BOOK ONE : LISTENERS AND READERS

:: AUTUMN 2000

scholar of cities :: 9/22/00

We are surrounded by emptiness but it is an emptiness filled with signs. It’s “Take Cyndi Lauper to Work Day.” Oh daddy dear, you know you’re still number one. A CTA train going in the wrong direction roars in; shudders itself into stillness. But girls just want to have fun. Great, now that’s going to be in my head all day. Doors are closing, watch the closing doors. Jakob waits. It doesn’t matter; you’re supposed to be conscious of pop culture, that’s part of what you do. When l.p. and hi-fi and stereo arrived, a depth approach to musical experience also came in. Everybody lost his inhibitions about “highbrow,” and the serious people lost their qualms about popular music and culture. Jakob is attendant to the self-modifying diamond. Anything that is approached in depth acquires as much interest as the greatest matters. “American Studies,” the girl at that party had said, “what is that, anyway?” and until then it hadn’t really occurred to him that he might need to justify what he wanted to do. Extra Pale. He had unleashed a drunken ramble of an answer and watched her tune out, later he wished he had said looking at the field of information trying to detect shifts. Consciousness does not postulate consciousness of anything in particular. An image, here, of Freya. He thinks she’s working today. He can’t remember what days she told him. The wrong-direction train is long gone now. He can hear the grind of the new train coming before he sees it. Sound is a kind of television. That’s what they really want—

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