or less probable, we couldn't signpost our path. But using number is like trying to detect the emission of a photon without having to receive that photon. The difficulty lies in trying to get number at least one remove from the font of all language—the human mind. Possibly we'll come closest to order, be at one with reality, when we can order number—at the level of statistical probability—to be truly random, at one with chaos.

At any rate, there you have it. I'd like to go into greater detail but I'm afraid to.

Before my phone numbers up and atted 'em I was content merely to tune out the noisome and the fulsome and sigh to myself, "That's life. You ask for beer and get water."

That is, I thought I was content.

It's only now that I'm getting beer with an egg in it that I realize how passionately I hated the way things were and how passionately I'd hate to have to go back to that way.

I don't know how long this phenomenon will go on but while it lasts I mean to make the most of it.

I unashamedly enjoy watching the expression of bewildered enthusiasm on everyone's face. That expression is there because everyone listens to and looks at what the polls tell him is popular and because everyone tells himself he likes it because "everyone" likes it.

But in some respects my feelings are more uncertain. I'm glad and at the same time sorry for the longhair musicians. It seems more embarrassing than pleasing to them to find themselves suddenly the idols of bobby-soxers. I try not to think of Stravinsky barricading himself against the adulating adolescents souveniring him to his underwear.

As you can see, I've had to harden my heart. (It's tempting to say I've had to become number.) And I intend to be even more ruthless.

I'm planning, for example, to place on the Hit Parade Dhaly's Concerto in Alpha Wave for Oscillograph and Woodwinds.

That's why I'm being exceedingly careful to leave nothing to chance. Though this document is sort of a hostage to fortune, I'm taking into account the possibility that I might lose it while commuting and that it might fall into the hands of some unsympathetic contemporary. So I'm not writing down my phone numbers or my name. I want to keep the lines clear for the pollsters.

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