mingus Soma right up there on my top ten names_for_a_wizard. There's a fellow in town with the name, and while I think he's a bit daft, I still respect the way his name sounds. 231202 ... raze there's a story that a man accosted him one night in a club and told him he wasn't black enough to play the blues. he fought back not with his fists, but with his bass, improvising a solo that shamed the stranger into silence. i believe it. my dad found his autobiography fifteen years ago at this bookstore on dundas street called "the monkey's paw". i can't remember what he was doing in toronto. it's one of about a thousand books i've been meaning to read forever. it begins with this bit of dialogue: "in other words i am three. one man stands forever in the middle, unconcerned, unmoved, watching, waiting to be allowed to express what he sees to the other two. the second man is like a frightened animal that attacks for fear of being attacked. then there's an over-loving gentle person who lets people into the uttermost sacred temple of his being and he'll take insults and be trusting and sign contracts without reading them and get talked down to working cheap or for nothing, and when he realizes what's been done to him he feels like killing and destroying everything around him including himself for being so stupid. but he can't — he goes back inside himself." "which one is real?" "they're *all* real." 231203 what's it to you? who go blather from