In the 1980s I visited the Babylon Archaeological Museum near Hillah, expecting solemn ruins and straightforward history, and while the ruins outside were satisfyingly ancient and dusty, inside the museum the Tower of Babylon was having an identity crisis: one artist painted it as a stern, sensible ziggurat, another turned it into a spiraling wedding cake of ambition, and a third made it look suspiciously like a 1980s civic center trying to impress God; standing there, moving from tower to tower, I realized humanity may have lost a common language, but we have absolutely never lost the confidence to redesign the past.

Little did I know that four decades later my name would scroll past in the credits of the film Babylon as “Vintage Horn Consultant.”

The producers of Babylon, directed by Damien Chazelle, reached out for guidance on Western Electric horns from the dawn of the talkies — that gloriously chaotic moment when silent film discovered microphones and promptly panicked — and they needed advice… and then, naturally, some actual horns. “JS” generously lent his magnificent hardware, and what began as a technical discussion about early cinema acoustics turned into a delightfully circular Babylon story; apparently if you spend enough time around ambitious towers, sooner or later something with your name on it starts making noise.

And thank you, JW — because when there’s a tower involved, messages travel far, but only if someone makes sure they’re aimed properly; every great structure may reach the sky, but it still needs a clear signal.

All fun….