konvolut m

My mistake -- The answers a couple posts below don't correspond to the Proust Questionnaire at all (and on examination, I don't think I'm up to it), but to a fairly different list of questions, set by Sophie Calle and Gregoire Bouillier, translated by Bill Berkson, and answered by Harry Matthews and Andre Codrescu in the current Jacket. Sorry, didn't mean to make the reader play Jeapordy there. (I've also changed a couple of responses since last night.)

Meant to record somewhere this statement, with which I disagree with completely:

"Speech is the voice unbound, timbrely [sic] rich and thick with meaning. Song, on the other hand, forces the voice into narrow norms, stressing rules tonality, rhythm, and content that have little to do with any language." -- Nicholas Colllins, notes to Lovely Music CD of Alvin Lucier's I Am Sitting in a Room

Just this Monday, twice.

Anxiety.

They have largely been realized; but then, they were not excessively grand.

Ambivalence, or so it often appears.

A piano; a patron.

Yes, but there is no shame in not caring to become one.

The intersection of Industry and Privilege.

Trivially so.

The belief that my musical output is a viable commodity.

Worry it.

Winnowing; organization beyond the immediately expedient.

Conversation. Watching a new print of an old film; reading something that I don't have to write about; unexpectedly hearing, in a public space, a song I had forgotten I loved. Having my back scratched.

Anything that does not suggest a misunderstanding.

Ask me about critics.

The utopian; the anachronistic.

Narcotics.

I don't know yet, but suspect it will turn out to be my back.

Letting another speak.

Diffidence, either in itself or -- among the insightful -- as an expression of arrogance; smoking.

Comes tantalizingly close to connecting me to others.

Not even a cult figure.

Any that does not require sleep, metabolizes toxins efficiently, is less easily intimidated, and possesses telepathic powers.

Back at home, the red tide is worse than usual this year.

~~~

Sure, since we're listening to country radio: "Big Blue Note," a headscratcher of a Toby Keith (or, as the site just linked to has it, "Keith Toby") single that adopts a quite Jimmy Buffet island-groove while attempting to be about obsession or at least bad cathexis (see the verse where he goes to the psychiatrist!), but between Keith's cloying phrasing and the clumsy payoff lines, it's the sort of thing that's only a hit when anything you release is. On the other hand, dug Martina McBride's near polka/nortena update (plus some ABBA intro/outro strings; is that in the original) of "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden."

Oh, and if we're making fun of U2? We used to have this whole routine about what went on backstage circa The Unforgettable Fire

Other band member: "Bono, c'mon, we were supposed to be on 10 minutes ago."
Bono: "But I still haven't found what I'm looking for!" (adopt Lucky the Leprechaun accent if poss.)
OBM: "Well, where do you think you left it."
Bono: "Where the streets have no name!"

There was probably more.

~~~

dB's: the 2 new songs were, well, the new songs, but everything else was spot on, didn't seem like they had enough rehearsal time to get uptight about it, and Stamey, esp., is a fascinating guitarist; younger keyb dude was very impressive as well, nailing solo bits on "Amplifier," which turned into a kind of trading fours thing. Stamey looks a bit more comfortable w/himself as a never-quite-got-there than Holsapple, but I could just be projecting from what it must be like to stand in the shadow of Darius. I'm not in the critical mode that would allow me, here, to explain why I don't think the good stuff -- "Ask For Jill," say -- doesn't require special pleading, but, um, it doesn't. Power-pop that punk didn't have to happen to because the art-damage had come earlier (heard those Sneakers recs lately?); the particular combo of not being idiots, liking love songs, and having a good drummer on offer ("Cycles Per Second"!!) can only make me dislike Death Cab all the more. Saw a guy, 10 yrs my junior, who knew every word, but I'd say St. Louis fixture Beatle Bob, up for the weekend, would be more representative of the crowd.

On either end, caught bits of Sam Roberts (actual hits in Canada, blandly anthemic) and The Ponys (a more palatable J. Fireater); skipped out before the M's (a less-plush D. Warhols, from what I'd heard on the radio the previous day).

~~~

Also: Red Krayola at Empty Bottle. Not their best showing, honestly -- just Mayo and Tom, in town to finish a record, with Tim Kinsella sitting in on drones and Synsonics. But (this would be where they differ from the dB's), I'm still interested in hearing new material: One song here was a timeline of various colonial struggles, punctuated by "won"/"lost" as the case may be.

In case you're not sure I'm old yet, I heard a Wilco song and enjoyed it. "I Am A Wheel," if you must know.

Finally, if you're curious, Bree's been to two different cabaret open-mics w/o me (not singing quite yet, just checking out the scene), and we're two for two on (1) "Being Alive," the worst song from Company, and (2) selections from Wicked, which Bree claims are "even less well-written than 'Imagine'." (This is hard for a song to be, by her lights.)

