Being ill is a lousy way to lose weight and keep your BP low. I’m still shaky today but might be feeling a tad more strong. I’m basically spending the entire day sitting in my chair. I made coffee when I got up. I had an apple while waiting for Eileen to get up. Then when she got up and I ate breakfast with her. We boggled which is our routine but I got fatigued after two games. Usually we ply four.

I sure hope the antibodies I am taking help fix whatever’s gone wrong with my body. As you might expect I haven’t had a martini since Saturday. If I can beat whatever’s wrong with me, giving up martinis is the least of my worries.

I think Eileen is feeling sorry for me because she asked me about the books I wanted to order from Readers World but didn’t. Hey I’ll take pity. I just ordered The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution  by Eric Foner.

and Mendelssohn: A Life in Music by R. Larry Todd

and Fanny Hensel: the Other Mendelssohn by R. Larry Todd

and Ways of Seeing by John Berger

and Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them

and Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language Paperback.

The Webster’s 1828 is the version that Dickinson owned and comes into play in research about her.

So here I am facing the grim reaper but getting to order books. Plus I don’t feel that bad, just shaky and low on energy. I’ve also stopped daily exercise. Pluses and negatives I guess.

We are planning a weekend trip to see Elizabeth and Fam. At this point, we (Eileen probably) will drive over to Delton on Saturday and spend the night. Go out to eat and see a show. Crash at Elizabeth’s and come back after that. It is possible I will have enough stamina for this. I guess I’ll take it as it comes. I do think I am feeling a little bit better but this might just me being over hopeful. Stay tuned for future adventures.

Went to the Doctor this morning. Eileen drove. I’m still kind of shaky both from whatever’s wrong with me from fasting. They tested my urine. There was scant blood in it but enough white cells that my Doctor ordered an anti-biotic treatment and asked me to come back after that and retest my urine. Then if she’s not happy she will refer me to a urologist. Blood in a man’s urine can indicate many things but the thing Fuentes stressed is that it’s not good and if we can we need to figure out what it is. If the urine is without blood cells at the next test she said we would drop it until my August check up. This is weirdly reassuring.

I do like having Eileen along on these visits. She comes along with me into the patient room and is very helpful.

I guess I didn’t need to fast for this morning’s office visit. Silly me.

I am madly trying to finish Playing Indian by Philip J. Deloria. The book is due to be returned to the library tomorrow. I have also ordered myself a paperback copy which is supposed to arrive this evening. I am finding it very helpful in figuring out stuff about native Americans especially from the point of view of how white Americans have treated and typed them.

After writing yesterday’s blog post I went back and re-read The Zoo Story by Edward Albee. I found the section about all of life can be a bit of narcissistic existence.

(Jerry : speaking to Peter who seems to be hypnotized)

It’s just … it’s just that … (Jerry is abnormally tense now) … it’s just that if you can’t deal with people, you have to make a start somewhere. WITH ANIMALS! (Much faster now, and like a conspirator) Don’t you see? A person has to have some way of dealing with SOMETHING. If not with people … if not with people… SOMETHING. With a bed, with a cockroach, with a mirror… no, that’s too hard, that’s one of the last steps. With a cockroach, with a … with a … with a carpet, a roll of toilet paper …no, not that either … that’s a mirror, too; always check bleeding.

So you can see I misremembered that actual line from the play. But I suspect that David and I talked about this scene as well as others and I remember our conversation more clearly than the line.

What Happened to One of Classical Music’s Most Popular Pieces? – The New York Times

The piece is Franck’s Symphony in D minor. I remember studying this piece in under grad school. I liked it okay. But this article sent me back to the recording plus a study score I have. After listening to this I figured out that it’s no better than Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Both words have incessant repetition of small musical ideas.

John Waters Is Ready to Defend the Worst People in the World – The New York Times

I admire Waters. Have for a long time.

