Weeknotes: March 11-15, 2024
Monday, March 11
"How dare you."
This, grumbled to my red Newgate clock as I return home from an afternoon walk. Daylight savings and poor time management have made me irritable. It's 3:30 and what have I gotten done?
The sun glinting off an old antique gum dispenser on my living room shelf was the first thing I noticed this morning. It ignited a previously-simmering desire to install a mantle mirror behind that shelf and open the room up to more light.
I wasted a good hour drinking coffee, searching for interesting wall mirrors I could afford. What I want is to find a vintage mirror with the perfect dimensions -- preferably in a half moon shape -- that someone is selling nearby for $20 or less. I would also not be disappointed if I were to stumble upon it at a local thrift shop, a random estate sale, or better yet, just leaning up against a telephone pole in front of someone's house, free for the taking. And I would like this to happen in the next few hours before I have to go to the studio. Any of these scenarios would be deeply satisfying and would add a positive emotional layer to my future mirror which will fill my room with radiance and suffuse my life with a gentle undercurrent of winning.
I add this to my ongoing quest for an attractive, but comfortable armchair, a desire that appeared suddenly on a similar morning a week ago. I wish to obtain the chair in a similar manner and have been trying all week to foster within myself a receptive chair-bringing attitude.
Working at home, I just simmering in my space all day, trying to get things done while while distracting myself with urgent home improvement schemes. And that is how it is 3:30 and all I've really done is teach the algorithm to show me more ads for mid-century accent chairs (and now mirrors).
Tuesday, March 12
While running down Prospect I notice a "Lost Turtle" poster on a telephone pole near Boggs. I spend the next mile wondering about it. Dogs and cats are the more common escape artists, but how does one lose their pet turtle? It's March. What was it doing outside and how long was it left unattended that an animal legendary for its lack of speed managed to move out of sight? These lost pet posters are killing me. My melancholy grows as I run past the salvage yard at Spring and Grove with its frequently heard, but unseen guard dogs barking and lunging at the fence as I pass. I've glimpsed their hulking shapes through the cracks and seen what looks like a large doghouse. I can't imagine they have a good life, chained up in a junkyard like a '70s cop show. I feel sad for them every time I run past and hope they are treated better than I assume they are.
After dinner I play around with mixes from our session last night. I hook up my old Casio CT-6000, a five-octave behemoth whose sonic palette helped calibrate my youth. The original of this model was bought for my brother at Service Merchandise in Arborland Mall in 1985. It was at the time Casio's state of the art keyboard with MIDI, velocity/after touch keys, and membrane-style buttons like the famous Yamaha DX-7. For two decades its string and brass ensembles and funky orange drum fill button soundtracked our lives as we pummeled the thing nearly out of existence. It was a broken wheezing mess by the time I included it in a bulk sale of other messed-up keyboards to a guy on Craigslist sometime in the late-2000s.
During the pandemic I started feeling some nostalgia for the old beast and began searching for another one. I found a CT-6000 in great shape for sale in Clarkston and drove out there to make one of several awkward COVID-era gear transactions. It was probably late summer 2020 and I remember the novelty of masking up to go inside someone else's house, especially a stranger's. I'd bought my drum set a few months earlier in similar fashion from a guy in a Livonia parking lot, grabbing each piece out of his truck and transferring them into my little Hyundai while he stood respectfully ten feet away. Both the Casio and drums were essential parts of my last album.
Wednesday, March 13
I set up a run of early evening errands, timed to begin with a falafel from Lazeez Eats on Ellsworth. I'm minorly obsessed with this place. It's my favorite falafel in town, but there is rarely anyone in there and I'm scared one day I’ll find it shuttered. I eat in the parking lot listening to Squeeze's "Another Nail in My Heart." 20 minutes later I'm cruising toward the grocery store and the Bangles' "Manic Monday" cycles through my playlist. Such a perfect pop song. That ornate piano hook, the great Paisley Underground vibes, the harmonies, it's all so breezy and sweet. And written by Prince at the peak of his powers. I'm smiling a big goofy smile, windows down, as I pull into the parking lot. I'm standing in the bulk aisle filling up a container with oats and over the din I suddenly hear that piano intro again. The Bangles are my lucky charm today.
