Last letter from mom for a good long while

So I was reading through the letters and I came upon this one and I think I'm going to put them away for a few more years after this.

Date: Sun, 7 Nov 1999 14:40:56 -0800 (PST)
From: Eileen Hutchins
Subject: Bro Robert

Dear Celeste,
Brother Robert's address is [address] Dad gave me some bad news last night. He said that you and Christie aren't coming on Thanksgiving. Of course I know that this is only a vicious rumor. I was counting on you.

I'm losing my memory in odd ways. It isn't Alzheimer's, I don't think; the pattern, judging by articles and tv reports I've seen, isn't right. Daddy's and Tom's patterns of deterioration were pretty much similar to the reports. My problem isn't so much in being confused. I can still learn new presentations for the museum, and remember what I previously learned; I can do great in narrating the slide presentation for Westward Ho! and communicate very well with visitors on my tours.So what is the problem? Well, it's hard to describe. The other day I went to the Moo to help count out fliers to be distributed to school district offices. I walked in and there was Chuck Morrow, who has been out sick for months. I gave him a welcome back are you ok now, etc. One of the other docents very tactfully explained that Chuck Morrow was out leading a tour, and this was Richard Sachen. I was mortified. Still, even at that, it took me about half an hour before I really realized who was who. The bad part is that I know these people well. Then when I was assembling the packets, I got them all mixed up. No one realized, but it scared me. Daddy thought I was Winifred, but by that time he was disconnected generally. What's happening? The pattern is wrong. Some other things have happened also, but none as serious as this. Still, I can take detailed notes at meetings (2 a month), produce an average of 4 to 5 typewritten pages, and there are no corrections made at the next meeting. But I have to realize that something is beginning to happen. Please say a prayer for me.It's scary. These things never used to happen. Is there a forseeable weekend you can go to LA to see Catherine? Grandma will come too. I think we should do it soon, while both of them are still able. We took Grandma to the Grand National Horse Show and Rodeo yesterday. I think she really enjoyed it.She said she went to Bro. Robert's for dinner last week. She was delighted that you asked her. You can't imagine how important your continued contact with her is. Bro Robert was right when he said that your heart is in the right place.

Please come on Thanksgiving if at all possible.
Love to the world's best daughter, Mom

Um, so I guess that helps answer the when-did-it-start question. I guess this means I never really knew my mom at all, really. I don't know what I wrote back to this. In the letters around it, she's responding to me trying to convince her that feminism and communism are good ideas. And she writes for a while about being depressed. This wasn't long after she got on prozac. Maybe she was never depressed at all. Yeah.

I think I prolly wrote back the wrong thing. The right thing was "go see a neurologist now!!" I'm pretty sure I didn't say that.

this is a public service message: if yer family member complains of these symptoms, take her to a spciealist. If her tumor had been operated on then, it might have been treatable.

yee gods

oh yeah. Tom was my cousin, Catherine's older brother. He had memory deterioration and lost his short term memory before he died. Daddy was my grandpa. He broke his hip and had emergency surgery and when the anesthesia wore off . . . well, it never did really. He was extremely confused for the five years before he died. My family, which celebrates intellectualism, learning and intelligence as high virtues, has a pattern of deaths involving slow, lingering brain diseases.

Letter from mom

Date: Sat, 20 Mar 1999 12:11:13 -0800 (PST)
From: Eileen Hutchins
Subject: Grandma

Dear Celeste
I left a message on your voice mail this AM. Grandma is having some medical problems.(Bloody urine) and needs cheering up. Paul is coming over to dinner tonight, and I was hoping my two daughters could come tonight or tomorrow if possible. If not, maybe next week sometime. Grandma is definitely not moving to the Retirement Inn until all her medical problems are solved. She also has a cataract and some other problems. Love, Mom

dead letter. dead things in the letter: mom, grandma, "two daughters" relationship.

Rebounding

Pros and cons of different methods (not all of which have personally been tried by the author):

	Pros	Cons
Moving far away	Seems like you can run away from problems Locations don't remind you of anything	Problems follow you You leave behind support structures and friends and end up feeling alone
Graduate School	Learn nifty things Get a degree at the end Chance to network in yer field	Lotsa work Possible Debt Might have to move far away Danger of becoming a professor if overused as rebounding tool
New Relationship	Comfy Reassuring Hopeful Might have picked the right person this time	Might be making all the same mistakes again
Sleeping with as many women as possible	Hrm, this deserves it's own post in the morning

Letter

Date: Wed, 17 Mar 1999 12:24:55 -0800 (PST)
From: Eileen Hutchins
Subject: forgot

Dear Celeste,
I forgot to mention that Bro Bob will be in Oakland next week, so we gave him your phone number. I think that's cool' that he wants to see you guys.

Catherine called and wanted to be remembered to you. She is in a swwimming exercise program, only this morning she couldn't find her bathing suit. She saidit is worn and mended. We wondered whether the laundry thought it was a rag and pitched it. One day Dad put out the garbage and the garbage man took the can.
Love you, Mom

Brother Bob is a family friend. He now hosts all the holiday dinners for Christmas and Thanksgiving and whatnot. Catherine is my cousin. Actually, she was my grandma's first cousin. She's in her late 80's at least now. She's a nun. And I can't blame the garbage man for taking those cans. They were rusty and dented. One didn't have a bottom anymore. I don't know how my dad kept using them. when we moved from San Jose to Cupertino in the early 80's my dad moved the garbage cans too.

Left in this year

I got one ten page paper due monday where I must apply critical theory to Joan of Arc. I will be relying heavily on Cixous and talking about how, while with the French army, Joan of Arc escaped binary oppositions about gender. I got one 20 page paper due May 14th, which is a research paper applying critical (feminist?) theory to Christine de Pizan's poem about Joan of Arc. And I've got to do my documentation of the electronic music studio + test utlities for setting up 4 channel audio, prolly also by the 14th. and some sort of installation for a parking garage muzak system by the first week of may. that's it. then I'm done. till next year. My plan is, of course, to finish this all as early as possible so as to coast thru the last few weeks. or leave early.

all the undergrad thesises (thesi?) were due tuesday, as were many of the graduate thesi. Isaac, tho, is still working on his, although he can sometimes be spotted on the porch of India House, taking a smoke break.

but class has been a bit relaxed as a result of so many folks being done. Especially in the one with the prof whose still out sick.
Tom, who just turned in 70 pages single spaced, and whose concert is sunday, participates in a class discussion and installation artists.

And I took some time yesterday to finally get a haircut. Issac was nice enough to take my picture afterwards.
If I look like I've been rained on, it's cuz it was pouring yesterday. connecticut doesn't go half assed with this weather thing.

rainy day

but happy anyway. In fact, when I went to my see my shrink, I've been so chill lately that she told me not to schedule another appointment unless something came up. Apparently, the Wesleyan student health services has deemed me sane. Or sane enough, at least. Part of the reason I was in such a good mood is because Cola sent me a CD of an Oakland-based duo called The Coup. Cool stuff. Also jelly beans and dark chocolate. Cola is awesome.

So yeah, I'm not a game show host. I'm not gleeful 24/7. But damn, I'm doing better than I was in February when I had devised a plan on how to harm myself. Um, yeah. A plan I decided not to execute. Would have gone to a hospital instead. Didn't want the world to know what a loser I was. Didn't want to hurt my dad. Also knew that I would probably feel better later. But I did think about it. Bad times. I wouldn't be blogging this unless it was 100% past tense.

So damn, what a year. There's only three weeks of school left, but I have a paper due May 14th. I'm actually starting to really like school, now that it's almost ending. Not that I'm not anxious to get home for the summer. Xena will be going to dog summer camp in Kentucky with Angela. I have two offers for house checking up, but no offers for subletting. Alas. I was thinking I should drive across the country, but Sophie points out this would take a week and flying is faster and cheaper. So... do I really need all the gear I was going to haul around? My desktop is excellent for running protools, except it doesn't work. And I've barely run protools all year. Do I really need it for the summer? What if I just had my laptop, my bass guitar and some clothes? Maybe my basshead too, cuz it's small. I keep thinking I should bring my drum machine, but I can't think why. I mean, it needs MIDI to work and I have no MIDI on my laptop. Why is my drum machine calling to me? Maybe I could have discussed this with my shrink today. She wanted to know what's been bugging me lately. Same old stuff, you know, but not so much I can't just annoy my friends or feel better by the next morning. Couldn't think of much to talk about. She said, "can't you dig up some anguish?"

I got rythm, I got music. You're wondering what a basshead is. Some bass amps are in two parts, the amplifier and a seperate speaker. I have an insanely huge speaker cabinet because some boy was giving me grief about my rig and I caved into peer pressure and now I have gigantic speaker that I don't ever want to move anyplace. the head is a seperate part that actually does all the electronic amplification. It has a power cord. the speaker does not. Most people, despite what peer-pressuring boy says about "professional" bassists, have these peices joined together in a combo amp. the electronics are at the top of the amp and the speaker is below. I have helpfully taken a photo of my basshead sitting on my ludicrously large speaker. It will come in handy if I play in a too-loud punk band next term...

augh

protools is not working on my desktop. it crashes the computer with an evil hard bad crash. everything has been sketchy on that system since i went to 10.3 instead of 10.2. now i can't run my most important application, basically the main thing i use the desktop for. can't run protools on my laptop because it requires a pci card. double plus ungood.

pictures

what better way to distract myself from my woes than posting bad pictures of my campus?

