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 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.
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.
Weeknotes: September 2–6, 2024
Monday, September 2
Over the weekend I used my bow saw and loppers to break down the big storm-loosened tree limb that fell in front of my shed. A casualty of a previous ice storm, it had been hanging by a tough woody tendon for two years before finally breaking loose last week. Very satisfying. Its logs are stacked neatly in my woodpile and its branches now crackle merrily in the firepit while I sip strong beer out of an enamel cup and listen to Duke Pearce and Bud Powell. Piano trios are the coziest of musical combos. In the winter I listen to Bill Evans Trio practically every night. It's only Labor Day, but I'm embracing the cool weather and its symbolic shift into fall.
I've pulled out my sewing kit and am mending my neoprene smartphone armband which came apart at the seams during my run today. I've bought pricey ones and generic ones and they all fail, some sooner than others. I'll occasionally mend one when I get tired of having to replace them, though it rarely buys more than a month or two of added service.
Weeknotes: August 26–30, 2024
Monday, August 26
"Do you know your way around here?"
"It's my first day!"
I'm comforted to see another older student struggling to find the right building on the directory map. I've just finished my first class and offer to walk her over to where I think it is. Her name is Norma and she's probably a few years older than me, using the GI Bill to finish up a degree of some sort.
I steer her to the incorrect building and she ends up walking back to her car to drive to the other side of campus. I was trying to be helpful, but I hope I didn't make her late.
Weeknotes: August 19–23, 2024
Monday, August 19
It's my last week of summer. One week from today, I will be one of those middle aged adults in a classroom full of teenagers at my local community college. My path of higher education ended indefinitely in April 1996 after two unfocused semesters at Central Michigan University, a school I attended mostly because my brother was already up there and it was the expected thing to do. My high school years were heavy on arts and humanities. I was a theater kid, president of my Thespian troup by senior year. I formed my first band in 7th grade and began gigging professionally at age 15. My brief college experience was half-hearted at best. I just didn’t have it in me. I wanted to make music.
Weeknotes: August 12–16, 2024
Weeknotes went on vacation last week. Weeknotes thought about becoming Campnotes for a moment, but decided that being nothing was healthier. Now Weeknotes is Weeknotes again.
Monday, August 12
After four nights of camping, it's a luxury to wake in my own bed. The morning is cool with a slight blush of autumn. I love this time of year. It’s the start of harvest season, wildflowers are are at their peak, and as summer winds down, there's a bittersweet breath of change that never fails to electrify me. I'm most activated in the calendar's borderlands. Late August, November, April, early June, these are peak awareness periods for me. When the fullness of each season has yet to come, that's when the interesting stuff happens.
Weeknotes: July 29 – August 2, 2024
Monday, July 29
It's midday and my brother and I are driving up US-23 to Fenton in a borrowed truck. He puts on a low-key electronic mix that reminds me of Ulrich Schnauss' Far Away Trains Passing By, an album we both agree is the ideal downtempo vibe. We're picking up a couch our parents bought from a local furniture store to save them the shipping cost. Simultaneously, we both get a text from our boss. I'm driving, so Jamie reads it to me. Drama at the office. Six of our co-workers have been laid off amid a larger company-wide restructuring. Somehow, we have both survived another corporate culling, though it's hard to feel secure right now.
Weeknotes: July 22–26, 2024
Monday, July 22
I drive to the optometrist to pick up my new lenses. After two weeks of squinting and headaches, I ease back into a world of stunning clarity. I almost expect to hear a fanfare as I slide them onto my face. On the drive home I stop at Dairy Queen and eat a chocolate-vanilla twist cone in my car while listening to pundits discussing President Biden's decision to drop out of the race. For the first time in months, I feel some hope. The path to November had become a funeral procession. Can Harris can pull off what shouldn't have to seem like some kind of miracle?
It's an otherwise desultory day of self-admin and catching up at work. At night I walk into town to see a show at Ziggy's, less because I want to, but because I think going out would be good for me. It was right move. Sitting on the stage floor, Sara Tea plays a hypnonic set of ambient autoharp drones and other manipulated sounds while landscape videos are projected on to a small board to her left. Michael C. Sharp follows her with radiant synth and guitar shimmers, and finally my neighbor, Golden Feelings, kicks off his summer tour, sending out sweet lotic tones from a small Mexican blanket-covered podium. It’s a perfect Monday show. Soothing experimental music, no vocals. I catch up with friends and discuss DJ-ing skate jams, breaking down in the desert, banjo museums, and Ray Lynch's Deep Breakfast.
Tournotes: July 17–19, 2024
Wednesday, July 17
Just after highway marker 334 on I-75, the bridge suddenly appears on the horizon. Depending on the atmosphere it may be a hazy mirage jutting out of the woods or a sharp relief of cream-colored gates against the blue. Today the weather is dramatic and I make my crossing to Dina Ögon's pastoral "Oas" while freighters churn into the straits from sunny Lake Michigan. To the east, stormclouds fall across Lake Huron in a foreboding smear above the three nearby islands. Dead ahead is an uncertain mix of gray and white over the green expanse of the Upper Peninsula. Crossing the Mackinac Bridge is never not special. Midway through, the right lane is cordoned off where two workers in hazmat suits blast flakes of Federal Standard 595c #14110 (foliage green) off the massive suspension cables with a firehose. I don't think I have ever crossed without encountering some type of maintenance. At the toll booth in St. Ignace I pay my own fare and that of the car behind me, a custom I learned years ago from K.
Weeknotes: July 8–12, 2024
Monday, July 8
In my dream I'm exploring a vast art deco hotel. It's mostly empty, either abandoned or in the offseason. Crates of interesting goods are stacked haphazardly around a casino-like room and behind the ornate bar I notice a beat-up cardboard box advertising a Casio keyboard model I've never seen before. What I pull out of it ends up being a gig bag containing an ornate handmade bouzouki, or maybe a cittern. Its strings are strangely paired with the middle ones in overstuffed clusters of three or four, all tuned in unison rather than octaves. I also notice the wood has rotted around the soundhole and on the back. A shame, as it's a beautifully designed instrument. I decide not to steal it.
I spend some time with Pretzel, my neighbor's three-legged cat, for whom I'm caring this week. He has barfed on his white couch blanket every day and every day I carry it down to the laundry room and re-wash it. I listen to Jake Xerxes Fussell's new album as I drive to Dexter to meet up with my cousins one last time before they depart to their respective homes in Pennsylvania and Florida. After dinner we visit our grandparents' grave where last summer we also laid some of their mom's ashes in a spontaneous little family ceremony. Then it's hugs all around and off we go into the furnace of a July evening. I put on some Hawaiian slack key music and keep all the windows down even on the highway.
Weeknotes: July 1–5, 2024
Some weeks words don’t come easy. I’m settling for brevity this week. Quicknotes, 100 words or less, which is rather fitting, given my opinion of July.
Monday, July 1
I feel frustrated. Nothing big, just in a general sort of way. 20 years ago I released my first solo album, Summer Cherry Ghosts. I'd meant to write an elaborate post celebrating its anniversary, but just can't seem to summon the energy. Every year July arrives with great expectations, but I never seem to meet them. Honestly, it's one of my least favorite months of the year. Here is an empurpled essay I wrote about that album several years ago.