Up 8:30. Read a post-mortem on the Michigan electoral controversy.
Spent an hr. on building-related email, cancelling or updating some credit card subscriptions, and signing up for access for a jazz piano instructional site.
Attended Rega Negaristani’s seminar on Carnap’s Aufbau, 11-1:45. 4th session. I’ve found it pretty so-so, to be honest. He’s genial and welcoming enough, presentations are alright, maybe not as interested in nuts and bolts of the account as I might like. Logical/methodological neutralism. Students’ presentations and questions tend to grandiose takedowns. (Except mine, of course, about C’s understanding of the unity of “the cultural sciences” w/ science in general.)
Lunch. Joined Bree to talk to her mom on FaceTime. Wasted more time on electoral whack-a-mole; now some bullshit “hearing” in PA, and a judge there delaying further steps of certification - unclear to what effect.
Cleaned out tub of debris from plumbing work. Didn’t take long. Watched an introductory jazz piano video “lesson,” went through some basic exercises, and then played “Lullaby of Birdland” for a while. (I should explain that I’m at this point an intermediate player; I’ve been reading lead sheets and improvising for years. But my technique is average, there are advanced harmonic secrets I’ve never cracked, and I’m very lazy about learning tunes in multiple keys. And I don’t transcribe solos. So I want to play along w/ some basics as I try to improve.)
Watched part of The Chocolate Soldier w/ Bree (another operetta, music from Oscar Strauss’s adaptation of Arms and the Man, but w/ an unrelated plot taken from Molnar’s The Guardsman b/c Shaw wouldn’t sell MGM the rights). Read this piece, nominally about The Queen’s Gambit, which I don’t intend to watch. Pull quote, for me, is: “Genius is a personality-laundering scheme.” Read 10 p. Carnap, Logical Syntax of Language, for another reading group next week. Read another 50 p. of the Wyatt bio. “I am a real minimanlist, because I don’t do much. I know some minimalists who call themselves minimalist but they do loads of minimalism. That’s cheating.” Annoyed to find that I have a Rough Trade CD with some of his Old Rottenhat, but not the full album (on another compilation called Mid-Eighties, which I think might be in our storage space, but which I might have to re-order.)
Usual walk at 10:15. Lights out 11. Not sure where I laid Commotion of the Birds.