The other night, at the end of the evening, I started listening to Tea for the Tillerman, in the dark. Joe came in, awake and not so much awake, and got in my bed, and asked when I was going to go to sleep. So, feeling all "Cat's the the Cradle" and the silver spoon, I got in bed too. And I didn't get back to Stevens for a few nights. I've been wandering around in some mighty different stuff at my uncle's suggestion and it's been fun. But tonight I came back to Stevens.
First off: I don't care what he's done since. Stevens is a musician, or at least he was (and is again, the clerk at the local video store tells me), and I am not in the religion or the religion subdivision business. Stevens made music. I used to like it, when I was a teenager and looking for someone to help me feel whole. And it turns out, that all these years gone, I still like the music. A little I felt like I was in the old Ford Escort or, before, the VW Rabbit, but not entirely. (Well, now he's playing "Father and Son" -- I'm not made of stone.)
It's lovely to find the music lasts for me. I remember teachers sneering, or quizzical, asking "Do you REALLY think Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin will last like Mozart?" I remember arguing, yes, this song, but maybe not that one. I remember doing a paper on Mussorgsky and his work, and reflecting that not all of his songs were immortal. I remember saying: We don't know.
Stevens won't last forever, either. He'll peel off when Croce and James Taylor are still audible. Joe probably won't find Stevens in his copy of 1000 Recordings, umpteenth edition, which I hope to buy for him some day. But it's lovely work, precious to hear, and to apply myself to now. I'm more complicated than this music (and so is Yusuf Islam, I hear), and it's wonderful to have the stone to touch again.
[Adding later: Now I remember, too -- I just listened to the first part of this record. Tape. Probably more tape than record. Still like it -- but mostly the first part.]