That building is called the music studios. It actually has windows on the other side. there are practice rooms in the basement, then a bunch of classrooms and offices upstairs. There's also a computer lab upstairs, but i don't have any classes in that building this term, so i only go in the lab when i need to print.

That's the big concert hall. It slopes downward into the earth. the stage is two floors below gournd level. It's a nicer concert hall than Mills has, but there is not quite enough seating. It was built with some 70's idealist goal of not having enough seating to turn a profit, so that it would always remian unblemished by commercialism. it's pretty reverberant with all that cement, but they've got some wood stuff inside, which makes it ok for concerts.

That's the rehersal hall, where I spend too much of my life. the concert hall is directly to the right of it. They're connected underground. There's a windowless classroom two stories down where we get to hear long lectures about random subjects once a week. On the surface level, the left window is the Electronic Music Studio.

I take classes in other buildings, but i spend most of my time in the music area. If somebody tells me to go to another building, I may stare blankly and ask them where it is. Which reminds me that I haven't done any reading for my mom-music class tommorrow... dern it.

Give me feedback

on my resume. Or pass it along to you work's audio department. Everyone is always looking for interns cuz we work cheep and it's short term and companies will hire interns even as they're laying off real employees. alas.

when acronyms go too far

I was just looking at the calendar for "wesfest," a bunch of events organized for perspective students:

Queer Issues Panel Curious about queer life at wes? Come talk to members of the LGBTTQQIPFAGBDSM etc. community about dating, coming out, bathrooms, activism, and anything else that suites your fancy. Location: PAC - PAC 004

Is this a joke?

Um, so yeah

I'm trying to post everyday, but there's not stuff I want to post about happening every day. "Had granola for breakfast. Went to class. Hadn't done half the reading. Went home. Gooffed around and IMed people. Walked dog. Went to bed." yay. I could write a CGI script to post that for me every day.

happy easter

Today is somehwat interesting automatically as it is the holiest day in the xtain calendar. I went to Easter brunch at Emily's house. Emily is an ethno student studying drum and bass. She's exciting. Nick, another ethno student, brought champage and mimosas were made.

Show and tell

That's wlater and Chris. Walter is a grad student. He plays piano and improvises and is very good. He's from Argentina. Chris is a sophomore undergrad. He's the one that brought Peaches to class on tuesday, which is when I took this picture.

That's the inside of my house before the Seder. My house is not as big in the part I've got than it looks in the picture of the whole thign from the outside. And the oven outside on the sidewalk is gone. yay.

This is David after supercollider class. He just got back from the left coast and he says he bought those glasses at a toystore in Portland Oregon, but couldn't tell me which one. David is a geek. David is living on the wrong coast. When he was in SF last week, he was excitedly IMing me about "war driving." Pull up on a side street, see whose wifi network is wide open. Get online. CT is not like that. no.

That's the Olympia Diner. I went there after Supercollider class yesterday with Jess and Tom. Tom is possibly going insane from his thesis, but is very happy UConn won. I once flew on the same plane as the UConn women's volleyball team. I asked them what school they went to. then I asked if they were from Canada or Alaska. Confusing school names.

And last, but not least, this is my housemate Aaron, who is very nifty.

Another letter

Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 15:07:46 -0800 (PST)
From: Eileen Hutchins
Subject: hi

Dear Celeste,

I'm sorry we didn't get up there for Christi's mom's crafts show. Dad and Grandma came in Saturday afternoon . Dad was exhausted, and slept until noon Sunday, then it started pouring rain, and Granddma didn't want to go out in it . We went out to dinner and she was very uncomfortable. I hope the crafts sale was a big success.I would like to have seen it.Remember the Wiener dog vest? We would probably have bought sometthing.

When can you come for dinner again? This time we'll call ahead for reservations if you would still like to go to Fontana's. yum.

I had some problems logging on to the email. Dad said the problem was with Yahoo.

I love you. Love, Mom

PS, Grandma loves to see you both.

Christi's mom made a vest for my mom with pictures of Mikey, the weiner dog I had as a kid on them. Reading these letters makes me happy. I don't know why I'm posting them. We buried my mom in the weiner dog vest.

Even more letters from mom

Date: Tue, 2 Mar 1999 08:48:36 -0800 (PST)
From: Eileen Hutchins
Subject: getting a cold

Dear Celeste and Christi,

I am coming down qith a cold. I 's not terrible but since you have that commute you can't afford to be feeling under par. Let me know if you would like to poatpone it for a day or two.

Grandma appears better than she has in a long time. and is very upset that Dad is selling her car and house and moving her into a home. She is ready to kill Ruby because she says Ruby needlessly exagerated her condition and caused Dad to panic for nothing.This after calling several times a week telling Dad to find her a place. Unfortunately she doesn't remember that, and now Dad and Ruby are the bad guys. sigh

Let me know whether you guys will come today. I thought, since Paul is coming, we could go to Fontana's. Did you get my Welcome Home email? Be sure to let me know how your trip was. Did you fight off any more biker nuns? Love, Mom

Ruby is a relation of my grandma's. I'm not sure how I'm related to her. Fontanas is an Italian place that we went to every single time I saw my parents after I finally said no more Hunan Palace, which is the place we went to every single time for the three previous years.

Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1999 10:23:51 -0800 (PST)
From: Eileen Hutchins
Subject: new job

Dear Celeste ,

I'm glad you are changing jobs. If you are unhappy in a place, raising pay as a bribe to stay on won't make it any better. When do you staet at Netscape? I want to hear about tonight at dinner. You,ll find Grandma better than she's been in long time.It' amazing.

Please excuse errors.

I'm

typing this without my glasses.

Ilove you. See you tonight. Love youu, Mom

Netscape and the doomed-seeming dot com got in a bidding war for me cuz i'm soooo coool. yes.

Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1999 21:41:01 -0800 (PST)
From: Eileen Hutchins
Subject: thank you

Dear Christi and Celeste,

Thank you for coming tonight. It was particularly important to Grandma.Didn't you think she seemed better than before? Her new home (if she likes it) will be Sunnyvale Retirement Inn, on Remington. It's acrosss from the Sunnyvale Rec Center, you know, with the park and fountain. It will be very important to visit her frequently, keep calling her, and invite her out often. so she won't feel abandoned. Thank you also, Christi, for salvaging my computer. I thought I had ruined it forever.

Congratulations on your new job, celeste.

Love, Mom

and thus I began taking my grandma out for coffee at Cupertino's Coffee Society once a week, especially since her new residence was near my new job.

Date: Fri, 5 Mar 1999 17:59:58 -0800 (PST)
From: Eileen Hutchins
Subject: book

Dear Celeste,

Many thanks for the Feminine Mystique. It will make interesting reading.It arrived today.

I spent until about midnight last night surfing the net. Thanks, Christi, the computer is working better than ever now. It zips along.
Now I'm a cooooooool kitty from Kansas City.

love, mom

Um, so I decideed my mom wasn't liberated enough and sent her a feminist classic from an online bookstore. And I would like to say that my mom was online in '99, before your mom had even heard of the internet, because my mom was cooler than yours. neener neener.

Date: Tue, 9 Mar 1999 21:37:04 -0800 (PST)
From: Eileen Hutchins
Subject: feminism

To the World's Greatest Daughter,

Thank you for the Internet address for feminist materials. I'm starting a folder for your incoming emails, to conserve information. You may have noticed that I have reduced the number of emails sent. I decided that 3 a day may develop a certain nuisance value, especially since you were kind enough to reply to all of them. .

I have sent an email to Paul, suggesting that, since he and Chuck can both burp the alphabet, they should have a contest. They would prepare by drinking a carbonated drink. First to vomit is disqualified. So far he has not responded.(strange, that)

I love you , Mom

hehehehe. chuck is my uncle: my mother's brother. Apparently, I was still trying to liberate her. Um, and that's enough emails for today, yes.

More letters from mom

Date: Wed, 3 Mar 1999 18:44:25 -0800 (PST)
From: Eileen Hutchins
Subject: what is this?

Dear Celeste,

What is this? I don't have any email!

What is happening re your work? I couldn't ask on the phone.I am anxious to hear what you are doing. Hope everything is OK. We're looking forward to seeing both of you tomorrow evening. Love, Mom

I was thinking about quitting my startup dot com job to go work at Netscape

Date: Sun, 28 Feb 1999 12:08:01 -0800 (PST)
From: Eileen Hutchins
Subject: welcome home

Hi, Celeste and Christi!

It's Sunday noon, youre' not back yet, but I want you to have message waiting when you get home. Acctually, I'm sure this will be one of many you'll have waiting.

I hope you had a wonderful trip. Wasn't it great to get away for awhile? Drive carefully on the way home and watchfor those biker nuns! You can't be too careful! I want to hear about your trip when you get back. Don't forget to come Tuesday.

Please call when you arrive in Berzerkley.

PAUL HAS REGISTERED AT DE ANZA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

HE'S taking 11 units of computer (2 classes) df programming. Please, please encourage him. Now is the time for him to create his future.

I am now the new recording sacretary for the Volunteer Committee at the Museum! Wowsah!

oops got to leave for Mass, and I' not dressed

See you soon, love, Mom

Paul is my brother. De Anza is a junior college.

