Up 7. Furniture assembly, w/ hired help about 9-12; moved stuff out of the way and broke down/took out packing material while they put it together. Made facebook event for June 8 show. Went to the corner to watch some of Queens Pride – saw a good synchronized cheerleading routine. Went to the corner Spent the later afternoon in Mt. Vernon for Brian Hartman’s 50th b-day; Jenny hired a brass band to surprise him at a neighborhood barbeque. Read (mainly on the train) another ¼ of Give Us the Ballot, listened to Olden Yolk, Living Theater (above average current indie-pop duo, sounds home recorded, didn’t really register the quality of their lyrics, but the female singer sounds a bit like Beth Kaplan from Salem 66, esp. on “Castor & Pollux”). Crashed hard when I got home around 9 – exhausted, overheated. Eventually read 20 or so p. of Jen Tynes, Hunter Monies. Good ear, elliptical but unpretentious in tone, otherwise not yet leaving a strong impression. In bed/lights out or good by 11:30.
June 1
Woke up too early again; heartburn mostly gone, but had a headache later on. Weight is down a bit. Took out recycling. Brought back a coffee, napped before I drank it. Started Ari Berman, Give Us the Ballot. Narrative history of the fortunes of voting rights after the 1965 act, and decades of mainly Southern attempts to subvert its provisions. Unconfusing, workmanlike prose, which is totally fine. Made it to about p. 80 over the course of the day. Home tasks. Went out after 4, got another coffee at Devocion in downtown Brooklyn (don’t know what else to call the part of town around Hoyt-Schermerhorn), wrote some bits of the race section of the preface. Swiss-cheese, but got something down (after skipping 2 days; must do better in June). No wi-fi, which probably helped. Had time to kill between the cafe closing and the show I was going to: Looked in a Goodwill and found an academic book called Byron and Greek Love (i.e., homosocio/sexuality). Might not be involved w/ questions of form, but might be interesting in light of the relationship of “Byronic” rhyme to Tin Pan Alley craft (w/ its connotations of queerness and “wit,” esp. in Larry Hart). Skimmed, standing there, poems by Peter Gizzi and Thomas Sayers Ellis in a Tin House anthology - reminded me that I’m a little surprise Ellis’ project Heroes Are Gang Leaders is playing at the Vision Festival. I’m not going that night.
Sat on a bench and read Craig Watson, Motes, entire. (Not a feat - 2 poems, each a title and 1-3 lines, per page [top + bottom]; if you printed 6/page, the book would be about 11 pages.) Afterword by Grenier, an obvious inspiration. Also early Coolidge, Adam Saroyan, & so on. Could imagining setting these as very short art songs (could project the titles).
Henry Flynt at Issue Project Room. Well-attended. Amplified violin over loudish monochordal backing tracks, one Velvets/Krautrocky (though one of the main melody lines sounded like “Norwegian Wood”) the second (after a long intermission) drony. Had some sheet music up there, so I don’t think it was entirely “modal improvisation,” though those were elements. There’s an element of hokum to this whole crowd - Young, T. Conrad (who owned up to it more) - which is fine, but at this level of presentation/execution, hearing this kind of work isn’t a high priority.
Listened to Dave Douglas/Uri Caine/Andrew Cyrille Devotion on train. Crisp - the more angular heads and clustery harmonic idioms stand out, though there are also extremely consonant passages. Douglas is the main composer, but he doesn’t play until the 2nd track, and Caine is at least as out-front overall. He goes into a cracked stride mode on “Rose and Thorn” (dedicated to Mary Lou Williams), w/ period woodblocks from Cyrille. Who’s very together, but subtle and economical - nothing to prove. Good record.
Home not long after 10. Took an aspirin. Read a bit more Berman, lights out 11.
May 2019 reading
Steven Shapiro, Karl Marx’s Capital
Alain Robbe-Grillet, Topology of a Phantom City
Gunnhild Øyehaug, Knots, trans. Kari Dickson
Man’Yoshu (Anthology of the Ten Thousand Leaves) v. 1, trans Ian Hideo Levy
Jarrett Earnest, What It Means to Write About Art: Interviews with Art Critics
Michael Rogin, Blackface, White Noise
Alain Robbe-Grillet, Project for a Revolution in New York
Sara Nicholson, What the Lyric Is
Roberto Bolaño, Antwerp.
