12/19

Up for a while at 5 or 6 - put on an audiobook of Dōgen. Up for real at 10, worked noon to 2 or 3, mainly on current section, not quite there, but got a little tired of it and also looked at the next long section on Adorno - cut a couple hundred words w/ no harm. Actually might have trailed off around 4. Watched another piano lesson and practiced — played “Stella By Starlight” which I’ve somehow never dealt with. Nice changes, I can see why players like it — its in Eb but starts on Emb5, which is probably really working as a Gm6; still, it’s unusual to have a note not in the tonic key in the first chord of a tune. Then did my scales - coordination improving at slightly faster tempo, and blues-scale exercises in E (works well) and F# (much harder to remember or use at this point). Went over week’s grocery order’s w/ Bree. Then spent maybe 45 min-hr. working on the benefit song. Made a chord chard a step down and more or less learned to play from it. Couple of interesting touches in the song — chorus starts on the dominant, there’s are “Maple Leaf” diminished passages, and both sections are 20 bars. 

Took a break, had a bite (we haven’t really been cooking the last few days, just catch as catch can), watched 20 min. of a Bob Hope/Virginia Mayo movie w/ Bree, then rehearsed the song together for 1/2 and hr. — basically learning the melody and rhythms. Tricky, but made some progress. Sunday Crossword, took about 45 min. Lights out midnight, tried to listen to a leftist philosophy podcast but absolutely hated it, switched to a Dorothy L. Sayers audiobook.

12/18

Up 7:30. Watched a couple of videos in bed (recipe video for a lemon pasta I might make tonight). Worked on show for an hour, 9-10. Read a JA poem cos I hat the time, then kinda spiraled for a couple hours, worked on book noon 3-pm. Not cutting that much from this section, and I need another short graf on “retransitional” lyrics at the end of bridges (e.g. “You Send Me” — “marry you and take you home”), but I am improving and clarifying some things. Took a break for an hour. Finished the show, submitted log and online playlist by about 5:30, so that’s off my mind until around New Year. (Or at least I don’t have to rush to choose the music.) 

Bree found the song she wants to do for the Pangea benefit video, “Gee, But I Like Music With My Meals” (Nat D. Ayer/Seymour Brown, 1911). Playable, but I need to take it down a key. Hope I can manage this without entering the whole thing into Sibelius. 

Reviewed/updated to-do list. Made some bucatini w/ a lemon + garlic “sauce” from an online recipe I’d been meaning to try. Good, meant to add parsley, could have let liquid cook down a little more - not sure the lemon adds that much to garlic and oil, at least for me. Put on a stream of a holiday program from the Louis Armstrong House Museum, w/ displays of memorabilia (Christmas cards from Nellie Lutcher), a couple of performances (Ethan Iverson, briefly playing Louis’ living room piano), and a tape of Louis reading “The Night Before Christmas” near the end of his life — w/ coughing, etc. that were edited out for the commercial release.

Watched a piano lesson, then practiced - chromatic scales at 108, the furnished “blues etude” in C and D (easy, but it will help me get the scale in rarely-used keys). Played until Bree had to call Ron. (I’m glad I didn’t let the “urgency” of the Pangea song keep me from doing this.) Short walk outside. Crossword. Lights out 11. Felt like enough got done today - still hard to fit in reading.

12/17

Woke up 6-ish. Watched a couple of YT videos and the Law & Order podcast I go back to for some reason. Up 8, breakfast/coffee. Put together playlist for 2nd show - all 2020, inc. a few reissues. Organizer for my every-other-Thurs. Carnap group had an emergency, rescheduling. Did some other basic radio work (scanned log, send station dropbox link). Took it easy for a couple hours. Called dad about 1-2; his Christmas card arrived. Worked 3:15-5:30 or so, finished revising “Constrast” section, started looking at “Transition and Retransition.” Could but a bit - a structural decision is how much info about harmony (esp. dominant-tonic cadence) to put here v. introduction. Helped Bree make some Swiss chard, put on John Wright, South Side Soul (really good meat and potatoes blues piano trio album that started coming up on YouTube). Bree is supposed to record a performance video for a cabaret she has performed at; might want to do a song I don’t know already. Worked on the radio show after dinner, got to the halfway mark. Did pick up Ashbery, The Conference of the Birds for the first time in a week or so, read 2 short poems. The epigraph from “Cartoon Music” is from Gov. Cuomo: “Do I wish none of this happened? Yes.” Watched the end of a Zen documentary so I could close the window, Fri. crossword, lights out 12:30.

12/16

Up 8. Breakfast/coffee, did a little radio work - still need to remember/figure out how to rip vinyl to Audacity (may be different w/ new version), but there was a d/l code for the 7” in question (Mike Watt covering Squeeze), so it can wait until next week. Had some videos/talks about Zazen as I went through (physical) in-box, made entries in to-do list app. This actually helps (Bree thought I was in a good mood). Joined Carnap seminar call 11; fairly long tech delay. The student presentation this week, on Goodman’s critiques of the Aufbau, was excellent - I want a copy. I drifted a lot during the rest of the session, in all honesty. There won’t be another one until after the New Year. I might watch the recording in a different mood.

I’m not going to do a blow-by-blow for the rest of the day. I spend most of it assembling my KSPC show for next Monday, recording/editing back-announce segments, etc. Several hours in all, w/ a break for therapy w/ Bree and a couple others to rest. Glad to know I can get through it; one more to do this weekend, and then I the pace eases up b/c of the holidays. I don’t think any other meaningful tasks got touched, except that Bree found Christmas cards she has in reserve; need to send one to my dad. No reading, no piano, first day I didn’t look at the book since the start of the month. Lights out midnight.

12/15

Up 9. Revision 10-1. Realized that a couple of grafs could go; some material on the connotations of a chord “progression” might go back into the intro. Probably one more day on this small section. Watched a couple more jazz piano video lessons — this is the course’s “blues week.” The approach is straightforward, but it’s nice to see it all put very clearly. (One nicety they insist on is that, when 12-bar changes go to the IV and V, you don’t also switch to the corresponding blues scale. I know of exceptions - “Tipinia,” and anywhere the IV of IV appears in the 2nd phrase (bar 6 usually, as in “Blue Monk.”) But maybe that isn’t always retained in solos. Played a little in C — what I should probably do this week is get “the” blues scale under my fingers in less path-of-least resistance keys.

Tried to do a few practical things, but wi-fi was hanging up badly (which it wasn’t when I was just wasting time). Realized that, despite cancelling my CT scan, I still had a store pick-up scheduled. So I masked up and did that, 4-4:30. Attended M. Matos’s Zoom talk on his ‘80s book. We couldn’t be more different writers, but he knows his stuff and does his work. Inspirational quotes: “You write a book to learn”; “The book is inside the draft.”

Evan had to cancel our call. Read last 10 p. of Logical Syntax of Language assignment. Played a bit more piano, blues in Db (ok, not really natural), tried Davis’s “Solar,” “Skylark.” Need to get 2 radio shows to KSPC by Sat., so spent an hr. on that. Found that I had to download a new version of Audacity for this OS, so it was good that I did this now. Took a break to go outside. Put enough music in my playlist to make 1hr 40min (the rest will be back announcing and pre-recorded PSAs/IDs), couple of related tasks. Printed a log. Crossword. Piles a lot crap on my desk into inbox to process tomorrow. Lights out 11 pm.