Reading Music: Julius Eastman

I listen to a lot of music reading. Used to be I listened to more or less anything. This was maybe because I was simply younger and could multitask better than I can now, or at least thought I could. Or maybe I used to spend more of my reading time with newspapers and magazines (or doomscrolling the internet) instead of reading books. At any rate, while reading books now I find words, or English words, too distracting, so my reading music tastes have developed some. No words or non-English or indecipherable vocals are a prerequisite condition of my musical selections for reading now; long, slow developing musical pieces are a preference. Brian Eno's rule that ambient music should be as easy to ignore as it is interesting usually fits my needs. Although my favored reading music can be calming it doesn't have to be. I actually find some intense minimalism, like Julius Eastman, and some free jazz, for another example, as mentally invigorating as coffee. Eastman was a bad boy (see song titles) of the art music scene of the 1970s and 1980s, African American, palled around with Arthur Russell of downtown NYC experimental-disco reputation, and reportedly lived in terrible impoverished circumstances at the end of his life. I've discovered at least three posthumous albums dedicated to his music that I adore as reading music right now: Femenine; Volume 2: Joy Boy; and this one, Three Extended Pieces for Four Pianos: