Up for a while at some point in the night, listened to Monk’s “Nutty” from Misterioso.
Up at 8. Read 25 p. Ratliff.Coffee, breakfast. Form notes, 10 R&B songs. Exercise - first day of rung 4, w/ no skips.
Walk.
Worked 10:45 - 1:30. 1 short but I think important graf - got sidetracked looking for a Baraka quote. Sent it.
25 more p. Ratliff. Lunch.
Got through mixing notes for last song (“Illusions”), and my general instructions (suggestions). Have to organize all this a bit before sending it (and the hard drive) to North Carolina.
Therapy.
Rested a hr.
Put on Martha and the Vandellas, Watchout! (1966 LP, the hit being Smokey’s “Jimmy Mack,” but w/ several lesser-known H-D-H cuts. Got through 4 songs before there was another delivery to help Bree with.
Second walk.
Read some Ponge.
Visited w/ Bree. Dinner. Called Dad; recovering reasonably well.
Wrote a couple of business emails.
Rest of Vandellas record.
Watched 2nd hour of Venom and Eternity, interrupted by another futile attempt to order groceries. The “love story” turns out to be even a feint - after a statement that the author, Isou, finds the previous in the 3rd section, we’re told that the protagonists have gone to a Lettrist recital, and then we hear a couple of works of sound poetry, w/ entirely non-representational imagery (scratches on film) — though we do eventually go back to narration. (The poetry, by the way, sometimes has a liturgical quality; Isou makes something of his Jewishness.) I guess the film is an attempt to be the one described in the manifesto it includes, though this itself gives the abstract passages a story-like context — as I said once somewhere else, “song form narratives noise.” It’s more self-reflexive and lucid than I’d expected. The one or two pieces of music become annoying through repetition.
Email is out of hand. Filed or trashed 100 inbox item, and a trashcan w/ over 1000. I also have trouble knowing want to do with the sent folder.
Stayed up to order coffee, filters, and a couple of books. Lights out about 1. Put on dharma talk, but fell alseep quickly.