When I was a boy I found an abandoned stove in the woods and I sat beside it to hear the crickets singing inside. That was my first opera. Those crickets sang of unearthly latitudes and I sat listening for hours. I must be honest—sometimes I’d cry beside them. I was just a little kid and already I knew the varnished life of blindness for I was not allowed to play with others. I was in turn studying the masters, the tiny bodhisatvas who sang with their legs. How could I have expected such a provincial beauty would fill me? I did. I knew, listening with everything I had, crickets would materialize within me. They were my first talking books. My first Caruso. Later I’d discover Lorca, his line: the little boy went looking for his voice/the king of the crickets had it…
Yes. The cricket king. The little boy with his thick spectacles. The proscenium arch of that old stove among the birches.
Planet of the Blind 