Saturday I noticed that my urine looked a funny color. It was a deep burgundy. I thought about what I had recently eaten and couldn’t come up with anything that might cause it to look that way. I monitored it for the rest of the day. It reminded me of a quote by Edward Albee. I couldn’t find it on google, but I think it may come from his play, The Zoo Story. It was something about cautioning about pre occupation with self. The mirror is everywhere even in your toilet (check for blood). At the time I read it I wasn’t sure what he meant. Look for traces of blood on your toilet paper? I think I understand it better now.

I have Zoo Story sitting upstairs but I am feeling a bit weak (lazy?) and am not going up to look at it. It’s possible the quote is marked.

I wanted to make bread this morning but I’m too lazy (weak?).

I was talking to Dr Birky about narcissism on Friday at our session. Narcissism is something I think about. I have had a theory that it takes a strong ego to be a maker (musician, poet, writer). Birky suggested that the narcissist seeks people who will reinforce his own warped view of himself.

I’m still thinking on that one.

After a day of looking at my pee I sent my doctor a message through the useless, idiotic, app she and her employers provide. If my urine starts to look red again I am planning to go to a walk in clinic. If not I’ll wait and see what my doctor recommends.

My BP has been low the last two mornings and my weight dropped dramatically on Saturday. Eileen said she noticed that I have been eating less (?).

Having an imagination is no help when you’re sick. I can envision the course of this illness all the way to the funeral. Nice, eh?

In addition I have some pretty stark memories of my Dad’s dwindling physical and mental powers. I have an especially brutal (to me) recollection of finding him alone in a patient room at the hospital after we took him into ER with a concussive fall. He looked bewildered. Not only did he not know where he was, but he may not have know who he was.

Warm fuzzy thoughts. Stay tuned for future fun episodes.

Yesterday, Eileen and I went to the beach and then picked up take out from Margaritas. Then before PBS newshour we watched episodes of “The Reservation Dogs.”

So far I am enjoying it. I especially like the humor in it.

Today my daughter, Elizabeth, and grand daughter, Alex, will visit. That should be nice.

I know I said I would share poetry yesterday but I ended up not doing any blogging.

I am continuing to read Foster’s City Terrace: Field Manual. He does not disappoint. His poems are brutal and beautiful and seem to me to be carefully and exquisitely constructed. Unfortunately I can’t find anything of his to share online.

Two from the new Poetry Magazine.

Personal History by Kareem Tayyar

Dream Journal by Kareem Tayyar

Two from March 14th New Yorker

“Cardiac Flicker,” by Emily Leithauser | The New Yorker

“Verses on the Unknown Soldier,”

I think I may be beginning to feel like my self after changing my life so drastically from church musician to human being. It’s the compulsions that are the tricky part. A good deal of my life has been spent in my version of discipline, mostly around music. Now I don’t feel the need to be disciplined the way I did when I was leading a program and performing weekly. This has had the effect of me examining how I arrived at the point I am with music. One thing that has struck me is how no academic teacher has really mentored me.

Ray Ferguson was the closest I had to a mentor. Though Ray was very helpful giving me a leg up and getting me accepted to Wayne State University, I don’t think he ever lost his picture of me as a sort of primitive, as indeed I was. We had many brutal heart to heart talks for which I remain grateful and Ray seemed to enjoy. One of my mild regrets about his death is that I never was able to show him how much technique I gained the last decade or so on keyboard.

Anyway, I’m not practicing daily any more. Sometimes a day goes by and I don’t play music. It feels odd but right. This is a transitory time of my life. Some of this is diminishing physical capacity especially in my left hand due to the Dupuytren’s Contraction. But recently I have found when I do play piano my abilities are not quite as bad as I picture them. Octaves in my left hand are possible if only at a slower tempo. Playing slower has never bothered me before so I am able to continue to enjoy hands on with music I love.

At the same time my own aesthetic is becoming clearer to me. It’s an aesthetic that is broad in that I generally trust my own gut reaction now more than I have ever been able to in my life. But when I examine other musicians’ approach I find more and more people that seem to share a bit of this. Usually they are much finer musicians than I am but at the same time I am able to share a broader love of music with them even though my technique as a musician is not as honed.