Letters from mom

Posting emails my mom sent me.

Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 19:12:36 -0800 (PST)
From: Eileen Hutchins
Subject: friendly hello

Dear Celeste and Christi,

How are you? Hope everyone is OK.

Did I tell you that Dad is in Tempe now? He got her into a place in Sunnyvale. They are coming here on Monday so she can check the place out.It is not at all like the one where Grandpa was. She can come and go from this one, as long as they know when she's leaving and returning. Everyone seemed to be friendly and nice;they were all nicely dressed, and most are ambulatory. I saw a couple of walkers and one wheelchair. The only problem I could see is that there are so many ancient ladies. They make the Ladies of Carmel look like spring chickens. But, the place is NOT dead! There was an elderly couple embracing in the hall. It seems they met there! Everyone calls them The Lovebirds.

Why do museums use volunteers as docents? Because they are cheaper by the docent.

Keep in touch. Love, Mom

My grandma lived in Tempe, Arizona, but got sick, so my dad went out to get her and found her a place to stay in Sunnyvale, CA that was assisted living.... and my mom was a docent at the San Jose Historical Museum

Date: Fri, 26 Feb 1999 06:17:28 -0800 (PST)
From: Eileen Hutchins
Subject: have a good trip

dear Celeste and Christi,

I hope you have a wonderful trip to Portland. Please call me (collect) when you arrive. I think it will do you both a lot of good to get away for a few days into a completely different environment. Work situations can really get to be the pits. Celeste, I'm praying for you to get into a job that is something you can enjoy and take a pride in, not stressful. Work related stress is a primary source of emotional and physical health problems. Anyway, drive carefully and be careful! All I hear about on the news now is those three women who disappeared on the road between Yosemite and Stockton.

Three of them! So much for safety in numbers.Don't get friendly with anyone on the road, even if ther're nuns! Anyone can rent a nun's outfit (habits, I believe they're called) The old advice about not speaking to strangers is taking on new meanin , especially where women are concerned.

Are you bringing your bowl-shaped sled in case there's snow? Please be sure to say a big hello to Christi's parents.Have a great time! Love, Mom.

My mom was funny... I miss her

Explination of how pitches are picked for avant-happy song

Why? Because it's homework

There exists an overtone array: [ 2, 5, 3, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23]

notes can be constructed from this array as overtones:

2/2 5/4 3/2 7/4 9/8 11/8 13/8 15/8 17/16 19/16/ 21/16 23/16

or the inversions:

2/2 8/5 4/3 16/9 16/11 16/13 16/15 32/17 32/19 32/21 32/23

the three notes played are always adjacent to each other, for example:

17/16, 19/16, 21/16

Melodies are formed by taking a triad, picking one of the ratios to be a pivot, inverting it and then picking adjacent ratios. For example, if we pick 19/16 as the pivot from the above triad, we would invert it to get 32/19. We then pick adjacent ratios. We can take the two ratios above the pivot, the two below the pivot or one on either side. 23 wraps around back to 2 in case we go off the edge of the array. So we could pick

32/19 32/21 32/23

as out next set of triads. then we would pick a pivot from that array, invert and pick adjacent ratios.

Each set of rhythmic patterns for the marimba sound goes through this process and saves the result in an array, so the marimba plays the same triads every time it plays a particular pattern.

The pivot ratio is played a bit louder than the other two. It is also sent to a sustained baseline tone. The adjacent frequencies played by the marimba and are put into another array for the counter-melody.

The counter-melody gets it's pitches from the array created by the marimba routine. It treats this as a FILO queue. It does not play when the marimba is playing or if it's current rhythmic pattern calls for a rest. The length of the note played is the length last used by the marimba.

Some patterns, especially in the first and third section, add more notes to the FILO queue than they leave space for the counter-melody to play them. the patterns in the middle section have a lot of space (and long durations) and the FILO queue may empty by the end of the section.

Signs of spring

So first things first, we've got the current status of my todo list. I'm filing an extension on taxes. My floors are clean. My two short papers are done. woot. still left:

• Write up description of tuning + algorythm for avant happy music (due thursday)
• Write more lab tutorials (asap)
• Ask advisor for resume advice, figure out where to send resume, send it off (asap).
• do paperwork for out of department course (should have done this weeks ago)
• installation idea for first weekend of may symposium (due?)

I went to class this morning and it was lead by Jess because the teacher is still sick and might be out for most of the rest of the semester. We listened to music and discussed it. Some of us brought in stuff to play. One of the two undergrads brought in a CD by a Canadian pop artist called Peaches. It is so low-fi. Her drum beats were cheesy, as were her baselines. Her lyrics were tawdry, but it was still somehow compelling. I was ready to dismiss it when she started singing over and over again "fuck the pain away." Oh my god. right fucking on. Seriously powerful statement, something worth pondering. Deeply angsty. It resonated a deep and powerful chord within me. So I give a thumbs up to Peaches. And I am ready to officially proclaim that angsty music is better than non angsty music almost all of the time. something trvial can be made awesome through use of angst.

Went out later today to do Deep Listening meditation. http://www.deeplistening.org/ I had a hard time getting into it because somebody was playing some bass-heavy music that my heartbeat kept matching, so I kept focussing on it instead of the whole sonic world. But then we went outside in the cold but pretty weather to do something called the Slow Walk. you walk as slowly as possible with your eyes closed while trying to listen with your feet, sicne they're sensitive to vibration. The turf was uneven and rough. My feet felt like they were gripping the ground, even through my shoes. They listened their way along the uneven path. I felt grounded for the first time in forever. when we stopped slow walking, I tried my pagan trick of visualizing tree roots growing out of my feet and a beam of light out the top of my head (connecting to the universe or something). I've been trying this periodically since December. I would end up imagining all the space between myself and the ground, if I was indoors. there were many meters to traverse. And outdoors, well, the ground is really hard. There's prolly cement buried right below the surface. but today, I tried for a moment, and it was right there. I felt like throwing my arms up over my head in joy. Seriously.

Then Angela and I went to Dunkin Donuts. Ironically, this is something to write home about. I said earlier that I'd never been to one, but that was wrong. I went once when I was 16 to buy coffee for folks doing clinic defense at the Sunnyvale Planned Parenthood. they do exist on the left coast, but only in suburban areas.

And finally, there was a seder at my house this evening, lead by Aaron. Much food was made and consumed. Many folks came over. Every dish in the house was eomplyed. Mchu wine was consumed. All good.

Pictures

That's my house in Connecticut. the thing sitting in front of it is an oven. You may wonder where there is an oven sitting in front of my house. I did too. My upstairs neighbor said he thought the landlord left it there. There's always trash in people's yards left out like that. I asked a local woman why folks did that and she said, "because they're renters." but now I know it's the owning class using our yards as temporary dumps. Eventually, it will be big trast pickup day and then and only then will the oven go away. Seriously. Anyway, I live on the first floor of that house.

That's Tom in a customary pose. For some reason, he shaved his head. His thesis is coming very very soon. Maybe he wanted to save the time he used to spend washing and combin his hair?

And lastly, you can acually buy this stuff here. I saw it while going out to get Manischewitz.

Confess

Celeste Hutchins
Mystic Voices
Foucault, Sexuality and Solitude

Foucault makes the point the identity is formed through repression. The self-examination of thoughts required for Christians to confess their sexual sins, including impure thoughts, lead people to develop strong senses of self and sexuality. During her trial, Joan of Arc frequently asked that the bishop hear her confession. However, peasants during her time did not confess frequently. It would have been normal for her to take communion only once or twice a year, thus necessitating few confessions.

Although the correct thing for her to do when she first had visions would be to seek the advice of her confessor, she did not. She heard mass with unusual frequency for a person of her class and took communion frequently enough that it was discussed at her trial. It's difficult to guess how often she went to confession before she decided to "go into France." We know she learned religion solely from her mother, so it may be unlikely that she confessed often.

Nevertheless, Joan of Arc seems to have a complicated gender identity, where she takes on male traits, while retaining female traits. Gender and sexuality are clearly linked. While we can see the technologies of the self that she uses to assume her chosen role, but how she got there remains mysterious. Perhaps her dialog with her visions was a recreation of her dialog with her confessor. When asked about jumping from the tower while in prison, she reports that she was doing penance for the sin of jumping, a penance assigned by her voices. Therefore, she does seem to have a confessional dialog with them, which may have facilitated her forming of gender identity.

Binary Oppositions

Celeste Hutchins
Mystic Voices
Cixous, Sorties

Cixous starts with binary oppositions, such as "Sun/Moon" to "Father/Mother." She makes the point that binary oppositions are heirarchical and patriarchial. One side of an opposition is always ranked better than the other and that side is identified as male. The most tangible duality that humans see everyday is male/female, but for some this is not a binary opposition. Transgendered people may switch sides or may reject the idea of an opposition altogether. Their actions are met with hostility and sometimes violence. Transgendered people now are more likely to be victims of a hate crime than any other group.

When Joan of Arc was young, she started to have visions, which told her to dress as a man and take up arms. Freud wrote that, "One may observe that it is just those girls who in the years before puberty showed a boyish character and inclinations who tend to become hysterical at puberty." In class, Professor Zieman remarked that at puberty, Joan of Arc became a boy. In this reading, Joan crossed sides of the binary opposition from female to male, and from weakness to strength.

