If doing what you want is an option for you, you should do it, because your one of the few lucky people who can. And even if you fail, you will be in a better position than if you’d never tried. The competition probably isn’t that crazy. Most people are too scared to even try. Bad things can happen, but every horrible thing that has ever happened to me has added integrity to my art and improved my understanding of the human race.

“Some Other Time”, my favorite standard. The sadness and the space in the music is for me just the perfect accompaniment to the lyric: “Oh well, we’ll catch up some other time.” And you so rarely do. You can hear the loss in it. Resignation. So much of life feels like that to me, of being just short of something, not quite getting what feels right and what you hope for. “Some other time” suggests the future but it’s one that never comes, so it’s a future of thinking about the past. The present moment doesn’t exist here, and that’s where the sorrow comes from.

His homemade philosophy is such that he can just wander around trying to be honest and respectful of others, and how they react to that effort is entirely their problem, not his. This is why no pockets of ickiness in the audience reaction feel particularly sad.