HOSS: You miss the origins, milkface. Little Brother with the keyboard on his back. Hunched through the Turpentine Circuit. Mule driven. Piano strapped to his buckboard. Jimmy Yancey. Big Maceo. Meade Lux. Back then you get hung you couldn’t play the blues. You get strung from limb to limbo. They’d sic the Hellhounds on yer trail. Back when the boogie wasn’t named and every cathouse had its Professor. Hookers grindin to the ivory tinkle. Diplomats and sailors gettin laid side by side to the blues. Gettin laid so bad the United States Navy had to close down Storyville. Then the move began. North. Chi-town. King Oliver. Ma Rainey. Blind Lemon. They all come and got the gangsters hoppin.

CROW: He’s gone bygone tootie again. Long gone. Sac-riligo! Drifted back to smoke and stink. The Past never happened! The past never did! Yonder yore. It’s air and nothing more. Air! Hallucination. Empty, empty. Sorrow and cremation!

HOSS: You a blind minstrel with a phony shuffle, Jim. You got a wide wound gaping ’tween the chords and the pickin. Chuck Berry and all his ghosts can’t even mend you up. You doin a pantomime in the eye of the hurricane and ain’t even got the sense to signal for help.

CROW: Help, oh help, oh help me doctor! I’m about to testify! Mercy, mercy, I’m a gonna die.

HOSS: You lost the barrelhouse, you lost the honky-tonk. You lost yer feelings in a suburban country club the first time they asked you to play “Rising River Blues” for the Debutante Ball.

CROW: You forgit that I’m from nowhere. Horsehair. I was never raised up. I have simply arisen. Epiphany!

HOSS: You ripped your own self off and now all you got is yer poison to call yer gift. Yer a punk chump with a sequin noseband and you’ll need more than a Les Paul Gibson to bring you home.

CROW: Home! Home? Home is where the heart is! That’s easy ditty. I got no heart to tie me down. I’m everywhere at once. Ubiquitous! Omnipotent! I’ll tap dance right across your sentimental rainy street every time you put your big toe in. I’ll shake yer booty while you weep for the naked ancestors. I’ll eat your maudlin lunch while you pay tribute to drivel and fantasy stick. I’m burnin from the inside out, Mighty Man. I got no time for retrospect. I’m in the charred zone. Gone. Blasted in oblivion. For me, this match is done dick. Dead. All you been doin is spinnin yer wheels from bell one.

(CROW makes a move as though to leave.)

HOSS: Wait! You can’t walk outa here! This match ain’t over!

DOC: Let him go, Hoss.

HOSS: Nothing’s been decided!

CROW: (turns to HOSS) Oh, you want finality?