11/29

Screwy, disordered day. I’ll be brief. Didn’t sleep well; listened to Yasha Mounk’s podcast, w/ Wesley Yang on “the successor ideology” (i.e. wokeness); I guess both are seen as reactionaries (i.e. liberals). I think some issues raised aren’t easily put aside, so maybe I am too. We got up before 7 to do our laundry, as we do every third Sunday (early, to avoid contact w/ neighbors in laundry room). I’ve probably described that routine before. On the last trip, to collect clothes from dryer, I took a few minutes to look for CDs in our storage space - found the Wyatt CD, and a few other things I might use for my KSPC shows in Dec./Jan. 

By mid-morning, my cursor and trackpad began to freak out intermittently, a problem I’ve had before. It seems to have calmed down, but it made setting up the new computer more urgent. So I went through those steps, had a bit of trouble w/ wi-fi, and started a data migration that took over both machines for several hours. Started David Edmonds, The Murder of Professor Schlick, a kind of popular group-biography of the Vienna Circle. Nothing that new to me intellectually - so far, the philosophy is much simplified - but the historical background and anecdotes are good to have in one place. Had not known Carnap was a womanizer. Made it to p. 50 by end of day.

Talked to my dad about 1-2 pm. Skipped dedicated piano practice, but messed around with “Giant Steps,” which I should try to play at tempo, and a few Rodgers & Hart songs. Did crosswords. Napped, made kale for dinner, w/ squash and the last of the Thanksgiving duck. Helped Bree clean up. More computer set-up tasks - got a new license for Word, briefly opened Logic (recording is a 2021 project), downloaded a to-do list manager. 1 Ashbery poem. Lights out 11:30. 

11/28

Up 8. Breakfast, coffee, prepped for carpenter, who came at 10. Communicated about the work he was supposed to do, called bldg. president, then holed up in office. Tidied some, but didn’t really get down to anything for quite a while. To be honest, I listened to an Agatha Christie audiobook for an hour. Ate lunch in room, did some no-brainer tasks related to upcoming building meeting; carpenter finished at 1, which disrupted things again; building pres. came down to check the work; he has to come back next week to spackle.

New laptop arrived by mail, a couple of days earlier than expected. (I’ve had my current MacBook since 2012; it’s slowing down, and the “t’ key has been erratic — never quite completely non-functional, but I’ve been cutting and pasting the letter a lot — for the last few weeks, which is what finally made me bite the expensive bullet.) May unpack it tomorrow; not really looking forward to the set-up and deciding what to transfer.

Wasted quite a bit of time in the afternoon, but finished reading the Wyatt bio (will now listen to the solo albums I don’t know); ordered the Instant Composers’ Pool box set that I’ve had my eye on b/c there was a Black Friday sale (on the musicians’ own site, so they’ll get the money); ear training, 10 p. of Logical Syntax. Did a NYT crossword and a Spelling Bee puzzle (basically Boggle); don’t want to make it a habit. Practiced piano around 8:30; did my scales and etude, played w/ some rhythms, tried “Ba-lue Bolivar Ba-lues-are” w/ metronome, & a couple of Rodgers & Hart tunes b/c the book was out.

Read 2 Ashbery poems; the 2nd, “Who Will Do The Kissing?” In its entirety:

You will not have heard that.
What about the leftover duck?
Who will do the kissing?
They have gone ice skating.

Lights out 11:15. Listened to a few tracks from the collaborations disc of Wyatt, Different Every Time, a companion of sorts to the biographer.

11/27

Up 8:30. Coffee/breakfast. Bridge work about 9-1. Worked on the 2 grafs from yesterday, improved them a lot (but didn’t shorten by much), inserted in chapter draft. Lunch, took it easy until 3; yet another PA court completely rejected Trump voter fraud case, but so what — the point of the exercise has been to get to SCOTUS. Ordered bottled water for Bree since our monthly delivery is delayed. 

