Elizabeth and Alex do quite a bit of cooking together. Recently, they wanted to make animal crackers from scratch. They had a recipe for the cookie but no animal shaped cookie cutters.

So they innovated. The result was very charming. Elizabeth came up with some simple designs based on circles and portions of circles.

Then they got to work. I found the results charming.

Yesterday’s church streaming service went much better. I plugged headphones into the fancy mic I have been using. Since Rev Jen is on vacation, she had arranged to have someone co-ordinate the streaming. It was the first time he had done it, so it was very helpful that the headphones allowed me to hear him and  the stream on my computer. This enabled us to touch base beforehand.

This has not been the case for weeks. Rev Jen and I have been working together with me being unable to hear her at all through  my computer. Eileen would stream what we were doing live on her phone in the next room. I would run into that room to hear what was happening and then come back quickly when it was my turn to play. Unfortunately there was about a ten second delay between Eileen’s phone and the actual stream which was happening (silently) on my computer.

Anyway, yesterday was much better.

I came home and immediately video chatted with my lovely daughter Sarah in England.

I haven’t worked on my composition today. I had a video doctor visit this morning. It was my annual check up. The doctor had tech problems with the interface. I was able to go through the usual pre-appointment interview with the nurse, but when Fuentes came on, she was pixilated and silent. We did manage to get it to sort of work. She was understanding about me not wanted to come in person. She said that the Covid 19 thing was not working out great for her. I suspect Spectrum Health (where she works) didn’t give their doctors a choice about being open during the virus. So far she hasn’t gotten sick.

My health is about what it was. I have gained weight since my last check up. And although my BP went down for a few months, it has been higher in the last week. I’m wondering if this is connected to my composition project which is weighing on me heavily.

I am making progress  on the piece, but I’m planning on taking today off.  Time to rest up a bit from yesterday and, of course, get some more reading in.

My life is good.

My sister-in-law, Leigh, “liked” last Sunday’s church service on Facebooger. (Hi, Leigh!) This inspired me to actually listen to my part in the recording. It was the first time I had listened to any of these streams. My playing wasn’t as bad as I remembered it being.

Besides composing, I have been doing quite a bit of reading. I’m banging away at A. R. Moxon’s The Revisionairies. It’s a bit of a romp. I’m enjoying it. It’s about 600 pages long and I’m trying to read a library copy.

The story is hard to describe. It begins a little isolated nook of a city where there is a Mental Asylum, a Sardine Factory, and the Neon Church. All of these are important to the plot. However the surreal nature basically dominates after a while. Not only do the inmates (called the “loonies” in the book) flood the streets due to something called the Fritz Act which reforms mental facilities by allowing the loonies to come and go as they want, the stability of reality fluctuates in very odd ways. Like I say, hard to describe.

I ran across this video recently.

This is an amazing performance. After checking around a bit, I discovered that this version is a transcription. The original was for an instrument called the Arpeggione.

Apparently, this instrument is tuned like a guitar but bowed like a cello. The accompaniment was originally piano.

I’ve been on a Zadie Smith kick. I listened to the video above from Dec 2019. She reads a story and chats with a fellow writer.

She published a new book, Intimations. I purchased the audiobook to exercise to. It is excellent. I will purchase a used copy of the when I can one cheap. In the meantime, I pulled out my copy of her 2017 collection of her essays, Feel Free and started reading in it again.

I didn’t finish it on  the last try. I guess I got distracted. I am promising myself to read some of her work that I own but haven’t read before purchasing more of her work.

I spent more time working on my composition today and yesterday. I have backtracked and rediscovered some of my initial ideas which look more attractive than when I discarded them.

I have been playing a lot of Bach organ music. Bach organizes my mind compositionally. Plus playing his music is like sitting at the feet of genius. This idea that it is an exciting privilege to spend time with authors and musicians in their work is one that Zadie Smith talks about.

NYTimes: Black Like Kamala

 Michigan’s political geography: Understanding 2016’s defining swing state in 2020 – Washington Post

Is This the Beginning of the End of Racism? 

by my hero Kendri. Again, I haven’t read it yet but plan to.