God did not want me to be a blind beggar on the street, alone and

Host: The night was thick with rain, and the city seemed to breathe in slow, weary sighs. Neon lights bled across the wet pavement, and the sound of a lone guitar floated from a dim bar tucked between shuttered shops. The music was gentle, broken, yet somehow alive — like a soul whispering through its wounds.

Host: Inside, the bar was nearly empty. Jack sat at the corner table, his coat damp, his hands wrapped around a glass that reflected the gold light from a flickering bulb. Across from him, Jeeny leaned forward, her eyes half-shadowed, her voice soft — but her words, as always, would cut deeper than the storm outside.

Host: The guitar player in the background began to hum, low and aching, as if his melody was a prayer only the broken could understand.

Jeeny: “Jose Feliciano once said, ‘God did not want me to be a blind beggar on the street, alone and bitter. He gave me music, first to be my companion and then to be my salvation.’”

Host: Jack’s eyes flickered toward the musician, then back to her. He snorted softly, half amused, half pained.

Jack: “Salvation through music. That’s a nice story, Jeeny. But life doesn’t hand out salvation so easily. Some people get talent; most just get survival.”

Jeeny: “Maybe survival is a kind of salvation, Jack. Maybe that’s what Feliciano meant. That when everything’s taken from you — your sight, your ease, your certainty — something else rises to fill the space.”

Jack: “Or maybe it’s just another trick we tell ourselves to keep going.”

Host: The rain outside pounded harder now, like drums echoing through the narrow alley. Smoke from Jack’s cigarette curled upward, mixing with the faint scent of whiskey and damp wood.

Jack: “He lost his sight, sure — and he found music. But that’s not divine mercy, Jeeny. That’s adaptation. The brain compensates. People do what they must to avoid despair.”

Jeeny: “You think that’s all it is? Compensation?”

Jack: “Survival instinct, nothing more. You call it God, I call it neurology.”

Host: Her eyes darkened for a moment, not in anger, but in sorrow — that quiet, human kind of sorrow that comes when someone mistakes the soul for a machine.

Jeeny: “Then how do you explain the way music moves us, Jack? The way it heals? Look at the people who survived wars, prisons, loss. They didn’t have medicine. They had songs. They had stories. They had the rhythm of something greater than pain.”

Jack: “Emotion. Shared illusion. Like faith — beautiful, but not proof.”

Jeeny: “And yet, sometimes illusion is what keeps a man alive.”

Host: The musician shifted his tune, now playing something slow and melancholic. A chord slipped, imperfect but true. It hung in the air like a heartbeat that refused to die.

Jeeny: “Feliciano wasn’t born bitter, Jack. He chose not to be. That’s the miracle — not the music itself, but the decision to make beauty out of tragedy.”

Jack: “You think choice changes suffering? I’ve seen people choose hope and still end up crushed. Sometimes, Jeeny, the world doesn’t care how noble your heart is.”

Jeeny: “But isn’t that what makes it noble? Choosing hope even when the world doesn’t care?”

Host: Jack looked away, his jaw tightening. The rain outside had softened to a whisper, but inside the silence felt heavier.

Jack: “You talk like pain has meaning. Like it’s some test from the heavens. But sometimes pain is just... pain. Random, senseless. And music — it’s just how we decorate the emptiness.”

Jeeny: “No. Music fills the emptiness.”

Host: Her voice rose — quiet still, but burning with faith.

Jeeny: “Think about Beethoven. Deaf, half-mad, alone — and yet he wrote the Ninth Symphony. Do you think that was decoration? That was defiance. He couldn’t hear it, Jack, but he felt it. He turned silence into thunder. That’s what Feliciano meant — that music is the bridge between despair and grace.”

Jack: “Or between illusion and self-delusion.”

Jeeny: “You call it delusion. I call it survival of the soul.”

Host: The bartender, an old man with tired eyes, looked up briefly as if he, too, had heard something sacred pass between them. Then he went back to polishing a glass, quietly humming along with the guitar.

Jack: “So you really believe God chooses who suffers and who sings their way through it?”

Jeeny: “No. I believe He gives us the instrument — but it’s up to us to find the song.”

Host: A long pause. The neon light outside flickered, casting pale blue across Jack’s face, turning his features into something almost tender.

Jack: “And what if you can’t find it?”

Jeeny: “Then you listen. To someone who did.”

Host: That stopped him. His hand tightened around the glass. He remembered his father — an old steelworker who hummed songs at night after the factory shift, songs of defeat disguised as strength. Maybe, just maybe, there had been salvation in that too.

Jack: “You think Feliciano’s music saved him. Maybe it just distracted him.”

Jeeny: “Distraction is just another word for peace when life hurts too much. And maybe that’s all salvation ever is — a moment of peace we don’t have to earn.”

Host: She leaned back, her eyes glistening under the dim light.

Jeeny: “He didn’t see the world with his eyes, Jack. He saw it through sound — through vibration, through resonance. Every note he played was a way of saying: I’m still here. Don’t you understand? That’s not escape. That’s victory.”

Host: The guitarist’s melody grew softer now, like a lullaby. His fingers, worn and steady, moved across the strings as if he were telling a story only he and God could hear.

Jack: “You make it sound like faith. But faith has no evidence.”

Jeeny: “Faith doesn’t need evidence, Jack. It creates it.”

Host: Her words hung in the air, delicate and devastating. Jack looked down, his reflection rippling in the amber of his drink.

Jack: “Maybe you’re right,” he said finally, his voice quieter. “Maybe the only proof of faith is that we keep singing when there’s no reason left to.”

Jeeny: “That’s all Feliciano did. That’s all any of us can do.”

Host: Outside, the rain had stopped entirely. The sky, though still dark, began to break — a thin line of silver stretching across the horizon. Inside, the musician finished his song and smiled faintly, as if he had overheard their souls conversing.

Host: Jack raised his glass slightly — not to drink, but as a silent toast.

Jack: “To the blind who see better than the rest of us.”

Jeeny: “And to the music that saves them — and us — from silence.”

Host: The bartender turned off the last light above the counter, leaving the room in a soft twilight of cigarette glow and leftover melody.

Host: As Jack and Jeeny stepped outside, the air smelled of wet earth and the faint promise of dawn. Somewhere, far away, a new song began — quiet, uncertain, but alive.

Host: And in that fragile moment, between the fading night and the waiting day, the world seemed to agree with Feliciano: that perhaps God does not spare us from blindness — He simply gives us music so we can learn to see in another way.