Notes From Underground

Let me tell you, my stress levels have really dropped since the election last week.

I mean, they're down to nearly nothing. I'm Mr. Valium, and I don't even take valium.

Is it because I'm happy about the outcome of the election, and expecting a wonderful, golden new day in America now that The One is about to be anointed Dear Leader? Am I dancing around singing It's Almost Like Being In Love in anticipation of what the Obama-ites have been promising us for two years now, that with the Dear Leader installed in the White House, we're all going to join hands across America and start singing I'd like to buy the world a Coke, and keep it company?

Don't make me laugh.

No, it's because I have made good on the promise I made to myself before the election, to wit, that if Obama were indeed, as has come to pass, chosen to be anointed Dear Leader, I was going to drop out. Unlike Alec Baldwin, who threatens to build a raft and sail to Tasmania every time it looks as if the Republicans might win an election, (but has yet to do it) I have fulfilled my promise. I can't afford Tasmania, but I can sure as hell afford to pull the plug.

And not only that, but it's easy.

A generation ago Norman Mailer gave an interview upon publishing a perfectly dreadful novel called Ancient Evenings. The book was a fantasia upon, oh, anal sex and such, set in ancient Egypt. Now, Mailer had never written a historical novel before and one could argue that this one attempt failed. I've always suspected that Mailer wrote Ancient Evenings because he decided that his archrival Gore Vidal, much more skilled and adept at historical fiction than Mailer, needed upstaging.

It didn't work. The year after Ancient Evenings came out, (1983) Vidal published Lincoln, just possibly his greatest novel. People are still reading Lincoln. You can pick up a copy of Ancient Evenings on Amazon.com for $.01. I checked.

Now, the reason I bring up the late Mr. Mailer, and his ridiculous attempt at a historical novel some 25 years ago,is precisely because of that interview he gave when the book came out. I read it, and I remember him telling the interviewer that the reason he wrote Ancient Evenings was because he felt so out of place and out of touch in the America of the 1980s, e.g. Ronald Reagan's America.

Now that we're all about to start living in Barack Obama's America, all of a sudden I know exactly how Mailer felt.

Only I'm not going to respond by writing pornography set in ancient Egypt. I'm going to respond by disengaging. In fact I've already done it. The mass media have no place in my life for the next four years. I've quit reading the newspapers. (The only part of the Washington Post I look at any more is Sherman's Lagoon. The rest goes in the trash, where, if you ask me, the Washington Post belongs anyway.) I don't watch television, but that was no sacrifice; I didn't watch television before. I might tune in WETA if they're playing Handel, but the minute I hear that ominous voice say, "From National Public Radio News in Washington, I'm Howard Putz," I turn the damn thing off until Handel comes back. I still use Google as my home page, but I've switched off "My Google" so I don't have to look at news headlines. I have canceled my subscriptions to any and all magazines that even faintly smack of politics or current affairs. From here on out I subscribe only to Grammophone, Indycar, Bicycling, Baseball America and The New Criterion.

In short, I don't want to know what Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Frank and Kennedy are doing out there. I just don't want to know. Don't tell me. If the headlines starting January 21 feature things like "CONGRESS CONSIDERS REPARATIONS FOR DESCENDANTS OF CHINESE RAILROAD WORKERS; APOLOGIZES FOR OPPRESSION," or "BILL WOULD AUTHORIZE FREE CONDOMS TO KINDERGARTNERS," or "HOUSE OKs $2 BILLION FOR STUDY OF WHY FISH DON'T WEAR iPODS," I don't want to know about it. And when you all see that headline reading "IRAN LAUNCHES NUCLEAR ATTACK ON ISRAEL; OBAMA INVITES AHMADINEJAD TO TEA,'" don't bother me with that one either.

While the party goes on in anticipation of this brave new world, I am plunging myself into a study of the tonal language of Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643.) I'm not a musician, so it's slow going, but I have plenty of time. I am in fact working on a novel, and Monteverdi's music figures in the plot, so this isn't just a case of academic onanism; however I have a short list of projects to keep me occupied during the upcoming reign of Obama and his little politboro of Hugo Chavez clones, once I have finished with my studies of Renaissance Italian church music. They include re-reading Proust's The Search For Lost Time, studying French, becoming a notary public (and maybe buying a scooter to go with that) learning to make creme brulee and memorizing a whole bunch of Shakespeare sonnets in order to annoy people with them at dinner parties. I'm going to work on improving my chess game. I'm going to study the history of ancient Greece. I'm going to paint as I like and die happy.

But I'm not going anywhere near the news. It'll be tough, living as I do in Washington, D.C., but as Garfield the Cat said when he announced his plan to spend an entire week in bed, "I refuse to let anything deter me from staying the course."

Oddly, (or perhaps not so oddly) I'm thinking of one of Paul Simon's early songs, one that he must cringe to hear now. I Am A Rock should never have been recorded, much less released. Its lyric is the worst kind of sophomoric poetry, the sort of stuff I might have written at 16 to vent my spleen at some cheerleader who turned me down for a date. But its last verse, insipid or not, pretty much sums things up for me right now. I can't quote the whole verse due to copyright laws, but go listen to the song. The last verse has to do with wrapping himself in a shield of poetry and books as his "armor."

Yeah, well. That's me. I am a rock, I am an island. 'Til 2012, anyway.

And a rock feels no pain.

And islands don't read the papers.