Jet-lagged. My sleep cycle will be out of whack for a week or more, but you don’t need a blow by blow. No reading, no book work, but managed to finish and send off my email interview for Rob McClennan’s blog. Main even of the day was Eddie’s “Summer Sweat” bbq/casual music-making evening in Claremont. The usual crowd of Shrimper/Rhino/townie folks - and a couple people I hadn’t seen in years. Good to hang out. Managed to make it through my set, pretty much what I played at Pete’s Candy Store (including the card trick before “Illusions,” which went over). Skipped “I Invented Rock ’n’ Roll,” “Control Freak,” and “Milkcrate,” swapped in “Untimely Beggar.” Home about 10, pretty beat - managed to write in poetry notebook before sacking out. Listened to Deserted again in the car, and played through a couple of Monk standard arrangements much earlier in the day.
jul 20
Up before 6. Already mostly (over)packed, grabbed a coffee around 7, came home and tied up loose ends (e.g. Aug. rent check). Spent some time saying goodbye to Bree. Called car at 10, read a little sheaf of poems by Joel Lewis and Gerald Burns I’d printed out at some point and slipped into my bag this morning. Lewis is, I think, a better poet than many more famous; has a narrow furrow (Jersey), I guess, but mines a great deal from it. Flight: Did crossword and the easy sudoko, screwed up the medium one. Read about 80 p. of Robert Bailey, Art & Language International: Conceptual Art between Art Worlds, which focuses on the UK group’s collaborations and conflicts w/ associates in NY, Aus/NZ, and Yugoslavia. The prose is lucid, but I have to say that some of the A&L group’s “analytic” philosophy, linguisitics etc. at this stage, while not window dressing, strikes me as less impressive than it did in my 20s, for instance a complete misapplication of Chomsky’s notion of an “ideal speaker-listener.” Once I’d had enough, read through A People’s Map: Stories From the East San Gabriel Valley, a newsprint publication by some independent journalists/photographers, w/ 2 page-spreads devoted to a bunch of ordinary/extraordinary folks from the era. I only found out about it b/c David Allen from the Daily Bulletin is in it. Listened to Anthony Coleman’s Jelly Roll Morton album, Freakish. There’s something about the strangeness and artfulness of this music that Coleman does capture, without entirely losing touch with its barrelhousing nature - but what it consists in, I don’t know how to say. 4 hrs. in Denver airport. Lunch, a porter, some email, frankly wasted some time online, finally made myself work on the chapter conclusion the last 90 min. before the connecting flight. Didn’t quite get the draft off to my correspondent before takeoff, and the paid internet on the flight was down. Did another sudoko (got it right this time). Listened to Mekons, Deserted. It sounds really good - David Trumfio on keys, bass, and mixing adds a lot. There’s a lot of Tom on this one. A postpunk grinder called “Mirage” is pretty great. But I couldn’t concentrate too well on the lyrics on the plane. Should hear it at least once more before seeing them Monday. Notebook poem. Landed 8:30, sent today’s writing while waiting for bag, my aunt and uncle Anthony & Beverly picked me up, at my dad’s house in Upland at about 9:30. Said hi, chatted w/ A&B and the caregiver for half an hr, went to bed.
jul 19
Up 5:30. Coffee around 7, a little Williams (Sokei, but I keep forgetting his name), poem. Read the first poem in Vincent Katz, Swimming Home. Came back, relearned “Each and Every One,” “Signed Curtain,” and “Model Worker” for Sat. Tried to figure out some details of “Our Hearts Do” on the piano - fooled w/ this off and on during the day. I feel like I had the bridge changes a while ago, but something doesn’t gel when I play it now. Spent some time with Bree, left for library at 2:30, had a bite on the way, worked on chapter ending 4-6, though I mainly went to return books and copy a couple p. from Edward Berlin. (Looks like I’m writing 1500 words about James P. Johnston’s “Charleston” for Sound American, and Willie “the Lion” Smith’s comments are relevant.) Headed downtown to meet Drew Boston for an adaption of In the Penal Colony at New York Theater Workshop - his idea (he’d gotten the tix for his birthday), but he got stuck at work, couldn’t even meet me after for a bite. Saw it anyway - performed entirely by 3 African-American men, undifferentiated for the first 1/3, which opened w/ them singing Sam Cooke’s “Chain Gang” and some athletic dance/mime (I mean: boxing, basketball), before settling into an impressionistic but recognizable adaptation of the Kafka story, and then back out into the framing material. In sum, an interpretation of black incarceration and, a bit more confusedly, spectacular mediation; I don’t think I understood a closing speech on punishment, but the director’s notes had a reading list of The Fire Next Time, Citizen, and related titles. All in all, not completely effective, but it doesn’t bother me that it somewhat literalized the source material as “political”; the more ambiguous prose version (which is also a Christian allegory) still exists, and this is one thing theater does. Waited for Drew at Vesalka until he texted that he wasn’t making it, ate at Blue Ribbon closer to F train instead. Hot and humid all day, pretty sick of the walking. Ended up managing to read all of the short edited volume Adorno’s Dream Notes I’d intended as a birthday present over the course of the day. Humanizes him (not that I’m sure he’d have liked that). The essay at the end (by a German critic, can’t recall name) is fine, but much less engaging. Pretty much collapsed upon getting home around 11; read a few more p. of Katz.