~~~

Later for the poetry, I hope.

"A breath of outside criticism means more, in the way of suffering, to an author than a gale of self-criticism." -- L.P. Hartley, The Love-Adept.

A piece of mine ('poem' might be overdoing it) is up in the order and decorum one day/one poet/one member of the House of Representatives project. Today, hit "poem 29/440"; after the next one goes up, look for it in "index of poems." Either way, please scroll down once you get the text up -- there's a bit more down there than may appear in the initial window -- and read others' contributions as well, won't you?

"I know what you can use for a sword -- Mom's got an old yardstick with all the numbers worn off." (Vic & Sade)

"I think I'm a little bit in love with you, Steve...we should do something violent, I don't know, knock down a cop or something." (Chase & Sanborn Hour)

~~~
Sept. 5-9:

Amarillo: Failed attempts to locate 2 Roadfood entries. Town appears to take Labor Day seriously; nearly everything but a so-so Mexican chain restaurant was shut tight, and the streets were deserted. Lots of flags out, but that could be an everyday occurence -- I have no other visit to compare it to.

Elk City, OK: Encounter out of The Birds with a flock of geese blocking a driveway into a park, all staring in one direction and slowly walking towards something. Flamingo Motel, run by an Indian women who noted that we'd come from California and made a face. Again, nothing open; stayed in and watched Singing in the Rain, and, the next a.m., the last half of The Big Lie, a vehicle for Bette Davis and Mary Astor to bitch at each other in an Arizona cabin. Like most movies, it turns boring after George Brent shows up. Stroud & Son's pawnshop (and ammo) on the way out of town -- picked up a Stars on 45 cassette and, mostly b/c it was strange to see it there, Ute Lemper's 1990 pop album Crimes of the Heart, which later turned out to be terrible.

[And the Romeo Void mentioned earlier -- a comp. tape called Warm In Your Coat. The Sam & Dave cover ("Wrap It Up") is weak, and they were spent by "A Girl In Trouble," but I still think It's A Condition kills. Someone please use the opening drum hook from "Talk Dirty to Me" (a.k.a. "casual, casual, casualties") for a mashup or a remix or something.]

Tulsa: Made sure I was taken past the memorial to the '21 race riots, which is accompanied by a notably non-conciliatory plague detailing, with individual names and amounts, several million dollars of unpaid damage claims. Otherwise, pleasant visit w/ a childhood friend of Bree's and her husband (who met in the phil. Ph.D. program at B.U. and decided to quit together and move to his hometown). Another foiled attempt to eat BBQ: The tempting-looking "Elmer's It-Be-Bad" took an extra-long Labor Day holiday (like, four days -- I even tried to stop there on the morning we left town).

St. Louis: Stayed w/ Robert Griffin and family; his daughter Rilke, who I saw as an toddler on the last couple of of 0pb jaunts, is now 9. Talked music, watched The Daily Show, was played an upcoming Scat release (a singer-songwriter w/ clear Pollard affinities, but less distractable), some Dungen. By either coincidence or subconscious plan, played Pretzel Logic, inc. "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo," on the way out of town. Took a kind of stupid-but-straight route through Chicago surface streets into Evanston b/c I was afraid of getting lost; made it home, in a manner of speaking, around 8.

Beyond what I've mentioned, and several hours of news about New Orleans, all I now remember listening to is Wha'apen, 3 Feet High and Rising, a recent Ethel Merman reissue, a few Frankie Laine duets that Bree and I like to sing along with, and the first disc of the Pet Shop Boys' b-side collection (not terribly good driving music, it turns out).


