5,000.

Was it just two years ago? It simultaneously feels like yesterday and like forever ago. I woke up to a phone packed with messages sent throughout the night and to a close friend reaching out directly to see if I was OK. And I had no idea what was going on. I was up early to catch a flight to San Miguel De Allende and spend the week with friends in a rental property. I had just written a review of a just-released album I was really proud of so I felt I was leaving town on a high note.

This is my 5,000th post on this site. Wow, I've come a long way since 2002 when I kicked this thing off as an extension of an email newsletter I'd been running since 1995, huh?

I ended up having a wonderful vacation that year, even though I spent most of the evenings crying in bars late into the night and confusing locals with my successful appeals to bartenders to play "Lazarus" over and over again, intermingled with the hits. Thinking about it now I still feel the old orbs expanding and liquid trickles down my cheeks. The locals must have thought I was insane.

At Chicagoist I wrote 2,960 posts, but this is the only place I've posted every weekday, regularly, since 2003. Does that make this site my longest relationship?

It wasn't planned, but it seems fitting my 5,000th post would coincide with the death of the artist that  means the most to me. This has been a space that allowed me to find my voice at any particular moment, allowed me to experiment, allowed me to expose myself, allowed me to cloak myself, and allowed me to turn countless people on to new music and books and movies and whatever weird stuff caught my fancy.

If you've been around since 1995 or 2002 or even just yesterday, thanks for hanging out with me. Thanks for reading and listening. Thanks for being you. Let's see if me and you can make it to 10,000 now. Sound good?