I would like to argue that she did not cross the opposition, but rather straddled it. While she did start to dress as a man and take on a male role, she made no effort to hide her identity as a woman. She did not change her name. In fact, she chose a title for herself that was explictly female and feminine. "Pucelle" is a word like "maiden." Furthermore, during her trial, she bragged that she excelled at all the womanly arts. One of the charges brought against her had to do with her telling a comrade that she would have three sons, one of whom would go on to become Pope. She did not transition fully to male, but held on to, and was proud of, her female-gendered activities and traits.

Just downloaded GIMP

Can't decide whether or not I like it. And, for the benefit of wesleyan students and Amy, who ended up with a copy of Digital Performer by accident: A DP Tutorial. All images manipulated with GIMP.

East coast style, west coast girl

Look at this picture of a puddle. what do you notice? Nasty cigarette butts. Good start. Lots and lots of folks smoke here. what else? It's frozen! That's ice on top of it! I took this picture on my way home right now to illustrate that it's still damn cold here. And the wind is blowing like crazy. brrrrr. this post is image heavy for the benefit of any left coast folks who wonder what my world looks like.

So Ron (see photo) noticed that I haven't done any TA work since the start of the semester. This is because he didn't tell me to do anything and I didn't think to ask for a long time cuz I was distracted and then when I did think to ask, I was scared of what might happen. I must now photo document the procedures for using the electronic music studio (see photo) and how to use Digital Performer and write a suite of small SuperCollider applications useful for testing the setup. And I need to be able to explain to the class the algorythms for my tuning pieces with handouts on thursday. A bit of work. At least, on my pre-existing to-do list, I called the tax guy and arranged to file for an extension.

this next picture is the CFA = the Center for Fine Arts, where I spend all my time. this view is from the south and is most of the music buildings. The whole thing is in this cement block style architecture. some folks love it. some folks hate it. I kind of think it's nifty, but the insides of classroom are a little weird, especially acoustics wise.

Lastly, here we have Charlie and Angela. Charlie is a composition MA and a mighty fine viola player. Angela is an ethnomusicologist MA and a mighty fine clarinet player. They're good folks.

7 concerts in 6 days

was my week last week. tonight, there's traditional Irish music, but i'm going to skip, since it's not really my thing and while I saw a lot of great music, I got little work done. Yesterday, from whence the picture comes, was Anne Wellmer's going away concert. She goes back to Europe today. It was 44 minutes of music, starting at 4:00 on 04/04/04. Lots of fourishness. Nice concert. I showed up late, so I don't know why the fava beans are on the piano, but I did see some of them get blown off with a battery fan.

I don't really have anything to say, I just wanted to document the kind of abuse that the piano in the student center is forced to endure. Last Tuesday, it had an encounter with wasabi peas instead of fava beans. And blocks stacked in it.

There was a little party after the concert to say goodbye to Anne W. and to wish Anne Rhodes a happy birthday. The concert goers were made up of the usual suspects. some of the people that come to every concert are not in the music department. We get undergrads from all disciplies and some science grad students. As things were winding down, some of these folks sat at the piano and in the style of Rythm and Blues, started a group piano piece. But these are fans of experimental music, so they were playing something 12 tone. Someone remarked, "I can't tell if that's a real piece or not."

To do

• Call tax guy
• Clean floors beofre seder tommorrow
• Two one page papers
• Do reading for class. all of it. really.
• arg, everything that was on the todo list before is still on it!
• having a great time, wish you were here!

My Fabulous weekend

Ok, so around 11:00 Friday, Jess and I hitched a ride to New Haven and took the train into New York. We got off in Harlem and rode the bus to the Coloumbia University area, where Jess' friend Yvette lives in student housing. She gave me lodging. We dropped our bags there and then all went for lunch. J & Y decided it would be faster to get a cab and would cost the same as the subway. Jess hailed a cab by standing in front of it as the light changed from red to green. One thing I thought I learned in Europe was to never step in front of a taxi, but she told me how to tell if the taxis have people in them. If the number is not lit up, then it's full (and if you love life, don't step in front of it), otherwise, you can hold them up at will. So we hopped in the cab and the driver drove like a maniac. I remained calm. If I were in another car, though, I would fear the irratic actions of the taxis. I think they create market for themselves by scaring other people off the streets. When you're in NYC, it's not uncommon to a street full of taxis, maybe one delivery vehicle and no private cars. But why would you need a private car when the subway is so good? Anyway, we were in a taxi headed for lunch when my life did not flash before my eyes. We got out and went to pseudo Japanese fusion food. It was pretty good, but east coast food is pricey. It was next to a chain store selling popcorn. the idea of starting a popcorn chain store is so ludicrous that it makes me think of capitalism as performance art. suddenly, there was a beautiful moment amidst all the turmoil and people could buy overprices bags of popcorn.

After we had food, we went to a coffee house, named the Mozart Cafe, which was covered with Mozart kitsch and only played his stuff and was full of conservatory wanna-bes. It's odd to think an establishment could survive catering soley to dead music snobs, but there you go. I mean, KDFC (Your radio concert hall in the sf bya area) lives, but it has a wide broadcast range and this is just a cafe. We spent too long in both eating places and didn't get to the Kitchen, but the galleries are free and will have their current exhibits up until school gets out, so I can go at a later date. Jess and I went to times Square to see, or hear rather, an installation by Max Neuhaus. (I don't know if I'm spelling his name right). So we walked up towards the bright lights. It's better than Vegas, I think, although the one time I was in Vegas, I barely cruised the strip. what's nice about Times Square is that you can cruise it on foot, whereas Vegas requires a car.

However, like Vegas, times Square is owned by the Disney-idied corps of the world. Disney store. MTV store. Planet Hollywood. chain thing. Chain thing. Chain thing. I got there a few years too late to see any real debauchery. We walked around a bit looking for, or rather listening for, the installation. Jess didn't remember exactly where it was, just that it was unlabeled and under a grating by 42nd Street. We walked around and found the grating where all the tourists get their picture taken. Jess took my picture. My camera's flash is such that it causes blinking more than half the time. We were walking around that pedestrian island, bent over double, trying to hear anything that sounded installation-y coming up from the grating. Such is New York that nobody even noticed us peering intently into the grate or wondered about us in the slightest. I heard later that it's nice to go the installation in the summer, because you can lie right down on the grating and hear it. Again, presumably, with no notice from anyone. We wandered around the wrong grating for a while and then left and bought popcorn from a chain store and then came back and still coudl not hear anything, when Jess had a flash of insight and we crossed the street to the smaller pedestrian island and we stepped on to the grate and suddenly, like crossing into another world, we heard the installation. It's based on the overtones series of bells. It was put in in the 70's, so it's not digital, whatever it is. and it sounded like a bell, so it's not analog oscilators, since they would be way out of tune by now. It had a pipe-y sort of sound to it. Like white noise sent through several long pipes. The frequencies beat against each other like bells do. I could hear different beating patterns by moving around. things fell in and out of phase with each other. It was always the same and always changing. It's a wonderful thing to have there in the midst of everything of Times Square. All the people and the traffic and the Andean Flute Band were all still making noise, but a wonderful new sound was added to it and somehow didn't compete with the other sounds at all. Jess said, "Watch these other tourists. They'll walk over it and not notice." so we people-watched for a long time and nobody noticed. I wonder if I would have noticed if I hadn't known about it. I know that I've been walking along sometimes and hear a resosnance and stop to listen to things, but Times Square is so full of sounds... The installation sounds intentional to me. The tuning is too interesting to be machinery noise, but apparently, that's what people think they're hearing. after a while, we went on. We stepped off the grating and into the street and the sound that had surrounded us faded to nothing within steps.

We hopped on the subway for a bit and then walked through Alphabet City, which is a neighborhood with some amusing grafitti, towards a club called Tonic. a band calleed the Jazz Travellers was playing. It was the Village Voice pick. We bought tickets to the 10:00 show and then went in search of food. All the restaurants were prohibitevely priced bobo (recall that bobo is slang for bourgeois bohemian) or sketchy pre-gentrified restaurants which Jess reistsed and which didn't have much in the way of vegetarian fare anyway. We walked for a while, searching for food when we came upon a burrito shop offering a vegan burrito, so we went in. I noticed a tie dyed piece of fabric on the wall which had a picture of a street sign on Haight on it. Hrm. the menu said it was San Francisco Mission District-style mexican food. Be it ever so hunble, there's no place like home. I couldn't stop laughing that I went to a big city far away from home and ended up at a place imitating the big city at home. I think California oozes out of my pores. In true Mission district style, the burritos were good and cheap.

We went back to Tonic and heard the fantastic band. they played stuff that was either standards or standards-y, but then in the solo sections, they got pretty free-jazzy. the music was really good and really fun. And then, after a few songs, the band leader asked for a singer to come up from the audience. a woman pushed past me, saying "excuse me." and got up on stage. It was Debbie Harry from Blondie. she sang for the rest of the set. Yes, she's still hot. She was wearing an untecked tuxedo shirt, black thigh-length pants and leppoard-print boots. she is a fantastic singer and sung a bunch of jazz tunes with the band. The band had a xylephone player, a drummer, a standup bassist, a sax player, a trobonists and a violinist. At one point, the sax player was playing a tenor and soprano sax at the same time. He had both of them in this mouth and was playing the keys of one with one hand and the keys of the other with the other hand. And it sounded good. Good tone. Totally amazing. They played a bunch of jazz tunes and then did an encore of a Blondie tune and all marched out and then back in like they were the Archestra or something. It was awesome.

