Writers Are Only Rarely Likable.

For However Dutifully We Record What We See Around Us, The Common Denominator Of All We See Is Always, Transparently, Shamelessly, The Implacable I.

Lancaster, California ... That Promised Land Sometimes Called 'the West Coast Of Iowa.

Above All, She Is The Girl Who 'feels' Things, Who Has Hung On To The Freshness And Pain Of Adolescence, The Girl Ever Wounded, Ever Young. Now, At An Age When The Wounds Begin To Heal Whether One Wants Them To Or Not, Joan Baez Rarely Leaves The Carmel Valley.

It Occurs To Me As I Write That This "white Light," Usually Presented Dippily (evidence Of Afterlife, Higher Power), Is In Fact Precisely Consistent With The Oxygen Deficit That Occurs As Blood Flow To The Brain Decreases. "everything Went White," Those Whose Blood Pressure Has Dropped Say Of The Instant Before They Faint.

Somehow Writing Has Always Seemed To Me To Have An Element Of Performance.