4.28.21

Such dialectical judgments enable us to to realize a momentary synthesis of the inside and the outside, of intrinsic and extrinsic, of existence and history: but it is a synthesis which we pay for by an objective historical judgment on ourselves.

— Jameson, Marxism and Form, 348

Woke up around 6. Arm sore from the shot, but don’t think I’m feeling other ill effects.
Started watching a really cheap b-movie, Stark Fear (Ned Hockman, 1962), w/ Beverly Garland.
Coffee, breakfast, talked to Bree. Hand exercises.
Read Jameson to p. 375.
Wasted time reading about procrastination.
Wrote about 30 min.
Therapy.
Nothing worth talking about for a couple hrs.
Tried to clear email for an hour, mostly a couple of long responses. 141 in inbox.
Read a bit more Jameson, + 2 JA poems. Wrote notebook poem.
Therapy.
Rested a bit, then cleaned and cooked some nettles Bree had put in our grocery order. Maybe not my favorite; better w/ some soy sauce. 
Listened to The Daisy Age during dinner. Some total madeleines of ’90-’91, like “My Idea of a Bombastic Jazz Style” and “O.P.P.”, and some I’d never heard, like DMX’s “Peachfuzz,” with a very young MF Doom.
Read to p. 400 Jameson. Watched another 40 min. of the Cinema Novo doc. Should finish both tomorrow.
Pre-mastered 3 more songs, and uploaded something else that might go on the comp.
Short walk outside around 10.
Up ’til 11:30, went to bead, quickly read ARC of Joel Huschle, False Memory of a Cape Cod Clam Shack, which I said I’d blurb. Started reading a couple of essays on the philosophy of procrastination, but they were extremely boring.

4.27.21

Non-dialectical thought establishes an initial separation, an initial dualism, naively imagining itself to be a subjectivity at work upon an objectivity wholly different and distinct from itself. Dialectical thinking comes as an enlargement upon and an abolition of this initial dualism, for it realizes that it is itself the source of that external objectivity it had imagined to be something separate.

— Jameson, Marxism and Form, 342.

Woke up at 9:15. 217.4. Procrastination podcast.
Hand exercises. JA poem.
Breakfast/coffee. Listened to some news w/ Bree.
Scrubbed tub for a few minutes. Shower, shave.
Wrote 11:30-1:15. Revising blues section.
Played “Speak Low” and “Moonlight In Vermont” on piano.
Left at 2 for Duane Reade, got my 2nd shot. Read 25 p. Jameson and wrote 1 p. Notebook poem will waiting, before and after.
Home around 3:30. Rested/dithered online, read to p. 128 Kumar.
Premastered 3 songs from Viable on Soundcloud, toward album submission. (Won’t quite finish until May.)
Worked on harmony for about an hr.; sent exercises to Judith B. for clarification, before I go on learning this step wrong.
Showed Bree the website for Celeste Holm’s estate auction; you could bid on her vocal score from the original Broadway production of Oklahoma! for around $2K-3K.
Listened to Pat Thomas & The Locals, Play the Music of Anthony Braxton. Finished reading Kumar; ambivalent.
Listened to a couple cuts from V/A, The Daisy Age. “Bonita Applebaum” in the cut.
Went to bed about midnight, read Jameson to p. 243.

4.26.21

Like the worker, the factory owner emerges into a world whose external conditions are already given, into a situation fixed in advance (even though the response to that situation is invented freely), and the acts and life styles of the previous generation are precisely a part of the basic situation faced by their successors. Thus, an essential part of the inheritance of the middle class, from generation to generation, is the fact of their own past violence, which is to say, the violence done by their fathers and grandfathers, and it is this that in a previous section we have called blood guilt.

— Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 284-5

Woke up before 6, listened to procrastination podcasts.
Out of bed around 7. Forgot to weigh myself.
Started coffee, did hand exercises. Had breakfast.
Misc. online activity until 8, d/l’d and read first few pages of Amitava Kumar, Everyday I Write the Book (about academic writing, not Elvis C.)
Read 25 p. Jameson, Marxism & Form.
Clipped nails.
Read 1 Ashbery poem (midway through Planisphere).
Wrote 9-12, w/ breaks. Revised a few grafs of blues section, wrote a hasty draft on next graf in last 30 min.
Wasted a bit of time online and read more of Kumar. Book’s annoying (quotes de Botton).
Tweeted about St. Vincent, eventually deleted, as it invited misogynistic responses.
Called dad about 1:30-2:15. The usual, he has doctor’s appts coming up.
Replaced water filter w/ Bree.
Therapy 3-3:45. Writing anxieties brought on partly by Pop Con panels; what are they a screen for.
Sort of drifted 4-5, read a few more pages Kumar.
5-5:50, harmony. Also half watching The Man I Married (Irving Pichel 1938), w/ Joan Bennett, Frances Lederer.
Cleared out some email; requested a refund for an online workshop I hadn’t gotten much out of. Inbox at 145.
Wrote to Dave Schramm, asked Luigi F. for Linda Smith’s email; uploaded most of Viable to Soundcloud, fooled around with the running order.
Read to p. 81 of Kumar, some Jameson.
Brief walk outside. Finished quota of Jameson, to p. 300.
Scribbled page in poetry notebook.
Watched 30 min. of Cinema Novo (Erky Rocha, 2016)
Lights out after midnight.

for a while

Just coming here to say that I’ll be taking a break from daily entries for a while. Not sure how long.

1/28

Up 8:30.
Played some piano in the morning - “Stella,” “Rubber Duckie.”
Wrote 11-2; revised 2 medium-length grafs.
Called dad about 2-3; another Zoom call w/ Bree’s cousin Alicia at 3:15.
Read more of Sword. Did another pass on the grafs in the evening.
Lights out 11.