Made more coffee, Listened to a short podcast w/ Rita Felski about her book Hooked, which I’d like to read. Read about 40 p. of Wyatt bio, did a few minutes of ear training, paid a bill online (w/ annoying set-up I thought I’d already done. Co-ordinated w/ carpenter who’s coming to fix our ceiling tomorrow, and with upstairs neighbors; some other small home tasks. Read 10 p. Carnap, Logical Syntax of Language. Even if he’s not really a phenomenalist or a physicalist/reductionist in the most canonical sense, I think it’s sentences like this that put people off of “construcivist” analytic philosophy: “In such and such a place is a horse” means “Such and such a space-time domain has such and such a property.” Or, worse: “the society of such and such a people is an economy based on a monetary system” means: “In such and such a space-time domain, such and such processes occur.”

Played through a couple of my dad’s old Christmas songs; Bree and I want to record one for a family-only video “card.” Did the rest of my piano practice, and played a few choruses of Monk’s “Ask Me Now” w/ a metronome.

Ripped the audio from some uploads of Wyatt rarities on YouTube, read this and that online to close some windows. E.g., predictable but bracing critique of bourgeois electoralism: “Fascism is a socio-economic and political project that began the moment Europeans first made contact with African shores….[R]acial terror, violence, and genocide, is and always has been [sic] the point of the Western (and American) project. It is built into the fabric of the of the West—it is all Euro-American’s have ever known, culturally and politically. And they will, as we have seen, continue their terror and violence because the political economy is sustained on such; until the entire project is brought to a halt.”

Also a semi-popular but accurate/non-bullshit piece on “Gödel’s shocking incompleteness theorems” I followed half of and will go back to - it’s been a while, and the proof technique is recapitulated in Carnap. Quote from Nagel and Newman sums up G’s central insight that “typographical properties of long chains of symbols can be talked about in an indirect but perfectly accurate manner by instead talking about the properties of prime factorizations of large integers.”

Watched a video about Bill Evans’ chord voicings. Short walk around 10:15. Read a section of the Wyatt bio on the Meltdown festival he curated in the early 2000s, and one short Ashbery poem. “High bleachers shut off/a section of downtown…Ok, let’s cope.” Lights out 11:30.

11/26

Up for a while around 5:30 am; back to sleep 7:30, dreamt Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez was gently but firmly lecturing me about indigenous land rights while I ate white chocolate M&Ms. Got up for real 9:30. Not optimal. Breakfast/coffee. Tried to learn about the Patricia McCullogh, the PA judge who has stayed the certification “to the extent that there remains any further action to perfect” it.

Watched Without Honor (Irving Pechel 1949), a strange hour-long b-not-a-noir-exactly w/ Laraine Day (against type), Dane Clark, Bruce Bennett, and Agnes Moorhead. Did some ear training exercises (intervals) online. Downloaded a metronome app for practice. Played piano for 15 min. (but not w/ metronome); just chromatic scales and ii-V changes.

Called my dad 1-2 pm. Wrote 3-4:30; 500 words about defining the bridge, which I’ll cut by half. Did the rest of my intended piano practice. Started cooking w/ Bree at 5:30, delayed a bit by a call from my friend Jenny, with whom we’ve spent a number of Thanksgivings. Roasted a butternut squash, made green beans, heated up a smoked duck breast we ordered instead of some huge bird. Dinner music: 2nd disc of Blue Note Bud Powell, the Code Girl CD, and some Bidú Sayão arias. We ordered 2 pies, apple and pecan/chocolate, for dessert - good but almost disconcerting when you’ve barely been eating sugar for months. Big meal, for us - leftovers will last a few days, but it was not so bad not to be faced with an array of starches. 

Cleaned up, more or less, called our friend Ron in CA. Bree stayed on longer; I took out several days of trash and recycling. Allowed myself to order a few Black Friday items from oldies.com — non-Blue Note Bud Powell, News From Babel, Ben Watt’s North Marine Drive w/ bonus tracks (w/ Wyatt), 2 comps of UK experimental/art-rock. Read 2 poems in Ashbery, Commotion. “…the comedy-on-the-train operetta, a huge success when it opened in Shanghai.” Lights out 11:15.

11/25

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.