Living in the living room

For the past two days my living room was a recording studio, cluttered with microphones and cords and recording electronics, resounding with soaring vocals supported by the bright, clean notes of acoustic guitar and fiddle, a room by turns a roadhouse for honkytonk blues and a chapel for love songs, a room that was a sweatshop of the arts, figuratively in terms of the concentrated artistic effort and literally in terms of the heat (the air conditioner was shut off to prevent fan noise from marring the recordings), a sanctuary for free creative expression, with neither fans nor critics present to inhibit the music making (at night I discreetly betook myself to the basement to watch 1940s film noir movies on muted volume) -- in short, for the past two days my living room was a place where a lot of living went on.