I’m All Lost In, #154 in Six Sentences: Toward Pioneer Square; six flats; and a list. Plus the Week in X>Y, including Vibes>Vibes.
I’m All Lost In
The 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week
#154 in six elegant, run-on sentences.
The Week in X > (is greater than) Y
Vibes > Vibes When I took XDX up on her last-minute plan Saturday night to check out the latest installment of the experimental Wayward Music Series at Chapel Performance Space in Wallingford where we’ve seen inspired solo-cello performances, beat experts, loop designers, and tanbura, upright bass, and art-guitar trios in the past [I’m All Lost In, #89, 6/28/25, I’m All Lost In, #127, 3/22/26 ], I was reminded that vibes is short for the vibraphone as opposed to this decade’s relentlessly-overused word for atmosphere and mood when the evening’s performer James Doyle, a classically-trained percussionist and University of Puget Sound musicology professor, channeled and reconfigured 1930s Swing-vibes-master Lionel Hampton into ethereal accompaniment for DIY field videos of beaches, seas, rapids rushing over rocks, oceans, and astral meditation.
Now this is vibes. Vibraphone wizard James Doyle, the Chapel at Good Shepherd, Wallingford, Seattle, 9/19/26.
The Number of Miles I’ve Gone Today > The Number of Miles My iPhone Says I’ve Gone Today It’s midday and my iPhone puts my “Walking + Running Distance” total at 3.8 miles, but the phone wasn’t on me when I was playing tennis at Volunteer Park this morning; I had put my phone on the bench at the side of the court as I always do while Valium Tom and I battled (“battled” with a heavy Slavic accent as if you’re Aryna Sabalenka talking about a semifinal match) through two Tennis-Channel-worthy sets of net volleys, deuce games, drop shots, two-handed backhand smash returns, and one-handed backhand ballet for more than an hour of tennis in dreamy, blue-to-gray, September weather.
The lower tennis courts (Courts 3 and 4) at Volunteer Park, North Capitol Hill, Seattle. (This pic is actually from our previous week’s match, 9/19/26.)
Taking 1st Ave. Home from Work > Taking 12th Ave. Rather than walking home the way I used to from Sound Transit’s International District offices by heading east on the Yesler overpass to 12th and north along the nondescript route into Capitol Hill, I’ve been slipping west down King St. and the quaint Occidental Mall this month into busy Pioneer Square and then walking north on 1st Ave. into flaneur-friendly downtown where I’ve discovered The Shop by Porter (I have no idea what the name refers to) at 1st & Seneca, a tech-chic coffeeshop that’s perfect for old CEO ideating amidst the glass-walled conference modules, living-room tables, sturdy chairs, plants, and couches until their linger-friendly, post-work, 7pm closing time.
A chic layover at 1st & Seneca, downtown Seattle, 9/22/26
This Week’s Obsessions
1) Day Made Kaffe Bar
Another re-route in my walk abouts this month now comes on Friday afternoons when rather than immediately tacking northeast back to Capitol Hill, I’ve been walking southwest to the bland, stadium edge of Pioneer Square on 1st Ave. to a groovy surprise—a split-level coffeeshop called Day Made which manages to mix the golden-milk-yoga-studio mood of a hippie space with the fine-line aesthetics of a cool art gallery, the friendly personality of a neighborhood arts & crafts shop, and the mod elitism of a designer clothing boutique, perfect for wrapping up business and savoring the last hours before Friday evening begins.
2) The Key of G-Flat Major
Chasing my obsession with Rufus Wainwright’s memorable song “The Art Teacher” [I’m All Lost In, #153, 9/19/26], I printed out the sheet music this week so I could learn to play it on piano, and I discovered it’s in the weird key of G-Flat Major—six skeptical flats—which helps explain how Wainwright created the illusion of a stammering school girl by ending each phrase like a lyric that doesn’t rhyme (though these do) on the “wrong” note, including a G natural on the “er” in teacher, not a proper note in the key of G-flat major at all, which shows—in a key with so many unpredictable pitches to choose from already— how awkward this soliloquy gets; perfectly, in this context the G natural adds a melodious touch of grace to the halting confession.
3) A List of 10 Minor Obsessions
The empty hypercity space off 1st & Seneca, Dowtown Seattle, 9/21/26
In addition to Day Made Kaffe Bar and the Key of G-Flat Minor, I was fixated on several other things all at oce this week: How popular E-scooters have become; my ongoing frustration with coffeeshops and bars letting in dogs and their exposed assholes despite King County health code against it (the county only enforces the no-dogs rule if someone files a complaint, so the burden to be the bad guy is on people like me who are uncomfortable around dogs); sad about the underutilized dream city plaza around the corner and up the grand cement staircase from the aforementioned Shops at Porter off 1st & Seneca; my earache (which wasn’t as I first thought a sign of an intractable illness, but, ah-ah, as I then figured it would do, soon turned into a minor cold late Friday night, but went away by Saturday afternoon); the coming A.I. empire and the end of the human era; purging the teenage art that’s been cluttering the walls of my apartment for too long; pizza (and though one of the personal pies I had this week was no-cheese, extra sauce and all veggies, the other one didn’t skimp on the diary at all as I officially admitted I’m no longer a vegan); my October 23, 1975 issue of Rolling Stone magazine with Patty Hearst on the cover that a guy making a Ramones documentary wanted me to scan for him because it has a full-page article on this new club called CBGB; William Gibson’s 1988 book Mona Lisa Overdrive as the Future-Cities novel in the city canon; antisemitism ( “just get over it” someone scoffed on my socials, “a meaningless term” someone else explained to me); and as it’s been for the last two weeks, Elaine Dundy’s 1958 city canon novel (Paris) The Dud Avocado which had me in stitches on the bus thanks to a passage when the unfettered American-expat protagonist Sally Jay reports on the “wrought up” “elderly American gentleman” at a cocktail party who “in one glorious non sequitur demanded to know exactly what I had against the South” as she “answers just for the hell of it, ‘‘Too much woodwork.’”