airplanes are supposed to leave jet trails, right? those white streaks in the sky. i saw four or five airplanes today, in a very short span of time, which didn't have any trails, and that sort of freaked me out. but i guess it makes sense that in certain conditions of humidity the vapors in the trail would evanesce so fast that the trail wouldn't be visible. anyone know about this? ester and i came up with some alternative explanations too.

the second week of classes (which reminds me: i need to fill out my add/drop form, not to mention register for music 48, and get my meningococcal vaccination shot) and they're already started to interact. today in dada and surrealism, we (well, mostly olivia and i) talked about musical techniques with analogues in dada methods, including composers we've discussed in my contemporary composers class (schönberg, cage, stravinsky), as well as bach. (the seminar went well - i co-led discussion for the first two hours or so, which was pretty successful, and i made friends with janine.)

more strikingly; i composed my second poeme dadaïste of the semester yesterday morning, this time in french, and in my french class. i rather liked this one - i came up with a slightly new technique, although it differed from tzara's instructions less than the rest of the class: i cut up the words of half of a small sidebar, let them slide a few at a time from a folded piece of paper, and recorded them in the order i saw them, but only the ones that landed face up. then, i put all the words back in the paper and again spilled them onto the paper on which i had written the poem, but all in one splotch, and then taped them that way. so, of the words in the article, some appear in both the written part of the poem and in the splotch, some only in one or the other, and some not at all; they're only visible as green. supposedly carol is going to scan the poems, so maybe there will be a picture up here soon.

a few discussions of last year punctuated today, because it felt like they had to. as ester and i agreed, it seems like some groups and people, in their approach to this certainly somehow-significant day, are missing the point; but of course there is no point. it's just a day. today is september eleventh. what should i feel?

as ben pointed out, this day last year was a lot like this. i don't remember it being this hot. i do remember eating cereal, and having french class. like on that day, i had a long phone conversation with my parents, but (this time) not about anything related.

a big arm day: our aussie/quebecois sub in yoga led an intense class with lots of tense muscles and almost no pause between asanas. then i drummed for the beginning of african ii, along with a full batterie including addie addie and broken-footed nori. that was really nice and home-like. but i had to leave early to have a piano lesson. hooray for tony barone.

the other big news is that my turntable arrived today. the dustcover is broken into a few pieces (one of them very large), which is a problem, and i have lodged a complaint which will hopefully register. there is also a problem with the arm-lifting lever - it does go up and down, but it's not high enough to lift the arm. i feel like there's an easy way to fix that. the stylus, finally, probably needs to be replaced. but the main thing is it works. so far it seems perfectly capable of reproducing bob dylan, xtc, and miles davis. now i'm back to digital though, listening to ll cool j's mama said knock you out. which seems to sample the "funky drummer" break on at least four tracks.

gadji beri bimba glandridi laula lonni cadori
gadjama gramma berida bimbala glandri galassassa laulitalomini
gadji beri bin blassa glassala laula lonni cadorsu sassala bim
gadjama tuffm i zimzalla binban gligla wowolimai bin beri ban
o katalominai rhinozerossola hopsamen laulitalomini hoooo
gadjama rhinozerossola hopsamen
bluku terullala blaulala loooo