it was a wistful thursday night and i sat down at the old stand-up piano at the smoke filled coffee shop. i had never played in front of anyone before. God only knows my parents never encouraged anything like it. i began playing for two reasons. the first was that it was there and i was curious, the second was that (and here i believe this is the better of the two reasons) i was inspired. so inspiration comes once and if more then seldom in ones life. and i played the piano. for the first time since i was a child, and i liked what i heard. droning and enigmatic, and yet somehow the puzzle seemed to fit together. the audience didn't mind the missed notes here and there, they were enraptured. maybe it was divine. maybe it was the emotion of the moment, but something happened in the twenty or thirty minutes that i serenaded these few people.