Then we went to one of NYC's two lesbian bars, the Meow Mix. It was relatively empty. I had a beer and Jess had some girly mixed drink. She was tired, so we didn't stay very long. It's a tiny tiny club, with a stage. A band was packing up to leave. I imagine it emptied when the band finished, but I don't know. We caught a cab back to Yvette's place. Tried to sleep in strange bed. Woke up very early and then had sleeping-in like disturbing dreams. Got out of bed when Jess was hitting the buzzer to get back into the building in the morning. Our plan was to have brunch and then head back to New Haven, where we could get a ride no later than 3:00. Best laid plans of mice and men.... J & Y & I walked towards the brunch place, dawdled at burnch, and walked back. New York looks very European in parts, but it is self-consciously so. We went to Coloumbia to get computer access to check train schedules. The train we needed was leaving in 15 minutes, so we took a much later train and took the bus back to Middletown. Since there was nothing to be done, we went to visit John McGuire, the Coloumbia professor who addressed Alvin's class last week. Jess knows him from her Ivy League days. He's a really cool guy. We talked in his office for a while, where he was working on Saturday and then walked to a tremedously pretentious coffee shop., where we met a real artist, whose name I don't remember. He's a woodchooper, a manly man, like Hemmingway, he explained. I went to the bathroom and people had scrawled poltically appropriate Shakespeare quotes. Jess was trying to explain how the coffee shop was emblematic of the neighborhood. I said "yeah. We've got nothing like this in Berkeley." The coffee, though, was dismally bad. the place was packed. It would never have survived in Berkeley. after more dawdling, which was delightful, despite the coffee, we walked around to a Radio Shack, where I bought a bigger memory stick for my camera and then went to the cathedral of St John the Divine, which is the largest cathedral in the Americas. It took me a while to figure out that it wasn't catholic. It was Episcopal. they're a lot like catholics, but without the desire to return to the 14th century. But no prayers to Mary. I would miss rosaries and Haily Marys if I were going to catholic-like church. The church wants to look centuries old, but it's not even finished yet. Part of it burned down a year or two ago. More attempt to self-consciously ape Europe. Catherdrals, in my opnion, should be timesless but also timely. Like the Gaudi Cathedral in Spain. It's not trying to look like it was build in 1509. Nevertheless, St. John was very nice. I love the resonances of huge cathedrals, and this had it in abundance. Also, a lovely looking pipe organ. I want to hear it played. It's huge. Pipes around the choir area but also trumpet-like pipes in the very back of the church. Pipe organs were invented by Ancient Romans, by the way. It's surprising how old some ideas are.

Jess and I then headed to Grand Central station. It's large and impressive. We got on our train to New Haven, and sat next to a nifty geek named Jen, who goes to 2600 parties in the city. I showed her supercollider stuff. I want to check out these parties. I miss being surrounded by geeks. They're my people. Jen was talking about an Electric Kool Aid Acid Test-like novel for our generation and how it might be tied to blogging. She's on to something. For long time, I've been day dreaming about writing a novel made up on instant messenger conversations. This is actually part of the reason that spies on my Moos keep logs: so I can analyze the conversation to see how to mimic them, either for AI applications or for art. Maybe we're all writing the great American work of our generation right now as a blogging work in progress.

Jess finally gave me the CD with me singing on it. It was just the "is this thing on" part of recording something else. but Jess spent all day friday singing my own songs back to me. Apparently, she's been playing it to other folks. I think this is silly.

Got back to Middletown at 8:20. Ran to tim's senior thesis concert and caught the last 20 minutes of it. Nice, droney, angsty music. angsty music touches a deep and resonant chord within me. But the fun jazz band did too, so maybe just good music touches a deep and resonant chord. Most happy music is banal and stupid, alas, so that might create an illusion of favoring angsty music. anyway, Tim's thesis touched a deep and resonan tchord within me. It was nice. Went to the after party at tim's house and drank Pabst blue ribbons. I am no longer a beer snob. Got kind of buzzed and then went to see an undergrad blues band play at a bar in town. I was surrounded by very drunk undergrads, a huge number of which were music students. fortunatately, despite drinking 2.5 beers, I sobered up enough by the time the bar closed to stay out of trouble. Undergrads: oh so cute and oh so young.

The grad stipend just got increased by 4% (woot), but music grads are paid half what science grads are. And the music stipend is below the federal poverty line. Some music students are having a lot of trouble because of this. So there has been much traffic on the grad email list about this. Talk of unionization has come up. but some math student was complaining, saying that he might get more money, but he had to lie and say he was a music student to impress women. Grad students complainign about lack of money and lack of sex. How classic is that? If you try going to a woman from connecticut and explain that you study experimental music, she goes looking for a math student. But with undergrads, he is so right. I tell undergrad chicks that I'm a music grad student and they look really impressed. they flirt with me, but then they run away. Which is good. I gave up drama for Lent. I'm thinking of giving it up forever.

I'm back.

Going to NYC

as a part of my plan to see five concerts in five days, I'm going to NYC tommorrow (whoah, actually today) and returning the next day. Two nights ago, I saw weird electronic music made with tweaked guitar pedals. Last night, I saw undergrads do a Fluxus concert. Tonight I saw a bunch of popish bands play at a club/house called Ecclectic. It was fun. I was unable to incite a mosh pit, however. Tommorrow night, something in NYC + checking out the gallery at the Kitchen and an installation in Times Square. Sunday, undergrad Tim Eastman's thesis concert. My camera finally came, so pictures will be forthcoming.

After going through all my papers and not finding my w2 form, but stumbling on several wedding cards (arrrg), I went off to do some Deep Listening meditation. It was quite nice. I felt much calmer afterwards. and Buddhist House, the location we met at, is conviently located right next to a Dunkin Donuts. I'd never been in one before. They don't actually have very many donuts. I was surprised.

Checklist

Yes, you feel gloomy today. (ok, maybe you don't but pretend you do for a minute.) It's a gloomy day. Maybe a day to go back to bed or to be grump or to cry or to yell at the dog. Let's say. But first, let's check a few things: When was the last time, dear one, that you ate anything? Have you had all the meals you should have by this time of day? Would a snack possibly be a good thing? When was the last time you ate anything with protien in it? When was the last time you ate a green vegetable? How long has it been since broccoli crossed your lips? When was the last time you injested a vitamin sort of thing of any kind? What about those omega-3s? Hrm? Been eating right?

Ok, so after a nice snack of broccoli, tofu and brown rice with hemp oil drizzled over it, still feeling blue? Well, what about sleeping? too little? too much? yo-yo-ing between too little and too much? Four hour nights followed by 12 hour nights is a bit bumpy. And what times have you been sleeping? 3:00 am - 11:00 am is eight hours, but it's kind of weird hours. and you miss the morning sunshine, provided there exists some. Daylight waking is good for you. And when I sleep in the late morning, it's not good, solid sleep. it's more like napping. or what if you're going to sleep, waking at a normal time and then turning off your alarm and sleeping until the afternoon? Oh, it's thursday. no class! i'll just nod off for a minute. oh my god, it's 2:00! Not good. Maybe schedule things in the morning?

Ok, eating right, sleeping right, still grumpy? Maybe you should leave the house! When is the last tiem you had a social encounter with another human? Invite somebody to have dinner with you (at least you know you'll be awake by then).

And when I say "you," I of course, mean "me."

I had dinner with Angela last night. She does not read my blog. I was kind of grumpy at the begining of the evening. Spent a lot of yesterday afternoon on taxes. Going through financial paperwork looking for tax stuff is stressful. And I can't find some of it! But what's the worst that could happen? I would have to file an extension. Thinking Wtwtch is very helpful. Ok, so I was still stressed and just got out of many hours of class and sleeping oddly. And I said, "I'm thinking about getting on porzac." And she said, "wait until a sunny day to make that descision." ok, so i'm obviously solar powered. But then I had tofu with mixed vegeatbles and some ice cream and felt happier, so there's something to consider there. figure out what makes me happy and do a bit of it every day.

I've been thinking about priorities lately, because my number one priority has sort of left my life, so what's important now? And I've been putting school/career first, even though that doesn't seem quite right. Shouldn't people come before career? But if that's true, what the heck am I doing in Connecticut so far away from my people? And so I think having a heirarchial list might be the wrong way to go about it. Follow my goals, but do a bit of what makes me happy every day. If it's so stupidly obvious, why did I have to go through the trouble of figuring it out? Everything is so blindingly obvious once I blog it.

I am ready for winter to be over

Yes, I am technically experiencing what New Englanders describe as "spring," but to my Bay Area self, this is winter. fall was winter and winter was winter on steroids. It is still bleak out. Yesterday, there were snow flurries as I walked to class. Today, it's rainging and cold. I guess I should feel happy that it's not freezing rain. I'm going to go back to wearing thermal underwear, since the warmth of last week was clearly a fluke.

the trees are still baren. Only the grass and the evergreens are green. Everything is brown and dead. No flowers bloom. Few birds sing. A few trees are thinking about waking up, but there are almost no visible buds. It's a replaying of the desolation of fall, but in reverse. And it's still desolate.

