Up 5. Dharma talk. Watched 1/2 hr of Hamlet.
Back to bed before 7. Got up again 8:20, though still tired.
Bree on Zoom call w/ Ron in L.A.
Coffee, breakfast, form notes 10 songs, exercise; 25 p. Solomon.
Walk.
Worked 11:40-1. Mostly revision, but started well. Wasted last 30 min or so.
Listened to a couple of versions (Julie Andrews, Elaine Stritch) of R+H’s “Something Good” for direction on chorus of “Flashlight.”
25 p. Solomon, 10 p. Coolidge.
Lunch.
Worked on “Flashlight.” new chorus idea. Bree likes it better, anyway.
Finally printed shipping label for Human Hearts drive; should go out to Mitch tomorrow.
Spent most of 4-6 reading/watching things in tabs I’d opened, inc. Frederic Jameson’s erudite/brilliant but (to me) diffuse LRB piece on Joseph Conrad, and Luc Sante’s NYRB piece on collaging. Showed Bree a segment from Mary Martin’s 1959 TV special, w/ songs from One Touch of Venus, Annie Get Your Gun (“Can’t Get a Man with a Gun,” w/ some lyrics I hadn’t heard; possibly a variant in the collected Berlin lyrics), and Lute Song, a 1946 play w/ a few songs by Raymond Scott and Bernie Hanhigen (the lyricist for “‘Round Midnight”). So then we listened to other songs from the score. Yellowface exotica - pretty bad. Listened to a podcast about COVID’s impact on Jackson Heights — apparently, the biggest hotspots have been JH/Elmhust/Corona - w/ our councilwoman Catarina Cruz, and read two recent New Yorker articles; the one on Seattle’s response v. New York’s puts paid to much of the enthusiasm for Coumo (to say nothing of DeBlasio).
Walk.
Watched a Tiny Desk Concert by the harpsichordist Mahan Estfahni (https://www.npr.org/2020/04/27/843270508/mahan-esfahani-tiny-desk-concert) b/c it includes a Mel Powell piece linked from Ethan Iverson’s blog (a Powell essay I want to work through; https://ethaniverson.com/mel-powell-unfurnished/).
Dinner. Played an Alberta Hunter record.
Filed CDs.
Listened to more Powell - realized I have a copy of a 10” w/ one of his through-composed pieces.
Computer tasks, not worth discussing. Lights out 11:30. Hope I don’t wake up too early.