~~~

Rosemary and Keith Waldrop, Discrete Reading Series, 9/16: R.W. is a lovely reader, with pauses and emphases that leave no doubt that she knows exactly what she's up to. One effect of her collage method (and the texts to which she applies it, though, is that the joining of a "general" (philosophical) claims to more grounded statements that make one wonder why you would ever believe, or even countenance, something so abstract can produce a too easy reaction; here, a titter, as if to mark "oh, aren't those philosophers silly?" But I think her work's relation to these sorts of questions is deeper than that sort of response recognizes (not something I think about every poet who invokes the apparatus -- or tone -- of 20th c. philosophy; I see that Reichenbach is a source for Blindsight*). and numerous lines hit home: "A shadow fell across clear-cut narration as I followed Wittgenstein to places. Where nothing happens." (Read, I'm pretty sure, without the sentence break audible.) A renga-ish collaboration (read together) that I didn't get traction with followed; then K.W. read from The Real Subject: Queries and Conjectures of Jacob Delafon with Sample Poems, a collection of dry against-the-grain commentaries (with some emphasis on the metaphysical) ascribed to a fictive "unique geezer" (per the jacket). Monsieur Teste was not alluded to in the portions read, but I was not shocked to find him mentioned early on in the book. Or, for that matter, Jabes, both b/c he's the family business, and b/c his rabbis are the obverse of the comic exegete constructed here. Excellent book -- an unstoppable read once I took it home.

*Not intended as sidelong mockery of Jane's numbering; no, rigor is not on offer, but nor is it claimed to be. Substantive comment to follow.

~~~

If you're overeating (for instance) to fulfill some other psychological need, being told this may be interesting, but doesn't actually serve to fill that need. Not sure why I had this thought just now; since we've gotten here, I've eaten more sanely that either in France or on the road trip. On the other hand, Bree and I (we've discussed it) often feel as if we're playacting at "keeping house"; it's partly to do with being surrounded by someone elses dishes, books [we're renting from a sociologist who's on sabbatical], wall hangings. But only partly. On the third hand, the weather has held since we've been here, with several simply gorgeous days. Having finished off the "tour diary," I'm not inclined to go into an even-more-boring "discovering a new town" mode, but I will say one thing: If you want to buy an LP of Marni Nixon singing Charles Ives at Vintage Vinyl, bring along fifty bucks; a Television Personalities LP will set you back a Grant and two Benjamins. Phooey.

Must be needing succor and ease: Enjoyed, without my increasingly customary "it's over, ok?" reaction, the new album by The Bats (though it's also just possible that they don't suck and never did); was immensely satisfied by my first visit to The Hideout for Kelly Hogan and The Wooden Leg's monthly residency (which would have had me on song selection alone: "Kites Are Fun," "London In the Rain," "Moody's Mood for Love," "Up A Lazy River," Mae Barnes' "Umbrella Man," "'Tis Autumn", Dee Clark's "Blues, Get Off My Shoulder," to say nothing of execution, or of the perfectly-timed entrance of a guy selling tamales out of a cooler, very comforting as the same thing happens at the Silver Lake Lounge), and looking forward to tomorrow's dB's reunion at the same venue's annual block party, which, I gather, marks the end of the season for live music outdoors here. So, yes, we're getting out more, enough to stave off disorientation and disconnection until teaching starts structuring my time next week.

Invited -- no, commanded -- to make common cause w/ Muy Romantico, though in what capacity, I don't know, as J-HOVA is on the opposite coast. Perhaps I can convince them of my 1-40 epiphany that What Is Needed are "art" bands feat. saxophones instead of strings.

Will try to comment on recent reading, finish off the drive-spiel, and lean less heavily on run-on sentences soon. Off to hear the Waldrops here, where I won't know anyone.

Dreamed that I was somehow involved in marketing an excessively vinegary brand of mustard named "Fancy Spread"; this dissolved into a third-person scene (advertisement?) of someone riding across the desert with Fancy Spread sandwiches as their only provisions. Woke up Bree when I woke up laughing out loud.

