As I was walking through the student center to check my mail, I noticed five musicians sitting in a doorway, looking like they were trying to warm up—on second glance I realized it was an ensemble of some sort. The clarinet player on the end kept wetting his reed, but instead of warming up, he just stared at his music as though he were waiting for the paper to do the impossible, to start bleeding or something. As I got closer, though, I caught sight of the director of bands standing over one of them on the right, talking animatedly about something-or-other, and it dawned on me why they weren't actually warming up—it was the wind ensemble, the director's minions, and they were afraid to warm up in public lest he call them "unprofessional."

If everyone in his ensembles quit, perhaps then there'd be some improvement. We could form a veritable union and demand our rights as musicians. As it is now...

There's a whole group of guys sitting around the tables outside the dorm, talking loudly out in the cold. I guess the cold air carries their voices well, or they're just damned loud, but in any case, I can hear quite clearly every unimportant word they're saying, and I'm really not impressed. I'd like it a lot if they'd just pack up and go inside somewhere to have their boring frat guy conversations about "Oh my God, the music was up so loud, you could, like, hear it through the floor and everything, and these guys were like..." [puts headphones back on, drowns them in A.F.I.]

[Remembers grinning across the backseat of the car at being roped into listening to this glorious newfound A.F.I. music, highway swishing by in the afternoon sunlight out the windows, clickety-clacking the keys of the laptop to admit my defeat at the hands of this luscious music]

Too bad there's no way to put into words the lush, deep guitar I'm listening to, I'd quote it onto the end of my posts any day.

"I am exploring the inside—I find it desolate...I do implore these confines now as they penetrate, 'Recreate me...' I'm hovering throughout time, I crumble in these days...I crumble, I cannot—I cannot find reflection in these days..."

---