12.23.17

Up at 5, but felt pretty caught up on sleep. 50 p. Levine (he’s getting into secular/popular music, and so into material I already have knowledgable opinions about; view of “vaudeville” v. “country”/solo blues is standard; he’s already make the mistake of thinking that Ervin Drake’s “No Segregation in Heaven” was in any sense a genuine gospel song.); 2 ½ ch. GHA (up through Benjamin’s artwork essay and Adorno on jazz, into Nazism.) Should record a couple of striking passages:

“Thomas Mann’s schema of German bourgeois familiar development in Buddenbrooks—the first generation makes the money, the second cements the family’s social position, and the third withdraws into something like aesthetic malaise—was unwittingly subverted by these Frankfurt scholars. (ch. 2 – the e-book pagination isn’t useful; I identify w/ this vis-à-vis my own [Italian-American] family.)

“Work on good prose has three steps: a musical stage when it is composed, an architectonic one when it is built and a textile one when it is woven.” (Quoted from Benjamin, One-Way Street; but what about work on good music?)

“Before his untimely death aged sixty-three in 1945, [logical positivist Otto] Neurath would establish the Isotype Institute in Oxford, devoted to his symbolic way of representing quantitative information which he was to deploy to help with slum clearance planning the West Midlands. That was one of the rare moments, with all due respect to the philosophical discipline, in which a logician’s skills have helped improve the living conditions of those suffering under capitalism” (ch. 9; this relates to my Quine/”On What There Is”/slum metaphor project, if I ever get to it. The second sentence is just annoying; compared to whose skills, Adorno’s?)

Went out for a coffee at Rad in downtown Upland, sent regrets for Chris & Cleaver’s holiday party (neither mom’s condition nor my own makes me feel like driving to Fullerton). Groceries. Home at 11, napped, knocked off some very mundane tasks, on the order of putting new insurance cards in both cards (and, just as importantly, informing Dad I did so). Read a little ahead in Levine, watched Camperforce, a 15-min doc on RV owners who work seasonally for Amazon (related to acquaintance Jessica Bruder’s book Nomadland).

Went back out and worked 3-6 at the Spot. Went pretty damn well – worked up my comments on the “race” of the bridge, and some polemic against Middleton. 3-4 substantial grafs, about 1000 words. Dinner at home, nothing worth remaking after. Read ahead a bit in Levine, in case I can’t tomorrow. Cold symptoms on and off through day, sent me to bed early, maybe 10, w/ a Whistler movie on.

12.22.17

Up about 4; read, tried to go back to bed at 6:30. My mother had a fall by the washing machine just before 7; the caregiver got me up. We were at the ER from 8:30 utnil around 5 pm. Omitting the blow-by-blow, but she has a small fracture in her right femur, not all the way through the bone; is supposed to heal, required physical therapy rather than surgery. In the meantime, it left her somewhat disoriented and we are helping her move (to bed, bathroom). Saw the Christmas short w/ J. Carrol Naish on TCM after we were settled back at home, and the first part of Meet Me In St. Louis – I don’t think I could stand watching Margaret O’Brien die tonight.

Sleep deprived, w/o usual nap; went to bed around 10 w/ a Thin Man movie playing on my laptop. Have to admit I’ve had a cold developing the last 2-3 days. No writing (or time alone, period). Managed to read, mostly at the hospital, 50 p. Levine, 3 ch. GHA (Naples, Mahagonny, Horkeimer/Fromm), and a few poets in Poetry – I’ll admit begrudgingly that Andrew Motion has a few good lines. Scrawled something in the daybook.

Extremely difficult day.

12.21.17

Up 4:30; read about 30 p. Levine (trickster tales). Went out to the Spot (an otherok coffee place on Mountain Avenue), worked from 7:30-11. A little balled up about how much to say about folk revivalism at this point; wrote something I may cut, started looking at an important graf on race. Picked up some things from Smart & Final, nearby. Came home, read a ch. of GHA (on the Institute for Social Research as originally housed in Frankfurt; informative), napped until 1:30. Left w/ Bree for family Xmas shopping at Kohl’s, Target, Trader Joe’s; bought myself a planner an a small notebook in the odd Japanese notions store next to the latter. Finished the Jepsen CD, which mainly gave the impression of syntactic well-formedness. Tried to buy sausage for dinner at Claro’s, but the line for the deli counter was ridiculous (they were on 99 when I took number 16). Dropped Bree at home and went back out to Sprouts to reserve a prime rib (choice, actually) for Xmas Eve dinner, took time for myself to go to the Goodwill on Foothill (found a Cage/Harrison/Partch CD, virtually the only one of any interest unless I decide I need to explore Alan Jackson and Vince Gill), Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures (speaking of grammaticality), and an r&b piano instruction book (not sure of the vintage, but not recent). Drove through El Pollo Loco to pick up dinner for parents; back 5:45. Changed, and went w/ Bree to the Fox Theater in Pomona for Kyle and Annalee’s kids’ school’s Holiday Sing. Poked my head into the local artists’ shop next door after parking the car, almost bought a book on Levinas from a table outside, maybe the last remains of the amazing used stock they had a year ago. Some questionable choreography, a rewrite of Taio Cruz’ “Dynamite” (“Candlelight”) and something called “Santa’s Getting Fit.” Clear highlight, a rather sweetly harmonized Hannukah song called “One Candle.” Wrote my daybook poem during a Kwanzaa number. Had a bite with K&A + their kids at El Merendero across the street. Disc One of Ellington ended on the way home, put on Independent Music for Independent Coffee Drinkers, Volume One, a comp I’d picked up somewhere b/c it had 2 songs by Pete Galub’s friend Django Haskins (as The Old Ceremony), at least one of which, “Poison Pen,” is strong. Most of the rest is NPR wannabie singer-songwriter stuff, some good playing. Home before 10, read Levine until Bree wanted to turn out the light, 11.

