when I lived in the mountains I had a special room built into the studio portion of my house. It was an anechoic chamber, absolutely soundproof and free of vibrations. The whole room was bedded on springs and lined with fiberglass baffles that absorbed all echo. There I listened to tapes of my own material, both in transition stage and final form. Music was a liquid presence in that chamber, invisible wine for the ear to taste. I used the room often but not always to play the tapes. Sometimes I just sat there, wedged in a block of silence, trying to avoid the feeling that time is stretchable. The small room seemed a glacial waste, bounded only by solid materials, subject to no central thesis, far more frighten-ingly immaculate than it was when pure music skated from the tapes. If you could stretch a given minute, what would you find between its unstuck components? Probably some kind of astral madness. A bleak comprehension of the final size of things. The room yielded no real secrets, of course, and provided no more than a hint of the nature of silence itself. There was always something to hear, even in that shaved air, the earth roiling into a turn, cells in my body answering to war.

Azarian came from Los Angeles to offer condolences. He climbed the stairs, shook hands with me, stood at the far end of the room. Somewhere along the way he had been given official word; her death was natural, coming as a result of unrelenting neglect. An acute pancreatic infection, viral pneumonia, an intestinal obstruction, a non-infectious kidney disease centered in the blood vessels of that organ. I wondered how much pain she'd endured in order to comply with her own cruel rudiments of conduct. Attrition. Let the stress of trying to live determine how you die. Ride along and hope it doesn't hurt too much. The intransigence of an enchanted child. Loving the child, I'd been half in fear of the woman, knowing she was serious, an unbroken line defining whatever it was she'd hoped to gain or lose. Someone to measure myself against. Azarian went on to say that Globke had contacted the family and arranged for the body to be sent back home, air freight express.

"What are you doing in L.A.?" I said.

"Tremendous things. I probably shouldn't tell you about it. In fact I'm determined not to."

"What is it?"

"Blackness."

"Black music?"

"Black everything," Azarian said. "Blackness as such."

"What's it like being into blackness."

"I'm not too far into it yet. But I'm making my way, little by little. I really shouldn't be talking about it. It's really deep, Bucky. Deep and dark. It's pressing against me with tremendous weight, practically crushing my chest. A lot of fear is involved. All kinds of fear. It's hard to pick out a single moment when I'm not afraid."

"How do you get into something like blackness? Do you have to shed your whiteness first? Or do you just go hurtling forward, bang, and risk all kinds of injury, mind and body?"

"How do I get into blackness? Is that what you're asking?"

"Can you put it in words?" I said.

"It's a street thing. Blackness is a street thing. It's the self-identification of the people on the street. Watts is a whole big bunch of streets. Same with Bed-Stuy. Harlem, it's not so much the streetness of Harlem, it's more the history and the badness of the vibes. Black is baddest in the best sense. I mea............