It might be useful to see where the day is going. How many academics' summers have simply faded away without anything to show for themselves?
8-9: Got up, showered, coffee. Read a few pages of Norwegian Wood. A little piano. Kenko puzzle. Went to Beth's house to feed chickens and cat.
9-10: Re-joined the gym. Meditation. Made breakfast; emptied and loaded dishwasher, ran it,
10-11: Writing. Wrote 420 words on an article!
11-12: Put a load of laundry in. Played piano.
12-14: Laundry in the drier. Gym. Second shower! Sorted socks and put clothes away. Blogging.
14-15:30: Reading at coffee shop. Finished Norwegian Wood.
4:30 : Picked up vegetables at store; other shopping.
19-20: Dinner. Watched a few movies.
Observations:
Gym takes two hours.
10 is relatively late to start work, but I only needed an hour.
Monday, June 24, 2019
Thursday, June 20, 2019
Serial Selves in the Suites
During my vacation I sang at Carnegie Hall (as a part of the choir to which I belong, which joined other choirs to form a large singing group, with representation from Hungary, Germany, and Switzerland), and visited my brother in DC. My partner got a debilitating joint and muscle pain disorder which made it difficult for her to walk, but we made it to many museums, Arlington cemetery to her grandfather's graven, and home on Tuesday. Yesterday was devoted to taking her to doctor appointments, etc...
Today I returned massive numbers of library books. I will have to re-check some out, but that's ok. I had to take three trips from my office to the library and pay $20 in fines, so it was clearly out of hand. I couldn't renew them in time on my vacation so I guess I will consider that an added cost of the vacation.
[How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, as the joke says. In my case, it was join a choir that would eventually get invited there. We had to pay a registration fee individually to sing, so the singers from around the world were essentially subsidizing the concert itself. It is a kind of pay-to-play scheme that takes away some of the bragging rights, I guess. Maybe I will just leave that part out of it. I also had to fly to NY, stay in a hotel, and fly my partner there and buy here a ticket to the concert. But that was our vacation this year so it was worth it.]
Also, during my vacation, I figured out what would be the missing piece in my book of Lorca Lectures: "Serial Selves in Lorca's Suites." I deliberately didn't bring a computer on the trip, but I had a notebook and pen, and that's all I needed to sketch it out, even without a copy of the Suites on hand. I have poems I can analyze like this one. I will translate it into French in case you don't know Spanish:
Today I returned massive numbers of library books. I will have to re-check some out, but that's ok. I had to take three trips from my office to the library and pay $20 in fines, so it was clearly out of hand. I couldn't renew them in time on my vacation so I guess I will consider that an added cost of the vacation.
[How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, as the joke says. In my case, it was join a choir that would eventually get invited there. We had to pay a registration fee individually to sing, so the singers from around the world were essentially subsidizing the concert itself. It is a kind of pay-to-play scheme that takes away some of the bragging rights, I guess. Maybe I will just leave that part out of it. I also had to fly to NY, stay in a hotel, and fly my partner there and buy here a ticket to the concert. But that was our vacation this year so it was worth it.]
Also, during my vacation, I figured out what would be the missing piece in my book of Lorca Lectures: "Serial Selves in Lorca's Suites." I deliberately didn't bring a computer on the trip, but I had a notebook and pen, and that's all I needed to sketch it out, even without a copy of the Suites on hand. I have poems I can analyze like this one. I will translate it into French in case you don't know Spanish:
Tú tú tú tú
yo yo yo yo
¿Quién? . . .
¡ni tú
ni yo!
Toi toi toi toi
moi moi moi moi
Qui?
Ni toi
ni moi
Thursday, June 6, 2019
Audition
My daughter is visiting from Chicago. She had an audition for the Kansas City Symphony on Monday. It is a highly codified process. You play the exposition to the first movement of the Haydn trumpet Concerto, then orchestral excerpts from Pictures at an Exposition, Petrushka... She didn't make it past the first round but it is her first audition with an orchestra.
She is 5' tall and weighs 105 lbs and can bench press 90 and do 10 pull-ups. She also does rock climbing in the gym.
She likes reading and listening to podcasts about top performers in sports. What she is trying to get into is a competitive profession with 20 jobs opening a year with many trumpet players trying for them. Really, though, the competition is not the hundreds of players auditioning, but the dozens that really have a chance at them. You audition behind a curtain playing the same excerpts as everyone else, so it as close to a merit-base system as exists. She is extremely analytical about her strengths and weaknesses. I wonder where she gets that from?
We watched a cooking documentary on Netflix called SALT FAT ACID HEAT that was pretty good. We watched part of the NBA finals but got bored and so we finished the last episode of the documentary.
***
Tomorrow I am going to New York. My local choir in Lawrence is part of a larger group of choirs singing in Carnegie Hall on Sunday. Then we will visit my brother in DC. I won't be blogging from now until mid June or so.
***
I read a short novel Las batallas en el desierto by the Mexican poet (and I guess novelist) José Emilio Pacheco. A kid in post WW-II Mexico City falls in love with the mother of a classmate (Jim) who is the mistress of some politician. His family treats this perfectly normal infatuation, one that every heterosexually inclined adolescent boy has had for an older woman, as some great sin and psychiatric disorder. He has to confess to a priest AND go to a shrink! The family takes him out of school, and later he finds out that the mother of his friend killed herself, but doesn't quite believe it. He end by saying that Mariana (his love) would be 80 years old now.
