Not trying to cop-out here, but just go listen to it. End on a song. I was happy to try to put into words a little bit of something about the other stories. Not like, “Oh I’m good enough to write about Gass, Murnane, etc,” I too, like many of the characters in these picks, am inept. But this song—I don’t know. I’m not saying anything, I’m writing nothing just to fill the space. Here are a couple lines: Well my baby cries when he’s tired / My puppy howls with the moon / You can never be sure of the people that you know / They don’t want to show you their sadness…” I don’t think it’s a sad song. It’s touching. To steal a little from Murnane. This song makes me think of a kind of mental landscape, of lying down in endless, rolling, dusty-green fields. A lightly cool breeze blowing waves in the grass. Warm sun. Not a cloud in the sky—a blue to match the green of the field.

First released on vinyl on Moonlight, on the label St. Joan, 1984. Rereleased on vinyl in 2016 on the label Chapter Music. Available here