Up 7. Listened to a short dharma talk.
7:30-9: Breakfast, coffee, 50 p. Willie the Lion, finished listening to Flowers of America.
Put on a harsh synthy record by the Units while making breakfast, but we both realized it was too much for Bree.
9-10: Exercise, R&B.
10-ish. showed Bree how to (try to use) check deposit app, so she can either get it to work or satisfy herself that it doesn’t (b/c of check size, lighting, or whatever), so I can go to the bank in the next few days. (She gave up before 11).
Walk.
11:15-1. Tried to get back to writing conclusion to current section, but wasted most of the time.
1-2: Read another section of Theory, A Sunday. Added a couple more thoughts/sentences to the above, as they came to me. Quick email exchange w/ David H. about the song. Read a short article on Monk by Martin Williams.
2-3: Lunch
3-4: Worked on “Flashlight”
4-5: Spent an hr. online while Bree was on a Zoom call; mostly, watched the first 1/2 hr. of a recent Globe production of Hamlet.
5-6: Tea/snack w/ Bree - had a 2nd cup of coffee for the 1st time in 6 weeks.
6-7: Walk, worked on email until 7:45
About an hour for dinner; played 2/3 of The Warm World of Joao Gilberto, a single CD that compiles his 1st 3 LPs + 2 or 3 other songs. (It’s remarkable how short many of his original versions of the Jobim/de Moraes classics are — even “Desfanisado” is barely 2 minutes, b/c it’s just 1 chorus w/o solos or reprises, and he takes it at a clip.) Liners have all the Portuguese lyrics. I wonder how hard it would be to translate “O Pato”?Flipped through a Penguin collection of Robert Burns, looking for something I thought I half-remembered, not really expecting to find it, but did: the lines “Naebody cares for me,/I care for naebody,” which end “I Hae a Wife O’ My Ain.” Need to know more about this! It it conceivable that Bert and/or Spencer Williams knew the poem (which has more in common, rhetorically, w/ BW’s “Nobody” than these lines).
Listened to what must be the song of the day, The Styrenes’ “Drano in Your Veins”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wb5yiLBrV54
Misc. - signed up for a membership w/ The Jazz Gallery, for support and so I can watch lifestreams.
Figured out how to fold up the flat rate package. Listened to a little Judy Collins.
10-11:30. Joined a Zoom call of PopCon alumni, organized by Carl Wilson. Haven’t ‘socialized’ this way much, but it was ok.
Lights out 12:30.
4.23.20
Up at 5, watched Colbert and the like.
Went back to bed for a while and listened to a dharma talk/guided meditation.
Listened to the first 3 songs from Rene Lebeau’s Flowers of America solo project — semi-improvised keyboard songs, w/ some drumming and production by Ray Ketchem. (They told me “no guitars” was one of their constraints.) Made me want to make music, which not much music does.
7:30. Breakfast, coffee. Read 50 p. of Willie the Lion.
About 9:15. Form notes, 10 R&B songs. Exercised (rung 5 started yesterday). Texted Kyle in Upland.
Took out trash. Walk.
Put on a playlist of improvised music from a BBC show, w/ a piece by Alexander Hawkins & Tomeka Reid: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000hgs8
Instead of writing, worked on various office/clean-up tasks, e.g.:
Filled out census.
D/l’ed mobile banking app, to deposit tax refund. [As of this afternoon, I can’t get it to accept the photos.]
Watched a longish live clip of Robert Wyatt with Matching Mole: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYg5OYpKYQ4
Spent at least 90 minutes doing something about every email I could. A lot of that was spent writing to Matthew Shelton, who posted a cover of a Nothing Painted Blue song recently. I guess I got the inbox down by 50, but there’s still a lot.
Lunch around 2. Tried to close some tabs. Called dad before 4.
Spent time with Bree.
Walk.
Worked on “Hold the Flashlight” for 45 min. or so. Maybe getting somewhere? Wrote to David H. w/ a question about the form.
Dinner.
Helped w/ a grocery order.
Read another section of Theory, A Sunday.
Watched some Smiths guitar-lesson videos. I should play around w/ open E tuning.
Lights out 11. Put on the rest of the Flowers of America record.
4.22.20
Up for a while around 4:30, back in bed 6, listened to a podcast, got up again before 9.
Coffee, breakfast. Played side 1 of an LP of Andy Kirk radio air checks, 1944-5.
Form notes, 10 R&B songs - realized I hadn’t gotten back to it yesterday, should do another 5 later today. Wasn’t up to exercise either.
