

And the song begins to fade.  And you fight the strong urge to 
turn this machine off.  Knowing that there's no safe place to 
turn the dial.  Much as our uncensored and raw memories are 
left to dream's devices, these sounds were never supposed to 
be heard on this side -- meant instead to be kept at a safe 
distance in our dusty collective subconscious.  

Still, as if in defiance of all that should be -- like someone 
who slows down as they pass a car wreck -- you turn the dial...
and your heart skips a beat...and you listen.


------------------