konvolut m

kspc 10-noon

ab baars trio + roswell rudd -- boo and milly's marching band
mavis rivers -- massachusets
don pullen/beaver harris -- well-kept secret
nat king cole -- d-day
the magic band -- when it blows its stacks
marion brown quartet -- exhibition
mabel mercer -- ivory tower
billy strayhorn -- strange feeling
mildred bailey -- the weekend of a private secretary
billy may -- road to hong kong
nara laeo -- chega de saudade
joao gilberto -- bim-bom
eric dolphy -- 245
lita roza -- no moon at all
george russell -- fellow delegates
dizzy gillespie -- you stole my wife, you horse thief
derek bailey/tied & tickled trio -- tickled 3
art hodes -- cake walkin' babies back home
irene kral/junior mance trio -- no more
george auric -- goodbye, new york!
etta jones -- (track?)
james p. johnson -- (track?)

Dreamt I was giving a talk at an aesthetics conference held in a cross between the Magic Castle and a whorehouse, somehow upstairs from my family's Thanksgiving dinner. The paper was on Roger Scruton, I hadn't written it and was hoping to do so during the other talks, but I had to keep going downstairs, during dinner. The only other thing I remember is that my presentation involved a slide of a painting by a contemporary German artist (someone like Richter or Polke -- he had a name in the dream). The painting was of a Gateway-box-looking cow in a field, with a blurry red swastika painted on its side.

today -- trying to set up practice, dry-cleaner's, p.o. (put postage on cds for cory but didn't wait in the day-before-Thanksgiving line), amoeba, karma coffeehouse (I don't know about this place -- 2 guys with acoustic guitars and no clue rehearsing a terrible folk-pop song over and freaking over, ch. 'you never shed a tear,' fat guy working, looks punk but plays live Fleetwood Mac), gym

poss song title: lovers on the radio

The appearance/reality distinction (in Platonist or Zen sense -- 'maya' -- for example) is a metaphysical version of the more (slightly?) concrete distinction in everyday moral judgement between 'what matters' in life and what doesn't. This is what deep/shallow metaphors, and some inner/outer tropes (beauty -- what you are v. how you look) try to capture. Analogy: relation of metaphysical skepticism to everyday questions about knowledge/justification (the Austin/Cavell view).

didn't know there were Andy Warhol stamps

fri nite, jason collett (awful)/stars (pretty great)/broken social scene (seemed ok, had to leave early) w/ shannon at henry fonda; animal charm (video detourners, moved here from chicago) at red cat, midnight...ran into andrew maxwell and crowd.

sat missed cleo 5 to 7 at laemmle's (one of those a.m. screening series I never quite get it together for); had to complain again about upstairs' neighbors music; planned to go to beyond baroque reading (oppen tribute), but had to call tyler around 8 p.m. to go over writing sample; his suggested changes more minor than expected -- heartening

sun taken up entirely by dad's birthday; mission inn in riverside (too damn much foot, but some pretty good smoked seafood), desert at grandmother's; exhausted all day

(songs in progress)

meat thermometer (not a double-entedre; it's actually about a meat thermometer)
when the one you want is not the one you have (yeah, overtly smiths-derived title)
i don't know you anymore (this one's pretty much done -- exactly two chords, sounds like the primitives)
'one song' (really straight pop, I don't think this one's making it)
love-starved (good title, too wordy at present -- 'assuage' is pretty bad) disaster area (actually, this is finished too, it's kinda alpha-Goatsy in content, but probably too confusing -- the kind of song that needs to be run up the flag live a few times)

Today: Zankou, gym, groceries. Read a little bit about pronoun anaphora. No writing. Could have gone to a preview of the new Errol Morris doc on Robt. Macnamara, but it'll be around.

Yesterday -- managed to get to UCLA early, spent all day (really, about 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., an actual workday) preparing academic job applications -- dull stuff like xeroxing materials and copy-and-pasting 13 almost identical cover-letters. Also figured out which jobs w/ later deadlines I want to apply to -- more copies next week. Stench of futility hangs over the entire enterprise. Had various conversations over the course of the day w/ fellow grad-students (one actually said, of speaking to me, "I'm discharging an obligation." My academic relationships are so warm.)

Went to Lasky Barn near Hwd Bowl (site of -- the barn, not the Bowl -- my first sort-of-date w/ Bree, almost exactly 6 years ago -- actually, it must have been Dec., b/c Will Baum and I met her outside LACMA the week after Thanksgiving) for a screening of -What's The Matter With Helen-, 1971, Curtis Harrington dir. (and present for questions). Shelley Winters, Debbie Reynolds (the latter, weirdly, looking as though she could still be in her early 30s), amazing cameo by Agnes Moorehead late in the film as an Aimee Semple Macpherson type -- there's one shot where she glares at Shelley Winters' character so witheringly, it's profound and campy all at once. (She's great, also, in a hyper-Oedipal episode of -Suspense- I heard recently.) Flick very much in mode of -What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?-, same screenwriter. There's more memorabilia in the barn than there was a few years ago -- suits of armor, old Bowl programs, etc. -- and the expected musty filmbuff crowd. Heard one very tanned aging queen actually saying, "...and I worked for a while at the Lido de Paree...," and there was this hunky kid of obviously limited intelligence (or at least expressive skills), asking interminable questions during the Q & A that amounted to: "How long was the shooting schedule?" He looked like the kind of gay porn star you imagine Dennis Cooper imagining his characters disemboweling. Harrington was genial -- said Winters used to play Puccini on a portable phonograph on the set, ostensibly to 'enter the mood,' but really to keep Debbie Reynolds on edge! (Also complained about her lighting.) I asked a question about David Raskin's score -- I had forgotten he'd also done -Night Tide.- Said Raskin made sure that the orchestrations for the big band in the shipboard scene was authentically period. Actually, the tango therein was an original composition -- the film had a limited budget, so the only old songs they could afford rights to were "Goody Goody" (used repeatedly), "Did You Ever See A Dream Walking?" and a very brief snatch of "Bye Bye Blackbird."

