Seven Lifetimes, Two Days

I'd lie on my bed in the dark before dinner listening to Kind of Blue. I didn't know much about good music but knew this must be it. Must have been made in heaven's what Jimmy Cobb said, and though I was but twelve I was inclined to agree. Sun streaks faded blue through my skylight, my blue walls, they turned a different shade, things darkened around me and my eyes adjusted. I'd stop blinking, things got dark again, I was my own spotlight. I was seeing sound then, my ears pulled in the music coming out of my stereo and it got louder somehow. It was time lesser beings might spend doing homework, but they'd be wrong. They'd only be learning numbers, spelling, wherever the hell the Congo was. They weren't going back. They weren't connecting. They weren't learning how one thing can say a hundred. Here was this perfection sculpted by fingers and mouths and all it took was seven lifetimes and two days. Even then, as a kid, without knowing much of anything at all, I knew that with seven lifetimes and two days I couldn't make something half as good. And that's either a knowledge that's very very good, or very very bad. I'm still trying to figure out which.