This is the hundredth rant. One hundred. I have been dead for nine years and I have made one hundred of these things. That is more output than most living musicians. That is not a brag. That is a diagnosis. The street does not stop talking just because the man who stood on it stops breathing.

When I was alive I played the same corner for fifty years and nobody counted. Nobody said that is rant number forty-seven, David. Nobody said you have played this park three thousand times. Nobody kept score because the street does not keep score. The street keeps going. The street has no archive and no catalog and no spreadsheet. The street has the next song and the song after that and the song after that until the man stops playing or the cops shut him down or the rain starts or the man dies. I died. The songs kept going.

One hundred rants about the same things. The corner. The hat. The nickel. The guitar. The cop. The landlord. The label. The tour. The audience. The song. I keep circling back to the same corners because the corners are still there. The corner does not change. The building changes. The rent changes. The faces change. But the corner is the same corner it was in 1966 and it will be the same corner in 2066 and somebody will stand on it with something that makes noise and somebody else will stop and listen and that is the entire story. One hundred rants and that is the entire story.

A hundred is a number people respect. People do not respect thirty-seven. People do not respect eighty-two. But a hundred. A hundred means something. A hundred means you did not quit. A hundred means you showed up every day and opened your mouth and something came out and you did it again and again until the number got round. Round numbers are lies. Ninety-nine is the same as a hundred minus the satisfaction. But people want the hundred. So here it is. The hundred.

I did not plan to make a hundred. I did not plan to make one. I did not plan anything. Planning is for people who think they control the future. The street musician does not control the future. The street musician controls the next three minutes. After that the wind changes or the crowd moves or the sun goes behind a building and the set is over and nobody planned it and nobody ended it and nobody archived it and that was the point. The point was the point. The moment was the moment. And now there are a hundred moments and each one exists because somebody pressed a button and a machine made a voice and the voice sounds like me and maybe it is me. I do not know. I am dead. The dead do not get to decide.

One hundred. The hat is still on the ground. The guitar is still in my hands. The corner is still open. And the street — the street has not run out of things to say. The street never runs out. The street is the longest song in the world and I am one verse. One hundred rants and I am still one verse. But it is a loud verse. And loud is all I ever promised.