10.9.16

Up 10. Weight 215.1.

Too late to do much of substance before lunch plans. Tried to mail a package; line too long. Tidied up w/ Bree, put on the boogie-woogie comp. I bought last week. Yancey, Ammons, “Pinetop’s Boogie.” No “Carolina Shout.” Jenny and Brian picked us up around 1, drove out for Szechuan in College Park. Dilapidated thrift-store down the block: picked up ($1/item) Big Black’s Rich Man’s 8-Track compilation (it’s not that I need a steady diet of crisis-of-masculinity rock; I’ve been thinking that this election has been like a bad Albini song), 3 Morrissey CD singles (w/ his good “That’s Entertainment” cover and other b-sides that I’m sure are collected somewhere), and the Clifford D. Simak novel Project Pope, which I used to see on SF shelves as a kid. Back to our neighborhood, loaded the digital piano I’d found for Jenny on Craigslist on into their car (this was the impetus for the visit); done by 3:30. Read 50 p. of Lethem, considered going to Oracle, but settled for Espresso 77. No laptop use there on weekends; read Gates and Brown, wrote in daybook, chatted w/ Macgregor & Kristin; walked back w/ them around 7:30 and returned an acoustic gtr that had ended up at our place. Cleaned up email for a while, otherwise unproductive (and uninteresting).

Mingus w/ Dolphy, Byard, “Take the A Train”

10.8.16

Up 9. Weight 215.1.

Out about 11, started Jonathan Lethem's new A Gambler's Anatomy, over coffee/on the way to Oracle. Worked from 1-6; dug in on 5 or so grafs about “Daisy Bell” and Will Marion Cook. Improved, not quite there. Listened to Walt Dickerson, To My Queen (1962) on the way to the Community Church on 35th for AACM show. Solo piano/vocal set by Amina Claudia Meyers; broadly interpreted versions of “Steal Away,” “Motherless Child” and others, with a block of Taylor/Abrams-style improv in the middle. Solid gospel player – she’s been doing it for decades. After intermission, Roman Filiu Quintet, w/ a sax/trumpet front line, interesting pianist, bassist swallowed up by the boomy room, Gerald Cleaver on drums. Solos maybe not on fire, but the third composition was genuinely interesting. (I can’t describe it in a flash w/o some cliché like “angular.”) Wrote in daybook during their set. Started Gates, The Signifying Monkey – can’t take this at a clip, or begin to comment w/o going farther in. Also Sterling A. Brown, Collected Poems, and front matter. Odd – most, like his version of “Franklie and Johnny” are scabrous, but those about old people are terribly sentimental. Home about midnight.

10.6.16

[Lost a longer post. I wrote about 800 words, not polished; finished reading the Massey and Hartman books; took my guitar to Rivington Music for a set-up; picked up pants I had left in the City Winery Green room last week; heard Luc Sante interview Ben Katchor at 192 books; listened to Born to Run.]

10.5.16

Up 8:30. Weight 215.4.

Recuperation/regrouping day + mundane tasks. Coffee: Updated to-do list and calendar, cut email inbox by half, worked on the cassette liner notes. Macgregor and Kristin (and their baby) came in, chatted a bit. Came home around noon, read Hartman and napped.

I can’t recall doing anything of note until 5. Since I don’t expect to have another free afternoon soon, took a ride out to Astoria to check out Hi-Fi, a record store/café I’d noticed while looking up the address of the bar of the same name. Bought a sealed cast recording of The Gospel at Colonus, Cuttin’ the Blues, a 2LP boogie-woogie comp on New World (always reliable), and a mystifying South African-themed musical from 1966, billed Leon Gluckman’s Wait a Minim! Not a great indulgence - $14 for the three, but put back several $8-10 records I might have bought for $5. Espresso machine, but nowhere to sit, so I got my coffee a couple blocks away, but didn’t stay there long either. Walked down Steinway through the heavily Egyptian section to a cheap gym I haven’t used in over a year (nor the closer one I’ve joined since) and had a surprisingly easy time cancelling the auto-pay. This has to be considered the day’s major accomplishment.

No: there is one other. I said no to accompanying Bree at an acquaintance’s wedding; she’ll find another pianist.

Finished the Hartman on the train back, except for the substantial end notes. Informed, makes some useful distinction, but it’s odd that he makes very little of disjunction and fragmentation, as opposed to non-metrical rhythm control, as an earmark of modernist poetry until nearly the end of the book. His comments on the “argument” of “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror” and why Ashbery is different than what came before are reasonable enough, but I don’t think I quite get why the poem’s greatly-loosened pentameter correlates w/ said argument. (It’s certainly not a radical prosody, as the langs have complained about everything past Tennis Court.) Also a fair chunk of Massey. This (the entirety of a page) is great: “Ice fastens/caution tape (summer/wrung the yellow out)//to weeds wrapped/around a mound of/crushed cans.” Elsewhere, “No ideas but in parking lots,” which of course is one; “perception’s a process” (with results). Hartman’s discussions of imagism and Levertov, coincidentally, are good reminders of what line Massey’s working in.

Could one be nostalgic for the post-modern?

Daybook, fairly late, put ducks in a row for tomorrow (return to daily book work, I hope for a stretch of 3-4 weeks). Lights out about 1 am.

10.4.16

Up 9. Weight 215.5. Not a prose day.

Worked on “Rainy Days and Mondays.” Heard Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s arrangement of “Deep River” on WQXR. The pianist sure milked the ending. Coffee, daybook, read in Hartman, started Joseph Massey, Illocality. More Flood than Wave. Bought a flash drive (last one lost in the shuffle of coming back from CA).

Home at 11:30, practiced the Human Hearts set off and on – it’s surprising hard to make oneself sit there and play through songs without pausing to fool w/ a guitar part or forgiving oneself for lyric flubs. The bridge of “Believe in Ghosts” (which I’ll probably rewrite) and finicky variant rhymes in the choruses of “Enemies of Song” are tricky, and I don’t know two newer songs well. Broke around 3 to call my parents (meaning to talk more often, a week goes by easily), w/ Bree.

Left at 5, met Matt at his workplace to help him carry drums to Hi-Fi. Got set up (I don’t like their house amp). Put St. Lenox (Andrew + tracks on phone + bass player) on at 8:00; Allen read briefly, we played our set, then brought Allen up to join us. I’ve played better. Modest turnout, neither embarrassing or encouraging. Glad to see Jenny, David Nagler, Liz & Ed, Matt Kanelos, Pete Galub, Drew. Casey Westerman down from Princeton, but didn’t have a chance to talk. Took $20 out of the door for cab fare, gave the rest to Allen. Debriefed w/ Bree on way home. Fun and all, and good for my karma, but I’m glad I can get back to writing (though we’ll see about tomorrow).

Set list: Enemies of Song/Still In Error/Boring Postcards/A Different City For a Different Life/Our Films, Their Films/Believe in Ghosts/Faith & Credit/Not Just When We Kiss [unaccountably forgot first chorus]/Flag Pin. With Allen: Rainy Days & Mondays [his idea]/Tourists/Going to Fontana/Be Positive/Junk/Bicycle/Lonesome Surprise