Weeknotes: April 7–11, 2025
Monday, April 7
C-G-D-G-B-D. It's a version of C Wahine, a Hawaiian slack key tuning I'm playing around with this morning. The low C vibrates against the back of my guitar and into my chest like a Pacific frequency. Outside a pale blue sky is flooding the weak clouds in a slow diffuse throb.
During a Zoom meeting we discuss a now-beleaguered company that we used to be a part of and it depresses me. I break for lunch and listen to a podcast dissecting last night's season finale of The White Lotus. In late afternoon I put the Tigers game on the radio. The entire homestand against the Yankees has been rescheduled because of the cold weather. Early April night games are a gamble in the Midwest. Two weeks into the season and the team is playing really well. I'm excited about them. They beat the Yankees 6–2 and who doesn't love to beat the Yankees?
I go for a drive, chasing the evening light and listening to Michael Rother's calm, radiant music. At Mary McCann Preserve, I hop back and forth over muddy lanes to get to the rail line at the back of the property. A dozen or so inert train cars are linked together on the track and have been there since I discovered this park during the pandemic. I'm collecting photos using different lighting strategies for my photography class, trying to find my way around manual mode. Right now I feel uncreative and pressed for time and I wonder how many lame photos of rusting train cars and derelict factories the instructor has to sift through every year from novice students like myself. They must be the G, C, and D chords of photography.
Weeknotes: November 18–22, 2024
Monday, November 18
It's mid-afternoon and I'm standing at the end of my block with Islay who is examining a hedge. Across the street a band loads out of an upstairs apartment. The first guy has a freshly-sculpted mohawk and a guitar case and is followed single file by two mismatched bandmates with amps and drum gear.
At work we are assembling our year-end lists, both for the company and as individual editors. I have some focused listening to do. At dusk I head out on foot and find myself wandering though Highland Cemetery, listening to Arooj Aftab's Night Reign on my headphones. It's a good cemetery album, more seductive than spooky. As night falls, I see a woman walking a dog in my direction down the dark wooded lane and turn around so as not to scare her. On my way out I pause at the gate which is eerily lit by a high purple streetlight. Now I'm listening to the Shovel Dance Collective, a U.K. folk group who sound a bit like Ireland's Lankum. Their slow, brooding version of the old maritime ballad "The Merry Golden Tree" is a bit of a masterpiece. I love these new dark trad bands.