Music, in that sense, is like travel. You cannot plan adventure; you cannot micromanage what will happen. You cannot wait for a better day. You can only open yourself up to, and prepare yourself for what may or may not happen. 'Classical' music, perhaps the most well-prepared of any style, was at its best articulated instantly in Mozart's or Beethoven's head. Mozart, as it were, could visualize an entire song instantly. The act of playing it out as an orchestrated piece was secondary to its creation. The orchestra is all craftsmen, but Mozart is the traveler into the mind. That rare ability for us to have all 'come together' that night had something to do with the view of Metlako Falls, or Darin in the Upper Clackamas.

For that, music not only resembles travel, but mimics it. Is it no wonder that music from the banks of the Nile mimic flowing dunes with those long-drawn oud notes, or that music from central Brazil is bouncy and rhythmic, like the jungle, and music from the Himalayas is majestic and bassy? On the airplane back, I looked out and could now see those scars on the Earth; miles and miles of clear-cut hills. Oregonians endure months of rain and fog for summers like this. But they also endure the cutting of the land because it feeds their city, which certainly makes Portland sound enough to be the future of America, not of Cascadia.