The BBC radio show called Inside Music has fascinated me in this respect. Musicians are called on to DJ an hour and half show and presumably choose the music. Their chat and choices fascinate me. Unfortunately these do not stay available online for long so I can’t just link them in and expect you dear reader to access them for very long.

The first show I heard was hosted by Julie Fowlis and I immediately became excited because her choices and comments were so wonderful. Unfortunately, she turned out to be an exception in that way. I found that I was not only listening to the comments and the music of the musician but detecting their approach to their own musicianship. Usually there were annoying limits to the way they saw what they did as a musician and the music they were sharing. After listening to several of these shows I began to understand both the presenters and my own critiques of them.

I don’t expect BBC necessarily to find many people as passionate, adventurous, and honest as Fowlis. But I was heartened that Elizabeth Llewellyn recently exhibited a wider range in her choices which included Bernstein, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Mozart, and two songs which I would think of as pop music.

Quite the thing for stuffy old BBC. Cool. I didn’t go for all of Llewellyn’s choices but it felt like talking about tastes with a musician I respect. Very cool indeed.

Tomorrow, poetry.

Dear Diary,

Sorry to have neglected you recently. But obviously I am filling up my retirement with enough things to keep me busy. I muse on why I keep this blog going and I’m not sure what the reason is. I have been keeping an online presence for many years. I began with all the idealism that I would spark conversation and trade ideas with other people. Well that didn’t turn out to be the case. Then as my family spread itself around the world I saw it as a user friendly way for my family to see how I’m doing without having to actually deal with me.

Now I am mostly motivated to put down my ideas in words because that helps me. But I am working so many different areas right now that I don’t seem to have much time for this. I console myself that I am available if family or friends want to connect with me. But I continue to learn the lesson that “less is more” especially with the passion and intensity of what is circulating around in my pea brain.

The trick of being retired for me is to continually examine my behavior for compulsions left over from pre-retirement. This is not as easy as it sounds. It helps to live with Eileen.

So today is not so much about ideas as to let those of you who are kind enough to check this blog know that I’m still going to keep it up at this point.

I have been burrowing deep into my nonfiction reading. I am learning distressing stuff about America and the people who lived here before the colonial settlers. I am learning distressing stuff about how white people appropriated ceremonial dress and thoughts for their little civic rituals while at the same time spreading genocidal actions against natives. I am learning from native people resiliently living now in this moment and staying connected to a tradition I don’t know enough about. I am learning how vast the history of this side of the world is and how it has been distorted in the stories we tell ourselves about it.

Also continuing to read The 1619 Project and learning more about the hidden history of the connection and repression of people descended from slaves in our country.

In addition I have been learning more about recent history in Russia and following the rape of Ukraine in real time.

This morning after my usual routine of exercising and making coffee for me and tea for Eileen when I sat down to read I found myself reaching for poetry. It’s afternoon and all I have read all day is poetry. It’s not exactly a palliative because I prefer most of my poetry to be disturbing but it helps me see how easy it is to be sucked into examining terrible stuff in our history.

This morning I especially enjoyed reading in Victoria Chang’s book of poems, Obit. My friend Rhonda gave it to me and I have read some in it. This morning it seemed to be exactly what I needed and enticed me to pick up other books of poetry sitting around that I read in occasionally including issues of my subscription of the magazine Poetry.

I have to reiterate here my gratitude for how my life is going and for friends like Rhonda who sent me a very encouraging text recently in which she said she knew I was moving in a different direction these days. Thank you, Rhonda! Life is good.

It seems like a good day to end with a poem.

Peripheral

BY HANNAH EMERSON
Yes I prefer the peripheral
because it limits the vision.

It does focus my attention.
Direct looking just is too

much killing of the moment.
Looking oblique littles

the moment into many
helpful moments.

Moment moment moment
moment keep in the moment.
Source: Poetry (March 2022)

[N.B. This blog was pre-approved by Eileen]

Eileen and I have spent the last couple of days staying calm but a bit frightened. Eileen had her regular mammogram on Monday. She came home unperturbed but a few hours later there was a call with the disconcerting news that she had to return the next day for another try. There was something odd in the first one that required another look and possibly an ultrasound.

