Thank you Cass, I really enjoyed that article.

There are a couple old men who I see every once and a while and though it's mainly for business purposes we greatly enjoy eachothers company. One is a lawyer and the other is an amazingly soulful gentleman who spent his entire life in a world of books. Each of them over their lives have been great readers and when we meet, though it's usually very breif, our conversations are amazing. I walk away from our meetings feeling filled with an overwhelming sense of having touched some great stone where the wisdom of all the world is housed. Sometimes I feel a bit naked when speaking to them because they often seem to see right into my soul. 

On one of our first meetings Ben, the man from the world of books, grabbed my hand suddenly and said to me "Reg, you will be a great father." 

I was startled because we were not at all discussing fatherhood, or children, or anything else related to that. In fact we were just talking business at that moment and nothing we had said up to that point would have led us there. I was shocked because one of the things I had been worrying to myself about was being a father. I turn 40 next year and I still have not got around to having children. I think my major roadblock in that area is my absolute fear of fatherhood. I have this secret terror of what sort of father I would make. I think I also rationalize my fears with garbage about what kind of world I would be bringing my child into and where I am in my life right now and how I might fit being a dad into all the other things I have to do.

Ben just said this to me like I had a big sign on my chest you could read from a mile away. Maybe he is a mind reader. Maybe some sort of witch. Maybe he is the Buddha. Maybe Ben is just a creation of my own troubled mind and does not really exist at all but I invent our meetings to cross examine myself. Maybe we can all read each others thoughts at times. Maybe because all human beings share certain common experiences we are, like Sherlock Holmes, able to detect certain things about each other if we just pay attention. Maybe I am just that transparent and I wear my thoughts and emotions like a big sign on my chest.

Who knows really. Perhaps Ben was just bored with business talk and wanted to move me in another direction. I know he saw in my eyes and the way I stopped dead in my tracks that he had struck a nerve. Maybe you could feed all of this information into a computer and come up with some sort of program that could chart all of this nonsense and predict that I would do this or that and Ben would say this or that and I would respond in such and such way...but could a computer grab my hand and in an old weather beaten voice speak what was in my heart causing me to sit and then read what was in my face and eyes at that moment?

Anyway, before I get too far off track and off on some long strange ramble, I'd just like to bring up The Ballad of John Henry. I always think of it whenever I hear or read one of these man and machine stories. It's a great little story that, like most of us more than likely, I first heard as a young child. It had a great impact on me and I do know if I ever have a child I will share it and let it sink into that child's memory.

Suppose what may happen if you fed "John Henry Blues" into their little computer. What a wonder it would be if circuits began to sizzle, microchips popped like corn, and the screen just went dark.  

For the man that invented that steam drill
Thought he was mighty fine;
John Henry sunk a fo'teen foot,
The steam drill only made nine,
The steam drill only made nine.

This all leads us into that wondrous place you mention in your post Cass, where we begin to dissect what we are...intellect, body, and soul. It's a place where the lines blur and we are faced with the choice of where to place or misplace our faith.

I think if I was sitting in a room with these folks looking at clouds and dots on a screen and someone was telling me this shows what music people will like and what would slip through the cracks I would begin to laugh. Not in a condescending I know better than you way...just a loud belly laugh at the human comedy and the strange places we travel to try to possess that which is only valuable because it is already shared.

It all reminds me of religion and how to some people the words on a page are like the dots and clouds on a screen and somehow to them show some sort of definitive arc. I'm just another voice in the wilderness but I just feel what is truly holy is what passes between us in the short space of time we are allowed to be human...and you can spend all the time you'd like trying to define and understand that but you may never learn more than if you could just...

be

here

now

and you can hear John Henry's hammer.