Weeknotes: September 23-27, 2024
Monday, September 23
The second day of autumn. That's the title of a song my brother wrote in the early '90s and I always think of it on the day after the equinox. In the evening, K and I drive up into the northern suburbs to see Vampire Weekend at Meadowbrook Music Hall. I brought a blanket, but we rent lawn chairs and sit in the cool damp evening, drinking gin and tonics and listening to Ezra Koenig's keening voice pierce the hill.
Weeknotes: September 9-13, 2024
Monday, September 9
I'm about to go to bed and make an early night of it. As I’m switching off the lights in my studio I realize I haven't touched an instrument all day and it bothers me. I pick up my guitar and sit casually atop my desk, thinking I'll just strum through a quick song as a matter of principle. An hour later I'm still up and have the bones of a new song in place. Whenever this happens, I think what might have happened had I just skipped the exercise and not played. When a song is new, it's always your favorite one.
I take it as far as I can, then stay up past midnight reading Leif Enger's marvelous I Cheerfully Refuse. It seemed like it was going to be a special book when I read the flap and I was right.