One of Larry's teachers at St. Johns emphasized that you couldn't know too much history. It enriched your understanding of whatever you were reading. In fact, if you didn't know the history of the period whatever you were reading was written in you couldn't really understand the text.

A text was interpreted within a context.

But as one learned, as one's critical appreciation grew, as one formed opinions, how did one approach a piece with the same innocence one started with, the same thrill of discovery, and thirst for knowledge, that drove learning in the first place? Did one become jaded, cynical, word-weary, from too much knowledge, too many entrenched opinions? How did one prevent that?

The teacher said he thought it was possible to lead an examined life without playing licks, without resorting to signature licks, repetition, shorthand, dense, idiosyncratic, personal symbolism. Magical thinking.

Consciousness means a knowing with, and is about belonging to a community of searchers, a fraternity of people engaged in the same quest for meaning in their lives.

Larry said he thought I was able to keep looking at things fresh, anew, and that reading my books, over the years--over 35 years--had kept him sane, had made him know he was not alone, not crazy. Seeing the development of my thought, the effloration of leitmotifs, the conflict of different traditions, the battle of ideas, the pull of emotion, prejudices, presumption, and facile resolutions, was endlessly fascinating, and did not get stale.

I took this as a compliment.

I took it as praise.

Kept him sane from the insanity and meaninglessness of work, the horrible wasted foolishness of work.