It’s an extraordinary thing, the moment of surrender. To get down on your knees and ask the silence to save you, to reveal itself to you. To kneel down, to implore, to throw yourself out into space, to quietly whisper or roar your insignificance. To fall prostrate and ask to be carried. To humble yourself with your family, your bandmates, and to discover if there’s a face or a name to that silence.

Someone has likened prayer to being on a rough sea in a small boat with no oars. All you have is a rope that, somewhere in the distance, is attached to the port.

If you’re going to be famous, sure, be funny, be irreverent. Listen to the shouters as well as the whisperers. But above all, be useful. That was his modus, it always seemed to me, a modus that became a prayer in our family. Simple. Direct. Make us useful, dear God. We’re available. How can we be useful in this world where we find ourselves?