11.14.21

Up too early - 4:30, watched SNL clips (but not the 10-min Taylor Swift performance, though I will). Put on an episode of Midsommer Murders and drifted back to sleep. Up 7:30, quick breakfast and coffee, talked to Bree on WhatsApp 8-9. 
Got an email from the podcast producers that we can actually split this up into two 30-40 min episodes, which will made editing a lot easier. Honestly a big relief.
Left for a gospel documentary I had tickets for, but started worrying I’d left the stove on (to dry my cast-iron pan before oiling) after a couple train stations. Went back; I hadn’t. But I read 30 p. Mackey on the trip.

[…] Fugitivity, he insisted/was-
n’t just getting away. Flight was being subject
to being caught carried back. Fugitivity’s haunted 
side he said it was… (237)

Back in the apt. about 11:15. Updated this and writing group check-in.
Made some broccoli + bucatini w/ oil and garlic for lunch. (Ate it all). Placed a grocery order for tomorrow.
Another slow/bleh afternoon. Read some Mehta, did domestic tasks.
Printed draft of chorus section (changed toner cartridge), went to E77 and marked it up for re-organization 6:30-7:30. Also started a new to-do list to process via Mark Forster’s “Final Version” technique. This can help if I keep it up - I usually peter out after a couple weeks and become “dead to the list,” but I feel like I’m spinning a lot of plates.
Came back and got into a long (friendly) twitter exchange w/ J. Clover about the form of “All Too Well.” Directly relevant to what I’m doing; also turns out his partner has written at length on burdens; found and downloaded her book.
Read another 20 p. Mehta. Lights out midnight.

11.13.21

Up 7:30. Slept through.
Went to E77 before 9 for coffee, ordered oatmeal for breakfast for a change. Read to p. 120 in Mehta, and about 15 p. of Mackey. (Sometimes it’s easier to read out, and on trains.)
Picked up some vegetables on the way home. 
Listened to some of the first take of the podcast before we re-recorded at 1. Got going, but I didn’t feel like it was good - I was in my head, trying to remember and anticipate points. Perhaps fortunately, a very audible thunderstorm came up, so we stopped at about 2:30.
Dithered a bit, then spent 20 min. or so paging through one of 2 Lomax collections for songs he/they print w/ choruses. Took the other w/ me on the train to Brooklyn, went through that, listened to Wendy Eisenberg’s Bent Ring, and read another 50 or so p. of Mehta, also while waiting for her set to start at Public Records (fancy “listening room” vibe w/ restaurant attached, I hadn’t been before). Said hi, also chatted w/ Brendan Gilmartin, who’s doing publicity for the headliner, Patricia Brennan. Had one cider. Wendy was good - solo electric/vocal, so none of the banjo songs from the current record, but some new songs, particularly liked one w/ some Tarot imagery and a third verse beginning “AAA - that is the form you write.” Brennan is a vibes/marimba composer/improvisor w/ a solo record - sonorous, a lot of interesting extended technique. Four-mallet marimba and pedal steel are 2 instruments I can’t even imagine learning to play.
First notably cold night to be out walking. Read more Mackey on the train back. Thought about getting tacos, just made a couple eggs at home. Lights out midnight.

11.12.21

Up 6:30; breakfast, coffee; late night clips, part of a psychoanalysis podcast. 
Replied to EN suggesting we re-record Sat.
Read 25 p. Mehta.
Too wet to go out. Managed to write for a scant 30 min. - messy first draft of a missing graf -- and read most of the section on form in Everett, The Foundations of Rock.
Therapy - started a bit late; call to dad. Started some tomato sauce w/ chicken in between, also roasted some Brussel sprouts.
After calls, cleaned kitchen, bathroom, tidied elsewhere. More of psych podcast.
Had Laura Cantrell over about 5-7:30 for a songwriting session; talked a lot and had some wine, but started doing something w/ one of 3 ideas she had, probably titled something like “Credit for Your Sweetness.” Changed some chords, got some idea of the form. Will work on it. One other also has possibilities. Played her “Our Hearts Do.” Turns out we’re not doing a States of Country show in Dec.
Had thought for most of the day that I’d go to a (late) happy hour Jack Silbert invited people in Manhattan, but realized I had completely misread the invite - it isn’t ’til Dec. 10. Not sure how that happened.
Bought tickets for Wendy Eisenberg tomorrow, and to the Jasper Johns show for Dylan Hicks’ visit. Picked a slot for KSPC shows during CA trip. Put some things in my calendar.
Read a little more Mehta, but tired out quickly. Watched a couple more episodes of Shrill. Lights out around 11.

