John Cage thought there was just the right amount of suffering in the world. That is an opening conundrum in Darwin's worms by Adam Phillips. John Cage knew how: 4 minutes 32 seconds of silence with suffering inside?

If I'm going to face difficult realities in the middle of the night, ideally I'd seek distraction with this.

Nature, says Raymond Williams, is perhaps the most difficult word in the language.

I like to land on a word, an idea, and stay there, especially in the middle of the night, surrounded by silence not my own. Resonance is the thing, not meaning.