Man With Sign, May 29, 02025
I wake with the alarm, yanked out of unsettling dreams with a certain level of relief, and head downstairs for a bleary pre-vigil coffee. The caffeine doesn't do that much to raise my energy level, but I reach Roosevelt Circle at 7:29, set up my big sign, and hold up THINK IN EONS — ACT NOW! as my philosophical advice to the morning commute. No Craige today.
1/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxKzJIU0o3E
#ClimateChaos #ClimateChange #CitizenActivism #HindustaniMusic
Speaking of which, the response is almost without exception positive. I get several calls of "thank you!" and a lot of raised thumbs and friendly waves. The get-a-job guy is angry enough this morning to shake his fist at me and holler "GET A REAL JOB!" A cybertruck goes by and I briefly contemplate the aesthetic failures that work synergetically to create such a remarkably ugly thing.
2/
My foggy focus isn't great for doing serious concentration on raga structure, but it does keep me moving slowly in the first half hour, thus serendipitously securing a gradual raga development over my slow segue into wakefulness. By 7:58 or so I'm pretty aware of my surroundings as I go through “tore karan main ho gayi bairagan” in Devgiri Bilawal.
3/
While I do go over a few bol-bant sequences inside the medium-slow ektaal (today at 33 bpm), it's mostly just relaxed improvisations, leading up to a period of more sustained focus on the antara. While I have this section essentially memorized and flowing adequately, it needs to be looser, and I put in about twenty-five minutes singing it with increasing legato and rubato, reducing its mechanical links to the tabla cycle.
4/
At 8:25 I make a video, today including the vilambit antara for the first time this week. Once this is complete, I have only a few minutes left in the hour, and I sing languidly through it, my body tired but relaxed, and then pack up for the walk home. Gauging my moves carefully, I avoid being flattened by traffic, and stash the signs in my garage before heading up my steps for another cup of coffee.
5/
Today is a lighter teaching day; only a few students, with time for video editing, dog walking, letters, postcards, and another 90 minutes of standing on the bridge with signs at 4 o'clock this afternoon. Plus which, I'm going to get an assortment of vaccinations which may well render me stupider than usual. Oh, and by the way, it's my birthday. I'm 67.
Get a real job!
See you tomorrow.
Man With Sign
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Warren Senders