SteveReich/MoneyTalk/SunBeams
I was driving from Boston to NYC, enjoying the beauty of a warm, early spring evening, trying not to think too much about the reason for the drive – to visit my mother-in-law in a rehab center-slash-nursing home, trying to recover from a knee operation. I was listening to an oldies station driving through Hartford. Haven’t heard “Henry the 8th I Am” in a long time. Naturally, I was signing along - mimicking the nasal British accent of the singer. Somewhere on the Merritt Parkway, the station faded and I put the radio on scan. Suddenly and unexpectedly, amidst the usual country/urban/top-40/oldies fare, my ears detected the percussive tones of Steve Reich. I scrambled to punch the button and stop the scan. How amazing is this? Steve Reich on the radio in southern Connecticut. My lucky day! But the world apparently had an interesting twist in store - a personal performance engineered only for me: After several minutes of enjoying the hypnotic, interlocking rhythms of Reich’s minimalism - in the closest approximation of “pristine audio quality” my Honda’s factory system can muster - with the beautiful countryside floating by, I began to sense a change. Just a staccato vowel or consonant here or there, in lieu of the marimba. It fit so perfectly into the percussive pattern that it might have been intentional. Gradually, however, the pulse of the interference intensified and it became apparent that another radio station – a NPR station broadcasting “Money Talk” - was the uninvited guest soloist in the heretofore wordless Reich piece. The piece had morphed into a meditation on the mortality of a major auto manufacturer. At about this time, the car entered a forest. The sunlight – now low in the sky, slanted through the bare trees, throwing bar code patterns on the road - mimicking the intervals of the audio interference that mimicked the music. I drove on, into the performance.

RedSox/Rufus
Perhaps this improvised drive-thru performance art installation was the harbinger of a passing? It wouldn’t be the first time that I experienced something profound or unusual or spiritual and, as it turns out, a loved one was dying. In this case, it was a cat. Rufus. I got to the city and found my wife cleaning up after the cat who, after a long illness, seemed to have chosen that particular moment to die. Rufus was a large, solid Abyssinian. Not my kind of cat, but he was so affectionate and so smart that he quickly won me over. He’d been at death’s door once before but we brought him back from the brink of kidney failure – spoon-feeding him baby food until his kidneys miraculously began working again. Since then, he had come back nearly to himself. Recently, however, he began shutting down. Getting noticeably thinner, despite eating normally. Spending more time alone. We had begun to suspect that the end might be near. This night, as I arrived in New York, he was foaming at the mouth, wretching, incontinent, glazed – seemingly beyond hope. On the TV, the Red Sox also appeared to be beyond hope. Down two runs with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning ...with the legendary Mariano Rivera on the mound for the Yanks. One miraculous swing of Jason Bay’s bat, however, and the Sox were even. Jubilation. But, still, Rufus (which means “red,” by the way) lay dying. Later, as Kevin Youkilis hit a ball far into the night to end the game, Rufus died.