mmmm. i woke up earlyish (9:30?), hit play and lay back in bed listening to Messiaen's powerful Quator pour la fin du temps. it is unusually and successfully programmatic (with movements meant to evoke birdsong, angels, trumpets, rainbows, and jesus) but not "embarrasing"-ly, as the liner notes suggest of the program.

now i have on the impossibly gorgeous Verklärte Nacht of Schoenberg, in his arrangement for string orchestra. the fullest, loudest passages seem to be physically affecting my speakers, the music gushes out and suffuses my room and leaks out into the sundrenched courtyard (which, happily, is far less strewn with kegs, cans, and broken bottles than it was yesterday morning.)

this has been (and is being) a swell weekend. i managed yesterday afternoon to read everything required for wednesday's seminar excepting a couple articles on the featured artist for the week; even taking it slowly, and pausing for a nap on the floor of mccabe in the little 3rd-floor nook overlooking worth health center.

i walked over to underhill just as the girl on duty was closing it up, and she let me in to borrow a stack of cds overnight. serendipitous timing feels good. i went to a practice room and played my current repertoire. a roundabout way through the dappled sun (why dappled? is that like the horses?) and up the beach, but i discovered i didn't have my novel with me, so i lay and talked with stef instead.

a pleasing meal, too, avec ben et rabi, who told us about unitarianism. we saw what we decided was a shrew (my googlesearch findings: shrew seems likely, but perhaps it could have been a vole.)

back home for l'Histoire du Soldat (a recording featuring ian mckellen, vanessa redgrave, and sting) and some eRes, including a fantastic sound file of "l'admiral cherche un maison à louer," a simultaneous poem by tzara, huelsenbeck, and janco, with people speaking in three languages and making a lot of silly noises. another fun bit of zurich dada: hugo ball's "sound poem" "gadji beri bimba" provided the lyrics for the talking heads song "i zimbra."

since i finished the reading i wanted to accomplish, and stef talked me into it, i went to see jenny yim's comedian in lpac. he was okay, some pretty funny jokes i guess, but it all seemed really really ordinary, the most stereotypical standup comedy i can imagine. is that what all standup is like? i don't think i like standup comedy, anyway. but i had fun making side jokes with stef, zab, and kara, and singing along to supremes songs with the words of other supremes songs.

that got me to olde club just before the boggs started up. they were noisy and sloppy but interesting, i warmed to it. nice extended solo pieces on banjo, dobro, and guitar. the drummer was a riot, no mounted toms (= greater visibility) but a big fast two-step racket for a pair of hot rods. i was less impressed with aloha; they seemed like a talented and rhythmically invented post-rock band trying to hard to make noisy emotional normal rock music. but the frequent moments of stripped-down polyrhythm, with vibes and congas, were nice.

olde club, cleaned again by the srn kids, looks better than i've ever seen it, and it was as packed as one would expect on a first-weekend-of-school show, with, notably, lots of freshman. this was helped by the adjacent swim team party in the wrc, which meant drunken folks in bikinis and aloha shirts and leis, funny for an indie show and funny for a suddenly cold evening. i was wearing a hawaiian shirt too, which made me feel a bit askew. but it all made for a nice harmonic energy. a good vibes show. (as thom yorke said about "i might be wrong" when i saw them.)

closers/headliners enon (stress on the e, apparently) were even funkier and funner than when i saw them with the lips two years back, although they were a person less. colorful instruments, and all that. basically, it rocked, and i was front and center (precisely) dancing, like the girl in the dalmatian shirt that the lead singer patted on the head, but not like her compadre next to me who somehow managed to remain motionless in that onslaught of groove. i bought their record, and their cd. i'm toying with the thought of only buying music at olde club for the rest of the semester.

i better get some brunch and return these cds by 1:30.

l'admrial a rien trouve