12.20.17

Up for a bit around 2 (said hello to nightshift caregiver), and then for good at 5:30 (time change, will be this way for a few days at least). Watched a bit of Marriage is a Private Matter w/ Lana Turner on TCM, then read 10 p. of Levine. Once dad woke up in his armchair (he’d been to bed, not sure how long), chatted a while. Got the car keys and went out about 6:30; found a handful of CDs I’d left behind in the trunk, put on Carly Rae Jepsen, E-Mo-Tion. At Coffee Klatch in Rancho Cucamonga by 7. Got spending record up to date, opened up Ch. 1, worked from about 7:30-11. I think I’ve made a good strategic decision both in slightly reshuffling a couple of subsections of the chapter to introduce “cultural” rather than technical/musicological matters more quickly, and is reminding me of what I don’t need to rehearse in the preface/intro. Improved several paragraphs, word count n/a.

Came home, discussed a few things with my Dad, read a little more Levine, took a nap from 2-4. Went shopping for dinner w/ Bree, came back, unpacked, read a bit more. Talked about how things have been around the house w/ Liz (the most frequent afternoon/early evening caregiver), and what to do for Xmas Eve. Dinner; watched Jeopardy w/ Dad. Went out to Upland Starbucks at 8:30. Too many loose ends to get back to work. Rated a few late EMP proposals, finished quota of Levine (p. 103), caught up quickly in daybook (4 p.). Nice relative obscurity on the instore playlist: The Miracles’ “Christmas Everyday.” Puzzled through two Sandra Macpherson poems in Poetry (one seemingly about buying a forged Whistler print off eBay; not sure what the terseness of the line-breaks is for except to obscure aboutness) and a longer one by Eisder Mosquera: starts w/ a clear lyric occasion (visit to a Cuban dog-track, musings on the poet’s homeland) veers into descriptions of marmoset videos (“The YouTube bubble/incarnadine in the corner”) and distant, near-abstract voyeurism: “I listen in/on the praxis applied/to the nexus/in accelerating,/intimate make-out/fondling.” Would read more. Home at 11, coincident w/ caregiver’s shift change. Started rereading (skimming) Allen Callaci’s memoir Heart Like a Starfish, looking for details/rhyme words to fill in a song I’m stuck on (“Viable”). Lights out at midnight.

12.19.17

Up around 5:30, tried to go back to sleep, but not really. Went out around 7:45, knocked out 500 words of something on the harmony section of the intro (too technical!!), then switched to Ch. 1. Came back at 10, took two potted cyclamen up to the 5th floor neighbor who’ll look at them while we’re away, finished packing. Called car for LGA at 11. Had a second TSA patdown in private, for reasons I’ll never know. Did in-flight crossword as usual. Flicked through the movie selection, ended up watching most of an episode of Insecure, which wasn’t made for me, and 2 of a silly horror anthology called Room 104. Switched to music (couldn’t listen to my own on b/c I only brought I Phone headphones with the old plug; the adaptor is in the bag I checked). Mainly listened to Kendrick Lamarr, Damn; but also sampled an Annie Ross album w/ Gerry Mulligan (swinging “I Feel Pretty”), a Geri Allen/Charlie Haden/Paul Motian date, some Debussy. (Much better choices, art-wise, than the movies.) Started in on Lawrence Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness. “To insist that only those elements of slave culture were African which remained largely unchanged from the African past is to misinterpret the nature of culture itself.” (5; the entire paragraph is very good).

Flight had taken off late enough to get us into DFW late enough to miss our connection; we were put on standby and (after standing in that line) had 90 min. to kill; called Dad to apprise him; ate. Got on the flight, though it didn’t look good for a while; not sitting together. Did an easy sudoku (the others were filled in), read Levine to 55, the introduction to Stuart Jeffries’ Grand Hotel Abyss (on my iPad), and the first few poets in a Jan. 2017 Poetry I brought along. (Sheryl Luna and Ishion Hutchison, both on the cryptic side; Carl Philips, 1 more discursive poem, ending image too pat; Tommy Pico, kind of a breathless pile-up, like [one dimension of] O’Hara for the Instragram age; think he was in one of those Preludes as well?]) Landed around 10 PST, picked up bags, got a cab to my parents. Dad and Mom both up; Jessica on caregiver duty. Chatted a little while, not long; went to bed and read another ch. of GHA (on Benjamin’s Berlin Childhood, clear enough but the author tends to repeat basic points too many times) before turning out the light around midnight.