Man With Sign, September 17, 02024

I wake with the alarm, toss down yesterday's leftover cup of coffee, and hit the road, arriving — a soloist today — at Roosevelt Circle exactly at 7:30. Clamp my big sign to the railing and hold up WEIRD IS THE NEW NORMAL, with a few attendant worries about the word's current prevalence in the political conversation.

Traffic is heavy and the drivers generally friendly. A guy in a dark blue station wagon gives me a thumbs-up, rolls his window down, and calls out "Thank you!" He follows it with some further remarks in a nice tone of voice, but I can't make out what he's saying, alas. The get-a-job guy of course wants me to know that I'm a fuckin' weirdo who should get a job. Heh.

I continue working on the triplet palta in Purvi thaat. After the first ten minutes or so of straightforward warmups I begin exploring more elaborate elisions, beginning with what we might call an Articulative Hemiola, in which I pronounce the first syllable of each pair of notes, thereby crossing the pattern divisions.

This approach allows me to "conceal" an essentially simple and repetitive structure, and the reflexes built by eliding the sargam syllables apply with equal value to the construction of ol-taans inside a khyal rendition. I work on the articulated pairs for some time, then shift to pronouncing the first syllable of each group of four notes.

This creates a 4:3 polyrhythm inside the syllabic flow and drastically obscures the underlying triplet sequence, so much so that every so often I doubt the line's integrity and resort to counting on my fingers for a few seconds, checking that everything's in order. It always is. I do enjoy practicing!

Make a video at 8:24, then sing free melody for a few minutes before closing up at 8:30 and heading homeward. Today there is no oncoming Northbound traffic at the rotary and I'm able to cross the road without putting my life in danger. The first half of my day today is all students; the afternoon is all house & political work; the evening, mercifully, is a rehearsal. The day begins and ends with song.

See you tomorrow.

Man With Sign