Up at 9. Worked at E77, about 10-2. Section is now at 2600. Owner sort of made overtures about contacting their booker to play there, after I mentioned that I played piano w/ Laura. I’m really pretty secretive about music in the neighborhood. Groceries, home, email (slightly forward motion on Viable art), listened to 2 songs from upcoming Destroyer record, and a couple I have to learn for Laura. Headed downtown at 5. Took the wrong headphones. Finished Moy. Kind of a shrug, maybe a couple of points I can make use of, and some references. Rehearsed at Rivington for the Figure 8 session w/ Matt and Brandon; had to buy a gtr strap. Decided to play gtr instead of piano on the basic track of both songs (“Any Road Home” + “Paradox”). Will have to listen/play through “Paradox” a bunch before Nov. 5-6. No show coming up, but played through “Not Just When We Kiss,” “Love-Starved,” “Cover Your Tracks” and “A Different City”; and, since the keyboard was set up in the room, a couple choruses of “Well You Needn’t.” Read in Prelude on the way home, finished it over a stout at E77. A slightly drunk guy noted I was reading poetry, told me he liked Bukowski, asked if I thought poetry was an acquired taste. My reply was, I guess, positive: “If I watched more golf, I’d like golf more.” Second to last writer in the magazine, Callie Garnett, begins a poem, “I have to admit it, I don’t like Woody/Guthrie that much, I just don’t.” (Some of it is set in Rhinecliff, on what I recognize as the Amtrak from Bard.) Strangely, a poem of Charity Coleman’s involves the child Joni Mitchell gave up for adoption at 19; Moy’s book touches on the song usually read as being about it, “Little Green.” Marked some non-famous poets (in the whole issue) I’d consider reading more of: Keegan Cook Finberg, Ed Luker, Stuart Calton, Cal Doyle, S. Brook Corfman, Cait Weiss (for a sonnet set in the Valley), Mark Yanich, Andrew Zawacki, Claire Wilcox, José Vadi, Teng Qian Xi. 11 out of about 100. Much of the rest either impenetrable, all to penetrable, or in one of a few [current] period styles. Alan Gilbert, by the way, may be the most depressing contemporary poet I know – and there’s some competition. Wrote daybook poem. An older man outside E77 quoted Paul Simon – “Ooh, what a night/what a garden of delight” at me. I couldn’t place it as “Duncan,” but I thanked him – and it was a nice night out. Home at 10. Lights out 11:30.

[John Adams, “Naïve and Sentimental Music” to “Addison’s Trip” (Sondheim, Road Show)]