Robert Levin

If I may, I'd like to use this space to respond to the many letters I've received asking me what my problem is. I appreciate the concern and if you want to know what's wrong I'll tell you. It's the egregious flaws in natures design of the female body. I mean a freshman at Pratt, for Christ's sake, would have known better than to locate the portal to the world in such close proximity to the anus. On the order of something my plumber might try to get away with, this demoralizing arrangement has made the moment of ones birth tantamount to exiting a subway station in downtown Calcutta. Yes, there may have been some practical justification for joining the female genitalia and the birth canal--although I find it interesting that even the manufacturers of coke machines, and in a time of budget constraints, have managed to maintain a respectful distance between the coin slot and the delivery bin. But at the very least, these organs should have been positioned where the former would be quickly accessible, where the necessity to get undressed would have been eliminated. (Had I been consulted, the spot I'd have chosen is the side of the neck, just above the clavicle.)

For those of you who have no knowledge of my work and whose education is woefully incomplete as a consequence, I used to write for The Village Voice and Rolling Stone, among other publications, and I'm the coauthor and coeditor, respectively, of two collections of essays about rock and avant garde jazz in the "60s:Music & Politics" and "Giants of Black Music".