It’s 9:40am, and I’m pretty sure the apocalypse has hit Beijing. Everything is a thick, menacing grey. A few lonesome lights are on in other apartment buildings. There’s no one else in this cavernous apartment except Caitlin, who is asleep. Oh, and I think some of the lights outside are turning off. There was a large gust of wind and the internet went out. Great…

Actually, this isn’t as ominous and frightening as when the same thing happened to me last summer, at two in the afternoon. The sky went pitch-black, and streetlights had to be turned on. For about 15 minutes, it was midnight.

I can’t really see down the street.

Today I had been planning on heading to Dashanzi, the industrial/art district fairly close to here by Beijing standards, to wander around and meet up with a friend of Caitlin’s who is the proud owner of (numerous?) baby lizards. It’s kind of hard to want to leave the house, however. Lightning.

On a less gloomy note, Carsick Cars were mind-blowing on Thursday night. D-22 was having its second anniversary party, and the place was totally packed. The front of the stage was so crowded that people were squeezed too tightly together even to smoke cigarettes. My friend Justin, who does sound at the club, had to kneel on the front of the two-foot tall stage, in front of the band, pushing people off the PAs.

Far from being aggressive though, this was one of the happiest crowds I can recall being in at a concert. At various intervals, the person doing lighting would turn almost all of the house lights on, so that the audience seemed to get as much attention as the band. When CSC played “Zhongnanhai,” their underground anthem, the entire bar showered them in the song’s namesake cigarettes. (Earlier in the set, a bearded, endearingly pudgy Chinese guy in blue hipster glasses hand passed around numerous cartons to share).

If our show with Carsick Cars is 2/3 as full as it was that night, it’s going to be ridiculous. There’s a funny listing in one of the Beijing monthly magazines about the concert: “D-22 keeps May symmetrical by having electrifying rock gods Carsick Cars see it out. Undaunted by having to share a stage with CSC are Korean noise types 10 and the unknown Hot and Cold.” Bu…..yah?

I wish I was a “noise type.” Also, I wish I knew what that actually meant. Oh, the freedom of being unknown.