I can sense how appalled you’d be by Philly, Percy; skyline sunk in summer smog, streets lined with trash reliably as the sun sets, girls that in 2010 no longer think in terms of love, or kisses, or tenderness, but in terms of dalliances with strychnine. I can watch the SEPTA trains, as you know, from my window, and if there is a West Wind pushing them, I don’t hear it. All is vacancy here, beneath the surface; all is silence and solitude, disguised by the shrieking noises that might as well be the Fugazi Fighters, who are playing tonight at Johnny Brenda’s. Someday, if you’re up for a good horror story, I’ll tell you about all the shows I used to go to in Philly, even shows I played myself: the mood of conscious and calculated dissipation, the sense of totalized futility, the incredibly acrid taste of a pair of unfamiliar female lips that has a hand on you and a hand on a Heineken. But I’ll save that for next time.