Utah

Utah Phillips died last Friday. He's mourned by too few, but his legacy will live on.

There will be no obituary, no sons and daughters grieving when I go. It will be an event that doesn't interrupt anyone's day and that surely doesn't cause anyone to mourn. I wish it weren't too late to matter. It's a shame to have wasted a life, though I suppose most lives are.

We try to matter, only to find that we don't even matter to ourselves, much less to the society into which we are born without our authorization or consent. Some, but very few, of us manage to be noticed. Fewer still go beyond being noticed, far enough beyond being noticed to make a difference. The rest of us become food for the future, moldering away beneath the feet of others who come after and don't matter any more than we do.

So what if the sun burns out, a million years hence? It's not like it really matters.

But Utah managed, somehow, to matter.