NOTES TO A BEATNIK SELF: THE SOUNDS OF SILENCE

Today I wrote a note to myself about something I needed to remember later on after I went in to make an alteration in a previous chapter when I got around to it. That moment of frantic scribbling to remember because I'm old and my memory can fail me at any time made Leonard Pearce leap into mind, him and all his notes to himself. Remember him? Sometimes, when I hurriedly scribble messages to myself on notepads, post it notes, napkins and lined papers, I feel like the protagonist, Leonard Pearce, of the 2000 movie, Memento. I kid you not. Wait a minute. Who am I writing this note to? Is anyone listening out there, beyond this page? This feeling I’m having right now must have been why I was so much drawn to Sounds of Silence when I first heard it back in January, 1966 when my world was crumbling. I was one month away from walking out of graduate school at Southern Illinois University. Ten years away from having my last drink.