Personal:

It's amazing...

... I can still get goosebumps, watching a DVD of a Peter Gabriel concert, listening to a song I've heard a thousand times before, but the change of tempo he makes for live performances creates an entirely new song, familiar but new and haunting.

I saw this man in concert the first time in 1982, the summer after my high school graduation. I drove from Memphis, Tennessee to Washington, DC, on a Saturday to see the concert Saturday night, then drove back to be at work Sunday evening. I was young, stupid, and poor, I needed the money.

The second time I saw Peter Gabriel in concert was 21 years later, in the summer of 2003 when my parents visited me in Austin. It is funny how time passes without notice; I could have fathered a child and had him come of age in that period. Time is unkind to most, and seemingly ignores others, until like Dorian Grey or the house of Usher he comes to take his toll with a vengeance. I have seemingly been ignored, Gabriel has paid his toll, you can hear it in his voice and see it in his face.

This second time I went to a Gabriel concert was in Dallas, a shorter drive this time, when my Mom insisted that my brother and I go to the concert together during their visit with me in Austin. I think she had an idea that my brother and I would talk during the drive and magically come back liking each other. He and I still don't really like each other. We have an acknowledgment that we are brothers, we can rely on each other as needed, but we don't like each other. We are too different, each from the other, and nothing with ever change that. Some chasms are never bridged, no matter how many "a very special episode" of sitcoms show seemingly irreconcilable gaps crossed, no matter how many happy endings Hollywood bolts onto stories that are best left with ambiguous or painful denouements.

Sad? Possibly...

True? Yes...

Regrets? No...