In the new quiet I heard the sea as if my ears were laid against the ocean floor. I could hear everything. The rumbling earthquake of a ship and the spider crabs moving between weeds.

This whole city's [D.C.'s] a Freudian slip of the tongue, a concrete hard-on for America's deeds and misdeeds.

Joy is such a human madness.

So too rose the language and music of urban America that sprang from the blues that came with the migrants and dominates our airwaves to this day.