July 1sts

On the other side of the year: January 1sts 

July is E Lydian Month. Craton Crossing, from Rifts. 

7/1/1998

Chuck Close exhibit at MCA. The thing that is most inspiring about his work is the reliance on the process or system of rules—such as crocheting or knitting—where you don’t always have to reinvent the wheel, yet can still be productive. His thumb-print work is very “impressive” (no pun). Interesting that he said that most of the time spent on a piece is preparatory. Sort of like writing a piece of music. It’s so impressive that even in the face of a debilitating illness, being paralyzed from the neck down, he still found a way to work. It was somewhat curious that the exhibit said next to nothing about his paralysis—and rightly so—it should have no bearing on the value of the work.

[7/1/2026: Ever since I started to get into his work, I’ve always had some kind of systematized process. I never have blank canvases in music]. 

7/1/2023

NASCAR weekend in Chicago—first year. It was surreal, like a dream: “I went downtown and there was a NASCAR race right in the middle of the city”. All the fencing looked carceral, dystopian, as if the city was on lockdown."

 A pic of the barber shop on the corner of Michigan and Harrison. Would make a great album cover: 

 7/1/2024 

Article: The Imitative Impulse. The reference to daisy-chaining relates to Chuck Close’s “crochet” metaphor for making a work: “There are two schools of daisy-chain making. The first is the thread-the-needle school, and advocates the delicate piercing of a single stem with the thumbnail and then threading a second stem through the cut until the flower head makes a natural knot; and so continuing the process on to the next, and the next....”    

[7/1/2025: I think this is actually more about systems, where your framework is allowing you to sequence and thread things together, where a connection might have previously been realized. The songday system that I've been using for over a year now is this sequential thread based on months, days, and minutes, and uses the music in language as a basis for new work. Once you've gathered musical ideas over a year, the next process is to weave them together into collections, which is a kind of a daisy-chaining. It’s a very efficient way of working, at least for me. I've never been in a situation with a blank sheet of paper or a blank canvas or a blank score. if you have a system in place, you can just grab an idea and go with it. “Nothing goes by luck in composition, it allows of no trick,” wrote Thoreau in his journal. “The best that you can write will be the best you are.” ]

 
 

 

 

 

 

***

Sotomayor: “With fear for our democracy, I dissent...Today’s decision to grant former Presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the Presidency”. “It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government.”