Skipped gym today, sunday, and friday. went wed. and thurs -- about 370 cals each, walking, listening to bob & ray tapes, grinning like an idiot, and (most days) 3 sets of 12 abdominal crunches (w/weight resistance). No visible effect -- poor eating habits right now, can't get myself even to cook the endive in my fridge.

Did manage to do a good bit of work on Friday, Sat. eve and Sunday morning. Today was useless -- except for 2 150 words Weekly picks, accomplished nothing (though tidied apartment a little, and made clear list of what has to be done). Saw 'In The Cut' for no good reason, fairly bland, and what's the significance of the slight blurring at one edge of the screen, as if part of the picture plane was out of focus (I just answered my own question). Bad use of poetry as portent.

Sunday, good reading by Jordan Davis, Sarah Manguso (whom I didn't know before -- I like her book) and Chris Edgar. Then Shrimper show at 51 Buckingham w/ Joy and Lou Barlow solo. Gave out some copies of 'Set of Pipes,' which arrived recently from Dark Beloved Cloud.

Going to listen to radiospirits, write a couple of emails, and get up at 6 a.m.. Tired all day, to be honest. Noting that previous entry was Tuesday, I find that I cannot recall what on earth I did on Wed. or Thurs.

Dreamed that Mira O'Brien knit me a tie.

your head -- no, your brain --
no, your mind is a rock
polisher, what's in there tumbling
round, ever smoother, ever
rounder, becoming frictionless.
The roundest soon will spin
out onto the waxed lane
of the page. On the surface
of a sphere, no point can be told
from any other by its surroundings --
the topography is everywhere
the same, and the core is inacessable.
Every sphere fits perfectly
into every other, so long as their centers
are aligned. Mirror-ball.

It's November 2nd, I'm sitting in Kristin Thompson's office listening to the Tinklers ("Don't Put Your Finger In The Fan") and writing this for eventual transfer to the Jenny Toomey tour diary. Played here in Philly last night -- really poor attendance (an early all-ages show at The Fire, which is a weird section of town that seems more appropriate to gnarly punk than whatever we and Michael Z. are), and we played kinda badly. "Clambed" would be the operative critical term. But one fellow really liked it, made us both sign an Antidote poster, and then told me about the saint buried (or encased in wax, it wasn't clear) nearby. Learned another of MZ's songs, "Experimental Film," and added some gtr bits. All the non-show stuff was great -- the club was showing films on the side of the next building over, so we ordered mole enchiladas from next door (this has been an unusually strong tour, eating-wise) and saw large chunks of "Psycho" and "Night Of The Living Dead," and, as we are leaving, the silent version of "Phantom of the Opera," complete w/ the early Technicolor bits. (And on the $12 bus from NYC Chinatown to the Philly analogue, we were shown "Shanghai Noon," which seemed fairly inventive for a formulaic buddy movie. So, a very cinematic day. Also read a good bit of Laura Kipnis' -Against Love- on said bus, on which I was badly crowded by a not especially pleasant woman because I didn't make the bus in time to sit w/ Jean, who is very compact.) Also, finally met Jenny's squeeze Brian, who seems like a fine fellow, and her friend Dorothy, but didn't get to talk to her. After a drink at the Royal, I acted as late-nite cheesesteak enabler, enticing J & Brian down to Pat's, where Jenny made a bad faux pas by grabbing someone else's order of cheese fries before hers were up! (Misunderstanding about how the window system worked.) The injured customer was nice about it, the counterman was not -- threw her change at her. According to Kristin, Gino's across the street (huge Philly rivalry) has a big anti-Mumia thing, I guess the cop that he either shot or didn't was a local and a regular. Also met Pierce & Melissa, a lawyer and law-library archivist respectively, very nice friends of MZ. Really nice polyester disco shirt on Pierce. As for this a.m., went down to the Italian Market, had my kinda-usual breakfast-when-I'm-in-Philly of pepper shooters, octopus salad, and a roll. Bought a Patricia Highsmith novel and a Mary McCarthy memoir at the used bookstore that's oddly placed between pork stores on the same street. It's not a great testimonial that everything other than the show last night seems to be more interesting than the actual rock, but that happens sometimes. We'll be really good in NYC tomorrow, on the inverse of the 'good-rehearsal-bad-show' principle. The Tinkers' version of "Hokey Pokey" is on now, good time to stop.