How is that even possible, to sleep 14 hours when I was not especially tired, then wake up feeling more or less normal? Maybe it’s because I did a good amount of writing yesterday in a style that is not comfortable for me. That kind of thing wrings my brain dry. The call above is from 21st Street at the strip mall, outside the old Radio Shack. Caller ID shows the number as 516-241-6962, which would be a Long Island number in the old world of geographically relevant area codes. There used to be a rule that payphones in NYC had to send out accurate Caller ID but that rule no longer exists, or if it no one cares to enforce it.
I’ve been writing at a piece about LinkNYC, which I did not think I was going to write about at any length ever again. The only people reading it will, I think, be the people who make them. I was motivated to write about this again after I took some affront at the claim on those kiosks that you can register for health insurance on the New York State of Health website. That is just not possible unless you happen to already have an account there. Even if you do have an account it is impossible to upload into the kiosk stuff like tax returns and documents for proof of income, as required by the website. But those limitations aside how is anybody supposed to actually navigate that famously recalcitrant website from a city sidewalk on a tiny screen with no physical keyboard in the cold of winter? Not my problem, I’m happy to say.
I’m feeling kind of strange about this epic sleep. As I said in the call above, at first I thought I’d woken up at 3:30 AM, similar to waking up at 2:30 AM last week and not really ever getting back to sleep. I’ve got to straighten my life out. I cannot afford to live like this forever. Or can I? Maybe the end is in sight and I just don’t know it yet.
The reflection of Bel Aire Diner and City Fresh Market signs in the payphone enclosure was surprisingly interesting to me. Reflections are a good subject for photography, I think, though they can be hard to get in proper focus. Shadows are another good source for photos.
I’ve been posting to a couple of classical music groups on Facebook the last few weeks and months. One in particular is a lot of fun. People post a few measures or a page from a piece of music and the others have to guess what it is. I actually created a website in that spirit, though it’s been dormant for some time: namethecomposer.com. The good atmosphere of that Facebook group makes me think I should revisit and redevelop that site of mine.
Last night I posted a couple of pages from one of my monstrous Sorabji scores, the Sequentia Cyclica Super Dies Irae, which is about 375 pages of vintage Sorabji. Off the top of my head (because they are hard to get to at the moment) I think the other printed Sorabji scores in my possession include St. Bertrand, Djami, Gulistan, a piano concerto, and some smaller pieces.
As far as putting music obscure composers in front of other musicians I think Sorabji is actually pretty easy to identify, though the individual works are not always so simple. It’s usually solo piano but written on 4 or 5 staves, often horizontally oriented, and just a fustercluck of notes notes and more notes. At some points over the years I’d been in touch with the curator of the Sorabji Archive, which as far as I know still has sole rights to selling those scores. I have not looked for any of that stuff in a long time but last I heard they were finally selling PDF copies of at least some of Sorabji’s stuff. That is, needless to say, a far better way to use those scores that are hundreds of pages long and unwieldy as hell.
The Sequentia Cyclica was performed and recorded by Jonathan Powell, who I saw play the Opus Clavicembalisticum at Merkin Concert Hall. I have not heard that performance but I probably should give it a try. The person I went to the OC with, a composer himself, made an interesting comment. He said that if you are a very good sightreader you could probably get through this stuff easier than most. I don’t know why but I found that to be a surprising insight.
There really is a lot of beauty to be found in Sorabji but there is no shortage of tedium and plodding fugues that just never seem to end. His works of more modest scope are, I think, reasonably approachable. I play his Pastiche on the Hindu Merchant’s Song from “Sadko” and find it to be quite playable, which is not to say it’s easy. In the Hothouse, which I played in college, is quite easy, as are some of his throwaway Frammenti Aforistici. My favorite Sorabji piece is probably Gulistan, but Djami would be a close second. I listened to Gulistan over and over while driving through Nebraska and the Dakotas back in 2002. I also played a lot of Aulis Salinnen symphonies on that trip. And, of course Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska.
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In other developments I think the time has finally come to get a new computer, not that I have money with which to make such a purchase. I would have to do this with financing and monthly payments, which I should qualify for since my credit is pretty ace. If I don’t qualify then, well, I don’t know. I need a PC with a shit-ton of RAM and that can open Adobe Creative Cloud programs in less than the ½ it took last night to open Photoshop. If I was on any kind of deadline this PC would cause me to miss it.
The funny thing about not having money and thus having to finance a PC purchase is that I will probably end up getting a totally jacked machine, which it sounds like I should not be able to afford. Most vendors don’t offer financing on cheaper PCs, so I might one of those $4000 VR-ready things even though I don’t expect to create VR content.
I bought a piano once on an installment plan, at a time when electronic payments were not an option yet. I don’t think I ever missed a payment, which would have been good for my credit rating (I guess) but I never really liked the idea of buying things that way. I prefer a single transaction. I remember when automatic payment plans became a thing and how I thought they created kind of a crutch for people’s credit ratings, since they are not exactly showing a higher level of responsibility in paying bills on time.
