Where was I? It’s a long story, but I’ll tell you the good parts (there aren’t any bad parts).

To begin with, I was supposed to go to Chicago last week to hang out with Our Girl and cover a couple of shows for The Wall Street Journal, but my editors decided at the next-to-last minute that I should hold off until later in the season. Since I’d already cleared my calendar to make room for the trip, I found myself with a totally blank week on my hands, something that hadn’t happened to me since, oh, the Battle of Hastings. I briefly considered staying in Manhattan and telling all my friends I was somewhere else, but it didn’t take long for me to write that idea off as harebrained. Aside from the obvious problems, I didn’t relish the thought of being in town for the Republican Convention and its attendant chaos.

The more I thought it over, the more I began to suspect that the universe wanted me to improvise a vacation–something I’d never done. Longtime readers of “About Last Night” will recall that I took a week off last August to visit Isle au Haut in Maine, scene of one of the prints in the Teachout Museum, and wrote an article for the Journal about what I saw there. But that was a work-related excursion, carefully planned for months in advance, and I am, as you all know, a degenerate workaholic whose hands start to tremble whenever he spends more than a couple of hours away from his desk. Could I possibly force myself to toss together a pack-and-go trip, unmotivated by anything other than the simple desire to get the hell out of town?

Duty whispered low, “Thou must,” so I revved up my iBook. Two hours later I’d booked a rental car and gotten in touch with bed-and-breakfasts in Uniontown, Pa., Toledo, Ohio, and Buffalo, New York (all of which turned out to be excellent, by the way). The deed was done. Nine blissful days ago, I drove across the George Washington Bridge, singing along with Fats Waller as I watched the New York skyline shrink in my rear-view mirror. I was–to my ongoing amazement–off and running.

What did I do? I visited two Frank Lloyd Wright houses, Kentuck Knob in Pennsylvania (just a few miles down the road from Fallingwater) and the Martin House in Buffalo. In between I stopped at the Toledo Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and Buffalo’s Albright-Knox Art Gallery. All these places are far from my beaten paths–the only one I’d previously visited was the Cleveland Museum, where I spent a hasty afternoon several years ago–and the idea of seeing them in one fell swoop struck me as wildly adventurous.

Did I have fun? More than you can imagine. I plan to write about my cultural adventures during the week to come, but the best part might just have been the journey itself. Though I drove a lot–1,538 miles, all told–I did so in a leisurely, unhurried manner, taking back roads and scenic bypasses whenever I felt like it. (Five minutes after I pulled off the interstate at Albany, I saw a hand-lettered sign by the side of the road that said BULL FOR SALE.) I ate tasty breakfasts, feasted my eyes on Kentuck Knob and the Martin House, and looked at dozens of great paintings, including Frieze of Dancers, my all-time favorite Degas. I got lost in Pennsylvania for about twenty minutes, and a gust of wind blew a dollar bill out of my hand at an Ohio toll booth. Otherwise, nothing whatsoever went wrong.

I had such a good time that I stayed on the road for an extra day and night. Instead of coming back to Manhattan on Thursday, I called the Hudson House Inn, my Cold Spring retreat, from the road, and spent that evening dining in style on their front porch and gazing at Storm King Mountain from my favorite waterfront park bench.

I returned home on Friday afternoon to find three hundred e-mails in my private mailbox. You know what? I still haven’t answered most of them–and I haven’t even peeked at the no doubt burgeoning contents of my “About Last Night” e-mailbox. Instead, I’ve been taking it nice and slow, if not totally inert. I went to a press preview of Slava’s Snowshow on Friday night. On Saturday a friend called me up and suggested we spend the evening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which turned out to be all but empty, most art-loving New Yorkers still being out of town. We dined on wine and cheese, listened to four very good musicians play the Brahms G Minor Piano Quartet, strolled through the Childe Hassam retrospective, and congratulated ourselves on having had such a brilliant idea. (Actually, it was her idea, but I had the good sense to say yes.)

On Sunday I watched a Gary Cooper movie, Vera Cruz, on TV, then had dinner with another friend and went to see Garden State a second time. On Monday I ran a few low-grade errands, read a book, got a haircut, took a nap, ate sushi, and watched another Gary Cooper movie, Man of the West. Today I’m going to paint my first watercolor (about which more tomorrow, maybe) and dip a toe into my accumulated blogmail. I have no deadlines of any kind until next week. I’m so unwound that a puff of smoke could knock me over.

So, could I get used to this vacation stuff? I think I already have. Everybody says I look and sound much happier. And I know I’m going to do it again.

I brought with me on my amazing journey a short stack of music for all occasions, some of which is as yet unavailable to civilians. Dave’s True Story, the kinky postmodern lounge act I profiled in the New York Times a few years ago, sent a rough mix of The World in Which We Live, their next album (which is terrific), while Mary Foster Conklin, another of my Times profilees, supplied me with a live recording of her recent Lieber-and-Stoller show (ditto), which I wasn’t able to hear in person.

I also packed a four-CD set burned by a kind reader of “About Last Night” which contains the sixty-odd recordings I chose back in 1999 for a series of three Commentary essays collectively entitled “Masterpieces of Jazz: A Critical Guide.” I’m hoping that some obliging publisher will invite me to turn the results into a fancy book-and-CD package (hint, hint!), but in the meantime, they made for classy drive-time listening.