~~~

For those inclined -- the Monday posting at a free OTR site I sometimes visit is a rather famous 1937 episode of The Chase & Sanborn Hour featuring a Garden of Eden skit between Charlie McCarthy and Mae West that got the latter banned from radio for several years. Tame, and only funny if you have a taste for the style, but an interesting bit of cultural history.

~~~

continuing w/ notes from the drive

Sun, 9/4

stayed with Dave and Marika, and Dave's father, who's staying outside their house in the immense trailer that he's tooled around in since retirement, apparently; he's helping them work on the house, which today meant retiling the main bathroom. After breakfast, they had to pick up a sink, so Bree and I were dropped for a while at a large Sally Ann nearby: Bookshelf included a nearly complete run of '70s-'80s Tri-Quarterlys [edited from NU, as it happens]. I had spent a lot of time with some of these journals (along with, nerd alert, The Journal of Recreational Mathematics) back in, hmm, junior high, when my father would sometimes take me to San Bernardino Valley College during summer session -- I'd spend the whole day reading around in the periodical stacks. Found the issue (one of the "Ongoing American Fiction" series) in which, back then, I'd read "Cordials," a very bad, mean, but strangely vivid short story (by an author whose name I cannot seem to keep hold of) which has stuck with me since in excess of its merits: Basically, a woman who has been hiding her pregnancy goes into labor but is so intent on consummating an extra-marital affair that she manages to expel the fetus and cut the cord during violent foreplay, all without her new lover becoming aware of what's going on. It's as though one of the few Bukowski short stories I've read (e.g. "Six Inches" from Erections, Ejaculations, and Tales of Ordinary Madness -- which I remember reading, dismayed, in the Montclair Plaza Pickwick's next to Pedrini's Music Merchant, where I'd wait for my parents to pick me up after piano lessons from one Mrs. Nye, who would comment with untoward frequency on the length of my eyelashes) rewritten in a parody of the style of New Yorker short fiction of the same era. I still am not sure what this story though it was doing; anyway, I chose not buy that issue. Back at our host's house, read the Anthony & The Johnsons profile in NYT magazine, quite effective in putting me on the singer's side -- hadn't read up on him enough before to realize he'd been doing similar things in a more theatrical/drag-underground context for more than a decade. Went back out to an internet cafe to get a course description to NU; one bulletin-board announcement read "The Tuvans are Coming!" and another advertised a local bank's offer of a free bushel of green chiles for anyone opening a new checking account. Dave gave me a self-bound book of roughly 1,000 quotes on reading from the Greeks up to lang-po, something he's been compiling in one form or another since we were housemates after college; I gave him AF. Ruined some decent pants with white paint. In the evening, watched Harem Scarem, a dismally bad Elvis movie that Bree had brought along b/c she insists that one of the dancers resembles Marika; and the Steve McQueen Blob, w/ its goony Bacharach/David theme song and curiously slow-developing 1st hr. -- most interesting thing about the movie might be the way that you never get a clear sense of the layout of the town.

I still believe, in principle, that a club set witnessed by 15 people might be as thrilling and valuable as one experienced by a packed house -- but when, in practice, was the last time I was actually at one?

