Alec Wilkinson remembers the late Gil Scott Heron, author of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised:
On the subway, he liked to sing just loud enough to be heard by the people around him, and he was very pleased one time when another passenger said, “Brother can sing.” He also liked it when people told him he looked like Gil Scott-Heron. He said that he mostly worked at night, and that a melody would arrive first, delivered by the spirits. “If you’re supposed to be doing something,” he said, “the spirits will come and help you. They have helped me out with lines I shouldn’t have known, chords I shouldn’t have known. Every once in a while I get lines from somewhere, and I think, I better write this down.” His nature was passionate but gentle, but there was the sense that he was trying somehow to find his way back to the self he had been that was so radiant and full of enthusiasm and ideas.
The Dish 