The lone howl of the nocturnal train mesmerizes my spirit. My mind returns to those night drives cutting through the fog while Patterns played on.

The night sets softly
With the hush of falling leaves
Casting shivering shadows
On the houses through the trees

-Simon & Garfunkel

I look at these years falling off the wall...are things all that different from when I was 23 in 2001? Yeah, a few pages have been added to the history books. For me, I picked up a bag of stories and got a few knocks on my noggin' for my trouble along the way. Fundamentally, my heart is the same as it ever was.

The benefit of running a blog online for so long is that I can return to both what I wrote and how I wrote it. Poetry aside, while I only have a single post from when I was 23, I posted Fantasy of Personality later that year in September 2002. And yes, it amuses me that I randomly picked out a post that actually has a perspective on today's topic.

I'm still me.

That post was 21 years ago in a September. What of that September some 21 years from now? You can bet your bottom dollar I'll be the same in 2044. At 66, I will still piddle around with tech and complain of its evolution for the worse. The world was a better place back when we had to boot our operating system off a 5.25" floppy.

I'm giving the "AI" DJ of Spotify a shot. I seriously doubt the ChatGPT engine is involved; it is likely just a repackaging of the same algorithm from a decade ago stitched together with audio generation for the DJ.

Spotify specifically references that it will "push (my) boundaries." Was that a feature I was asking for? I'm just here to have a good time! Generally, pushing boundaries is a BAD thing, right? ...unless you are a global superpower and then it's that "Get busy living, or get busy dying" historical debate. I seriously have my doubts as to whether Spotify will introduce music that I've missed for awhile like Paul Young's Everytime You Go Away or entire genres like Southern Gothic.

So far, it's playing it safe...

• Bon Jovi - I'll Be There For You
• Journey - Faithfully

I had no interest in its Warrant selection, so it picked out...

But all of this glitter is getting dark
There's concrete growin' in the city park
I don't know who my neighbors are
There's bars on the corners and bars on my heart

Well played, Spotify. Well played.