12/9

Up 7. Crossword, about 15 min. Started listening to an LRB on Denise Riley w/ a former friendly acquaintance I’ll probably never hear from again, but found the presenter annoying. Carnap seminar, usually at 11, postponed. Breakfast, coffee. Watched a couple of cooking videos. Read about 10 pages of Logical Syntax of Language; comments on analyticity are interesting. Worked on revising next section, about 9-1. Went pretty well. 

After lunch, did two phone chores: scheduled contractor to finish work on our ceiling (next Mon.), and scheduled a CT scan to confirm that I’ve passed my kidney stone (Tue.); also had to call Dr. to request insurance approval. Doesn’t sound like much, but 30-45 min. in all, but they’re the kinds of things I let slide. Therapy w/ Bree.

Piano practice - scales, syncopation etudes, tried to play head of “Donna Lee” and “Easy To Love.” Some general fooling around with “modern” (Hancock-ish?) minor voiclings. Don’t really know what I’m doing. Started reading Rudi Blesh, Combo U.S.A., a collection of jazz profiles in a mode/style that’s now considered pretty retrograde - though oddly his general pronouncements on the demotic character and meaning of the music come off like Christopher Small. Watched the end of a bad but sort of fascinating 1944 romcom, Bride By Mistake, w/Bree; Laraine Day, Marsha Hunt, Allyn Joslyn (best part). Wrote an email to KSPC (have to get on producing my Winter Break shows). Made some notes on microphones; got email that my backordered audio-interface/pre-amp is coming. Crossword - harder, had to look 3-4 things up. Lights out 12:30. Skipped JA.

12/8

Awake for a while around 5 am, listened to some radio drama. Got back to sleep, didn’t really get up until 10. Breakfast, coffee. Worked 12:30-4, sent section to Evan Kindley for feedback. Showered, watched Kim Mack’s IASPM Zoom talk, 5-6:15. Dealt w/ a couple of emails, orders, bills. Read remainder of assigned Carnap (Aufbau). Piano practice - pretty much the minimum, but getting better at the moment in two-handed chromatic scales where the hands don’t match. (Also play some blues in B major earlier, just as an exercise.) Listened to an associated swing/syncopation playlist (Oscar Peterson, Blakey, “Stolen Moments,” Bud Powell, Kenny Barron, Christian McBride), partly while working on to-do list in Things. 9 pm, put on a Zoom webinar/concert by Peter Curtis, an acquaintance who was at the bridge talk, on the Jewish Great American Songbook. Good guitarist! Had some interesting comments on the descending chromatic line in “Brother Can You Spare a Time?” Located a few books related to various projects (Foucault, logical empiricism) in my chaotic shelves; turned up Goodman’s Structure of Appearance, but not Problems & Projects (though I have a d/l of “Seven Strictures on Similarity”). 3 JA poems. Lights out between 11:30.

[On the quasi-political front, here is what I tweeted earlier today: “See the somewhat calming SCOTUS denial; then immediately read about Texas suing other states over their election procedures. It's not exactly that I'm such a staunch bourgeois electoralist, though I'm sure some friends would say I'm kidding myself. Yet I do seem to be invested...in the tottering state not crumbling in this particular way - not for *this* mf'er. It probably has less to do with "my politics" than my ethical/affective abreaction to people whose sense of self allows them to scream for what they want until they get it. I hate and envy them.”]

12/7

Better. Up before 8, Spelling Bee. Breakfast/coffee. Worked 9:30 until near 1; same passage, but a bit closer. Decided to ask a friend (who asked me to read a proposal recently) to look at it. Spent a while trying to list upcoming projects and commitments, and put them in Things. (I had listened to a David Allen talk that was a bit clarifying about -how much- to put into a system like that; anyway, I have too many loose ends to keep in my head, including a couple of requests to record piano parts on other people’s records at home.) Read about 15 p. of Carnap, Aufbau, and a piece on Goodman’s Structure of Appearance in the S.E.P., for Wednesday. Listened to a jazz piano lesson on swing/syncopation, did my practice session - chromatic scales, circle-of-fifths shell voicings, some rhythmic “sentences” to a metronome, soloed on ii/V and ii/v for a while. Answered several emails. Lights out 12:30.

12/6

Fairly tough day. Up 8, Spelling Bee, breakfast/coffee, read, like, 3 p. of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. Struggled to start writing; worked noon-2, just inched along. Called dad about 2-3. Dealt w/ some domestic stuff (grocery orders etc.), but wasn’t able to do anything else worthwhile (e.g. read or listen to music) until 5:40, then helped make dinner w/ Bree; w/ eating and clean-up (stove), took ’til 8. Listened (during prep and dinner) to some Merle Travis, last night’s streaming set from the vanguard by Christian McBride’s New Jawn; closed with a Weather Report-era Wayne Shorter tune I dug. (I have never knowingly listened to Weather Report.) Practiced piano around 9. Also some Beethoven songs. Practiced piano w/ a bit more discipline than last couple days; scales, brief ear training, 7-th-chord “etude” around the circle of fourths w/ metronome; worked on “All The Things You Are” and “I’m Old Fashioned.” Took out trash, short walk per usual. Stayed up a bit, read the last 2 chapters of the Vienna Circle book. A note from Ernest Nagel, 1935: "Tell Carnap that Universities throughout the US are becoming more politically reactionary daily, and to exclude from his prospectus anything which some dumb conservative--who 'feel' these things--might regard as cultural Bolshevism." 2 JA poems. “What do you want, John? Informally,/a new body, and an assistant.” (The other, in prose, is “Die Miestersinger”; funny, as the opera came up in my MS a few days ago.) Crossword. Lights out after 11. Listening to an audiobook of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.

12/5

Up 8, crossword (harder by Sat.)/Spelling Bee. Breakfast, coffee.
Worked 10-1. Used ideas from last night, didn’t get that far but on the right track.
Unproductive 1-4.
Read 50 p. Prof. Schlick. Many Austrians were enthusiastic Nazis.
Played piano a bit - no discipline, just some tunes. Will try to do a real 30 min. routine tomorrow.
Worked on email for 45 min. - got inbox down from about 350 to 290.
Group zoom call w/ friends that we usually see this time of year, 8-9:30.
Recycling, short walk. Did Sunday crossword online. Lights out 12.