How many times have I spoken to the firmaments “I AM!”? Countless! I have spoken in all of my ways: as the infant, whose bottom was whacked by the pediatrician, my shrill yawp filled the sterile room and my “I AM!” was heard on high and maybe even out the doors of the Maternity Ward, down the elevator shaft, and out the back door…
Since my first original thought so many millennia ago, when, at the birth of all beings, all insignificant ions, I flitted around in the atmosphere, looking for my place to set down, just to rest a bit as I gathered the strength to scream my “I AM!” to the ethers, along with every other ion screaming that day, some thirteen billion years ago!
“I AM!” I called out to a listening Universe in my first triumphant yell so many epochs ago, when I won my first argument, my first arrogant writ of unrequited love, a supplication to
understand an outcome, reaching out for just a crumb in a basket on a cart: every day of every month of every year of every decade of every century of every millennia since the first iteration of wherever I came from, crying out since the beginning of mumbling “I AM!”
And now, on this very day, looking up into the Universe, remembering one life of remembering three lives, ten lives, just a dot, a droplet in a bucket of lives, all crying out at one time or crying through the shadows, bellowing to any God or Goddess who will listen, to every priest, every Shaman, every bishop, every apostolic, every ayatollah, even every guru, Lama, Rinpoche, Sensei, monk, elder, Maharishi, and even Mahamandaleshwar, if he or she will listen as I call out again, among the thousands who join me, and cry “I AM!”



Sounds include:
Three pieces of musical samples and a thunderstorm.
The voice is a singer only identified as “sheet music singer”, singing the 1894 classic “Streets of New York”.

Credits:
Many thanks to uploader tim-kahn and “sheet music singer”.

Lyrics:
Sidewalks of New York (1894)
(words and music by Chas. B. Lawlor and James W. Blake)
sung by sheet music singer, Fred Feild piano,
according to the sheet music

Down in front of Casey's
Old brown wooden stoop
On a summer's evening
We formed a merry group
Boys and girls together
We would sing and waltz
While the "Ginnie" played the organ
On the sidewalks of New York

Chorus:
East side, west side,
all around the town
The tots sang "ring a rosie"
"London Bridge is falling down"
Boys and girls together
Me and Mamie Rorke
Tripped the light fantastic
On the sidewalks of New York

(Chorus)

That's where Johnny Casey
And little Jimmy Crowe
With Jakey Krause the baker
Who always had the dough
Pretty Nellie Shannon
With a dude as light as cork
First picked up the waltz step
On the sidewalks of New York

(Chorus)

Things have changed since those times
Some are up in "G"
Others they are on the hog
But they all feel just like me
They would part with all they've got
Could they but once more walk
With their best girl and have a twirl
On the sidewalks of New York

(Chorus)

All artwork © 2020 Samuel Bissell