This is the new jam “Orlando,” in which I sample Questlove, Virginia Woolf and a full orchestra.

Why am I dropping this a day early? Because it is imperative that a song about time travel be released on Back to the Future Day.

And yes: if I were to put this latest string of new songs on an album, I’d have to call it Recovering English Major.

SUGGESTED READING

• Orlando: A Biography. By Virginia Woolf.
• “Virginia Woolf: Performing Race” by Gretchen Holbrook Grezina, from The Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf and the Arts, Maggie Humm, Editor.
• “Craftsmanship.” By Virginia Woolf. BBC broadcast, April 20th, 1937
• “Ludwiggy.” By Questlove

Orlando as a boy.

“[Words] do not live in dictionaries; they live in the mind. And how do they live in the mind? Variously and strangely, much as human beings live, by ranging hither and thither, by falling in love, and mating together. It is true that they are much less bound by ceremony and convention than we are. Royal words mate with commoners. English words marry French words, German words, Indian words, Negro words, if they have a fancy. Indeed, the less we enquire into the past of our dear Mother English the better it will be for that lady’s reputation. For she has gone a-roving, a-roving fair maid.”

From “Craftsmanship” by Virginia Woolf