Up 6.
Got out of the house by 10. Listened to some of the 1st disc of a Robert Wyatt, Different Every Time. Matching Mole’s “Signed Curtain” is Relevant to My Interests: “This is the chorus, or it could be the bridge, or just another part of the song.”
Spent an hr. or so at a coffee place in the West Village, working on email. It’s piling up - an hr. a day may not be enough, esp. when I take the time to unsubscribe. Tried a couple more people to join me on the 6/8 show - Greg Peterson from The Scene Is Now finally accepted, later in the day.
Worked about 12-3:30 at a new Spacious location, nearby. Better than yesterday: wrote a good-enough transitional graf I’ll go back to, and picked through the ontology and intellectual property sections of the preface (introduction?), adding and cutting bits here and there. Not the last pass, and I’m lazy about polishing the footnotes, but I got to around p. 16.
Saw Last Year and Marienbad (Resnais, 1961). I have no deep thoughts about this movie; just pleasurable, and a little ridiculous - it’s perfectly executed, to the point of rendering parody pointless. I read a mid-career Robbe-Grillet novel (Topology of a Phantom City, c. 1977, at least that’s when the translation appeared) recently — so porny, though he does a better job than some postmodernists (Coover) at convincing you that the “material” an irrelevant vehicle for the formal play. Probably less true of the films he directed - which I don’t plan to watch. That aspect is less pronounced, or at least not the whole of the law, in Marienbad. Thought a bit about strategy for the match/card game (Nim) played in the movie.
Got back into Rogin, Blackface, White Noise, read about 30 p. on trains over the course of the day. Once home, tidied up some, put on that Amos Milburn compilation again - interesting R&B version of Billy Hill’s “The Glory of Love,” a huge mainstream hit in the ‘50s, though written in ‘32.
Laura C. came over 8-10 to run some songs for States of Country - worked on “Come all Ye Fair and Tender Maidens,” from the Baez repertoire. Pretty tired out/done after she left, lights out by 11:30.
May 21
Up around 8.
Idle morning; difficult to get in gear. Watched most of a subpar U.K. musical with Diana Dors. Spend an hr. on email but didn’t feel like the inbox was any smaller. Trying to find someone else for the 6/8 show; both David Nagler and Pete Galub are busy.
Went to workspace near MoMa from 4-7:30. Spun wheels on the preface. Did not feel good about the end of the session.
Home not long after 8; watched the first 30 min. of an inexplicable sorority-girl murder mystery, Nine Girls (Leigh Jason, 1944) with Bree.
No significant reading. Weak day. Lights out 11.
May 20
Up about 6.
Read Moten, Myles, and Molly Nesbit interviews in Earnest (no pun intended).
Watched (started last night) Listen Up Philip (Alex Ross Perry 2014). Don’t think his style and concerns are for me.
Left at 10, worked on email for an hr at coffee.
Therapy; changed day/time starting next week.
Lunch.
Took notes on several (previously read, overdue) books at Lincoln Ctr. Library, 2-6: Ira Gerswhin, Lyrics on Several Occassions, Jeffrey Melnick, A Right to Sing the Blues, Gerald Bordman’s Youmans bio, Jack Sullivan, New World Symphonies, and the passages on song form in Gerald Mast, Can’t Help Singin’. Paid fines and returned those and other books, renewed Edward Berlin’s little ragtime research monograph and Roholt, Groove. A pretty concentrated 4 hrs. of work, if not “writing.”
Scrabble at Jean Cook’s (David was at a co-op meeting, their son Leonard spent the evening being Rainbow Dash from My Little Pony), her neighbor Jeannine + her junior-high age son Gabe, and Steve Silverstein. Took some cheese and dried fruit from the renovated Essex Market. Listened to a couple of Rogerio Duprat LPs (brass arrangements of mid-to-late 19th c. Brazilian instrumental music), Henry Threadgill, and a “spectralist” setting of Un coup de des (don’t recall composer).
Train home. Listened to Mayfield/Impressions off and on during the day.
May 19
Up at 6.
Finished The Ten Thousand Leaves, read another 50 p. of art critic interviews (C. Kraus, R. Krauss, Lucy Lippard). Not sure I did anything significant for a couple hrs. after that. Also read a few pages of Deborah Cook, Adorno, Foucalt, and the Critique of the West, a bit later.
