So It Goes

New York Times obit

A tribute in today's Salon.com

I saw Kurt Vonnegut speak once. I took some students to a lecture series years ago. We sat in the front row, and from the excitement of the kids you would have thought that he was a pop singer.

I’ve often referred to the cantankerous wisdom Vonnegut shared that day. One pearl that has stuck with me is his response to the lecture series itself. The title of the lecture was pretentiously long, written by some academic to impress the likes of Vonnegut, having to do with a threatened free press in the US. Vonnegut, it would seem, would have strong feelings on the topic. He’s an author whose works are frequently banned in schools, and he was a card-carrying member of the ACLU. He did have strong feeling, but not those that might be expected. He mocked the topic and criticized it, saying that there is no threat to a free press in the US, that freedom of expression is guaranteed. He said that too many people mistake the right to express themselves with the obligation of other people to listen. No one has the right to write a bestseller. If you want to write, write. No one can stop you. Write, and then show your writing to people. Drop essays on tables in coffee shops. Don’t try to write for the world. Write for you, or the people in your family or your neighborhood. Publish in your school paper or literary journal. Hand copies out on the street. Nobody owes you an audience, but you can create whatever you want.

That's more what I heard than what he said, I suppose. I hope it's close.

To me, a guy who has a room filled with unpublished songs, three plays sitting on a shelf, and a folder filled with generally unheard lyrics, it made a lot of sense. Though most of what I’ve written sits on a shelf, what little I have shared with my small part of the world I have shared, in part, due to what Kurt Vonnegut said. So, in that spirit, I’ll share a song that my friend Chris and I wrote years ago. It’s about Vonnegut.