Weeknotes: March 4-8, 2024
Monday, March 4
A couple hours into the workday I pause to add some synth parts to a demo I started recording over the weekend. It was a song idea I got while running and I had to keep singing it to myself until I could get home and could do something about it. This happens to me a lot and I doubt I'm alone. Many of my best creative breakthroughs have come while running or walking. Being ambulatory jiggles the mind in a helpful way and I sometimes feel like I can hold very elaborate concepts in my mind while on foot, but as soon as I'm back home amid familiar sounds, objects, and needs, they quickly dissipate. If what I'm imagining seems particularly exciting or urgent I try to condense it into bullet points as I near my house so I can quickly jot them down as soon as I get inside. It's a debrief that often usurps even the need to drink water.
I pitch the song concept to a potential collaborator and we message ideas back and forth for a while. The weather hits 70°F and I turn off the furnace for the rest of the day. Around 6PM I'm barefoot on my porch playing guitar. Neighbors amble by, enjoying the warm evening. An old silver sedan pulls up parallel to my own parked car and stays there idling mysteriously for a while. Eventually the driver begins laboriously backing in behind my car even though there is ample parking on both sides of the street. It's not a difficult maneuver, but the guy is really struggling. The whole operation reeks of uncertainty. I keep strumming. A minute later he gives up, pulls back out into the street and pauses again. The guy in the passenger seat looks over at me, flashes a goofy apologetic smile, and they head off. What was that all about?
Tuesday, March 5
My evening has suddenly opened up. All day I thought I was supposed to be volunteering with some co-workers at a charity event, but apparently I forgot to sign up and they already have all the help they need. I could do a lot of things with this chunk of free time and I'm tempted to just stay home, but I decide to drive to Ann Arbor and see Perfect Days, the new Wim Wenders film. The remodel they did at the State Theater back in 2017 was transformative. I think back to high school viewings of Pulp Fiction and my first Rocky Horror experience, sitting in its grimy, uncomfortable seats with other downtown weirdos. I walk through the plush little Art Deco lobby to the box office. The young woman who sells me a ticket has a tattered paperback of Stephen King's The Stand next to the register where I choose an assigned seat at random.
It's a small screening room and I've unwittingly seated myself next to a pair of Chatty Patties who trade comments and exclaimations all through the film. A few rows back another moviegoer sniffs loudly every five or six seconds, refusing to get up and blow their nose for the entire two hour runtime. Irritations aside, it's a marvelous film that pulls me into the patient daily life of Hirayama, a cleaner of Tokyo's public toilets. There is no dialogue for the first half hour, just scenes of Hirayama's morning routine and the thorough scrubbing of magnificently designed Japanese bathrooms. Throughout the film he experiences moments of quiet joy and occasional unexplained sorrows, all conveyed wordlessly through the face of actor Koji Yakusho.
I too find joy in my routines. It's taken me a long time to understand this about myself, but my own habits change little from day to day. I wake and reset my bedroom in the same sequence before opening the curtains, I make the same oatmeal recipe every morning, prepare my coffee with the same practiced movements, run my familiar routes around town, and so on. The variation is in the unexpected encounters with others, the subtle changes of atmosphere, and the shifting texture of each endeavor. When Hirayama pauses in his work to notice sun-dappled shadows on a bathroom wall or take pleasure in completing a found scrap of paper with a game of tic-tac-toe on it, I understand him fully.
I'm trying to grow a grapefruit tree from a seed I saved last month. Every morning I look at the tiny green seedling in its pot on my kitchen table, an unlikely little miracle. In the movie, Hirayama rescues maple seedlings from local parks and tends them in his apartment. I'm hardly the monk-like character Yakusho presents in the movie, but there are many aspects of him I recognize in myself. I find myself thinking about my previous career at the violin shop. I was no luthier, just a simple repair and set-up technician, but over the years I grew to love my tools and the daily movements I made with them became second nature. Now that I make my living on a computer, I sometimes miss the physical labor of working in a trade. There is grace in repetition. I am not a particularly graceful person, but I like noticing when certain movements have become an inherent part of my physical language.
Wednesday, March 6
It's my mom's birthday. We celebrated with her in Brighton on Sunday and on Monday I mailed a card that should hopefully arrive today. I listen back to a demo I recorded on my phone last night. It's a song I started writing four years ago about what my estate sale might look like. It catalogs some of my belongings, asking their future owners to treat them with respect when I'm gone. It's been about 80% finished for a long time, but there were holes in the lyrics I just couldn't seem to fill. Before bed last night I took another crack at it and the missing lines suddenly coalesced. This is another habit I’ve developed. Revisiting my songbook at the end of the night, just to see if something sparks. I'll give it a few more days, but the new lyrics passed the overnight test.