jul 18
[Touched on the horns before bed last night. I should probably call “Faith and Credit” done for now, pending running it by the players. (Discussed this w/ Cheryl and Jay at lunch last week - changes/reduction on the session are usual.) Lights out midnight.]
Up 6:30. Went to Cafe Benne, finished typing up notes on Culler, and wrote a 300 word graf toward the chapter conclusion. Came back at 9:30 or so, saw that I had missed an email from my neighbor about rescheduling our philosophy chat. May or may not happen later today. [It didn’t. Too bad.] Reread the Snead article we were going to talk about anyway. A lot of misc. packing/typing up of loose-ends. Helped Bree change our bedding. Took a few notes on Edward Berlin’s little Reflections and Research on Ragtime booklet, paged through Roholt’s Groove and realized there was nothing I needed, checked Kevin Young’s The Grey Album on a couple things, then returned it to the branch library around the corner. After Bree went out, I tested out the repaired Princeton, partly to make sure one of my tuning pedals worked, and ended up practicing some of by b-b-q set for Sat., which I’d been putting off. Watched, at Bree’s recommendation, a short sub-B-movie, a pro-business, anti-muckraking MGM programmer called Hometown Story (Joseph M. Newman, 1951). Highlight is Alan Hale Jr. explaining to a chef exactly how he want his porkchops cooked. Also Marilyn Monroe in one of her early tiny roles, though she makes an impression. “I always treat men with respect. That way they treat me with respect.” Got back to the Bert Williams book - which, though not engagingly organized, gets better as it goes along; I’m getting the sense of his ideas about the marginalization of West Indian/Carribean concerns in the “bichromatic” regime of U.S. race relations. Interesting account of Marcus Garvey as a trickster/showman. Took a box of junk that Bree had collected out for trash day - happy we’re actually getting crap out of the apt. Worked another 90 min. at E77, left before music started. Not much of note after 9. 2 p. in poetry notebook. Listened to music on shuffle in bed; I think I can remove the OCR of Ragtime from my phone. Lights out 11.
july 17
Slept very poorly, might have been up around 3, listened to podcasts. Had to actually get up at 6, cleaned up and got coffee quickly, left w/ Bree at 8. Her appointment, the follow-up her kidney stone procedure, went smoothly - we were out of Mt. Sinai by 10. She’s back to normal on this front. She went home, I stayed around Union Square and read Green at Think ’til noon - finished it later on the train back. Stopped in the Strand, bought nothing. Came home, hot and exhausted, rested but Bree needed my help repacking the kitchen A/C we have to return. Annoying but necessary; UPS picked in up later. Napped about 3:30 to almost 6. Played through a couple of the songs I bought last night. Called Dad. Went to E77, worked on “I Ain’t Got Nobody” section from 7-9 over 1 beer. Rounded off, I think it might be the end of the chapter - which I had previously conceived as going all the way up to “I Got Rhythm.” Requires changing (and shortening, which is good) the introductory section. Thunderstorms. Had a bite, bought baking soda for Bree. Home by 10, finished Tuten - terrific book, somewhat comparable to Barthelme but even more deadpan, with a lot of found material. He quotes Engels’s “Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State”:
“The making of contracts, however, requires people who can freely dispose of their persons, actions, and possessions, and meet each other on the basis of equal rights. It was precisely the creations of these ‘free’ and equal people that was one of the principal society.” (47-8 - goes on from there, on bourgeois marriage)