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Warren Senders

Man With Sign, May 21, 02024

Tuesday morning is beautiful — sunny, clear, neither too cool nor too hot. I walk up to Roosevelt Circle at 7:29, greet Craige (who's just getting ready), clamp my big sign to the post, and hold up 2021 IPCC REPORT: "CODE RED" FOR HUMANITY, which I've not used as much in recent days.

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youtu.be/GMHO43U7EJU

And if yesterday the commuters were largely indifferent, this morning they make up for it. We get calls of thanks, friendly waves, raised thumbs, our picture taken, and a nice variety of approbative responses. The get-a-job guy is nowhere in evidence, which means the negative reactions add up to exactly zero.

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My voice is a little creaky at first, so I take ten minutes to warm up before going full-tilt into "gaawo gaawo gaawo hari guna." But once I get started, I am really enjoying myself. Over the rest of the hour I move back and forth between free improvisations in teentaal and the kind of finely detailed layakari I was investigating yesterday.

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Which, in fact, I continue exploring today. Specifically, three different exercises starting at beats 10, 11 and 12 respectively. The first is three groups of ten 8th-notes; the second four groups of seven 8th-notes; the last is two sevens followed by four threes. These are all relatively easy when all the subdivisions are sung, harder when it's sequences of quarter- and dotted-quarter-notes outlining the rhythmic motion.

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But I don't belabor them, instead singing each exercise a few times over and gaining clarity on each iteration, then returning to free improv, occasionally accelerating the tempo a little from the morning's starting point of 142 bpm. I get so into the whole process that the next time I'm aware of the clock, it's 8:21. Time to make my video.

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This completed, I retune the tamboura away from the Ni-based tuning customary for Marwa, and up two semitones to D. Craige and I do a pretty good rendition of "How Can I Keep From Singing?" with a nice stately cadence; he says he finds the archaic language difficult, but it sounds good to me. We finish at 8:30 and pack our respective selves up; another day has begun.

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Let me close by reasserting the distinction between activism and politics. The two are superficially similar, but differ profoundly on a deep level. The first is driven by conscience, and resists compromise; the second is driven by exigence, and defined by compromise and negotiation. Neither can be complete by itself. Conflating the two is a common error, and one with potentially catastrophic consequences. Be careful.

See you tomorrow.

Man With Sign

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