brian_wilson raze i used to think he talked a little funny because he had a stroke no one knew about. then i realized it was something he meant to do. he made his mouth crooked to better hear his own voice in the one ear that still worked. the story goes that his father beat him into being half deaf when he was still a child. i believe it. i also believe if god is real, and if he or she or it once chose to briefly inhabit the body of a man to discern how singing might sound if what drove it was not of this world, brian at his best must have been that vessel. listen to him soar while seated at a piano with leonard bernstein's camera crew looking on, hear him ask if you're sleeping, and tell me that isn't as awake as any living thing as ever been. 250611 ... epitome of incomprehensibility I was sad to hear he'd died and a bit bewildered to have two precise snatches of song stuck in my head. Radio voices were talking about him as I, a passenger in the car, saw and felt an overpass uplift me. The song was the theremin part of "Good Vibrations" but arranged for back-up singers, as I did it in youth choir. Then the car went down the ramp that flattened into the highway, and my mind replayed "I'm lying in bed, just like Brian Wilson did" from the Barenaked Ladies. 250611 ... nr this is a tough one to swallow. also, strange that he and sly_stone both died within days of each other at age 82. 250612 what's it to you? who go blather from