May 31
Up a little before 6 - felt more rested than the last few days, but had a bout of heartburn. Had coffee and listened to a podcast about reparations. Bree was out after 8. Managed to record and mix by track by 11. Used a phone app called Spire that Simon Joyner told me about. Did about 3 vocal/guitar takes, once I found a good place for the mic. Found that I hadn’t tuned to the keyboard, but that our “out-of-tune” piano, a half-step up in G minor, was close enough. Started fooling around w/ a more determinate part, finally decided to do 2 passes, floating in/out of time a bit. Mostly high-register ringing stuff, added more solid chord on one take near the end. Not an “arrangement,” but effective enough hard-panned. Harmonized w/ last chorus and tag, to “go” somewhere at the end — think it works. Mixed in the app (though you can export individual tracks), didn’t mess w/ add’l effect. Basically, it sounds like a 4-track recording from 1991. Emailed myself the file (not in the best format possible - a lot of data transfer involved), checked it on other headphones, dropboxed it to Luigi in Italy.
Rested for a while after that, listened to a duo set of Angelica Sanchez w/ Sam Newsome, ending w/ Monk’s “Raise Four”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VybhoOuZ-cI. Hot water was out, and then the water was off while it was being fixed; couldn’t shower or do laundry. Read the rest of Nicholson. Better when it gets past pointing out lyric conventions. Sent the Secret Stars cover to Jodi (who wrote it); old, email address, who knows if I’ll hear back. Talked to my dad; took energy. Finally showered.
Left at 7, to hear Dan Clucas (and NY musicians he’s fallen in with) William Parker’s music, some unrecorded, at Michiko, w/ Charlie Waters woodwinds; Matt Lavelle, trumpet, alto and bass clarinets; Hilliard Greene, double bass; Jack DeSalvo, guitar; Tom Cabrera, drums. Other 2 horn players have worked w/ Parker, and know his ‘book.’ Two uptempo numbers, “Mayor of Punkville,” and “I Believe” (in 3) were outstanding - the latter just sounds like a classic hard bop head. Ballads, arranged kind of chorally between the 3 horns and bass, were harder to distinguish on first hearing — a lot of donuts and fermatas - but the solos were good. Didn’t hang out long, ate a salad and read Christgau’s piece on his friend Marshall Berman on my phone.
Read Antwerp on the train (both ways) - it’s 60 p. I’ve read it before but it didn’t stick. It’s not so strange coming off some Robbe-Grillet — whether it’s a new novel, and anti-novel, or something else, it’s more in that line than later Bolaño.
Physically out of sorts all day, off and on. Lights out 11 - went to sleep to Crispell/Dresser/Hemingway playing Braxton.
May 30
Woke up before 5. Listened to the rest of Graham Priest interview and some Debussy. Tried to close a bunch of tabs, documents, etc. - the desktop itself is a to-do list. Got back to bed 7-10, felt a lot better. Read a chunk of Robbe-Grillet at coffee. Spend most of the day on home tasks - tidying my office and so forth. Listened to/half watched a set by Fay Victor, Jamie Branch, etc. from last year’s Vision Festival. Bought several things I’d bookmarked on Bandcamp, notably the new Verlaines album (and one other I didn’t have), and a new Dave Douglas/Andrew Cyrille CD/dl. While Bree was out, prepped to record that Secret Stars song. Got out the baritone gtr (which was hard to tune to my keyboard for some reason), set up the amp - physically difficult w/ the unassembled bookshelf boxes &c. - played a bit, found a key, transcribed the lyrics, rehearsed the song. Didn’t actually push record or anything before Bree got back. Obviously, this is no way to have a “studio.”
Went out in heavy rain at 6 to hear Fay Victor (v), Darius Jones (alto), and Sean Conley (double bass) do 2 sets of Ornette tunes at 55 Bar, between the Duplex and the Stonewall. Some lyrics (existing ones to “Lonely Woman,” new ones to “Eventually”), some scat, broadly defined, some extended vocal technique. Approach didn’t seem fully harmolodic, but the lack of a chordal instrument, as in O.’s quartets helped in not get too change-y. It was good, but Sam Newsom sat in for a couple of tunes each set, and frankly raised the level; everyone stepped up their game after an amazing solo on “Blues Connotation.” Low-key gig - 2 drinks and a tip bucket, seemed mostly like regulars of the scene, if not the bar. A very New Yawk woman in her 60s (70s) at a table near me complimented the coat I got in Ontario. “I like a good coat…and you wear it well.” Someone else gave me a Vision Festival schedule, and a younger woman commented on my Robbe-Grillet book. Which I finished over pizza after the sets. Odd that it happened to be set in Greenwich Village, of which I was in the heart. I don’t have much to say about it - admire the style and technique, not the politics or implied morality. (That there isn’t one is b.s.). Could have gone to see someone else at Small’s not far away at 10:30, but it seemed wiser to come home. Lights out midnight.