Convergences: The essayist writes, “In the late 1960’s, as a college junior, I drove John Fahey through
Massachusetts for a week. He was playing a series of gigs
from Williamstown to Wellesley. Well after midnight,
somewhere on the Mass Pike, he began to ramble on about
his music and the odd and often inappropriate places it had
found a home. He told me that there were mental hospitals
in Massachusetts where his music was played over
loudspeakers as part of the therapeutic regime; psychiatrists
had decided it had the power to soothe the more agitated
patients.

‘I’m always amazed it doesn’t drive them to immediate
suicide,’ he said, cackling.”