Up for a while around 4. Listened to the rest of Personalia.
Tried to go back to sleep. Woke up again at 9.
Coffee, breakfast, exercise, 4 R&B songs.
Walk.
Wrote 11-1. Completed yesterday’s graf, sent.
Lunch. A little CD filing.
Read Brown until 3.
Worked on building notices, other home tasks.
Listened to Personalia again on headphones. Worthwhile - dense arrangements, odd structures (lot of dropped measures), interesting keyboard sounds and some terrific bass playing. Not sure where the case went. Sorted more CDs.
Worked on mixing notes (2P?) w/ break for 2nd walk. Getting closer - should plug in the drive w/ the ProTools tracks tomorrow to make sure it’s ready to send. (And probably copy everything for safety.)
Finished Brown. 10 p. Spaar.
Put on an LP of Fletcher Henderson sides, c. 1924-5, while preparing dinner w/ Bree.
After dinner, worked on “Hold the Flashlight” for 35 min or so. (P)
Went down a Cocteau Twins rabbit hole for half an hr. before bed. The read 10 more p. Spaar, which started sounding like Liz Fraser lyrics. Lights out just after midnight - dharma talk, but fell asleep quickly.
4.18.20
Slept badly - up around 2.
Up 9:30. Lost my morning.
Coffee. Bree called Ron in L.A.; good to talk.
Took walk after 12.
Worked 12:30-2. Wrote 200 words about static harmony - a start, but the time went quickly. Didn’t send anything.
Late lunch.
Downloaded a pomodoro app. Need to systematize/routinize some things to get more done in a day (and to play music at all). Tasks done or worked on this way marked w/ (P)
Called dad, with Bree. Conversation generated another round of atty/accountant emails.
Discussed a grocery order, but we decided not to set a date until later.
Did more alphabetizing (collecting Bs while also picking out gospel CDs for a separate section, and filing stray As and classical discs). That’s really all I did until 5:30.
Read 1/2 quota of Brown.
Finally exercised. Form notes on 5 songs.
Put up a building notice. Second walk around 6:30.
Cleaned bathroom, worked on editing mixing notes, processed email (P)
Worked on setting for David Hadju’s lyric (“Hold the Flashlight”). Didn’t get too far, but its the longest I’ve sat at the piano in weeks. (P)
Dinner around 10. Read until 11:15, to p. 140 Brown, + 20 p. Spaar.
Lights out 12:30. Put on Locate S,1 (Christina Schneider), Personalia.
4.17.20
Up 7. Read some news, watched late night monologues.
Coffee, breakfast. Longer conversation w/ Bree than we sometimes have in the mornings.
Started Wesley Brown’s Darktown Strutters, a novel set around minstrel days, w/ the protagonists being the quasi-historical Jim Crow and a fictive son (Jim Too). Recommended by Christgau and Eric Lott. Promising.
Form notes, 10 R&B songs (Jordan’s “Boogie Woogie Blue Plate,” a paradigmatic blues-w-a-bridge).
Walk.
Worked 10:45-1. Substantial graf about non/quasi-function pop harmony. Went better than usual; felt good, rather than defeated, at end of session. Sent it.
Lunch. Conference call w/ rest of building board; came in late b/c phone was on airplane mode.
Went to Espresso 77, w/ mask (Now required/strongly encourage, though there’s no “civil penalty” yet in NYC, per Governor Cuomo) to pick up two lbs. of coffee (was running out, mail order won’t come for a few more days); same system as Stand Alone Cheese. Furthest I’ve been from the apartment (five blocks) since before Mar. 16. Back before 4.
Relaxed and visited w/ Bree until 6.
Read 25 p. of Brown, 20 p. Lisa Russ Spaar, Orexia (quietly dense poems w/ a devotional cast - title is a combining form meaning “of the appetite,” as in ‘anorexia,’ which maxes sense but I had to look it up).
Listened to George Adams/Don Pullen Band, Life Line.
Showed Bree an Q&A w/ CBS’s medical correspondent (an M.D.) that was clear and useful on fabric and food.