~~~

Really, questions about affect v. language aside: as a watcher-from-the-margins, I don't know whether I'm more amazed that there's something (or is there?) called "The New Sincerity" (a term I can't shake loose from associations with features on 10,000 Maniacs and Guadacanal Diary, -- basically, anyone who ever opened for pre-arena R.E.M. -- in back-half-of-the-'80s Spin) or that those who are using it are, in some cases, not kidding. [Which, as with nearly all jaundiced comments on theoretical positions, caricatured or not, is not meant to speak against a particular poet's poems.]

~~~

You can, it turns out, be homesick for a home you were sick of. [See, the don't-end-with-a-preposition norm really sticks in my craw -- this wouldn't sound right if it read, "a home of which you were sick."] On the other hand, amazing bakery smell (not to get all last-page-of-Bright Lights, Big City) coming from somewhere near the exit from the Evanston El. (Is the orthographic idiom "El" or "L"?)

How can the pleasant if guileless publicist leaving me a voicemail re P.J. Olsson know that, with every "I know you've written about Beck, and they get a lot of comparisons" and "his voice is really soulful, it's smoky and just a great voice," and "the songs are fun and quirky" (all these as close to direct quotes as I can manage w/o playing the message again), she is digging her artist's grave, as far as my critical time is concerned? [Nothing against this woman doing her job -- at least she's not writing me one of those pretending-to-be-palsy-but-actually-just-a-mass-mailing-with-my-name-macro'd-in things that several of the smaller, more 'funky' indie-publicists seem to think will make me forget that we are not even acquainted.}

Nor could she know that I would avoid pre-much-less-re-viewing this album, nearly as a matter of my own sanity: I wrote up Ollson's Dawson's-placement-driven debut for CMJ Monthly several years ago, and, as little as I wish to appear to be taking some principled stand against gutless, witless, pale-15th-gen-copy-of-"Loser" trip-hop, recall it as the very record that brought me up against the fact that actually passing my orals might be more satisfying than spending n hrs. listening to a piece-of-crap record repeatedly, toward the mere end of converting said experience into approx. 210 words of piece-of-crap prose and a R.I.Y.L. taglist. And that, as with few records before or since, I actually had to cleanse myself of the experience by driving around mid-Wilshire for an hour playing, unusually for me, a classical station, which, unusually for me, happened to be playing Morton Feldman's For Christian Wolff, its irregular crystallography a godsend at that moment.

Even less could she know that I've just moved most of the way across the country, and feel, at this moment, like the second-most psychologically isolated person alive. (The first-most being Bree, who doesn't even have contact with the clerks at payroll or campus police/parking [from which office issued, incongruously, the Live 1975 version of "Hurricane."]) Which does tend to manifest itself as a certain lack of magnaminity: I'm feeling exceedingly bitter and negative, toward [Excised: list of unfairly scorned objects that said far more about the subject. Apologies for making nonsense of JD's link, and for eliciting in the first place.] Which makes this a good time to zip it.

skipping around: Yesterday's drive from Tusla to St. Louis included stops here and here. And, despite our better judgement, here, near Carthage, MO. Your jaw has not truly hung open until it has hung open in front of, stained-glass windows, mock-Sistine ceilings, and large, multiple-figure, stone statues and fountains, in which every single figure save Jesus is portrayed as a tiny adorable child in the familiar no-nose manner of these immensely popular porcelain figurines. Kitsch, one forgets (though this was a main point of Greenberg's), is typically utterly sincere -- and thus, mere mockery is not really a tenable response, not in the face of the room decidated to the deceased relatives of Precious Moments collectors, and to artist Sam Butcher's late son, who died in a car accident in 1990. What is worrisome is that some future culture will unearth all this, long after we and our cities are all dust, and reconstruct American spirituality inaccurately. Very slightly inaccurately.

Unrelated to all of the above, but I'd been meaning to register this somewhere; the other show up at MOCA, concurrently w/ the Basquiat, is one of those collector-bequest shows, this time, various works gifted or to-be-gifted by one Blake Byrne. Pretty spotty -- one-of-this, one-of-that, a lot of looking pretty chilly after a hr. or two with J-M B. A couple of the tiny Orozco's that I like, a Cornell Hotel. (MOCA, I know, has a bunch of late collages that aren't usually out on public view, which is annoying.) The item of interest to me was an early Kosuth Art as Idea as Idea dictionary-entry-as-post-Reinhardt-anti-painting, from 1966-8, in the same format as the familiar ones on "meaning," etc., except this one uses the entry for "tart." From my notes (probably not exact), the text reads:

tart (2) -- n., ME tarte is adopted from MF-F tarte, perh. orig. a var of OF-F tourte, from LL tarte (panis), a round (loaf of) break, a cake, o.o.o.. The sl tart, a prostitute, is short for jam tart, a sweet 'dish.'

Interesting, in that I had not been aware that many of these works took as their linguistic/conceptual "material" a concrete term rather than an abstract/theoretical one (there's one on 'water,' though -- perhaps of interest as a mass noun?), much less one that might be seen as connecting w/ concerns associated w/ his feminist contemporaries. (I might as well note that I'm very suspicious of Kosuth's claims about the centrality or originality of his own work, and most of his critical writng [on Wittgenstein, he is nearly impenetrable]; his work is primarily interesting to me as a case, and perhaps for its pedagogical value.)

