Up for a while around 5; dithered online. Went back to bed, listened to a little Craig Taborn, got back up at 7:30. Got coffee, started looking at Carl Richardson, Autopsy: An Element of Realism in Film Noir. Came home and spent a little over an hr. doing garden work w/ Bree (I do not like it, but want to sign up for watering once a week to set a good example for others in the building). Left about 11:15, got lunch, 7 toward Manhattan closed at my stop, had to backtrack toward Flushing. Read intro and ch. 1 of Richardson; strident and flat-footed in his Bazinianism (Bazinism?), but good on production details of The Maltese Falcon. Intrigued by discussion of Renoir’s Swamp Water (1941). Made it to LC library 12:45. Got going about 1:30, revised 1st 2 grafs on publishing, added another, seemingly usable. Left at 5:45 for the Kitchen; book launch/performance for Adam Pendelton, Black Dada Reader. Didn’t know much going in, only knew about it b/c I saw it was happening last night. The anthology is an odd mix of texts you might assume would appear under that title (Baraka, of course) – but are Adrian Piper and George Lewis dada, by most lights? Also a lot of work coming out of conceptual art (Lewitt) and language poetry (Silliman) that isn’t usually read in connection w/ race. So I guess making those connections was the argument. Readings by the editor (a New Sentence-y piece I liked), Stephen Squibb (economically minded, but I’m forgetting the details), Joan Retallack (on the “metaphysics” of white, I think the piece was mostly sleight of hand and let people my and her color off the hook of identifying as “white” a lot more easily than, say, Adam Fitzgerald might), and 3 songs by a multiethnic “New Orleans-style” brass band (SugarTone), ending w/ a long “I Only Have Eyes For You,” after Lester Bowie’s. Not sure I have a final verdict on whether it all hung together aesthetically/intellectually/as cultural politics. Chatted w/ Nathaniel Otting and a friend whose name I’d misspell. Read chapter on The Naked City on the train home – should see The City (Steiner-Van Dyke 1939), Black Legion (Archie Mayo 1936). Home, listened to a little more Taborn, lights out by 11.