(with music) TOPICS: I don't know, the usual brain hurricane 4am freak-out? Sometimes I feel like this podcast is my evil secret, where my buried id comes out like a werewolf or Mr. Hyde and goes on paranoiac tirades that would drive away anyone who dared to get close enough to listen and defeat the point of speaking or singing out, that desire to connect and be seen and heard. But maybe my habits of trying to use one word that turns into ten, an unstoppable firehose flow when people only have a couple minutes to listen and then will get bored and irritated with not getting a turn to talk, are meant to be shaped and guided or even pounded into freewheelin' freeballin' freestylin'. Maybe I need to stop trying to push the river of words and remonstrate with myself about not becoming my father, whose verbal press was unstoppable and unspeakably cruel as it used up every particle of air in the room and left no breath for the rest of us -- a man so like our last president in his endless diatribes and rambling and paranoia. Maybe instead of exacerbating that by pouring shame on myself, and fear, and abusing myself in thought for being The Worst Ever and Doing This Loneliness To Myself with my pain and shame and fear (and self-abuse) I really need to bring up and bring in the alliteration and rhyme and tighten the circles to come back in time for a rhythm to hold me. Maybe instead of trying to slow down when that feels like death, I should lean into going faster, harder, and aim my crazy toward more musicality. Even if I fail I'll land among those whose supreme love pours out relentlessly in acts of creation and recreation that are born, live and die even as they hit the air. And keep going. It's worth a shot, anyway. And I'm running out of time. I can copy my heroes, no matter how unworthy I feel, and just keep going so fast I don't have time to park on my failures and despair.