An Excerpt from "Shakey" by Jimmy McDonough

Neil Young has been remarkably consistent on the subject of songwriting over the years: It happens, I don’t understand it, I’m grateful and it’s pretty pointless to talk about it. I pity the poor fool who attempts to crack the meaning of his lyrics as if breaking a code. It can’t be done – not with Young’s help, at least, and he doesn’t care. Although he’d never put it this way, I get the feeling Neil Young views songwriting almost superstitiously, like a conjurer’s gift. Define it – question it

It's Raining in Love by Richard Braughtigan

I don’t know what it is, but I distrust myself when I start to like a girl a lot. It makes me nervous. I don’t say the right things or perhaps I start to examine, evaluate, compute what I am saying. If I say, “Do you think it’s going to rain?” and she says, “I don’t know,” I start thinking:    Does she really like me? In other words I get a little creepy. A friend of mine once said, “It’s twenty times better to be friends with someone than it is to be in love

A Defense of Literature

> The universe is huge. Time is impossibly vast. Trillions of creatures crawl and swim and fly through our planet. Billions of people live, billions came before us, and billions will come after. We cannot count, cannot even properly imagine, the number of perspectives and variety of experiences offered by existence. We sip all of this richness through the very narrowest of straws: one lifetime, one consciousness, one perspective, one set of experiences. Of all the universe has, has had, and wil