A couple of months ago I was standing on the corner with a friend, waiting for a town car to take her back to Harlem. It was sleeting so we stood there a while before anyone stopped. Across the street in the elementary school, a construction crew was working. I thought they were just replacing the windows, but they were clearly doing a lot more than that. For a moment the high, penetrating rasp of a wet masonry saw eclipsed our conversation. I winced at the volume, though ceramic sounds mostly make my mouth water a bit. (I like the sound of unglazed porcelain pieces clinking up against one another, or the faint grinding a blasted glass stopper makes in a flask.) My friend turned excitedly toward the sound and then apologized over her shoulder, saying that in her house noises like that are music. He husband is a musician and makes some beautiful, but frankly difficult music (sound art?). It occurred to me that as conscious as I am of the visual world around me, I’m only intermittently alert to the aural landscape. When I suddenly notice it, I am suddenly overwhelmed by how much I’ve been missing, the way I was in the Zumthor building in Vals. The Therme Vals is a singular building. It is probably the most completely considered physical environment I’ve ever encountered. Everything is intentional. Materials, light, color, lines of sight, temperature, smell, and acoustics. Yet it doesn’t feel at all overwrought or overdesigned. It feels very pure.

I am hung over with exhaustion today. Baby was possessed of an mysterious feral energy between 3 and 5am and wanted to run about the room shouting for shoes and toys and other things I can’t recall. I could use a hangover remedy: (Austin) Tex-Mex migas with nice thick homemade chips and tons of cheese melted over the top for a moment under the broiler. There should be refried beans made with a lot of bacon grease and a very spicy michelada… Instead I’m sitting here trying to think about graphing and proposals and not really succeeding at all.

An interview with the director of Treeless Mountain, So Yong Kim, a woman I once worked with and liked very much in the way I can’t help liking people who make beautiful things that appear rigorously organized in some mysterious personal way… I can’t wait to see this movie.