If music, and dancing, serve to draw groups together and direct their emotions towards some common external goal, as E.O. Wilson points out – hip hop or rap, one of the most popular styles of current music, serves this purpose via a public display of anger, alienation and aggression.

Classical music, by drawing up the bridge of cash and hyper refined black tie snobbery, has put itself out of circulation for most of the younger generation. Besides since a significant part of this music originally served a religious function – in notable cases like J.S. Bach’s, it was almost exclusively music written for Church services – it serves none of the needs of Gen X, Y or Z, for whom religion is an old fogeyish superstition at best or a crutch from which one frees oneself at worst.

If the depiction of Mozart in the film ‘Amadeus’ is reasonably accurate, it is hard to imagine in the current time, that opera was once enjoyed (and was even accessible!) by (to) the common man.

The death of coherent communities leads to the death of aesthetic in music. For example rural black communities in America were joined together through the exercise of gospel music, to express suffering under oppression and sing of man’s yearning for redemption. Blues served the same function in the secular arena. Now we have rap and other forms of angry music taking their place. I find both these forms of music to be beautiful, and that they can be heard at an angle of repose, unlike the current avatar of music originating in the black experience – hip-hop.

It is only after many years I am permitting myself to add- -ress you again, through these Abstractions on paper. I had read Freud all morning and was led To reexamine what was once Alive and throbbing between us.

Discounting Freud’s absurd theory Of penis envy, you were looking For a responsible and stable daddy And I, oh the infantile ‘I’, sought The benevolent mommy I had lost Metamorphosing from a smooth faced Child into a hormone lashed youth.

However sometimes a cigar is just A cigar. And what was on my mind (Or should I call it soul, that unknown And perhaps unknowable sea within?) When we made love (another loaded word; Another abstraction to soften a common act) Was not a yearning to be restored to oneness,

But a nu-clear annihilation of the self, This walking wounded self. Did I Succeed? No. Was it good for you? No. How closely entwined is the serpent Of pain to that of languorous pleasure! Freudian insights in hindsight, I know, I know, are bunk, more so when we are

Cursed to keep repeating this shadow puppet play, This masquerade ball of courtship and conquest, This minor glee in the face of deepening loss. Yes we are created to perish, and yet see how We stay alive by playing this crazy amorphous Loud riff again and again, Love!

Tonight, past has become A vertiginous tunnel that Doesn’t return, even An echo of my call.

You must be down There, somewhere, beyond Any resounding, or even worse Beyond any summons

Issued by my grief At such displacement. Perhaps Memory’s cather is really Insufficient to keep remembrance

From fading. The years have washed Away, along with minor details of Those minor lives, more important things: Friendship and promise of friendship.

No wonder, the rain gargling in the gutters Reminds me of the undead, laughing.