This is my Zen

I fell in love with a new song this week. It's called "I Hear the Bells", from Mike Doughty's solo release Haughty Melodic, and also from the Veronica Mars Soundtrack (Shut up! The show is awesome, OK?), and last night when I was feeling tense and strange and unhappy I lay on the living room floor with the lights off and just listened to it on repeat for probably 45 minutes, watching the shadows on the blinds from the bougainvillea outside my apartment and feeling the floor shiver when freight trains went by. And I felt calm, and my head was clear of all the things that crowd in and keep me from...functioning, sometimes. I don't think I would go as far as the Murder City Devils--"I would've slit my wrists if it wasn't for rock and roll"--but I don't know where I would be without power chords and four-track recordings and songs so heart-stoppingly beautiful that you have to drop everything and just listen, because for that four and a half minutes, nothing else matters.