today

I ran a mile race in 9:50. I could have gone faster. Still have a lot of energy. Brought the chicken feed in; after breakfast I will get rid of some invasive honeysuckles. Reading Norwegian Wood again. I couldn't remember anything at all, except that it was a tragic love story narrated by a man who never quite gets together with the main female character.

One of my songs is really coming together, not merely as a song, but as something that can be played with an infectious rhythm. I am practicing playing my right hand louder than my left and getting exact dynamics and phrasing.

Your goodbyes
left me with so much more to say
but your eyes
told me that you'd be back to play...

from your kiss
I knew that you'd really like to stay--
You'd come again and spend the night another day

Hardware

I go to the hardware store to play their piano. They have moved it to the other side of the door and it will not play anymore: the keys stick with the humidity extreme humidity we've had in the last week and will not come up again. Leaving a piano outside is not good. Now there are two non-functioning pianos that I used to play. I decide I will go to the KU gym this afternoon instead of the city one across town.

I moved my furniture to have the carpet cleaned and am putting it back in different configurations. I will spend a few nights away from the apartment to get a fresh perspective on things.

Running

I go to the "Rock Chalk" gym on the West side of town. It is a ten minute drive, so I spend twenty minutes driving in order to run inside for 33 and a half minutes. I do a 5K around a 1/8 mile track, then cool down by walking another half mile. My fastest mile this month is 9:56, so my 5K mile times are just barely slower than that. I'm running in an official 1 mile run on Sunday.

Piano

I went to the music department yesterday. A harsh sounding electric piano in a practice room. Unsatisfied, I went to the student union. The piano there is in a corner and in bad shape. I don't last lonsg. Some keys don't work, and it sounds as though the sustain pedal were always on. Today, I go back to the music dept. There is a yamaha upright that sounds ok, though not the exact sound I like. Some of my songs sound ok on it. I need a sweet sound, not too bright.

facebook friends

Facebook suggests that I become friends with my former therapist, with a lawyer for my university, with a friend of my girlfriend's, with a young woman I have taken voice lessons from, and with my own daughter.

Bass (ii)

I realize that bass lines use the root and the fifth quite a bit. So all of sudden, without having played very much bass, I start hearing those lines with a bit more clarity, just by intending to play it. And, what should have been obvious: the piano doesn't have to play the root and the fifth very much, because the bass has that part covered, so the piano concentrates on the third and the seventh.

***

A voice in my head says: your songs rely on easy harmonic and rhythmic tricks, and they all sound similar to one another. I answer this voice by saying, well, I am a hobbyist, but honestly I don't feel my songs are inferior to those of anyone, except Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, Richard Rodgers, and about three dozen other songwriters.

Torment

I'm hearing a song I wrote play through my head over and over for hours as I lie awake at night. I try to construct a walking bass line in my head for it but I can't hear the pitches in my head for this line well enough.

***

I think of the first real book I read, Of Human Bondage. I remember three things: Philip is an artist, but mediocre. The book seemed to be saying that you either have it or you don't, and he doesn't. Very depressing. Secondly, a scene in which he inadvertently declares his love for an older woman, who then dismisses him. I went back to re-read this scene more recently, and it was not as sexually suggestive as I thought it was when I was 11. Thirdly,there is no God. He prays as a kid for God to cure his club foot, and nothing happens.

Bass

Inexplicably, I've decide to play bass. Bought an electric on line and the amp will come in a few days. I have to trust myself in these things, because I am rarely wrong.

Incoherent

Is there a category more incoherent than "the irrational" (lo irracional)? That neutered article, the, or lo, wants to take into its purview everything that is not rational, but this depends on a previous definition of what rationality is.

Berm

Someone used the word "berm" and I asked what it meant. Then I realized that someone with a relatively large vocabulary (like me) is someone who learns new words every week, compensating for other words lost every week to oblivion.