Neither of us slept very well that night. But after the next appointment she came home to tell me that they had found a non malignant cyst. No action needed.

So while war rages in Ukraine, Eileen and I were very grateful that we had dodged that particular bullet. Eileen confessed to me later that what she had dreaded was not so much a cancer diagnosis but the eventual treatment which is often as bad if not worse than the disease.

I finished Gessen’s The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin a few minutes ago. I wanted to read it as quickly as possible during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I am already of a fan of Gessen’s work and am planning next to read her book, The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia. It’s sitting on my shelves.

Eileen signed up for a online three day weaving workshop. I think it has helped distract her a bit.

The Biden Administration Killed America’s Collective Pandemic Approach

The headline on this article did not blame the Biden Administration for this otherwise I probably wouldn’t have clicked on the link. I find it dumb to keep blaming the president for stuff. But this is a good article.

Playing Indian by Philip Deloria is a very disturbing history of white men dressing up as Indians and using fake Indian shit in their secret societies. I have always found secret societies like the Masons a bit weird. But this shit goes back further than I expected, if, indeed, I expected anything at all.

I was interested in this book because I was hoping it would give me some help thinking about appropriation. But the topic is much broader than that. But I do like Philip Deloria’s title. It puts the whole idea of white colonial settlers blundering into the Americas and then making many stupid stupid assumptions and acting on them until the stupidity persists to this day in the story white Americans tell themselves.

I had heard of the Tammany political maneuverings in U.S. History. I think I may have had a paperback that told the story of corruption in New York via Tammany Boss Tweed.

But this is the 19th century. Deloria doesn’t even mention this. He’s more interested in fraternal orders that sprang up using fake Indian type stuff to organize themselves.

It seems that Thomas Jefferson and John Hay belonged to one or were at least present at a public celebration of of these Masonic-like organizations. Which brings me to what I wanted to “share” with you today.

The ridicule of natives was unsurprisingly extended to African Americans.

” The New York Evening Post carried accounts of an ‘African Tammany celebration” in 1809, and the following year the Rhode Island American reported, ‘Last April Fool Day we light de council fire at de wigwam in my house. Well, dan we chuse officer. Toby we make him Gran Sachem. Cudjo we make him farrer in council; Yellow Sam he set up for Sagemalel be he no brack enough. Dem we chuse Whish-em-Stirky.’ The ‘celebrants’ then toasted ‘Broder Tomm Jefferson, de lass gran sachem of dis country.’ ‘Black Sal, his squaw,’ and ‘Our broders, de white Indians.’

What? Black Sal has got to be a reference to Sally Hemmings, Jefferson’s slave and concubine. Nothing in the footnotes about her. When the report was printed in the Rhode Isalnd American (1809) Jefferson still had some 16 or 17 years to live and was just finishing up his term as president.

I always pictured the Hemmings affair as something sort of swept under the public’s eye. But it doesn’t look like it. Wow.

As the time passes since I began retirement, I can see how I am transitioning to a more normal existence. I find myself studying Emily Dickinson, native Americans, and learning more about composers I love like CPE Bach and Haydn and musics I love like most folk music and a lot of other popular music. Having the option to pretty much do anything I want to with my time is fun. I keep examining my impulses and ignoring the ones that come from years of church work and even a bastardized orientation toward academic music.

And still rattling around in my head are ideas about music I still want to make up (compose). At this point I’m sort of thinking of continue to contemplate what I want to make up and probably then rehearse it and video tape it. This is probably the process that I will evolve. But no hurry!

I’m about half way through Gessen’s book on Putin and it does help me understand the horrific news.

This is one of those times in life when you know important stuff is happening (in Ukraine) and accurate information is hard to come by and things are moving quickly. My response has been to pick up my unread copy of The Man Without A Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin by Masha Gessen.