More recording in the evening. No concrete ideas, just grabbing instruments and seeing if there's a part in them. I'm still getting accustomed to working in this tiny space. It's like recording in a cockpit. I’ll get excited about an idea and stand up to grab a guitar while tripping over the cables wrapped around my leg, yanking the headphones off the edge of the desk. I like my mise en place very tidy and this room is a challenge, but I try to ride the enthusiasm and end up writing a picked bass part a little reminiscent of Michael Penn's "Out of My Hands." All his records are underrated, but I especially love 1997's Resigned.
I also work out a semi-campy outro part on the Stylophone my friend Lauren got me for Christmas. I didn't tell her I already had one. It was on a couple songs from my last album, but the vibrato stopped working and I'm so grateful to have a fresh, fully-functional Stylophone at my disposal again.
Thursday, March 14
Cleaning out the company office in preparation for our move to a smaller one. Pies (pizza and fruit) have been ordered to commemorate the strange holiday people call Pi Day. I only ever know Pi Day is here because free food sometimes gets offered and I have trouble turning down free things. Walking out into the March drizzle with my office chair, another delivery truck from a local pie company races up the the curb. My friend Allen and I joke that all the pie businesses must bulk up their staff on 3/14 to meet the crazy demands of office celebrations. The tailgate of my hatchback is jammed shut and I have to cram the swivel chair awkwardly in through the side door. When I arrive home my house suddenly feels overwhelmed and claustrophobic. Until recently, I think I had just the right amount of stuff in it. But once you cross that threshold, any new arrival feels like a burden. I take my old unwieldy swivel chair, a relic of some ‘60 lab, down to the basement where other auxiliary items are piling up. Spring cleaning is on my mind.
State Park logs another fantastic and efficient rehearsal ahead of a house concert we're playing this weekend. I love this band. We're in a good era. I’m flush with the fellowship of music and as I step out into the cool dark night and hear the spring peepers singing in the marsh across the street.
Friday, March 15
Signs of spring have been present for weeks, but especially so in the past week. The tree of heaven in my front yard -- one of several fully-grown ones -- always seems to have the year's earliest crocuses around its base. It’s a strangely fertile little plot for a tree that secretes toxins into the soil. The hyacinths next to the driveway popped up this week and there are also violets and other wild pioneers scattered throughout the yard. The widowmaker elm branch from last year's spring ice storm still hangs over my shed door, though it has lost some of its menace and doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Despite all these warm days, it seems too early to install the window screens and I'm still enjoying the unfiltered sunlight coming in at harsh angles through the panes. I have vague thoughts about getting a picnic table which, like the brick firepit I installed, will no doubt become an immediate tangle hazard for Islay's leash and consequently an irritation for myself.
Islay, who turns ten this week, drags me on a walk over the train tracks toward what I refer to as "Poop Alley." It's a curious little street of mixed use sandwiched between the tracks and the river that dead ends into a tangle of overgrowth. It contains a handful of houses, a derelict industrial building, a towing company, some rehearsal studios, and at its entrance a large apartment complex with a center courtyard reeking of unclaimed dog poop, despite an unmissable kiosk with a trash can and ample supply of refuse bags. When she is at her most purposeful, Islay of course wants to head straight down Poop Alley. Who with a hound's nose wouldn't? I try to discourage walks in this direction, but she has become an obstinate walker in her later years and today I humor her.
We only get halfway down the street when something spooks her. Sometimes it's a loud trailer banging over a pothole or just some unwelcome scent a human like me can't detect. Dogs are a mystery. We take a second walk in early evening and never really leave the block. Just a lot of unfocused ambling back and forth across the street, long pauses to sniff the air, and discoveries of exciting little trash caches. I'm free to travel wherever I want, so I allow her to lead the way. Sometimes it’s an epic trek and sometimes it’s to the backyard.