Weeknotes: September 16-20, 2024
Monday, September 16
There's a bad smell coming from somewhere on the porch. Is it just my overripe trash can? I'm standing out there sniffing, looking over the rail for a decaying rodent when CC pulls up. I guide her up the steps to "the spot" but she doesn't smell anything out of the ordinary.
We play through a handful of songs in the living room while Islay whines, begging for treats. Her brat summer continues. Many of our rehearsal tapes have insolent dog noises on them, like ambient feedback. She eventually settles down, head on paws, and listens from the couch.
CC and I revisit songs from previous albums and scale down a newer one from its full-band arrangement to duo format. We also add a few more short pieces which preface longer songs like sympathetic key siblings. In this way, our next set will contain about 20 songs in 45 minutes.
Tuesday, September 17
At work I rewrite the biography for Fairground Attraction, a short-lived U.K. folk-pop group from the late-'80s that notched a number one hit with the breezy "Perfect." I'd never heard of them before today, but apparently they helped launch the solo career of Scottish singer Eddi Reader. Our old outdated bio refers to them as a "neo-skiffle" group, a term that charms me and one I reuse in my new bio. Their whole album, 1988's The First of a Million Kisses, is charming, so much so that I order a vinyl copy off Discogs after I'm done. I have a weakness for this kind of record; folky misfits succeeding beyond their means in an unfriendly climate. There were a handful of these in that era of hairspray and excess. The Pogues and Violent Femmes, of course. I’d put the Proclaimers' first album in that bucket too.
And then there are the true outsiders. How does something as obtuse and whimsical as Shopping Trolley's 1989 debut get released on a label? Joe Boyd's Hannibal Records wasn't a major, but it certainly had strong enough distribution that I stumbled into a copy in the U.S. Or the Horse Flies? A pseudo-gothic old-time string band from Ithaca, New York whose debut (named after the Cramps' "Human Fly," which they cover) somehow got re-released by MCA in 1987. Fairground Attraction are far more accessible than Shopping Trolley or the Horse Flies, but they still fought upstream to share chart space with Michael Jackson, Rick Astley, and Phil Collins. Their bassist played a Mexican guitarrón. Folk instuments win hearts.
Wednesday, September 18
All night I dream uneasily in Adobe Illustrator. By dawn I've moved so many shapes and created so many anchor points I'm exhausted. I meant to fit in a run today, but racking up mileage has become less of a priority.
I abandoned my marathon training a few weeks ago. I’m doing too much; something had to go. It's okay. I've tried to run one big race per year since 2009 and some years I just can't manage the time commitment. Maybe I’ll try to run a half before the year is out. I'm fitting in shorter runs when I can and experimenting with longer bike rides for pleasure and fitness.
Tonight I set out on my bike at 5:40 to time various segments, mostly out of curiousity. I didn't mean to end up in Ann Arbor, but I got hungry and just kept going. I have a couple slices and a beer at New York Pizza Depot, then head down past the hospital and do it all in reverse. I covered the mileage of what would have been a long September training run with far less fuss. By 8:00 I'm back in Illustrator tracing images for another class assignment.
Thursday, September 19
It's 9:40PM. I sit on the rug giving Islay some attention. I promised myself I'd take her to the creek today, but never made it. I feel like a bad dog father. I've been on a screen working on one job or another all day. The night sounds filter in through the open window: crickets, passing cars, neighbors chatting, a train in the distance. I step out onto the porch in my bare feet. It's the perfect time of year, pleasant days, cool nights, an equitable amount of daylight. I step out onto the sidewalk to get a better glimpse of the moon peeking above a neighboring eave.
A string of dim lights has been strung along the porch of the house kitty corner from mine. It's a rental, reliably shabby with a heavy turnover rate. No one seems to stick around long enough for me to meet them. The newest tenants have shown some TLC to the front porch, planting mums and other hardy late season blooms and keeping the little scrap of yard tidy. Halloween decorations have already gone up around several houses. I clocked the first fake headstone a few doors away on August 31. This town loves spooky season more than anywhere else I’ve ever lived.
Friday, September 20
I dreamed about Daisy, one of the cats I grew up with. I haven't thought about her in ages. In the dream she was so playful and happy and I learned that it was because she was on some kind of medication. In that liminal space I thought how sweet it was that Daisy was still at my parents' house and had found such joy late in her life. Then I reached the dream's temporal edge and fell cruelly into the present; Daisy and all her siblings who lived with us back then are long gone.
I understand the concept of how dreams work, that they are a sort of steam-letting of unconscious thoughts that can often be correlated with the stresses and events of waking life . Just yesterday my neighbor asked me to check on her cat while she was at work. He’d had apparently had a scary episode at the vet the day before and was on pain meds. When I went to greet him he was more affectionate than ever and after a ten-minute cuddle I felt sad to leave him. That Daisy, of all the many cats in my life, would inhabit a similar role in a dream is surprising, but welcome. The brain is a funny place. I like to know that she and so many others I spent time with are still in there somewhere, occasionally rising to the surface.