Filled out a mail-in census b/c Bree and I aren’t sure that something we filled out in 2019, maybe the long-form census?, ever got there. (Some Googling suggests it was the irregular American Community Survey. Confusing.)
Walk.
Worked 11-1. 225 words, not a full graf. Have to finish later. (Response to yesterday’s material was positive.)
Lunch. Bree convinced me not to brave our local p.o., even w/ mask, to send Mitch the drive, so I spent some time (P) signing up for a USPS account and ordering a flat rate box.
Read 50 p. Willie the Lion.
Read Gail Scott’s essay + story in Theory, A Sunday. “Maybe the basic tenet of writing from (or notwithstanding?) a feminist consciousness is simply expressing that which cannot be absorbed into ‘their’ processions — philosophically or in in terms of form.” Later: “Here the matter of what’s unskirtable in feminism…must be able to resist the tendency to create new conventions.” A master’s tools argument; and a tall order.
Therapy.
Exercised and caught up on R&B.
2nd walk.
Came back and looked at my graf, got involved and forgot I was supposed to cook Swiss chard until 7:45. Did that, played other side of Andy Kirk record (w/ an odd Danny Kaye guest shot on “Minnie the Moocher” and a Joni James LP, finished dinner around 9.
Worked another 45 minutes. Sent 2 grafs. Nearing end of “harmony” section, but need a conclusion; giving myself tomorrow off, will try to write it over the following 2-3, send to my readers, and then take a pass at revising/cutting the whole chunk.
That’s about it - hard to have the energy to work on music far into the day.
Lights out 11.
4.21.20
Up 6:45.
Meant to start day by reading, but the file transfer from last night hung up, so I fixed that and got involved w/ making a few changes to the mixing notes; about an hr.
Breakfast, coffee. Listened to the rest of the Coltrane disc. Excercised, got through 5 R&B songs (starting 1951 set) before 9.
Therapy.
Walk.
Worked 10:30-1. About 500 words. Not so bad.
Mail: tax refund, actual postcard from Kyle.
Called dad.
Lunch, about 2:30.
Helped Bree w/ groceries.
Read 50 p. Willie the Lion, until 4:15.
Spent some time with Bree.
2nd walk.
Finished mixing notes, decided that I’d better send the larger drive. Found a mailer, wrote to Mitch for confirmation.
Ate dinner w/ Bree around 8:30.
Gave up after that (on working on a song, listening to music, or reading); watched whatever YouTube videos came to hand and part of a Rosalind Russell movie. Defeated and emotionally wrung out (from matters these notes don’t convey).
Lights out 10:30.
4.20.20
Up 6:30. Watched John Oliver.
Finished Spaar.
Coffee, breakfast, visited w/ Bree.
9-10, exercise, form notes 10 R&B songs. Fnished 1950 set - a few more 32-bar or blues-w-bridge songs than ’49, but not many; possibly also a small uptick in VC forms, maybe paralleling pop mainstream.
Read more news than usual, on astroturf background of lockdown “protests” in Michigan (DeVos family a backer) &c.
Remembered to write to an out-of-state friend w/ grandparents on the UWS w/ grocery delivery advice - she said she was horrified to hear her 85-year-old grandmother was still walking to Zabar’s!
Walk.
Worked 11:30-2. “Modal” music. Sent.
Lunch. Started reading Willie the Lion Smith’s memoir, Music On My Mind around 3; needed a nap, resumed until 5-ish.
Very little else in afternoon. Should have called dad.
CD organizing. Into the Cs, but also pulling compilations and sountracks/cast recordings.
2nd walk, 6:30.
Worked on mixing document (2P) — plugged in the drive, checked the files, added some notes about where to find the overdubs from other studios. Also copied everything to my laptop. Now have to decide whether to send the entire external drive, or just a flash w/ the additions (I have an unused one, and they might fit).
Worked on “Hold the Flashlight” 25 min (P) - there’s are phrases I can’t get the harmony for.
Listened to 1st half of the “lost” Coltrane album that came out last year as Both Directions at Once before Bree went to bed (and asked if I could do something quiet.) There’s at least one great untitled original, and a take of Franz Lehar’s “Villa” — oddly, Lehar comes up in Willie the Lion’s book as an influence on Eubie Blake.
Read Lisa Robertson’s intro and Nicole Brossard’s essay + poems in Theory, A Sunday (a group of talks by a working group of Montreal feminist writers from the late 80s).
Lights out 11:15.