Listened to the new Dylan song - has a bridge.
Worked on the Carl/Alex conversation for 15 min. Behind.
Thought about trying Pomodoro (25 m. sprints, w/ breaks) for more tasks.
Lights out around 11:30. Listened to podcast about the Science Wars/Sokol Hoax.
4.16.20
Up before 7, but pretty tired - looked at a couple things online, went back to bed until 8:30.
Coffee, breakfast, 25 p. Ratliff (book gets better as it goes on).
Exercise; form notes 10 R&B songs. More verse-chorus (as opposed to strophic or AABA) songs start showing up in 1950.
Fit in another 10 p. each Ratliff and Ponge (also read some of latter last night) so I can finish both this afternoon.
Responded to an email — realized that a message about saving or scrapping the metal masters for Another had gotten buried for a few weeks, w/ a Thurs. deadline before they’d be recycled. Asked to have them shipped here. Hard to believe it will ever be repressed, but hard to just say - “destroy them.”
Tried to work from 11-1. Wrote a little, but felt like I needed to find something in Ripani, The New Blue Music, ended up reading the first 50 p. Instead (and didn’t find what I thought was there). Will need to go back to the paragraph tonight.
Lunch. Put Zoom on Bree’s laptop and discussed some deliveries in progress.
Finished Ratliff and Ponge.
Email, on both sides of a nap. Came out of that phase at 6.
Second walk, 6:30.
Went back to work until 8:30 — dumped most of what I wrote this morning and added to/fixed previous graf instead. Sent that.
Ate chicken soup and half a sweet potato with Bree.
Have also been trying to organize CDs in spare windows of time, or when playing records. Culled most of my classical music and alphabetized it. Also have a pile of “A”s. Unfortunately, there are a lot more discs (in boxes and stacks) than shelving, so I don’t know this will play out.
Listened to Lee Konitz Quartet, Ideal Scene, in memoriam.
Lights out 11:15.
4.15.20
Up for a while at some point in the night, listened to Monk’s “Nutty” from Misterioso.
Up at 8. Read 25 p. Ratliff.Coffee, breakfast. Form notes, 10 R&B songs. Exercise - first day of rung 4, w/ no skips.
Walk.
Worked 10:45 - 1:30. 1 short but I think important graf - got sidetracked looking for a Baraka quote. Sent it.
25 more p. Ratliff. Lunch.
Got through mixing notes for last song (“Illusions”), and my general instructions (suggestions). Have to organize all this a bit before sending it (and the hard drive) to North Carolina.
Therapy.
Rested a hr.
Put on Martha and the Vandellas, Watchout! (1966 LP, the hit being Smokey’s “Jimmy Mack,” but w/ several lesser-known H-D-H cuts. Got through 4 songs before there was another delivery to help Bree with.
Second walk.
Read some Ponge.
Visited w/ Bree. Dinner. Called Dad; recovering reasonably well.
Wrote a couple of business emails.
Rest of Vandellas record.
Watched 2nd hour of Venom and Eternity, interrupted by another futile attempt to order groceries. The “love story” turns out to be even a feint - after a statement that the author, Isou, finds the previous in the 3rd section, we’re told that the protagonists have gone to a Lettrist recital, and then we hear a couple of works of sound poetry, w/ entirely non-representational imagery (scratches on film) — though we do eventually go back to narration. (The poetry, by the way, sometimes has a liturgical quality; Isou makes something of his Jewishness.) I guess the film is an attempt to be the one described in the manifesto it includes, though this itself gives the abstract passages a story-like context — as I said once somewhere else, “song form narratives noise.” It’s more self-reflexive and lucid than I’d expected. The one or two pieces of music become annoying through repetition.
Email is out of hand. Filed or trashed 100 inbox item, and a trashcan w/ over 1000. I also have trouble knowing want to do with the sent folder.
Stayed up to order coffee, filters, and a couple of books. Lights out about 1. Put on dharma talk, but fell alseep quickly.