Back a little early, but not really: I'm at Double Shot Coffee, a large and pleasant cafe in Tusla, OK. (n.b. that the Belle & Sebastrian playing here is much more unexpected, and hence pleasant, than the same in, say, Silver Lake; similar feeling about catching, say, Day to Day on High Plains Public Radio, or even Bill Moyers complaining about the Corporation of Public Broadcasting. That said, I have seen a Darwin-fish and a "Free Leonard Peltier" bumpersticker in the last hr., not on the same car.) Some raw travel notes --

sept. 2

out of L.A. approx. 10:05
lunch at Maria's in Blythe, typical but good Cali Mexican
3 or 4 hrs. of podshuffle, Silkworm's "Couldn't You Wait" about the 3rd song in as if it knew where I was headed
hit Tuscon around 7 p.m.; staying at Motel 6 b/c Club Congress was long sold out of this wknd, which happens to be a 25 yr celebration of Tucson music; gravitated to that vinicity anyway as it helps me get my bearings.
dinner at Pico de Gallo, killer shrimp and fish (usually manta ray) tacos as always
dropped Bree at motel, headed back to Congress, heard a couple of current bands I can't now i.d., then a one-shot reunion set by The Pedestrians, sometimes credited as the areas first punk band -- I don't think they released anything at the time, but this was a satisfying sort of cow-wave, a bit like the further out earlier AMC, caught a line something like "...sends down a perfumed angel and lifts up her skirt [skirt, skirt, skirt]." Then The Sidewinders, fairly standard-issue but spirited rootsiness; they were still playing, covering "Peace, Love, and Understanding," as I headed back to the car, too dead on my feet and anxious about next day's drive to stay up for G. Sand/Blacky Ranchette. Would have been curious as to the lineup, as John and Joey don't seem to be playing w/ Howe anymore -- they'd be playing as Spoke (the early duo-only name under which the first Calexico album was originally released) later in the weekend. Did run into Dan Seta, an old L.A. friend who played in Idaho (band, not state) for some years, his wife Jenny, and the sister of ex-Weekly crit Robert Lloyd.

Made it to around p. 370 of Sorrentino fils' Trance before leaving home -- quite sure I packed in the car, but it immediately buried itself somewhere in our sloppy packing job. Was enjoying it -- stands up to most DeLillo, which seems the obvious point of reference, though maybe not to his 2 or 3 best books. When Bree takes over driving, I'm picking through Ted Honderich's 1976 Political Violence, which I suspect is going to end with a stance against some forms of non-state-sanction forms of dissent, but is pretty withering about some of the stupider arguments against same on the way there. "We do not suppose, generally, that what can be said for or against a line of action is no more than can be said by those peresons who are or might be engaged in it. No such requirement survives reflection."

At some point, read Alec Bemis' long LA Times Magazine piece on freak-folk. Must admit to both much of this music and Alec's take on it (particular the positive valance given to its various 'quiet' forms of religiosity), and I wonder, as ever, what it is about being accompanied by music that draws some (ok, some poets) to admire lyrics whose particular mode of 'literariness' is precisely that which they would disdain on the page (pls. note Sufjan's New School MFA in fiction). And, while I'm bitching, we also have the mythmaking -- Devandra's music career took off "magically"! Freak-folks, you see, never try, never work -- see also the commonly told (though not in this piece) story of Newsom's first recordings 'just happening' to fall into Will Oldham's hands. Feh. All that said, I think Alec's piece is of real value in distilling a take on/defense of this stuff, one that is pretty reasonably seen as implicit in the work and its presentation. You should read it, even if you hate the relevant artists (I'm 50/50).

sept. 3

Taking Bree's cue not to eat a big American breakfast every single day; yogurt and plums from the co-op on 4th Ave.
Heard The Castaway's "Liar, Liar" -- one of the Nuggets-era tunes I haven't heard enough to be sick of.
dropped by Librio, a small bookstore w/ a surprising poetry section, on the way out of town; picked up Jarnot's a+bend chapbook, Bree found a $2 copy of Lust for Life
more radio, less iPod -- New Mexico oldies station played Pete Wingfield's wonderful and unfamiliar-to-me "18 With A Bullet".
hwy 26 for shortcut around Los Cruces, shaving maybe 1/2 hr. off our time on the 10 and 25; picked up program for the Great American Duck Races in Deming the previous weekend, then ran smack into the Hatch Chile Festival, many hand-cranked roasters of fresh green chiles, quesedillas, burgers, etc. topped or stuffed w/ same; noted 2005 Miss Chile -- they elect two, one red, one green, in otherwise identical homecoming queen-type satin dresses.
local senior citizen paper with oddly convincing piece on the daily cost of nursing care v. living on an endless series of Princess Cruises
local independent radio program feat. a long interview and in-studio session w/ one "Jaimi Faux," pronounced "Jamie Fox"* -- v. conventional Jewel/DiFranco stuff, plus a lot of recovery and "relationship w/ God" talk, one mildly memorable song called "High On Uncovering."
Santa Fe around 8:30; staying w/ my college friend David Carl, currently awaiting a tenure decision at St. John's, and his s.o. Marika, who's teaching creative writing and dance history at multiple colleges in SF and Albequerque while she works on a novel, and dancing in a company in the latter

*Presumably, the spelling is meant to avoid confusion w/ the star of Ray -- which I caught 1/2 hr. of in the morning on motel HBO: I note that I was not strictly correct a couple of days ago in saying that Percy Mayfield is entirely elided -- when Ray's fighting w/ the Raelette w/ whom he's having an affair, he's also working at his electric piano, and says (in a barely audible aside) "Percy only sent me the music for this one." Which is, I am pretty certain, false. I kinda dug Curtis Armstrong's Ahmet Ertegun, though; just sussed that he played the comic relief detective on Moonlighting.

enough for now

Graffiti in Karma Coffeehouse on Cahuenga & Selma -- chorus of "When The Levee Breaks."

Apartment closed; car packed; blog paused for roughly one week.