Dying before dying has two important consequences: It liberates the individual from the fear of death and influences the actual experience of dying at the time of biological demise.

My folks have played everything from rock disco pop funk and blues. My dad has always brought and played different genres like jazz classical and Latin. With all this in my pocket I feel I have a taste of everything for my influences.

The people on my mum's side of the family are atheist intellectuals who are ueber-proper. My dad's side of the family are missionaries who are more comfortable sitting around in sweatpants than they are in a five-star restaurant. But those two influences converged in my life.

My mum was raised Jewish my dad is very scientifically minded and my school was vaguely Christian. We sang hymns in school. I liked the hymns bit but apart from that I can take it or leave it. So I had lots of different influences when I was younger.

I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art poems schools theology displacing all that exists or that has been produced anywhere in the past under opposite influences.