Let's emphasize some words: bleak, barren, desolate, cold.

And it is now quite clear that the weather and my mood are strongly linked (one is like a barometer for the other... ha ha ha). Is this like a normal thing?

To do:

• find tax paper work and mail it to tax guy. (deadline ASAP)... ack i lost my w2 form...
• modify symphony movement to fit requirements for American Composers Forum content, print it, put it in the mail. (postmark deadline tomorrow)
• write short paper about Joan of Arc, binary oppositions and the male gaze (due next wednesday).
• Write one other short paper of undecided topic (also due wednesday).
• Ask advisor for resume advice, figure out where to send resume, send it off (asap).
• do paperwork for out of department course (should have done this weeks ago)
• installation idea for first weekend of may symposium (due?)

And all I want to work on is the ultimate pop song generator.... by which i mean, it's an idea that i can't escape. i thinking baout how to do drum patters for Urban Hipster, and I end up thinking about the logics behind the creation of drum patterns and how you might be able to tell a computer to modify a pattern based on song intensity levels or to develop it's own patterns or what the rules are for drum patterns in different genres and how to represent those grammers.... i'm going to go write a giant drum object thingee while sitting on the radiator and ignoring my giant box of paperwork which contains tax stuff and my readers and umm... not the symphony deadline, cuz i already wrote the dern thing....

update

Ok, I'm not sending in the score. Why? Well, apparently I need a letter of reference and it's way too late to ask. (curses for not paying attention to this earlier) and also, it's a week long program in October of next year, not just a reading. On the one hand: awesome. On the other hand: I've already got a music program that i'll be attending on October. Anyway, the Wesleyan Orchestra will be reading it in April, so it will still get a performance. And then I can modify it based on hearing it, which will make it better if I decide to submit it to a contest later. And mostly, I'm flaky for not paying attention to the requirements until the day before it's due.... But I've sent tapes and scores and whatnot to a bunch of these contests and so far all I've gotten out of it is the joy of helping support the US Postal Service.

i've already been awake for 12 hours

I got up at 5:30 this morning (before some of you west-coasters went to sleep, i'm sure) to give David ride to the airport bright and early this morning. Met him at 6:00 AM. I am not a morning person. David is nifty, though. And I have bad airport karma. At the end of spring break Ellen woke up at 4:00 to give me a lift so I could get back to school. I think I also still have bad moving karma, although I've helped so many folks move, I may have worked it off by now. I think that and then I remember Lisa Peña standing with me at the bottom of some stairs with a refrigerator. the stairs were outdoors and kind of steep and painted cement (bright purple, in fact) and all slippery. And it was pouring rain and the gutter was jammed, so all the water from the roof, whose overhang ended exactly in the middle of of the stairs, was running down onto us and onto the fridge, and from there on to us. Think of all the water from the 6 foot wide by however many feet long section of the roof running down the fridge on to us, while we struggled to hoist a refrigerator into the lovely second-floor Casaninja 2. Ah, Casaninja 2, where we had decided to settle forever.... until midway through painting it, the landlord told us that it was for sale. Best laid plans, etc...

So I've been drinking coffee! and tea! to stay awake! I was the smartest person on earth and was going to write a bunch of proofs about the fibbonacci series (what a nutty series it is), but it's wearing off, and now I might just nap or write a paper. zzzzzzz

Saw presentation today by a composer named John McGuire. He's pretty cool. He talked about the fibonnacci series, which he used for a piece he played a tape of called A Cappella. the piece is lovely.

I've been asked about the melody for my latest musical endeavor. There exists a recording of me improvising lyrics. Jess has it. I'll post mp3 when she passes it along. *hint*

automation

I've long had an ambition to write a program that would just make music for me, so I could just press go and it would make tunes. I could teach it a few pop genres and then run it a whole bunch of times and just pick some good outputs until i had an album's worth. Better yet would be to teach it somehow to evaluate the output. Somebody (a record company or something) actually has a program that will do this. So I could just feed my tunes into the pop analyzer, pick all of them with a high enough score and have instant hits. Even better would be to incorporate a neural net sort of design into the generator, so it could learn from the appraiser and create more consistently catchy music.

Well, I now have a little program that creates avant-happy tunes [listen] (when i said "pop", Aaron encouraged me to re-evaluate the pop genre...) and it repeats rhythms, but it has a different melody everytime. And it's kind of catchy, I think.

so.... now what? it's always kind of the same song. I guess I could generalize it, so the rhythms would change with every run too. But... somehow it's not as satisfying as i thought it would be. I guess it would make good video game music, since then it would get run over and over again and the repeating non-sameness of it would be interesting.

What would I do with myself once I had written the uber-music generator and it said everything I had to say?

avant happy

My avant happy song has been improved via Ron's suggestion of adding some space and by switching my note array to LIFO queue instead of a FIFO queue. It's way more repetitive, but it makes more musical sense. Still kind of glitchy, tho. especially when i record it.

Springtime!

When people's thoughts turn to cheesy pop songs! As heard in my shower this morning:

Urban Hipster

[intro]
lemme show you a picture of the girl i like
black and white photo
she's the one on the right

Lemme tell you about the girl i like
urban hipster keeps me up at night

[verse 1]
really pretty with curly hair
she wears t shirts with funny slogans

little glasses, converse shoes
she's the coolest thing in oakland

[refrain]
she's a little bit younger and hipper than me
she gets pop culture cuz she watches tv
[repeat]

[verse 2]
Urban hipster in a miniskirt
I want to get to know her better

Urban hipster in a miniskirt
she'll steal my heart if i let her

slow learner

There's an episode of the Simpsons where Lisa places an electrified donut someplace in the house and tracks how long it takes Homerto learn not to touch the donut. "mmmmm donut.... ouch!" "mmmmm donut... ouch!" "mmmmmm donut .... ouch!" of course, the joke is that he never learns.

So it is with me and recreational alchohol consumption this year. Note to self: stop after second beer. too skinny for third beer. third beer will make me act stoopid.

fun filled friday

So I went to buy tickets to see Aaron play percussion in a dance recital, but it was sold out. Alas. But when I talked to Aaron, he told me he could get me in as his roadie. So I sat and chatted with him and Charlie and Angela before they went on. Topic: Belle and Sebastian. Are they excusable? Are they good makeout music? What is good makeout music? I mostly spectated as I really have no clue about Belle and Sebastian. I'm not sure about good makeout music, but it might be an interesting summer project. (ummm.. to produce some, I mean.... although further research is requied) Do Gen Y types really make out to Marvin Gaye?

The trio was really excellent. I'd never heard Angela play clarinet before. She has a beautiful tone. The piece was lovely. Charlie composed it. His pieces that I've heard all have a nice thoughtfulness and an asthetic sensibility that's just right, not heavy handed at all. He allows beauty to emerge.

Since I just watched the one piece, we got out of the recital pretty early and Angela and I decided to go to a dance called the Girl Twirl (I kid you not) at the harbor park. It's a women's dance party.

Consequences of high self-esteem: I really like dancing and I don't need to be drunk to do it. Of course, drinking is fun! So we danced for quite a while. I requested Baby Got Back by Sir Mix-a-lot, one of the finest pop songs from the 90's. This time, I didn't talk to strangers, but that's ok.

Fortunately, it was completely warm out and we were able to walk to and from Girl Twirling, which was good cuz I went ahead and drank beer number 3. I'm lucky I didn't fall off the ladder to my bunk bed when I got home.

The beautiful bleakness and desolation of grad school is such that people expect you to occassionally drink to excess. So much the more so if you have recently experienced woes in love, which is so dern common it should be in those "so you want to go to grad school books."

So You Want to Go to Grad School?

You have a surplus or life savings, or you think you can survive on the piteously meager stipend, or the economy is bad and your parents are generous and the economic sacrfices seem reasonable, or heck, an improvement over your current statis. Well, say goodbye to your girlfriend, becuase even if the stays with you (give it less than 50% odds), you're not going to have a lot of time for her. And say goodbye to all those hours of sleep you're used to. Say goodbye to your pre-existing social life. You'll have time for that on breaks, if you can afford to get home. Used to living in a clean house? Forget it. It's not compatible with your current situation, unless you pay too much for campus housing and then they'll send somebody around periodically to make an attempt at cleaning your kitchen, in which, by the way, very few green things will reside... assuming by "green things" we mean things that started out as green. Look in that fridge. What do you see? spots of mold. beer. good, maybe it's time to go to the store. after class. and rehersal. and doing some reading for tommorrow. don't worry, you'll have time to clean at the end of the semester when you're also trying to pack to leave. You do have time, however, for intense personal crisises, inner turmoil and angst. Make sure to pick a school which offeres mental health services included with tuition. you'll need it.

why would you want to do this? Do you love your subject? Really love your subject? Do you want to dedicate years of your life to living in semi-monastic cloistered conditions just to focus on your subject? (this isn't like your undergrad.) Are you willing to endure mortification fo the flesh and the spirit in the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom? turn to page 2 for preparing for the GREs.

I love grad school. No really. What should I work on first? Should I read Foucault? Should I read the Boulez-Cage correspondences? Should I write a second movement for my symphony? Should I finish my song in progress? Should I record some analog noise? Should I write lyrics for my "Urban Hipster" song? Should I start my string quartet? Should I work on an installation for the May symposium? In what lovely way should I consume myslef? I mean, as soon as this hangover wears off.

