(no subject)

New song obsession: "Mine", also from Ida's latest. I love the way the undulating piano and guitar patterns play against each other, especially when they're joined by those wordless backing vocals. This after a week working on a sort of mix CD--including Elvis Costello's recording of "Poor Napoleon" with Bill Frisell, the Malarkies' "Upstairs", Nanang Tatang's "R U Ready", and Low's "When I Go Deaf", all of which were in constant rotation in my head, and occasionally out of my mouth.

Yesterday's show was sparsely attended, which usually throws me way off--I withdraw even further from the audience, I lose my footing as a musician. But yesterday--thanks maybe to Colin and Philip's enthusiastic response to some early songs, or to the opportunity to stretch out on my own and play some new songs and old ones without having to answer to a band, or to the strange sleep-deprived out-of-body state I've been drifting in and out of lately--I managed to push all the psychology out of the way and just sing. Oh, singing is nice.

I'm working on a new song that's nothing like any of my other songs. Change is exciting.

(no subject)

Anyone want a collection of tapes from the Black Saint/Soul Note label(s)? 21 albums by bands featuring Mal Waldron, Paul Bley, Paul Motian, David Murray, Art Blakey, Bill Frisell, Joe Lovano, Charlie Haden.... Most of them are still shrink-wrapped, so I can't tell you how they sound, but my guess is: avant-gardy.

Update: It's been claimed.

(no subject)

Tonight I went through a colossal manila envelope I haven't opened since I moved from New Jersey. Here are some things I threw away:

• Records from the move--shipping contracts, utility cancellations and signups.
  
• Records from different frequent flyer programs. I used to fly frequently.
  
• Numerous academic papers on MUDs, innovative user interfaces, computing for people with disabilities, UI lessons from games, and hypertext, an idea that has since conquered the world.
  
• Transparencies from my AT&T presentations on TWin and VEmacs, an attempt at a voice-control-enhanced text editor for programmers with repetitive stress injuries.
  

Here are a few things I didn't throw away:

• Unmailed postcard reproductions of art (Lichtenstein, Magritte, Holzer, Stella (Frank), Johns, Mondrian, Munch... and others) and of World War I and prohibition posters. Most people I knew put posters on their walls. I used postcards.
  
• Mailed postcards from talking_sock: Mexico, Cardiff, an island resort.
  
• Three photographs, the best of which depicts my sisters at Stonehenge in 1993. Stonehenge looks okay but my sisters are great.
  
• An unusually artful Sunday Doonesbury (October 6, 1996).
  
• A photocopy of a humorous flowchart of "all" science-fiction plots, author and date unknown.
  
• A Boston Globe article (March 20, 1995) about Eric Ostrom--possibly this Eric Ostrom--and his new ice detection technology for airplane wings.
  

[Looking over this post in the morning, I find this question: What matters?]