Up at 6:30. Overcast. I’m so sick of it being cold everywhere I go.
E77 7:30. Quota of Keene; noh plays. 10 p. of rights/wrongs. The digital chapter is kind of dull, to me.
Groceries w/ Bree.
Rested/dithered a while, started reading the poems in a book of paintings and texts by Natalie Häusler:
[…] Nobody ever had
a real subject matter in painting. It was either excuses,
paying subjects, agreed upon stories or given nature,
all for eventual comparison. On this basis
it was worked around, behind, with against
or underneath. Just about anything will do. As I
had understood this, I also understood that none
of those realizations would help anyone to actually
make a painting. […]
Something similar might be true of poems.
Spent most of the afternoon, about 2:30-5:30 on Laura’s set. A number of the songs are 2-3 chords, and familiar in form (“Oakie Boogie” [except that it’s in B, still one of my worst keys for playing blues], “Take Me Back to Tusla,” “Crazy Arms”). The trickiest are the ‘80s country hits - Reba’s “Rumor Has It,” which I charted, and Garth’s “Friends in Low Places.” More info on keys, and some substitutions, came in by email later — Boo Reiner, the guitarists, wants to do different Vince Gill and John Moreland songs that originally called. Also worked on getting my piano part on “Route 66” closer to where I want it (though by any standard a poor imitation of Nat King Cole’s).
It’s Great To Be Alive (Alfred Werker 1933) at MoMa; musical fantasy about a polo playboy (Raoul Roulien, unknown to me) who becomes the last man on Earth after “masculinitis” devastates the planet. Gloria Stuart as love interest, Edna May Oliver as the leading American scientist. Completely nuts. Clever songs by William Kernell, an early 20s B’way/TPA writer who apparently had a career but whom I’ve never heard of. “No man could be luckier/Than to marry a girl from Czechoslovakia.”
Finished the main text of the copyright book while waiting for the movie, and later getting a bite, though I should skim the notes and read a 2nd-ed. post-DMCA afterword. Finished the Häusler poems on the train.
Pretty dead by the time I got home at 9 or so. Listened to a couple of the Laura songs again. Lights out 11:30.