I did not understand this album for a long time. I played it because someone I respected played it, and then I played it because I had played it before, and then one morning driving to the hotel in November, the light still grey and the city not yet awake, Gloria came on and something in it opened. She is singing about becoming. I was fifty-three years old and I had already become whatever I was going to become, and I understood for the first time that this was not a sad thing.

I bought this cassette in 1989 from a shop in Osaka that no longer exists. I have replaced the tape three times. The songs are the same.

There is a word in Japanese, ma, for the meaningful pause between sounds. This album is mostly ma.

Hana gave me this on her phone and showed me how to listen. A man confined to one place who finds that this is enough. I listened during morning garden work. I had to stop twice to sit down.