February 3, 1959

He’d felt the rhythm of their dancing from his mother’s womb; bore witness to it through the first decade of life. Music spilled into the kitchen from a radio in a wooden cabinet. Whenever Buddy Holly came, the volume was turned to the right and music thundered off the walls. They spun and flipped and twirled.

February 3, 1959, his mother heard the news. She turned the knob with such force, it dislodged and bounced across the kitchen’s linoleum floor. They never listened to music again and the only sound he ever heard was static.