I spend the rest of the morning working on a pair of bios, one for a contemporary British psych band and another for a Japanese Shibuya-kei band from the '90s that is experiencing a revival. Suddenly it's noon and I rush to my appointment with my new accountant. Yesterday I gathered up all my tax documents, but the only folder I could find had a picture of a tiny golden retriever puppy sitting a cappuccino mug on it. I buy cute animal folders like these from Dollar General to give to my bandmates and I had one leftover. After the appointment I have a list of errands to run and as I tick off each one I feel more and more exhausted. Outside the Bakehouse, I eat a cup of tomato soup in my car listening to an audiobook from a familiar British detective series I often revisit for comfort.
Rather than allowing myself to rest, I work into the evening, drinking ginger tea on my bed, and fantasizing about installing a nice looking armchair in my bedroom where space is at a premium. It's been one of those days. A day day. One filled with the basic stuffing of life. At night I eat ice cream and watch Marcel the Shell With Shoes On. It's been in my queue for weeks and I'm finally getting around to it. It's perfect. Jenny Slate and Isabella Rossallini are an unlikely combo. I think of my mom the whole time. I think she'd love it.
Thursday, March 7
Rough news to start the day. One of my dearest friends has lost his partner of 29 years to a brain tumor. The prognosis wasn't good, but it all happened so fast. I’m worried about my friend.
I get into a rut around noon, unable to decide my present course of action. Start a new assignment, make lunch, run, walk the dog, learn a guitar part for a song I have to perform on Saturday, or send out some booking emails? My regular routines -- the ones that keep me grounded -- generally cover mornings and evenings. Midday is sometimes hard to deal with. The sun is at its zenith, but I'm often down in the pit of tasks trying to suss out their importance and decide their sequence. It was different when I worked in an office. I much prefer working from home, but sometimes I get overwhelmed.
The evening is better. I'm working on a solo project of brief acoustic songs, each one under a minute long. I've recorded my parts at home, but am ready for some collaboration. I pack a blue IKEA bag full of percussion instruments and meet up with two of my bandmates for a recording session. CC, Elly, and I have been playing together for a little over a year, but have never done any recording. As I'd expected, they are a dream team. Efficient, creative, and fun. I think back to recording my entire last album alone during the heart of the pandemic. Having no one to bounce ideas off of. Trying to force myself to hear and play from different perspectives just to make sure it wasn't sounding too one-dimensional. I'm proud of that album, but it's so much easier to make decisions in a room with smart, engaging people. I've missed this. I’m glad to have these friends in my life.
Friday, March 8
Rainy day errands. At a local antique store, I browse mid-century armchairs. The entire time I'm in there a woman stands at the counter dominating the owner's time with a long-winded story about her family and some heirloom furniture. "Well, I have two sons. Boys! Girls would've known what to do with them."
At the vet buying heartworm meds for Islay I notice two "Found Cat" posters on the bulletin board. For an instant I think one of them must be Moose, my neighbors' lost kitty. But neither is gray and how would Moose have made it all the way to Saline? I remember watching The Incredible Journey when I was a kid, but still, it's an unlikely trek through a dense suburban landscape. At least someone's cats have been rescued. I like seeing found pet posters much more than lost ones.
I stop by K's to see the progress she's made cleaning out her old office. The room is like a pandemic vault she sealed up tight mid-2021. She's made great strides and even painted one of the walls purple. She sends me home with a generous tote bag of wine and another filled with a bunch of old dog toys she’s unearthed. Islay will be thrilled to be reunited with classics like "peanut," "potato," and the one that's supposed to be a bowl of guacamole with holes for little squeaker-filled tortilla chips.
At home I pour a glass of wine, listen to a Bernice record, and make a one-pot spaghetti dish from the New York Times cooking app. It's good, not exceptional. I present the first few toys to Islay, sending video of the operation to K, then dump the whole bag out on the rug. She is indeed overjoyed. She nudges them around with her nose, flitting between several of the stuffed toys, then gets to work on an old antler bone while I restring my Telecaster. There’s a good show going on over at Ziggy’s, but I don't have the energy to go out tonight. This is my entertainment.