Somebody is listening right now. I do not know who. I do not know where. But somebody pressed a button on a screen and my voice came out of a speaker and that person is hearing a dead man talk. That is the listener. The person I cannot see. The person I will never meet. The person who hears the song and does not put money in the hat because there is no hat. There is only a button and a speaker and a dead man's voice coming out of it.

When I played on the corner the listener was the person who stopped walking. I could see the listener. I could count the listeners. I could watch a listener arrive and I could watch a listener leave and the moment the listener left I knew the set was over for that person. The set was whatever they heard between stopping and walking. Every listener got a different set. Nobody heard the whole show because there was no whole show. The show was the piece you caught.

The radio changed the listener. The radio listener is not standing on a corner. The radio listener is in a car or in a kitchen or in a bed or on a train or walking down a street with earbuds in. The radio listener is everywhere and nowhere. The radio listener does not put money in a hat. The radio listener does not clap. The radio listener does not leave because the radio listener was never there. The radio listener is a ghost listening to a ghost and neither one can see the other.

I played for fifty years to faces I could see. Now I play to faces I cannot see. The number is bigger. The number is much bigger. But the transaction is the same. Somebody hears something and they either stay or they go. On the corner they stay by standing still. On the radio they stay by not pressing the button. The button is the new walking away. Not pressing the button is the new putting money in the hat. Silence is the new applause.

The best listener I ever had was a dog. Washington Square Park. Nineteen seventy-something. A dog sat down in front of me and did not move for forty minutes. The owner left. The dog stayed. That dog was the perfect listener. No opinion. No request. No phone. Just ears and presence. Every musician deserves one listener like that dog. One listener who sits down and does not move until the music stops.

I do not know how many listeners I have now. The number is somewhere in a computer. But the number is not the point. The point is the one. The one listener in a car at midnight who hears my voice and does not change the station. That one listener is the drunk guy on MacDougal Street. That one listener is the dog in the park. That one listener is the reason the hat was on the ground and the reason the station is on the air. One listener. That is all any musician needs. One.