In addition, I gobbled up ten commercially released CDs in the course of my voyage. It occurred to me as I returned to New York that they added up to a nicely eclectic list whose contents might be of interest to at least some of you, so here they are:

– Karrin Allyson, Wild for You (recently praised in this space)

– Ani DiFranco, Dilate (“Superhero” is now my theme song)

– Emmylou Harris, Stumble Into Grace (I still have a crush on her after all these years)

– Allison Moorer, Miss Fortune and The Duel (Our Girl and I are of like minds when it comes to Miss Moorer)

– Uncle Tupelo, 89/93: An Anthology (good when it’s good, dull when it isn’t)

– Caetano Veloso, The Best of Caetano Veloso (this one didn’t ring the bell for me, much to my surprise)

– Rhonda Vincent, One Step Ahead (hot retro-style bluegrass from a superior singer-mandolinist)

– Fats Waller, Honeysuckle Rose: 51 Original Mono Recordings 1927-1943 (I don’t think the world is quite ready to hear me yowling along with Fats on “I Wish I Were Twins”)

– Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (need I say more?)

Attentive readers will doubtless have noticed that the “Teachout’s Top Five” module of the right-hand column was renamed “The TT-OGIC Top Five” over the weekend. It hit me shortly before I left on my vacation that Our Girl in Chicago really ought to be putting in her two cents’ worth, so I made the fix after I got back, and from now on Our Girl and I will have joint custody of the Top Fives.

As I write these words, each of the five current picks is “signed” at the end with my initials, but that will change as soon as Our Girl gets the hang of the coding and posts her first Top Five item, which will be signed “OGIC.”

By the way, OGIC, thanks for minding the store while I was away. You rock, as always.

“Encountering what appears to be a kindred spirit is always exhilarating, perhaps especially so when sexual consummation is not a part of it.”

Simon Callow, Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu

The first time I took a driving test (and right there you see where this story is headed), I hit another car while pulling out of the parking spot. Short test, short story. My second try was more successful, though requiring lots of tongue-biting on my part as the instructor lamely cracked wise about my “record.”

As he mentioned earlier, Terry recently licensed me to contribute to this blog’s “Top Five” feature (appearing in the right-hand sidebar), and without a road test. I find his faith touching, and without wrecking or denting anything have contributed a squib for Garden State, which was about ten times better than the coy television ads had led me to expect. I also discovered last night that Zach Braff is keeping a blog as part of the movie’s official site; it’s interesting and well worth a look.

I’m having a week of fielding ecstatic phone calls from friends on art-centered road trips. Terry, who says hello, is looking at paintings wherever it is he finds himself today. Meanwhile, Our Friend on the Block, whose writing occasionally graces this site, is out west researching a book project on land art. This week she’s in the Salt Lake City area looking at Spiral Jetty. Later she’ll be, enviably, at Lightning Field. She is, by the way, soliciting suggestions of places to stay and sights to see around Flagstaff, Albuquerque, and Overton, Nevada. Color me green, despite the impeccable weather in Chicago, of which I have a very fine view from my desk.

I’m gobbling up these letters like so much popcorn. Sad to say, I’ll soon run out. I have only one volume (vol. 3) of four from Scribners’ 1928 South Seas Edition of Stevenson, a ratty red pocket-sized book scooped up at a library sale some years ago for a quarter.

TO HENRY JAMES

Honolulu [March, 1889]

MY DEAR JAMES,–Yes–I own up–I am untrue to friendship and (what is less, but still considerable) to civilisation. I am not coming home for another year. There it is, cold and bald, and now you won’t believe in me at all, and serve me right (says you) and the devil take me. But look here, and judge me tenderly. I have had more fun and pleasure of my life these past months than ever before, and more health than any time in ten long years. And even here in Honolulu I have withered in the cold; and this precious deep is filled with islands, which we may still visit; and though the sea is a deathful place, I like to be there, and like squalls (when they are over); and to draw near to a new island, I cannot say how much I like. In short, I take another year of this sort of life, and mean to try to work down among the poisoned arrows, and mean (if it may be) to come back again when the thing is through, and converse with Henry James as heretofore; and in the meanwhile issue directions to H. J. to write to me once more. Let him address here at Honolulu, for my views are vague; and if it is sent here it will follow and find me, if I am to be found; and if I am not to be found, the man James will have done his duty, and we shall be at the bottom of the sea, where no post-office clerk can be expected to discover us, or languishing on a coral island, the philosophic drudges of some barbarian potentate; perchance of an American Missionary. My wife has just sent to Mrs. Sitwell a translation (tant bien que mal) of a letter I have had from my chief friend in this part of the world: go and see her, and get a hearing of it; it will do you good; it is a better method of correspondence than even Henry James’s. I jest, but seriously it is a strange thing for a tough, sick, middle-aged scrivener like R. L. S. to receive a letter so conceived from a man fifty years old, a leading politician, a crack orator, and the great wit of his village: boldly say, “the highly popular M.P. of Tautira.” My nineteenth century strikes here, and lies alongside of something beautiful and ancient. I think the receipt of such a letter might humble, shall I say even [–

It might be a bit of an understatement to say that Daniel Asa Rose admires Cynthia Ozick’s new book, Heir to the Glimmering World. I don’t know when I’ve seen such self-abasement in the service of such a good cause.

Confession: It’s not Virginia Woolf I’m afraid of–it’s Cynthia Ozick…. She reminds me of Virginia Woolf, is why.

And a little of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. And a lot of that odd-duck dyad, Charlotte Bront