Next door, the lawyers with cocker spaniels, who rarely say a word to anyone on the street, not that they are bad people, their sprinkler goes off. It's six AM.

I have a sip of Pernod, and go out and strum a few chords underneath the sky, big dipper up above now. It's a quiet time in the city of Washington, DC. It's the one moment the town rests. And even that is interrupted, by a flashing light, or by the traffic that is nervously anticipating all there is to do today. I keep a line to Shane MacGowan, who, oddly, keeps me feeling normal. A legal city, asking questions, why are you here, what are you doing... It's a good time to sing Rainy Night in Soho to the backyard. Before daylight catches me, before the ambitious peer out at the darkness and tell me to pipe down, there's sleep to be had before the work that makes the big bucks.

There are things that you don't like to be interrupted doing. Maybe this is baseball. Gehrig, Williams, you don't interrupt them at the plate, hey what are you doing, much as you might like.

Funny feelings arise.

I'm a barman. Twenty years I've done masterpieces of the moments of bar's healthy ruminations. And like all art, those moments slide away, down a river, held even as they were, close. Bravo to the Nobel winners. They are us.