Man With Sign, September 9, 02025I roll out of bed with the alarm, already looking forward to the first slice of toast (I baked yesterday and it came out very well).

Traffic is heavy and almost entirely supportive, with the exception of a guy in a trades van who (despite being, apparently, an electrician) doesn't seem to think much of science. Hey pal, it wasn't Jesus who discovered electricity. Anyway, it's him and the get-a-job guy, whose fulminations seem to have simmered down significantly over the past week. IDK why.

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Today I have set aside to work on the antara of "kaase kahoon aali," and I begin by going over the primary melodic gestures in the lower register. Because antara sections are always built in the upper octave, the initial learning can take place an octave below, allowing the basic material to be internalized before it's placed in the correct register.

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There are some tricky intervals (a descending major seventh, for example) that take preparation. And — as usual – it takes a while to understand the ebb and flow of tension within the slow ektaal setting of the words "jabse sajan pardes gayilavaa unke milan naad piyaa ki aas," in which some words "rebound" off the initial accents while others "arrive" at them.

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But the composition itself comes to flow fairly smoothly and I get it memorized by 8:20. I'd begun at a stately 18 bpm to give myself room for mid-course corrections, but by the end of the hour I'm at yesterday's 23 bpm pace and able to maintain an even and unforced rendition — aided by the melodic rhyme in beats 9-11. I've spent the whole hour alternating between asthai and antara, and enjoying it.

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At 8:23 I make a video, then finish off a few more avartanas of improvisation before retuning and walking over to Craige for our duet. I make fewer textual glitches today, and Craige's voice is a little better, so both of us feel reasonably content with our rendition of "Get Together." And then we pack up and head our separate ways.

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As an example of the relevance of my sign for today, I note that the US Department of Energy released a post on social media claiming that, since the sun goes down at night, solar energy is not effective or reliable. I didn't know it was possible for scientific ignorance to extend to being unaware of the existence of batteries, but this is the world we live in now.

See you tomorrow.

Man With Sign

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