Myself ran a wire back through gelatinous time, 40 years hence, and said to me: “I remember you. And the years are like octaves, scales descending the keyboard. I am here at the lowest end, the speed of oscillation slowing, and I reach in the past to find the fourth, the fifth, every decade the octave. Harmonies doubling the power—that is the secret of growing old, that you can play your past and present like a piano. Most people don’t.”

Paul Ford, “A Wire Back through Time”