How do the narrator and Usher spend their days?

The two boyhood friends try to make the days pass decently. The primary reason the Narrator is even at the House is to provide some company if not also some cheer. He watches while Roderick paints. One of the paintings depicts the interior of a long vault or tunnel, clearly well below the earth, with no source of artificial light, yet bathed in "a flood of intense rays." Another pastime of Usher's is playing guitar. Due to his excitement and nervousness, he seems to excel at playing it. He revels in strange improvisations, and he often sings along.

Roderick also spends time in intellectual pursuit. He has become fixated on the idea of the sentience of all "vegetable," as well as even inanimate, things. He pores over books in his vast library, speaks of a living "atmosphere" about the waters and walls of the house.