Linda Ronstadt

On the highway with our carpool to Northeastern University, I hear The Stone Ponies for the first time. Linda doesn't start slowly, but opens full:

“You and I, travel to the beat of a different drum...”

A pure moment, a meditative moment, pristine. I am immediately connected to a stream of music that from that moment always resonates in me. I am grateful for an intelligence that could feel that force instantly, though I was still pretty dumb.

Just tonight, hearing her open that song again, I could feel that passageway was right there again, an opening to future development, with those first notes ("You and I"), and was inescapable.