I came home last night from a week away on a trip for work, testing hardware out in the desert east of here -- very rugged environment, dry, cold, rocky and hostile. Most of all. I brought no guitar with me. So it was with great delight that I picked up my old Martin and felt my fingers falling into the familiar patterns, doing runs and couplets up and down the neck; it was the finest homecoming one could wish for. There is nothing like music to heal the trials and stresses of life in the world.

Music also heals between nations and groups -- I sat once around a campfie in the hills of northern Thailand and traded songs with people from Thailand, Vietnam, France, the UK and Greece, and every song that came out was a thin strand of common understanding and a little piece of affinity for the human species. I could recite a dozen such experiences all over the world. Just in my own lifetime.

Deteriorating into hatred is to lose music, and vice-versa. Some thing worth at least trying to remember.

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