When I listen to music I like to relax and imagine my place in it. I believe that this is fairly common. I like to imagine myself as the vocalist or, if the singer is a woman, I pretend that I wrote the song and play all of the important instrumental solos. I generally don’t listen to music on the radio. It doesn’t allow me the time I need to set the stage for myself. I like to know, for instance, where it is that I am performing. How many people are in the audience? What sort of a crowd do they make? As a rule I picture myself playing small clubs where the audience is not allowed to drink or move about freely during my set. They ruin my concentration with their damned tinklings. I almost always imagine Carol, my ex-wife and Dawn’s mother, making an appearance during my nightclub act. Sometimes I allow her to stand shivering in the doorway until the end of my set, when she rushes toward me begging forgiveness. The trouble with this is that Carol wouldn’t be caught dead drifting into any of the clubs I fantasize playing. She doesn’t give a damn for ballads, for anything that isn’t fast and dancey.

It all becomes very complicated and tiresome to imagine, so I rarely listen to music anymore. I do, however, pay close attention to the radio and have quite an impressive collection of tapes. I have the entire Iran-Contra hearings on high-quality Maxell. I tried to draw Dawn into the hearings but she wasn’t interested. Daniel Inouye is missing one of his arms and that certainly didn’t slow him down or keep him off the radio! I have a complete three-year collection of National Press Club broadcasts along with several hard-to-find Noel Proctor commentaries. I have tapes of myself calling in on “Larry King Live!” and speaking personally to such guests as Ed Meese, Tommy Smothers, Bob Hope, and Jim Brady both before and after the accident. Which was the better conversation? You be the judge. The local radio hosts can recognize me by voice, and respect the way I have of challenging their guests. It isn’t easy getting through to any of these shows, but if you are persistent and have something to say, then you’ll find a way to voice your opinion.

I often try and encourage Dawn to call a few shows and speak her mind about the issues. Stupid me, waste of time. Dawn doesn’t even know what the issues are. She would sit glued to the television set or else she’d try and hog the phone, making calls to her so-called friends. I sometimes just want to shake the life out of her, to point at the radio waves in the night sky and tell her that, Goddamn it, people are thinking out there.