11.11.21

Up 7, breakfast, coffee.
Watched the end of The Green Years.
Talked to Bree 9-10:15. Have to find a tax document (emailed about this later).
Bought plane ticket to CA, Dec. 14-Jan. 15. 
Several unproductive hours, interrupted by a Zoom call w/ writing group. Mildly useful, but it’s the last one and I’m glad not to have the commitment. I’ll just admit it: I watched a bunch of ok TV online. Maybe I still needed to recover from the podcast.
Worked at E77 6:30-8:00. Felt like I should touch on the book instead of giving up for the day, but it didn’t feel like much.
Wrote to KSPC about Winter Break shows, and Dylan Hicks about seeing him on a trip here in Dec. Got an email from EN about rerecording the podcast interview for length and pace. 
Also didn’t feel like I handled meals that well today - didn’t wildly overeat, but didn’t take time to cook and ended up having to each what was around in mid-evening. 
Lights out midnight.

11.10.21

Up 7. Slept through. Breakfast, coffee. Cleaned kitchen, started dishwasher.
Read 10+ p. Lakatos. “It is a shame of present mathematical education that students can quote exactly the different definitions of the Cauchy, Riemann, Lebesgue, etc. integrals without knowing which problems they were invented to solve, or in the course of the solution of which problems they were discovered.” (122)

“It may be time to admit that our tendency to think of revolutions as epochal transformations, rather than as circular turns, has not been conducive to understanding the power of racism’s repeated reinventions, which not a few have echoed Amiri Baraka in calling the “changing same.”

Eventually did more podcast prep; listened to part of a Taylor Swift playlist for her other bridges; located my copy of Robin James’ Resilience & Melancholy. 
Therapy 11.
Found the songbook w/ facsimile “I Ain’t Got Nobody” - fairly quickly, so took some extra time to tidy up stacks of other sheet music. Ran across a few things I want to play.
Recorded podcast w/ Elizabeth Newton about 1-3:45 (inc. mic set up, some places we paused). Will need to be edited down quite a bit, but I think there were some good exchanges. Main songs/bridges discussed: “We Are Never Getting Back Together” (and “All Too Well,” which I don’t think has a bridge), “Tracks of My Tears,” “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” and “I Ain’t Got Nobody.”
Decompressed a bit, unloaded dishwasher, made coffee, watched another 20 min. of The Green Years.
Got back to Mackey, read 30 p., mostly on train, while also half-listening to the new Mary Halvorson/Sylvie Courvoisier album. I need to check her out more.
Treated myself to 2 slices from Joe’s on Carmine, saw Passing at IFC. Odd to see a movie the very day after you read the book. Good, beautifully shot (maybe even too aestheticized), couple of foreshadowing additions in the script that rang false for me, but Tessa Thompson is fantastic, and the piano score was very good.
Started reading Suketu Mehta’s This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant’s Manifesto on the way back.
Got off a stop early to walk, swung by Terraza but there was no music tonight and  they hadn’t put a schedule up on the chalkboard (they barely post shows in advance on line - it’s actually hard to find out what’s going on). Listened to Dry Cleaning. Home around 10. Lights out 11.

—

Some of the Mackey runs together (of course I’m reading it quickly), but there are passages that just jump off the page - like “mu” part 118, “As If It Were ’This Is Our Music’ (188-192)

(…) Lord Invader’s Reform School/
Band it was we were in, the Pseudo-Dyonisian
Fife Corps, the Muvian Wind Xtet…The sense
we were a band or were in a band had come/back,
names’ wicked sense we called timbre, num-
bers’ crooken sense our bequest.
…
(…) the Freedmen’s Debate
Society our name now was, the ox Tongue
Speaker Exchange. Fractal scratch. Nominative/ser-
ration. Cutaay run, cutaway arrest…
…
Beginning again for the muleteenth time,
we counted off. It was our muleteenth
breakdown, muleteenth new beginning…