***
I found this notebook where I write down every book I read. For some reason I haven't been doing it since last December, so I made note there of the Pacheco book and resumed my record of my readings. I started in 2017 and have read 161 books, but that isn't counting the times I have forgotten to keep track.
She is 5' tall and weighs 105 lbs and can bench press 90 and do 10 pull-ups. She also does rock climbing in the gym.
She likes reading and listening to podcasts about top performers in sports. What she is trying to get into is a competitive profession with 20 jobs opening a year with many trumpet players trying for them. Really, though, the competition is not the hundreds of players auditioning, but the dozens that really have a chance at them. You audition behind a curtain playing the same excerpts as everyone else, so it as close to a merit-base system as exists. She is extremely analytical about her strengths and weaknesses. I wonder where she gets that from?
We watched a cooking documentary on Netflix called SALT FAT ACID HEAT that was pretty good. We watched part of the NBA finals but got bored and so we finished the last episode of the documentary.
***
Tomorrow I am going to New York. My local choir in Lawrence is part of a larger group of choirs singing in Carnegie Hall on Sunday. Then we will visit my brother in DC. I won't be blogging from now until mid June or so.
***
I read a short novel Las batallas en el desierto by the Mexican poet (and I guess novelist) José Emilio Pacheco. A kid in post WW-II Mexico City falls in love with the mother of a classmate (Jim) who is the mistress of some politician. His family treats this perfectly normal infatuation, one that every heterosexually inclined adolescent boy has had for an older woman, as some great sin and psychiatric disorder. He has to confess to a priest AND go to a shrink! The family takes him out of school, and later he finds out that the mother of his friend killed herself, but doesn't quite believe it. He end by saying that Mariana (his love) would be 80 years old now.
***
I found this notebook where I write down every book I read. For some reason I haven't been doing it since last December, so I made note there of the Pacheco book and resumed my record of my readings. I started in 2017 and have read 161 books, but that isn't counting the times I have forgotten to keep track.
Wednesday, June 5, 2019
The Trick
The trick of being good is to set your own internal standard and measure yourself against that. You can set that far higher than the standard of your field. If you try to meet an external standard, then you will be aiming fairly low. For example, an article could be publishable, in the sense that someone might publish it, but it might not be up to your own standard. Someone could still reject your article, but it is unlikely you will get mostly rejections if you are meeting your own, high, self-imposed standard.
My minimum is to have something well written, that makes an intelligent, non-trivial point, that engages with a genuine critical problem of interest at least to me. I don't allow myself to use sign-posting.
This does not mean that what I write will be flawless.
My minimum is to have something well written, that makes an intelligent, non-trivial point, that engages with a genuine critical problem of interest at least to me. I don't allow myself to use sign-posting.
This does not mean that what I write will be flawless.
Crisp Immediacy
In this dream there was someone using words and phrases of crisp directness, naming things as they really are rather than being abstract or roundabout. I can't remember any of the language itself, but I was struck by its unstuffy, outdoor feel. It was not obscene or taboo language, but we felt that a barrier had been broken down. They were ordinary English words, but the effect was extraordinary.
I came up with the phrase "crisp immediacy" after I was awake, just to be able to remember the dream. But this phrase doesn't really convey the concreteness of the language.
I came up with the phrase "crisp immediacy" after I was awake, just to be able to remember the dream. But this phrase doesn't really convey the concreteness of the language.
Saturday, June 1, 2019
Chords
Bemsha Swing has a simple structure. A single phrase that repeats four times (the third time in another key), in a shortened AABA form. It is in C. Yet it has 10 separate chords, including 6 of the 12 dominant-seven chords. Autumn Leaves has about 9 or 10 ten chords too, including the 7 chords related to its key, E minor. I Got rhythm has numerous chords as well, and is in B flat. So overall, I can play just about any chord, theoretically, just by learning these three songs, plus a few of my own in D flat and other odd keys. Let's say there are 48 basic chords (major, minor, dominant 7, and half-diminished). It sounds like a lot, but I feel the need to know every note on the piano in relation to every key.
Surprise
Lorca's main impact on Flamenco before the late 1970s is attributed to a work that
1) is not by Lorca, in the conventional sense, and
2) has nothing at all to do with flamenco.
I think that is what I love about scholarship. Finding something anomalous and then having to explain it. Of course, once you investigate it, it makes perfect sense. The popularity of the folk songs that Lorca collected, arranged, and recorded persists to this day. They are not flamenco music in their origins, and Lorca is not the composer or author of the verbal texts. But you can simply make them "aflamencadas" by singing them in that style. They are folkloric; they have that existential connection to Lorca; you don't have to write new tunes for them, or approach the dense symbolism of Lorca's own poetry. This is Apocryphal Lorca all over again and I'm loving it.
1) is not by Lorca, in the conventional sense, and
2) has nothing at all to do with flamenco.
I think that is what I love about scholarship. Finding something anomalous and then having to explain it. Of course, once you investigate it, it makes perfect sense. The popularity of the folk songs that Lorca collected, arranged, and recorded persists to this day. They are not flamenco music in their origins, and Lorca is not the composer or author of the verbal texts. But you can simply make them "aflamencadas" by singing them in that style. They are folkloric; they have that existential connection to Lorca; you don't have to write new tunes for them, or approach the dense symbolism of Lorca's own poetry. This is Apocryphal Lorca all over again and I'm loving it.
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