This book has been on my to read list for a while. Published in 2012 with an updated afterword by Gessen in 2014 I have always been curious what sort of a story Gessen would tell.

it’s odd to read this now because I was alive during the events Gessen attempts to chronicle. It is helping me understand the complex demise of the USSR. At the same time it casts light on living through history as we are now doing.

I have been getting a great deal of reading done. That’s the main reason I haven’t blogged lately.

Eileen and I had a fun chat with Sarah today. It last close to two hours. You might wonder what the heck we talk about but we never fail to find things to discuss even though Sarah inevitably apologizes each week for “babbling.”

Opinion | Putin’s Moves on Ukraine Will Be a Historic Mistake – The New York Times

by Madeline Albright and published Wednesday of this week before Putin attacked Ukraine. She is excellent.

Opinion | Putin’s Moves on Ukraine Will Be a Historic Mistake – The New York Times

Gessen article also published on Wednesday.

Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation by Silvia Federici Amazon

From Wikipedia “Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation is a 2004 book by Silvia Federici. It is among the most important works to explore gender and the family during the primitive accumulation of capital As part of the radical autonomist feminist Marxist tradition, the book offers a critical alternative to Marx’s theory of primitive accumulation.[ Federici argues that the witch hunts served to restructure family relations and the role of women in order to satisfy society’s needs during the rise of capitalism.

I picked up on this book from Roxanne Dunbar-Otyiz’s An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States.

I was delighted that in the first pages of Susan Howe’s 1985 Book, My Emily Dickinson, she refers to Emily Dickinson and Gertrude Stein as “two writers whose work refuses to conform to … Anglo-American literary traditions.” Yay! They are both obsessions of mine and I read on with relish (as Joyce says): “Emily Dickinson and Gertrude Stein are clearly among the most innovative precursors of modernist poetry and prose, yet to this day canonical criticism from Harold Bloom to Hugh Kenner persists in dropping their names and ignoring their work.”

Still on the first page of her book, Howe writes “Emily Dickinson and Gertrude Stein also conducted a skillful and ironic investigation of patriarchal authority over literary history.” And then a couple of sentences that struck me so that I copied them into my running journal: “Who polices questions of grammar, parts of speech, connection and connotation? Whose order is shut inside the structure of a sentence?” Whose indeed.

In a few minutes I put Howe aside to read some poetry by Dickinson.

I turned first to my library copy of Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them edited by Cristanne Miller and read:

A sepal – petal – and a thorn
upon a common summer’s morn –
A flask of Dew – A Bee or tow –
A Breeze – a caper in the trees –
And I’m a Rose!

Miller ‘s footnote is illuminating: “RWF silently emends ED’s phrase ‘a caper’ to ‘a’caper,’ assuming it to be a verb.” RWF is R. W. Franklin and edited quite a bit of Dickinson. I don’t have his edition but my Thomas H. Johnson edition did not follow him in policing the grammar and parts of speech in that instance, but Johnson substitutes commas for the hyphens in the first line and does not indent the last. I know that mine above appears not indented but this is an instance of me not being able to get WordPress to do the layout I want.

It seems to be a quick instance of Howe’s patriarchal authority attempting to exert itself in the face of the skill, irony, and beauty of Emily Dickinson.

The most striking thing to me about using hearing aids are the return of the high frequencies. This means I hear more clicks and softer sounds that have been getting by me for years. It’s not particularly pleasant. But I am expecting that I will begin to notice all the extra sounds less as I get used to it.

I did manage to get my hearing aids hooked up to my phone via Bluetooth. I listened to C.P.E. this morning and it sounded pretty good.

We decided not to go sit by the beach today. We drove down to take a look. Besides the rain (which I like) it was cold. Yesterday would have been perfect. We got started pretty late and have been running behind all day. It’s about 4:30 PM and we just had lunch. Martini time soon!

I stopped by and picked up some holds from the library on our way for our little drive. When I got home two more books were waiting for me.

I have been looking forward to My Emily Dickinson by Susan Howe. This time even though it came from the bookstore that sent me the heavily marked up copy, the text was clean.

