astride raze the version of the_white_album i grew up with was defective. the second disc said all the right things, but its iridescent underside wasn't home to anything more than a repeat of what i'd already heard on the first cd. it took me years to remedy that. even_now, some strange part of my brain still sometimes thinks of it as half the record i know it's meant to be: a seventeen-song sprawl that ends not with ringo urging me to dream sweet_dreams for both of us, but with john talking to his mother's ghost the only way he knows how. if i stand astride the sadness of a man a decade and change away from his own unmaking and refuse to move until the feeling leaves my legs, maybe she'll hear him this time. 261027 what's it to you? who go blather from