Improv

 I have a technique for improv which is to isolate one phrase and just improvise the hell out of it. So, I would be repeating four measures over and over and developing as many ideas as possible. Obviously I didn't invent this idea. I do it, say, over the first four measures of the bridge to "Body and Soul." Or I play the first melodic of "Bemsha Swing," and then improvise in the space between that ending of the melody and the second phrase: essentially one measure.  

A few things will happen:

Settling down into a pattern, with some definite preferences for what I want to play.  

Getting bored with the pattern, trying to find new ideas. 

Those new ideas form new patterns. 

I can play two short phrases, one long one, a long and then a short, a short and then a long. I can play mostly diatonic notes, or go way into chromaticism. Some things sound too corny for me, like too many Gershwinesque minor thirds. 

I do while watching Netflix on the computer; then interesting associations form between the two parts of the brain. I can play, and then the episode of something I have watched comes into my memory.  

Intersectionality

 Intersectionality is actually a cool concept. It shouldn't be the social media version of it, in which you tally up different segments of identity in order to see how many ways you are oppressed. I am thinking of it as intersection lines, or encrucijadas culturales. Hence my course on intersectional Lorca. 

***

The original context, simplifying greatly: suppose a company hires white men to be executives, black men to be workers, and white women to be staff. They don't hire black women at all. But they aren't discriminating against black (since they hire black men) or against women (since they hire white women). We only see this as discrimination if we hold two ideas in our head at once, or the intersection between two kinds of discrimination. 

Dilemma: my argument is either wrong or dumb

 From one perspective, arguing that Bodas de Sangre is not a fictionalization of the "Crimen de Almería" is wrong. That, uncontroversially, is Lorca's source. 

From the opposite perspective, the argument is dumb because everyone knows that it is a work of fiction. 

But, I argue, my argument is valid because there is some theoretical point about fictionality itself. Identifying the real life source of something seems explanatory, but it is really not. 

Dream of people moving in

 A large family or group of Mexicans were moving in to an apartment where I live. Some people I was with (?) started to help them unload their truck, which was a yellow school bus. I started to carry things in too, unasked. They didn't acknowledge or protest our assistance, and I felt shy about speaking with them. One had two tambourines mounted on a stick of some kind. Their apartment looked different from mine; it was several all put together with some kind of inner courtyard with a fire pit or chimney. 

The emotions were subdued here. I felt no particular way toward the Mexicans, just seeing that helping someone was the most obvious thing to do.  

Dream of escaped zoo animals

 I was somewhere outside; across the river, I started to notice animals that should not be there, a baby elephant; rhinos charging; then lions eating other animals.  I tried to alert the people I was with but I couldn't make myself be heard. 

Is Lorca a writer of fiction

 Here's another one I will write.  It is called something like: Is Lorca a Writer of Fiction? The idea is really rather simple. The search for real-life models for Lorquian characters leads to a naive epistemological view. His plays and poems are fictional works. Paquita la Coja is not the Bride of Bodas de Sangre. 

The refusal to see Lorca as a writer has significant consequences. 

I like the brutal directness of titles like this. Are Lorca's works, works of fiction? I wrote a poem about this once. 

 

Maugham

 Philip is attracted to women he finds ... unattractive or ugly. Love arises when he doesn't actually like person in question, or is treated badly. He dumps one ugly but nice woman when the woman he really loves comes back to him, pregnant with another man's baby. She doesn't love him, but needs his help. He is ecstatic. He first falls in love with him because she is rude to him and he wants to get back at her, even though her skin has a weird greenish twinge and she is anemic. 

Maugham can't really write the novel as a gay novel at this period of time. The character is not the author, but clearly the emotion of love for someone who is not returning it, and in fact is not even likable, has to be an authentic emotion. Love arises not in spite of the lack of reciprocity and attractiveness but because of these factors.