My grandfather sits asleep, well, not quite asleep; you can tell by the way he shifts in his chair, gently stretching his toes and repositioning his arms as the small talk from the kitchen ebbs and flows. A bird chirps, metronomically; I look for it; I find it in a tree; it darts away off across the pasture, yellow grass punctured by lattice transmission towers and grazing cattle. Beasley looks a lot like his owner, I think, as he sits there in my grandfather’s lap, long eyelashes and aged fur, an old dog resting on the leg of an old man. Occasionally, both of their eyes flick open, to assess their surroundings.
Bill Evans’ Lucky To Be Me plays, quietly. I usually set my headphones to be noise cancelling, but I think I should use transparency mode more often. I don’t need to block out the world around me all the time; I should not imply that my music is better than the people around me.