I was very interested in the book, Homo Poeticus: Essays and Interviews – by Danilo Kiš.

Even though Kiš died in 1989, he is fascinating. His is another title I picked up from Gerald Vizenor. Susan Sontag edited and wrote the introduction and preface. That’s worth the price of admission for me even though this is a library book.

Here are some cool ideas from it: “Nationalism is first and foremost paranoia, individual and collective paranoia. As collective paranoia it is the product of envy fear and primarily the result of a loss of individual consciousness … If an individual feels unable to ‘express himsel’ within th frame work of the social order either because it fails to encourage him as an individual—in other words, stands in the way of his self-fulfillment—and he feels obliged to seek fulfillment outside his identity or the prevailing social structures” then shit happens.

Oops that last part was me. More from Danilo Kiš:

“The nationalist is by definition an ignoramus. Thus, nationalism is the path of least resistance, the easy way out.”

“Nationalism is the ideology of banality. It is a totalitarian ideology.”

You get the idea.

Sontag says this about Danilo Kiš in her introduction: Danilo Kiš was “one of those writrs who are first of all readers, who prefer dawdling and grazing and blissing out in the Great Library and surrender to their vocation only when the urge to write becomes too unbearable.”

I think might slightly apply to someone like myself who is grappling with a new vocation that omits church.

Eileen and I picked up our new hearing aides today. It’s probably going to take some getting used to. Right now it’s like the treble is turned up on everything. Consequently, my piano sounds very tinny. Yuck.

The cool thing is that they are Blutooth. This means I can use them as buds, telephone as well as listening to podcasts and music. I haven’t hooked them up yet. I’m waiting until the highs cool down a bit which is what they are supposed to do.

They are adjustable by hand. When we return they’ll set us up with a phone app. In the mean time they look quite adjustable by hand.

However the keys on my computer seem very loud.

I think it’s pretty crazy that a definitive edition of Emily Dickinson’s poetry was so slow in forthcoming. Susan Howe has helped me understand the issues. Many of the editions and volumes available up until recently applied different and even whimsical standards to getting Dickinson’s poetry on a printed page, making what look like arbitrary decisions.

This may sound a bit extreme but I have been reading Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them edited by Christiane Miller. When Dickinson was 28 years old she seems to have bound poems in small packets the scholars call fascicles. Miller’s edition seems to be most the annotated of these and other poems that Dickinson seemed to be preserving in one way or another from then on.

For example, the first sheet in Miller’s edition Miller and R. W. Franklin another editor divide into three smaller poems. Thomas H. Jackson retains the three as one poem.

Here’s Miller’s edition.

On the left is a picture of the page in the fascicle. On the right is Miller’s rendition of it. By the way, I love “In the name of the Bee–/And of the Butterfly—/ And of the Breeze—Amen!

In addition to this, Dickinson provided optional words and rewrite in some of these versions. These are usually ignored in many renditions. Howe is the one who turned me on to this. She says the best way to read Dickinson is in the facsimile editions.

This retails at $294 dollars on Amazon. Even Howe thinks this is too expensive for the average reader. But Miller’s edition is only $37.80 on Amazon. I have the library’s edition right now and have only begun examining it. Not exactly ready to own.

I’m almost done with Lyndall Gordon’s biography of the family. I quit reading it a while back because Dickinson died and there still quite a bit of book to go and I was mostly interested in her. Now, I’m interested in the whole preservation of her poems. The story is quite complicated. Dickson’s brother Austin was quite a loser. He screwed around on Susan his wife and did so with Mabel Todd, an ambitious (and admittedly brilliant) woman who had designs not only Austin but getting her hands on Dickinson’s work. This descends into a battle between Susan Dickinson and Mabel Todd.

Then Austin’s daughter by his marriage, Mattie, and the daughter of Mabel Todd, his lover, carry this spat well into the 20th century. It’s helpful to know this back story while trying to sort out Dickinson’s poetry beyond bastardizations in editions.

And it is such lovely and powerful poetry.

