At his 70th birthday party, his wife-friend-comrade-in-arms, in her homage to Miles, sang his praises in a few perfect words that dropped pearls onto a single strand, and his daughter bantered back and forth with him on the merits of bands and musicians that only a few would know unless you were in the know and they were.
And the rest of us heralded his passion, the sound and the fury that insisted on music being understood as a pillar of our hearts and souls and thus our world, a passion that included everyone, be it neighbor or sibling, be it colleague or friend, or be it a kid from a small town writing to him decades before email and online and internet and click, requesting a copy of his top picks of the year and enclosing a dollar for the xerox, only to have a copy made and the dollar returned because in Bob's world everyone was welcomed to the table.
*from Van Morrison's "Into the Mystic" and what was written on the birthday cake
