Xenophilic Xylograph

Xenophilic Xylograph

If you love me give me music.

DB - The Vagabond

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This Vagabond is one strange dude, you know what I mean? He's got stacks of books and magazines all over his apartment. They're in the corners, up against the walls, everywhere. And they're all philosophy, history, psychology and stuff. I only found a couple of novels.
And where there are no books he has paintings. He paints pictures and tucks them into plastic bags here and there.
He told me that he spent his working life as an actor. Imagine that! That's got to show some lack of common sense right there. He says he's an artist. Well, lah-de-dah.
So am I when you get right down to it, but you don't hear me bragging about it.
And as if that weren't bad enough, he listens to classical music and opera (especially Wagner!). I mean what kind of a nut case is this? Who wants to listen to screechy sopranos singing in a language you don't understand?
I went to visit him one afternoon and he was listening to some hunk of junk in German about a dragon and a guy with a sword who listens to the birds. I asked him, "Do you really like this crap?" You know what he said to me? He said,"Yes. I really like this 'crap'." There's obviously something wrong upstairs.
But dig this. He told me he first started listening to opera when he was 6 years old. SIX ! ! ! If that isn't weird, what is? He said his was sitting in a car with his 16 year old brother who was turning the dials of the radio looking for a jazz station when it just happened to hit on the opera broadcast. He says he jumped forward from the back seat and asked his brother what it was. His brother told him it was the Saturday afternoon opera broadcast. So every Saturday afternoon he got with the family radio and listened, all the way through, even if he didn't understand any of it. And he still does that even to this day over 60 years later.
See what I mean? This guy's a kook.
Now he's retired from show business (more likely sent out to pasture because he's to old to play leading men now, if that's what he was doing, which I doubt). And he lives in some small town somewhere and writes essays on things he thinks he knows something about. But I ask you what could a retired actor and classical music freak ever know about anything?
I've known some crazy people in my day, but this Vagabond character takes the fruitcake.