While I’m being intolerable I’d like to go on record how lucky and even a bit guilty I feel over how I am living my life now. My sense of well being is general. I am drilling down on understand the history of enslaved people in this country and the multitude of natives a mind boggling number of the latter and active and have fascinating stuff for me to learn.

The guilt is irrational. Never having to look back at church music is such a freeing thought. Sometimes despite that I get little twinges like when the notifications on my phone go off as they did this morning and I have a horrible little premonition that Grace is contacting me to fill in last minute. I don’t think they would ask this and I like to think I would instantly demur, but it’s a weird notion after five months of not working in church stuff.

Thank you god

In Playing Indian by Deloria, I learned about another practice of blackface besides it repugnant American practice. In England, to hunt game was a gentleman’s prerogative. Part of a poacher’s strategy was blacken his face so as to not be recognized. This eventually led to the Black Act of 1723. Deloria sees these people as figurative and probably literal ancestors of White settlers who disguised themselves as “Indians” for various acts including civil disobedience like the Boston Tea Party.

In the course of checking this stuff out online, I learned that the words “mask” and “masquerade” share a probably etymology: French mâchurer (Cotgrave, 1611) to daub, to black the face, Catalan mascara soot, black smear (end of 14th cent.), Portuguese mascarra stain, smut (16th cent.), mascarrar to daub, to smear (1813). (from the OED under the etymology of mascaret, n)

This meme was circulating on Facebook. I like the quote but wasn’t sure it was authentic. It’s actually in Gould’s wikipedia article complete with citation. Cool.

Today is the 22nd birthday of my oldest grandchild, Nicholas. I miss flying out and spending time with the California branch. He and I texted back and forth today.

More books in the mail yesterday.

My copy of Susan Howe’s Singularities reminded me that next time I need to check and make sure the book is unmarked. This book is marked up in places.

Since Howe likes to mix it up on the page, extra marks from previous readers make it more difficult to decipher. Sheesh. The other books were in much better condition.

Talking to my therapist today I realized that all my reading about Native Americans are interior preparation for my next compositional project. The copy of The Art of Tradition that came in the mail yesterday is pristine. One thing I like about this book and the research is that it was way ahead of its time. The authors understood Native American traditions and expressions as a work in progress. This went against the grain of anthropologists and their ilk. It was so contrary that though it was finished in 1955, it is only recently available. It seems to be much clearer and helpful to think about Natives as real people with a living practice not one stuck in some idealized and misunderstood past.

The antinomian controversy, 1636-1638: A documentary history edited by David Hall was in excellent condition although obviously an older book. The original flyleaf is pasted inside the front cover. It has a good explanation of this book:

“This volume brings together the core documents in the Antinomian Controversy, the theological-turned-political disputation of 1636-1638 that shook Puritan Massachusetts to its roots, led to the defeat of one governor an the election of another, affected the relations between England and New England for years, determined the shape of Puritanism for the next century, and established Anne Hutchinson’s popular reputation as a martyr in the cause of intellectual freedom.”

I have already read extensively in the library copy. I find the transcripts of Hutchinson’s trial are riveting. I can picture all these intimidating white leaders grilling Hutchinson. Her replies are a model of coherence and confidence.

Elizabeth brought a new book with her on Wednesday, Alice Neel: People Come First. I had never head of Neel but Elizabeth helped me understand her genius. Yesterday morning we talked about Elizabeth’s art class and Alice Neel. I love to chat about stuff like this.

The book was issued as a catalog to a show at the Met last year. The paintings in it are beautiful and startling.

Elizabeth brought the book to use with her class. Cool beans!

I continue to bounce around different styles of music. What I used to call classical music seems to have taken a huge step out of the spotlight. Major newspapers don’t necessarily have people on the beat of that kind of music so much any more. My guess is that for so long academic music dominated the music beats that now people like the NYT cultural critic, Wesley Morris, have only pop music on their horizon. This was the guy who wrote the music chapter of The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story (the book) and did the 1619 podcast episode on the same subject.