Left at 1 to write at a co-working space near MoMa, which is nearly empty on Sundays. Not so great. Managed a few sentences, but got sidetracked looking at early grafs of section. Really need a new approach; this is a task I have to work on seriously over the next several weeks. Read online about procrastination as a form thereof. Got an email from Laura Cantrell asking if I wanted to play a show at Pete’s Candy Store she’s been offered but can’t do; told her to pass my info to the booker. Also got a request for an online interview about my book of poems from Rob McLennan, for his long-running blog — happy to be asked, spent last hr. drafting responses to the 1st couple ?s (the same for all his subjects). Shiny object, perhaps, but both of those exchanges made me feel less obscure and defeated.
Left just before closing at 5, took train to 14th, poked around in a junk shop on 16th that actually had some decent records, though I wasn’t of a mind to spend, e.g., $30 on Monk’s live Misterioso — which I used to check out of one of the local libraries in h.s., and which includes the Johnny Griffin solo on “In Walked Bud” that Christgau writes about at length (arguing for its R&B content).
Met Bree for dinner nearby as planned, before a “Secular/Sacred” concert at YIVO. David Lang’s Little Match Girl Oratorio, which crosses the Andersen story with liturgical writing derived from St. Matthew’s Passion; effect was a bit Roomful of Teeth-y. Book of Doubt/Book of Faith, another primarily choral work, a premiere in fact, by Adam Roberts. I wasn’t getting much out of it, and then had a weird attack of (best guess) heartburn and general discomfort; felt the need to go outside until intermission. Fortunately, it subsided for Feldman’s Rothko Chapel, which was why we came. I have the piece on an LP, but really didn’t know it at all well — much shorter than I anticipated at 25 min., esp. relative to some late Feldman durations, and if I ever knew the uncharactistically direct violin melody, conventionally harmonized by an arpeggiated xylophone pattern, that comes in 3/4 or so through, I’d forgotten it. Excellent performance. Felt good enough by the end to stay for a panel w/ the 2 composers from the 1st half, and two of Mark Rothko’s children; succinct and less self-congratulatory than many such talkbacks (though in fact there was no Q&A). Lang made a nice point comparing the “chutzpah” of his piece, and Rothko’s willingness to take on a commission for what was initially intended to be a Catholic chapel, to Berlin’s writing of “White Christmas” (though less positive readings of the assimilationist function of all this weren’t likely to come up in this venue; cf. Michael Rogen and the less judicious David Melnick).
Home about 10:30, made myself spend another hr. on email. Unsubscribing to a lot of things, but my current definition of “dealing with” entails reading or listening to whatever linked material made me keep the message in the first place, so an hr. doesn’t always get me through that many. Also checked in w/ Dan Clucas about his visit here in late May/early June - I’ll see him play at least once.
Lights out 1:30, later than usual.
May 18
Up 6.
Finished Gunnhild Øyehaug, Knots.
Read 50 or so p. of The Ten Thousand Leaves v. 1, trans. Ian Hideo Levy, and part of the introduction.
Read about 100 p. of Jarrett Earnest, What It Means to Write About Art (interviews w/ critics).
Listen to one side of an LP reissue of Amos Milburn sides (postwar R&B), and most of the 1st disc of a Curtis Mayfield collection.
Forced myself to work down through inbox, dealing with every email in order, for an hr. Have to do this until it’s manageable.
Listened to an interview w/ Jay Garfield, a Western expert/advocate on the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna. He’s the guy who co-wrote the controversial NYT/Stone piece on non-Western philosophy; given N.’s views on contradiction and the division of logical space (or G.’s interpetation thereof), it’s not surprising that he’s in Graham Priest’s cohort.
Went to St. Michael’s cemetery for their annual Scott Joplin tribute (not birthday); walked from Jackson Heights, about 40 min., but had a hard time finding a place to cross the BQE, so missed Edward Berlin’s talk. Enjoyed the band, the Uptown Ramblers, nonetheless — nice mix of Joplin, other period music inc. waltzes played straight and ragged, the clarinetist’s vocal turns on “You Tell Me Your Dream, I’ll Tell You Mine” and “If You Were the Only Girl in the World,” the pianist’s solo "Carolina Shout,” and the final graveside performance of “Maple Leaf Rag.” Met up w/ Jay Sherman-Godfrey, Paul Lukas, their partners and Renee and Mary, and another couple who brought a thermos of cocktails.
Got home about 6, rested for a while, did some of the reading above later in the evening.
Lights out 11.