djhazzzz

May 28, 2007.  The last time I listened to Coltrane's Africa/Brass album.  199 times, I've listened to the opening track of Pat Metheny's "A Map of the World", morning music (yeah, still, Tone, and it's still your fault. I've eliminated the album from my "most played" playlists.) April 1, 2007, the last time I listened to Arvo Part's Berliner Messe.  I used to fall asleep with that album playing every night in the late spring and summer of 1994.  So much to read, so much to listen to, and I'm feeling burdened by the limitations of my work.  What should be intellectual freedom is instead the burden of a book unwritten, of promise yet to be fulfilled, the sword of Damocles dangling ominously, yet described in triplicate and its severance a process well documented and funded by the Great State of California.  I've somehow come to associate my not-listening-to-jazz (in favour of a wave of indie/shoegazing over the last few years) with not-being-done-with-my-book and not-being-more-productive.  I'm not sure why, as I've been stupidly productive, of late, despite the two unwritten talks in the next 5 1/2 weeks scaring the living fuck out of me.  The bigger audience, 1st week in April, likely the less important talk than the smaller-but-everyone-is-someone audience, 3rd week in April talk.  Sigh.  Back to Mrs. Mandlestam, having dabbled in some of Osip's poetry, this evening, and another fine glass of the fine invention of Glenmorangie  aged in Burgundy casks.  Delightful.  

ooops

"Now I'm where I want to be and who I want to be and doing what I always said I would and yet I feel I haven't won at all."  (Eb - E - E - Eb - E - E).  Or something.  I've got a bad case of the "oh shit" blues.

But, in better words than mine, "It is clear that, crushed as it was, my 'self' had survived and needed only a short breathing space to come into its own again - it is particularly active in old age when a certain peace of mind has been achieved, but before the pain of past years has died away.  Later, the pain too no doubt goes and gives way to senile complacency, but I have not reached this stage yet.  Then it will be too late to write - pain acts like a leaven for both word and thought, quickening your sense of reality and the true logic of this world.  Without pain you cannot distinguish the creative element that builds and sustains life from its opposite - the forces of death and destruction which are always for some reason very seductive, seeming at first sight to be logically plausible, and perhaps even irresistible.  I feel my pain keenly now, and am going to write about myself alone." --Nadezhda Mandelstam.

hang my head

A Decemberists's's's's's's (silly proper noun plural rules) song, three easy chords (D A G, for those of you following along at home), but a difficult (for me, at least, as a rank beginner) strumming pattern, and all the more difficult to finger the chords, strum, and sing at the same time.  Not really my really my suit in keyboard playing, either, happy to block out the chord's base with my left and do any heavy lifting with my right, and still rhythmically challenged, as it were, when adding a vocal line on top.  My inner metronome, clearly, leaves much to be desired (although there is a certain pleasure in typing this and realizing the fingers of my left hand are essentially numb, as the callouses have largely faded from non-playing until the last few days - the resuming of which probably coincides with the resumption of placing words here), not to mention either/or/and playing and singing.  But something's got me thinking, and it ain't just the ache in my left knee as it protests this whole "running" thing of late (did I mention I refuse to look like my father? absolutely and utterly, and I'm actually willing to sweat to prevent it. I am a stubborn bitch when necessary, and this, apparently, was my cue.)  It ain't just the work, or whatever transition it is I seem to be struggling with.  Err, well, it is probably that last, though if I could place the to and the fro of the equation, it would make this all rather less, well, you know, wordy.  Ah, those three blogger tags below - scooters, vacation, fall.  Scooters? Who was smoking what when they decided that was an ideal exemplum gratis?  "Oh! I see - my post is about scooters! And those cute little Vespas we rode in Majorca on vacation last fall!  So I should tag this post 'scooters, vacation, fall'!"  What about "e.g., Hooters, liposuction, hell"?  Not a bad shorthand tag for Los Angeles, actually.  I miss England, I miss NY, I'm annoyed as fuck that he-who-stole-my-affect is coming to give a talk here the week after next, and terrified about how much work I have to do over the next few weeks. And, ultimately, I'm just a bit fucking moody.  Although Berkeley friend who claims she still loves me coulda shoulda woulda might've called, but didn't. And as it's all about me, well, no points, hon', for that. Although all of my friends seem to think that "Tuesday" passed.  Although the friend with whom that was invented seems to think it was "wednesday", not tuesday, but as all my journals from that period never arrived any place (or, didn't do so from my perspective) there's no way of verifying that claim one way or the other.  Dunno.  I want to put on my Sex in the City voice and ask if my approaches to relationships and friendships are somehow mutually exclusive, but, well, that would be cheap.  A few more sips of wine, some Nadezhda....Hope Against Hope, she writes....unto the very grave.

words

It makes me very, very happy that Thom Yorke uses "indefatigable" on Eraser, and that he pronounces it correctly. The mental geography of proximity - born in Oxford, that pretentious ginger twat was. He once spilled a full pint on me in the Bully Arms. Soaked in lager by greatness. Most exciting. Back to work. Geoffrey reminds me of all the reasons I don't like Gregory, but also all the reasons the Aeneid never really rocked my world. Although I should buy the new translation, regardless.