I find various ways to entertain myself in the evenings. It has been a difficult transition from the “nonstop live-with/commute-with/work-with my girlfriend” days to the “intermittent transatlantic 6:00 a.m. phonecalls from my girlfriend” days, but I have begun to reintroduce myself to myself. For instance, I’ve been acquiring lots of new music lately, and it takes some time to listen to it all. There’s no way around it—there’s no way to compress the songs or microwave them or inject them directly into your skull. The act of listening to music happens—can only happen—in real time.

So I wasn’t at all embarrassed when one of my roommates finally asked me straight out, “So what exactly do you do in your room so much of the time?” It was simple to explain. “Well, I’m usually reading the news on-line and listening to music.” He can hear the music through my wall perfectly well, so he didn’t really need to ask. But I guess many people don’t consider that listening to music can be done in the same way as watching TV, where it is the sole focus of the attention. That’s how I like to do it. It was easier when I smoked. With a cigarette in hand, the experience was fully absorbing, occupying enough senses to seem like an activity in its own right. I have a harder time sitting in my chair, just staring at the speakers, without a cigarette in hand, which I think is where the news comes in handy.

This week I finally decided to try Interpol, having read a bit about them here and there. I came across one of their CDs at work and slid it into the CD drive on my laptop. The first song was one of those forever-droning semi-atonal dream-guitar numbers with lyrics so simple and repetitive that I actually described it as an instrumental to the guy who loaned me the CD. The actual lyrics alternate between: “I will surprise you sometime, I’ll come around,” and “Surprise me sometime, come around.” Perhaps it’s that they’re disposable; my hunch, though, is that they just fit so well that they disappear into the melody. It was simple and beautiful, meditative and floaty, reminding me of a song by Lungfish from a couple of albums back whose lyrics consisted solely of “God’s will, not yours, not mine.” In fact, that one I think I’ll share:

Yes, that’s Fugazi’s Ian MacKaye doing backups. I’m excited to know, now that for the first time in six years I again live in a place where you can find live music worth watching, that I’ll be standing in the audience in a dark and smoky club next Friday night watching Lungfish play. The last time I saw them was in 1994. They’ve been around for a long time, always playing for five bucks a head, playing the same songs about forever they’ve always played, though I think they change the particular lyrics and tunes occasionally. Part of what I love about seeing them is that one could easily mistake the singer, Daniel Higgs, for a tattoo-covered Abraham Lincoln belting out pantheistic anthems until he’s hoarse.

So music is a fine and worthy endeavor. You couldn’t convince me otherwise. It’s all the reading of the news that has led to so many vitriolic diatribes in this forum recently. But the more I read, the more I realize that the most frightening thing in the world is what Bush will do if he thinks he has a mandate, if the American people get together and collectively say, “Yes, what you have done to this country is good, and we collectively want four more years of you jamming your fist so far up the world’s ass that you can brush its teeth.”

One day a while ago, I drank just a bit too much coffee at work, and when I got home I had lots of energy and couldn’t think of how to use it up, so I got on my bike and rode down to the White House. Of course, you can’t get anywhere near the place. It’s fenced off and guarded by cops and soldiers for blocks around, but I at least saw it. It’s not actually that big. I prefer Maria Theresa’s old pad in Vienna. What I was secretly wishing for, as I pedalled slowly enough past all the cops that they put down their papers and watched me pass, was that I’d see Bush on the lawn somewhere. I fantasized about what I’d say to him if I could get close enough to communicate anything. My two favorite options were “We’re keeping an eye on you, sir,” and “There’s nothing more dangerous than a zealot who thinks he’s doing God’s work.” Had I actually had the opportunity to say anything, though, we both know I’d just have been hauled in for questioning and followed by the FBI for the next 8 years. Not really worth it, especially for stuff as unfunny as that. How come I don’t get a speechwriter?

It was a nice bike ride though. I had OK Computer playing on my iPod at full-volume-minus-one-click, which lent itself very nicely to my perception that I was floating through the city streets, despite that I was riding as hard as I could for most of my journey. I was passing up cars at quite a few points, dodging in among parked cars and squeezing at full speed between stopped traffic and parked cars, looking both ways and then not stopping for red lights. I felt infinite and invincible, an impression that would have ended quickly had someone opened up a car door unexpectedly right in front of me or clipped my shoulder as they passed me, but nothing of the sort happened. Getting hit by a car once is enough.