Post-dinner with Good Nathan at BS&G. It's always a struggle not to have a conversation with him in which we relate differing experiences but arrive at similar conclusions. He and I talked about music that resets us to a known relaxed state. His favorite was a song by Dave Matthews; mine was the Bach Chaconne as recorded by Awadagin Pratt. My Crazy Taxi scores were consistently above $4000, including a new high score of around $4850, right behind David. Someday I will catch him.

Piano-hunting at odd hours is difficult. Hillel was locked. I rang the bell. No dice. We checked the proximate Harkness Chapel (locked), the Church of the Covenant (someone was playing it), one of the various Mather edifices (locked), Guilford (no piano), and Hillel (this time, open thanks to someone having heard the bell). Good thing we got in; a lot of creativity gets internalized — not sure if it's lost, or compressed for later use — when I'm in the mood and expect to play but can't. What will I do for a piano in Boston?

My normally underemployed soft touch was completely on, and I had enough ideas to sustain the lack of banging. To recharge, I half-assedly rendered my signature but out-of-practice Rachmaninov Prelude in D major. Then I improvised again, this time with a bit more banging. Nathan said he wanted a recording so he could use it all as regenerative music when needed. I'm glad it had that effect for him. For me, after improvising, although I usually find myself energized, I almost always also feel unsettled, even unnerved — that my playing is some infinitely deep intelligence's answer to a question, except that it's an idiotic question. Improvisation manifests only those ideas in my head that are quickly and easily reached. Those less accessible are not plumbed for lack of time to consider their proper use. I want to be a composer.

Got Rowan's Mac IIci (running OpenBSD) to synchronize its clock over the network using NTP. Taught him some basics about the organization of the filesystem and how to browse it. Then, built him a custom kernel.

With the helpful critique of Peter, G-Nate, and Danny and his nearby friend, I made some nips and tucks to the face of schmonz.com. One of these days Danny will finally like the way it looks. Not!