Resume Draft

Celeste Hutchins
(860) 301-2508
celesteh@casaninja.com
www.berkeleynoise.com/celesteh

Objective:

Summer internship doing audio programming, sound engineering or sound design

Education:

Mills College B.A. May 1998
Majors: Computer Science and Electronic Music
Wesleyan University MA in Music Composition anticipated May 2005

Skills:

Languages: Java, C/C++, SuperCollider, MAX/MSP, Perl, CGI scripting, HTML
Operating Systems: OSX, Linux, Solaris, MacOS, IRIX
Programs: Pro Tools, Digital Performer

Experience:

Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT
TA August 2003 - Present

• Teach workshops in using Digital Performer and sound recording

Java Just Intonation Calculator http://jjicalc.sourceforge.net/
Lead Programmer Spring 2002 - Present

• Took over the abandoned open source Just Intonation Calculator
• Added support for multiple file formats

Other Minds, San Francisco, CA
Volunteer Sound Engineer 2002-2003

• Edited sounds for the web

AOL/Netscape, Mountain View, CA
AOL Online Music
Product Manager October 2000 - February 2001

• Product design
• Wrote PRDs
• Researched webcast technology

Open Directory Project
Software Engineer February 1999 - October 2000

• Wrote web-based tools for editors in perl
• Apache Server configuration
• Processed and pushed RDF and search data to http://search.netscape.com

Isadra Inc., Palo Alto, CA
Software Engineer August 1998 - February 1999

• Java Servlet programming for JavaWebServer
• Finding and fixing software bugs
• Set up intranet

Whole Bean Software, Oakland, CA
Founder December 1996 - October 1997

• Attempted to start a software company to produce a real time java chat application for the web.

Multimedia Resources Inc., Portland, OR
Intern May - August 1996

• Wrote Java applets
• Wrote CGI Scripts in Perl / server parsed HTML

Tetherless Access Limited, Sunnyvale, CA
Intern May - August 1995

• Tested / fixed software for wireless routers
• Implemented new features for the wireless router software
• Documented router software and networking

Mills College Information Technical Services, Oakland, CA
Student Worker August 1994 - November 1996

• Maintained subnets of NeXT machines and Macintoshes
• System administration including user support
• HTML Authoring and user documentation

Informal Experience:

• Electronic musician with a home recording studio
• Belong to a co-location coop, where members share root responsibilities and keep the server up
• Run and program for a MOO (similar to a MUD but object oriented)

---

Does anyone care about my internships in 1995 anymore or should i cut those? any feedback?

still more faq

see questions 1 - 2 and 3 - 8

9. How was your break?
   Cathartic.
10. Is that good?
    yes.
11. How's school? How do you like Wesleyan?
    School is cool.
    Teachers are great. classes are useful. i'm writing a lot of music.
12. what are you going to do after you graduate?
    Um... I dunno. I might do the german exachange program. I think I will. After that, I dunno. Look for a teaching job? Get a PhD? Go back to work for the computer industry?
13. What Cds did you order?
    Movement By: Gossip
    Geogaddi By: Boards of Canada
    Fever To Tell By: Yeah Yeah Yeahs
    Amnesiac By: Radiohead
    Hail To The Thief By: Radiohead
    Draft 7.30 By: Autechre
    Additional records will have to wait until I get to Amoeba where I can buy them used for cheeper.
14. What times can I call you?
    10 am to midnight eastern standard time. If you know i'm awake after midnight, cuz i'm responding to email or something, you can call me later.

What would happen if you burned inscence inside a refrigerator?

maybe i should get a navel piercing to gaze at

ok, first note that i caved in to peer pressure: http://celesteh.blogspot.com/2004_03_14_celesteh_archive.html#107972820218639842

and now i'm going to talk about emotions. i feel like i tore myself down and built myself back up again. and maybe it's too early to say much about that, cuz i've felt like i've had my feet under me for all of a week now. sometimes i feel aftershocks, but not so often. and maybe i'm just in a good mood because it's warm and sunny and if it got cold and dark i'd be sad again, but i dunno, i feel changed. i've been looking in the mirror the last few days and thinking "i'm cute." Which is not something I ever remember thinking before. maybe when i was a child in gradeschool or something. and, well, it's weird. i feel very weird... will it last? i hope so, but you know, it's nice right now.

I started drinking coffee again and that is fantastic. If I have a latte, I am the smartest person on earth! I had some tea before giving my Freud presentation in class today and I felt like doing laps around the classroom. Presentation went well, I think. People were taking notes on what I said. These kids are able to understand Foucault, and that's incredible, but I've read a lot more than them, so if I can find something familiar, I can make a connection that they might not. Oh, this case study of a male hysteric sounds like something I read in Faludi's Stiffed, so maybe I can use what she said to talk about what Freud said. and also, i'm the smartest person on earth! well, only metaphorically

And last night, I was out on a supercollider field trip (geek run) to get pizza in New Haven and I was talking too much, without the benefit of coffee . . .. Many CA folks know me as a really talkative person, but I just haven't been for a while. So...who knows... maybe CT people will have to get used to me talking a lot ... Or maybe I'll stay quiet. It's just weird.

And you guys all asked for navel gazing, so if I seem arrogant or something, well, you asked for it.

I have a bunch of old noise music on the web at http://www.berkeleynoise.com/celesteh, from my analog phase. The last real analog thing I wrote was about death, but it's not on the web. My grandma died not that long before my mom did. My poor dad lost his mother and wife less than a year apart. And all the drama played itself out in minature with my grandma. All the dynamics around my mom's death were there. All of them. Asshole medical health people. Angry me. Christi angrily explaining that she was attached to my grandma too . . ..

I realized at the funeral, that I didn't know what kind of music my grandma liked. I didn't know her favorite singers or her favorite hymns and I asked my dad and he didn't know either. Something incredibly important that I would never know. So I was upset for several months (and mad at my mom because she was acting so weird. oy vey) and finally understood that my grandma was hella old and tired of being alive and had a pretty good life that had to end sometime. so i wrote a piece of music and it turned out to be about that. it sounds like death. less than a week after i finished it, my mom had brain surgery. it's the best piece of music that i ever wrote and so prescient, it scares me. I had been exploring an asthetic of openness and "air" in analog electronics and I lost it at that point. I've been forced to switch to supercollider, which is nice and portable, but kind of bloodless.

Listening to: Laurie Anderson's song "Oh Superman." fxcking fantastic

So you like navel-gazing, eh?

I think I had some lint in there, but then I took a shower....

Talked to my shrink today. "And then this happened and then this happened and this happened...." She nodded and said "wow" a lot. I like her because she does a great empathetic expression. I told her this a while ago and she assured me it was sincere, but I actually don't care if it is or not. Anyway, she said I should feel proud of myself for all the progress I made. So I'm getting an A in mental health. woo! (this is a metaphorical A...)

I'm trying to write some happy music. This started out as a bid to impress CT chicks with mullets, but I think that might be a lost cause. I see them as Thomas Kinkade fans and they see me as the Unibomber. No TV. Doesn't like driving. Makes weird Noise Music. Eats weird things like avacadoes... Yeah, I'm an alien. But at least I don't have a mullet.

People who like my music are mostly geek boys or other composers and other mullet-less types. So I've decided I'd most like to have geek girl fans, insofar as I might have groupies . . . as if . . .. But I'm not writing for their benefit. I'm writing to impress my teachers. No, just kidding. I still want to write some avant-happy music, cuz I'm running out of angst to tap in to. I don't have any real problems right now. I could get angsty about the white stuff settling out of my fridge onto my (tightly sealed) food containers, but I think that will go away shortly... I hope.

I was listening to RadioHead Kid A to get some ideas, because I love their synthpop and it might be cool to write some laptop music and then sing along! but maybe they're not really all that happy? Is my baseline for happiness skewed, or is this just an asthetic issue? Hrm. Been smiling a lot, so that must count for something.

anyway, Kid A is my most recent pop album. Aside from getting all RadioHead since that album, what CDs should I buy? I have some Amazon.com gift certificates. I like indie rock. I like punk rock. I like noise. I like what Sonic Youth has been up to for the last few years. I just got a CD of Laurie Anderson playing live in NYC Townhall Spetember 19th 2001 and I'm not so into it. Not edgy enough, at least in disk 1. I'm not familiar with her work at all, which is why I got the CD. Reccomend me some music so I can buy it based soley on your suggestion!