I read about half of his chapter before returning to reading straight through. I suspect that this collection of essays is very uneven.

Nichole Hannah Jones is who created the original project and then is credited as having “created” the book version. She is a Pulitzer prize winning journalist and teacher. But I found her essay which is the first one a weird blend of personal anecdote and sweeping assertions. I hasten to say that I am very supportive of the idea of broadening the historical discussion to include stuff that has been omitted by white historians. However I did notice that Jones’ footnotes in this essay were often to newspaper articles. Her citations disappointed me in that they did not point me to new sources to consider. But I will read the entire work eventually.

But to get back to the weirdness of thinking about music styles.

Jean Baudrillard’s Selectedd Writings came in the mail today. Though I picked up on Baudrillard from Gerald Vizenor’s Fugitive Poses, his (Baudrillard’s) ideas on commodification of society quickly made me think of my own weird love of commercial music AND other kinds of music. Part of my struggle with commercial music is that I believe that it’s primary purpose is probably to get itself consumed and this often is the basis of its design. This makes it sometimes feel dishonest to me and consequently not very attractive to me who loves music.

Maybe this is the inevitable bigotry of old age, but when I examine commercial music of my own past though I know that the musicians I admire like the Beatles and James Brown and on and on were definitely in it for the money the music does not feel fundamentally dishonest to me. I just use my own built-in bullshit gauge.

When I am considering music that is new to me, I can tell whether I like it or not. And that is the biggest question. Music I like seems to include music that is many different styles. I think sometimes that I fail to connect to music because I am most interested in how it sounds. But commercial music sometimes seems to be a sort of celebrity thing where what is being sold is a persona not necessarily a sound.

A couple of days ago I suggested that Eileen and I send flowers to ourselves this year. Usually I try to be sneaky about it but that is harder during Covid restrictions. She smiled and said that she had already ordered flowers for me but it could count for both us. They just came. Note the daisies. At our wedding we gathered wild daisies for the flowers. So we try to give them to each other when we can.

Another cold day in Michigan. I spoke to my son, David, who is living in California today. He said it was 80 degrees there. Life is rough. But I do like Michigan.

It’s hard to explain to people how good my life is right now. But I do enjoy it: reading and practicing. Each day is another gift of life if you don’t mind me being a little smarmy about it. But it is true. I enjoy living with Eileen. And I love reading and thinking.

I guess I don’t have much to say today. Red letter day, eh?

Eileen is handling our finances now. She has been just a little concerned that I might be spending money too fast. This is quite probable because before she asked me about I was paying little attention to how much money I was spending. I was enjoying buying things for people as well as spending money at the local bookstore.

But I am trying not to spend money so quickly. Today I asked her if I could buy some used books. That way I could them cheaper. That would be good. I couldn’t buy them from the local bookstore. That wouldn’t be as good. But I think I’m going to do that. At least as long as Eileen wants me to moderate my spending.

And I am quite spoiled. I know that if I was only able to read books that are already in the house I probably wouldn’t live long enough to run out of books.

But still I’m going to order some books if I can get them cheaply enough.

time passes

I just ordered 6 books used. Total bill: 89.17. I’m too lazy to figure out how much money I saved by buying used but 6 books for 90 bucks is considerably less than if I purchased them new. They are:

1. The Antinomian Controversy, 1636-1638: A Documentary Hall, David D., Ed.
2. Fugitive Poses : Native American Indian Scenes of Absence and Presence Author: Vizenor, Gerald Robert 
3. Art of Tradition: Sacred Music, Dance, and Myth of Michigan’s Anishinaabe, 1946-1955 Author: Gertrude Kurath, Jane Ettawageshik, Michael D. McNally
4. My Emily Dickinson Author: Howe, Susan
5. Singularities (Wesleyan Poetry Series) Author: Howe, Susan
6. The Birth-mark: unsettling the wilderness in American literary history Author: Howe, Susan

I have already read two of the Howe books and am reading library copies of the first three. Of course, I double checked with Eileen before closing the deal and she gave her okay. I am truly spoiled.