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Comment by labrador | Hacker News Reader

I'm an old man now and a lonesome man in Kansas, but now I remember what it feels like to be a teenager and have people misunderstand your favorite artist that you feel you have a deep personal relationship with

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I hope you don't mean this YouTube video misunderstands Philip Glass, because I think it actually speaks to a truth that most people miss. There is a monologue that runs through Glass's music, it's full of questions and exclamations and regrets and...

These guys captured that nicely -- and made it funny.

As a Philip Glass listener, I found the clip kind of funny. But also because they took one of his better pieces and just straight out missed it.

I don’t know what to tell you about loneliness and solitude. The most lonely years of my life were the ones I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. The year during the pandemic that I lived in the Lost Coast was pretty good by comparison. So I will say that I hear you, wherever you are in Kansas.

I hate to spoil it, but it's from a spoken word piece by the late Alan Ginsberg ("Howl") and Glass - Wichita Vortex Sutra #3

    I’m an old man now, and a lonesome man in Kansas
        but not afraid
            to speak my lonesomeness in a car,
            because not only my lonesomeness
                it’s Ours, all over America,O tender fellows—
                & spoken lonesomeness is Prophecy
                in the moon 100 years ago or in
                    the middle of Kansas now.

"spoken lonesomeness is Prophecy." What a great line, because that's pretty much what old age is

Art is whatever you want it to be.

Cheers all the way to Kansas, I hope you have a rich life despite the loneliness.

It is from a poem by some fella named Ginsberg.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-arPnTm0ZFI

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