Today in class, Alvin was talking about a concert that Ellen gave her a few years ago and said it was the best concert that he ever saw. Pretty cool. And I got CVS set up across my home network, so my laoptop will be in synch with my desktop, which will be helpful. yay.

more faq

3. Did you do any homework during break?
   ummmm. no. well, a little.
4. Are you screwed?
   No. My goal for break was to get very ahead of stuff. Now I'm behind, but not very. I still have time to spend some weekends in NYC, which I must do or it will have been very silly for me to come out to the East Coast.
5. Can I come visit you?
   Sure. Gimme some advance notice. My weekends go from noon thursday till sunday night. (woo!) I can meet up with folks especially in NYC, but also in Boston and I can provide lodging at my abode, which lies in between those two fine cities. I might be able to find you a place to stay in NYC. I managed it for Tiffany. Flying JetBlue from Oakland to JFK airport is cheeeep and it is a direct flight. Flying to Hartford is also cheep, if you book in advance or fly red eye. There are no direct flights from Oakland to Hartford, alas. Do not change planes in Dallas, it's way the heck out of the way. Both of those fine airports offer car rental. There is a very useful train out of JFK. I can come get you at Hartford. I can come get you at JFK on a weekend, or at the train station in New Haven.
6. Are you really going to send all of your CDs to Christi?
   No. I'm trying to split them up evenly. It will actually be nice to have fewer CDs, so I can actually listen to the ones I have left and then I have an excuse to get new ones. all of my pop music is about 5 years old.
7. What is Friendster?
   http://www.friendster.com/info/moreinfo.jsp
8. How much time do you have left at Wesleyan?
   My semester ends the first week of May, which is looming alarmingly nearby. I have two semesters left after that, so I ought to graduate in May 2005.

Freud Report

Hysteria and my mystics class

Symptoms of hysteria include "anorexia, carried to the pitch of rejection of all nourishment, various forms of disturbance of vision, constantly recurrent visual hallucinations, etc." (p 4) These are remarkably similar to some of the signs of holiness in mystics. Saint Claire (?) starved herself to death. Hildegard of Bingen had a constant disturbance of vision and frequent visions, which some might term hallucinations. Breuer and Freud were not unfamiliar with these similarities. They claim that hysteria results from repressed reaction to trauma, and hence is common in "saints and nuns" (p 11) as well as others taught to repress their feelings. Thus this paper seeks not only to define hysteria and explain its cause, but also to explain why "saints and nuns" are so often effected. It is not approaching mysticism neutrally, but with the idea of explaining the phenomenon as illness. The writers go so far in making this connection, that they refer to a certain set of symptoms as a "hysterical stigmata." (p 15)

However, the hidden symptoms they attribute to hysteria do fit extremely well in finding a non-mystical explanation for mystics. They claim that dissociative states, otherwise known as "splitting of consciousness" or multiple personalities, are "present to a rudimentary degree in every hysteria . . .." (p 12) Thus, hysterics have two voices. One is their own voice, and one is the voice of the "hypnoid states" that hysterics enter into during hysterical attacks. "The ideas which emerge [during hysterical attacks or hypnosis] are very intense but are cut off from associative communication with the rest of the content of consciousness." (p 12) Therefore, the ideas do not exist in an accessible form during the hysterics normal, waking self. They are ideas from an internal other.

Breuer and Freud assert that hysterics enter into hypnoid states for a few reasons. One is excessive daydreaming, "to which needlework and similar occupations render women especially prone." (p 13) Thus they continue to define hysteria as female. The case studies where they find the root causes of hysteria include examples of men and women. In all cases though, the victims endured some trauma and were powerless to stop it. The hysterical man was physically attacked by his boss. (p 14) He was thus feminized and made subordinate through physical force. His attacks also stemmed from having been unable to win a case against his boss in court. The hysterical man was thus denied access to power through normal channels. He was thus feminized and responded to that in an affective, feminine manner. This is similar to the condition of female religious who can never rise in power through the church, due to their gender. They also had an affective hysterical response, which at the time allowed some of them to gain power. This powerlessness shows up again when the writers describe the typical hysteric, "They include girls who get out of bed at night so as secretly to carry on some study that their parents have forbidden from fear of their overworking." (p 240) Girls who are barred from gaining power, in this case knowledge, through normal channels. As the lives of our mystics are not well known, it's hard to know how much they fall into these patterns. It's easy, though, to imagine Joan of Arc, the self-proclaimed best spinner in all of Domremy, working and day dreaming about leading soldiers to battle.

The mystic who most closely matches hysteria as defined by Breuer and Freud, is Kempe. Her woes started during a time of trauma surrounding childbirth and lead her to experience hallucinations of demons and other hysterical symptoms for months. Even when that ceased, she continued to have hysterical symptoms, similar to those described by Breuer: "Every pain, however, caused, reaches maximum intensity, every ailment is 'fearful' and 'unbearable'. . . . We find nervous palpitation of the heart, a tendency to fainting, proneness to excessive blushing and turning pale, and so on." (p 241) It fits perfectly with a Freudian hypothesis that her traumatic event was sexual and her visions and her issues surrounding her husband were of a sexual nature. Breuer goes on to say that auto-hypnosis, such as Kempe's visions, "develops from reveries that are charged with affect." (p 248) For example, Kempe's in depth day dreams about the passion of Christ or of serving the Blessed Virgin while she was pregnant may qualify. Kempe reports crying constantly during these meditations. Perhaps her praying for visions was a form of auto-hypnosis which triggered her hysterical states. Perhaps all successful prayers for visions are auto-hypnosis.

faq

1. Is it ok that I'm reading your blog?
   If I didn't want folks to read it, I wouldn't be posting it where they could see it. (yes)
2. What's going on with you and Christi?
   Neither of us wants to reconcile. I am buying her out of the house. I'll sue for divorce (thus jumping into the gay marriage legal fray) in May when I'm in CA and I have time.

woof

I just got xena back from her dog sitter. she stayed with a music dept secretary for about 2 - 2.5 weeks. I picked her up this afternoon. she was moderately happy to see me, but also bored in the way she is these days. *yawn*. Deb, the sitter, though, was nearly overwrought. She told Xena a bunch of times that she loved her. Told me to bring Xena back for a visit. Told me how great Xena is. Clearly did not wish to be parted from my dog.

which brings me to the problem of this summer. My current plan is to disappear from CT as soon as possible, prolly the first week of May, and head back to CA. There, I'll hopefully have an internship doing audio programming (in C, C++, Java, Supercollider, MAX/MSP), sound engineering (protools/digital performer), or sound design. (Resume coming very soon. hire me.) And then head back some time in august, possibly heading to the Michigan womyn's Music Festival and maybe on to the Deep Listening Resteat and then finally to NYC, where I'll be crashing with Jess. So big questions surround poor little Xena.

If I have an internship, I'm going to need to find a daily afternoon dog walker. And then, what to do with her during august. Even if I skip music festivals, I'm still going to need a place for her while I'm in NY. So I've got at least two options of where to put her for the summer. One is to send her where she went for winter break and one to send her to spring break lodging and in both cases, I'd give slightly less than 50% odds that I'd get her back. I barely got her back from winter break. She's very happy when she goes to see these people. They have space for her to run and other dogs and one has kids and the other has a farm. she's prolly a lot happier there than she is lurking in my house with no dog contact and insufficient exercise. But she makes me really happy.

I wouldn't adopt a dog right now. Heck, I wouldn't adopt a cat right now. when I got her, I had a stable job, I was married, I owned my house. even then she didn't get walked enough all the time. It'll be harder to fit her into my swinging urban hipster lifestyle when I come back. My current thought is "I'll find a way." and drive her back to CA and then drop her off maybe with her spring break sitter when I get back to the east coast. But maybe I shouldn't have a dog at all....

Back in CT

Got up at an ungodly early hour to get my 6:00 AM plane, which was, for some reason, routed through Dallas. I think I may go with the second cheapest tickets next time. Mitch says that the Dallas routing was because I flew American. "If you flew American to hell, you'd go through Dallas." Or would that be the final destination?

Continuing my trend of having angry people sitting next to me on planes, I was roused from my nap by an angry, loud yelling argument. And the person who was yellling... was the stewardess. Apparently a 95 year old non-english-speaking diabled woman had failed to comply with an instruction to get out of the isle (go figure) and this stewardess had done something to the woman and then was yelling at her extremely upset son who thought that elderly, disabled people deserved a bit of consideration. They went back and forth a loooong time. I didn't see the incident. I don't know who was right. I do know that the stewardess finally "won" the argument by claiming the guy was calling her stupid and insulting her. The guy was not. She had very very poor conflict resolution skills. And I think it's possible that most people have terrible conflict resolution skills. My Middletown housemate, Aaron, teaches kids some of these school in public schools, but his techniquies are "think of the color blue" and don't hit the other kid. I think teaching kids age-appropriate conflict resolution throughout their schooling would be really good for society as a whole. Anyway, there are right ways to win arguments and wrong ways and sometimes winning isn't a good goal. That's my thought.

I got home to my humble abode and noticed a slightly weird smell and decided it was cuz the garbage hadn't been emptied and so I was ignoring it, trying to figure out what was up with two of the power outlets in the living room. Stereo and modem were both dead. Alas. Then my hosuemate suddenly appeared and I was talking to him about stuff and Jess showed up. Aaron popped open the fridge to look for some beers and made a loud exclaimation.

Not only did both of us fail to clean out tupperware, throw out soy milk or do any preperation for being gone two weeks, the mini-power outage also included the fridge. And it had been off for a while. Green fuzz coated the entire inside. when he opened the door, a haze of mold spores filled the kitchen. ack ack ack.

Aaron is currently bleaching the inside of the fridge. I will mop afterwards. We found the tripped breaker and restored it. But what made it trip? Was it just something random, or is our house in danger of burning to the ground? I'm glad I installed smoke detectors.

oy. well, the fridge needed cleaning anyway.

Aim

I am now on AIM in addition to yahoo instant messenger. contact me directly for screen names.