Back

Traffic is heavy and almost all my responses are positive. A pair of contractors in a big pickup truck try to tell me something, but since they're mumbling and I'm disinclined to move, they eventually settle for a theatrical thumbs-down before moving on. The get-a-job guy is AWOL today, so those two are the only negative voices this morning.

2/

The adjacent-note-inflected scale work in C Dorian continues. Today I spend the first half hour working on minor variations in the exercise. Among these are: eliminating the non-inflected pitch (thus singing grace-noted pairs rather than triplets); placing that pitch in the middle and/or ending positions; singing three grace-noted pairs with no "straight" pitch at all.

3/

At around 8:00 I shift back to singing the exercise as originally conceived, moving it up and down over two octaves and a fifth. Today my breath control is faltering a bit; for whatever reason, the long line is interrupted more often for air than I'd like. But everything else feels pretty good, with the upper register ringing well.

4/

At 8:22 I make a video, then — turning on the tabla — spend the last few minutes of the hour singing free improvisations inside the Punjabi tappa, "aa gumani aa jaa," a favorite piece that I've not sung much since featuring it on an India concert tour in 2011. It's rusty, of course, but I just may bring it back into circulation as I enjoy it so much.

5/

And then the hour is over; I cross the oncoming traffic and make my way homeward. Yesterday was anomalous: all my students canceled or rescheduled, leaving me with a long stretch of time which I was able to employ productively in cleaning and reorganizing my office. Which is still wildly cluttered by ordinary standards, but compared with what it looked like LAST week, hugely improved.

6/

To say nothing of completing a bunch of postcards (currently writing for Indian River County in Florida), handling some institutional busy-work for NEC, uncovering long-lost (and hugely important) documents in the midden that is my work-space, and even getting a little done in the basement, which is going to be seeing some contractors this summer.

7/

I don't have the time or energy to stretch the metaphor much further, but it does strike me that a vast and system-wide housecleaning is due for the institutions of American governance. We escaped catastrophe in 2020 by the skin of our teeth, and there is a vast mess yet to be dealt with. Do not be complacent; do not waste your vote or your energies on vanity or spoiler candidates. This is a bucket-brigade moment.

See you tomorrow.

Man With Sign

end/