Art Installation

So a few weeks ago, I went to a music festival and symposium at Wesleyan, called the For a Long Time festival. One of the symposium speakers was Michael Schumacher, who runs the Diapason Gallery in New York City. This gallery specializes in sound installations. One of their current projects is sound installations for people's homes. People who really like such things pay a fee and get an installation put into their homes. Depending on the amount of money they put in, they get a certain number and quality of speakers put up around their house. So somebody might pay a few thousand dollars and get a killer sound system and some pieces to play on it. The deal, though, is that it's an installation. It's self-directing art. The customer does not controll the art. Meaning, they don't know what they're getting ahead of time. Furthermore, there is no volume control. It plays what it plays when it plays it, which might be just on the full moon or something, who knows. If you don't like the installation, you can turn it off, but you can't turn it down. Schumacher told us of an early customer who said that it completely changed her life. I bet it would.

Personally, I wouldn't want an installation in my home, because I work in my home. It would be hard to write stuff for my own installation if there was one already going. But if I were not a composer and I really loved sound art, I could totally see getting one. Fortunately, Cola has an installation in her apartment of the same sort by accident. Her intercomm is freaking out. (Read her account of it.) Sometimes it plays street sounds into her apartment. No volume control. It's even more hardcore than Diapason's venture, since there's no off switch. I kind of liked it as it reminded me of this project. But sometimes, randomly, it will switch and play sounds from the apartment to the street. This is a bit more distressing because, well, few people would want all the sounds from their studio apartment to be played out of a speaker on the stoop. No. Not good.

Cola, however, is a good sport and while she was upset about this (I would be upset too), she is willing to let me take advantage of this situation. The stoop speaker masks everything with a bad 60hz hum. A bad hum. Something is clearly ungrounded. Well, I mean, obviously the wiring is screwed up or this wouldn't be going on. So anyway, what we did was duct-tape a speaker over the intercom and then set my computer to play out of the speaker. It's playing my tuning ratios but retuned to be overtones of 60hz, the same frequency as the hum. The effect is subtle. (Maybe a bit too subtle, but when it was louder, it ended up alarming the other tennants.... anyway, I turned it down.) It's kind of nice. However, I was unwilling to sacrifice my laptop during the day, so it's not going when I'm not there. What I clearly need is a second laptop that can run osx so I can leave this up 24/7 until the intercom is fixed. Really. heh. I am too pleased with myself about this.

casaninja?

This post killed.

I am keeping casaninja.com as is.

Media Machine

I got some audio of Ann Coulter from MediaMatters.org and I was struck by how everybody kept talking on top of each other so you can't even tell what's going on. You get bombarded with bombasticness and somehow, at the end, feel like information has been communicated, but none has. It's fake news. It's a media machine trying to pass itself off as the news story. "Hey, look at me!" the media says. So I thought, what if this got layered more and more of the same stuff on top? And not having much more ranting handy as I don't have cable, I just layered the same clip. And I think it sounds like a machine after several layers. How Ironic! What do you think?

http://www.xkey.com/~celesteh/music/wesleyan/media-machine.mp3

say hi

That is a picture of Cola aka Nicole, whose apartment I've frequently been lurking in. Cola is nifty. I know her from my undergrad days. She's a geek. Was a history major and a CS minor, now works at the seond largest toy company in the US programming toys and also takes nifty pictures. She is also my new girlfriend. Say hi.

fixed comments?

anon commenting should be working now...

Creative Commons Liscence

Ok, let's talk copyright. Anything that you say or do that gets recorded somehow is copyrighted. So recording or writing down a new song is copyrighted. Making up a new songs and singing it in front of 500000 people is not copyrighted unless it's recorded. So copyright is somewhat stupid. Furthermore, all of your blog ranting is copyrighted. It belongs to you you you and nobody else. Which means that nobody can rip off your woe over Krispy Kreme's Atkins Woes and set it to music without having to first secure your permission and possibly pay you. This is somewhat stupid. Why is my ranting that I do over the telephone not copyrighted, so that anybody could overhear, find it amusing, later it somewhat to fit in meter and make it into a song, but my web ranting in a different class? Because of stupid copyright laws. Let's face it, most blog posts do not deserve copyright protection. They're on the order of found writing. So why give it copyright protection? Why not do a less restrictive copyright so other people can do stuff with it if they feel somehow inspired?
All text on this website, with the exception of poetry and song lyrics, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Check it out!

New Template

Yes, my blog looks different. I wanted to take advantage of new blogger features and unfortunately, the easiest way to do that was to pick a new look. My old look was also designed by blogger, but, i dunno, this one feels so corporate to me. i tweaked the colors, but it's still dull. oh well. the content is what matters, right?

Music as Social Change

Jesse wrote a really good comment to my last post and I'm going to post it here cuz it's very good

1. install guerilla public sound art pieces that undermine corporate branding of public spaces, drive folks away from malls the day after thanksgiving, or dovetail with a local activist campaign's goals.
2. arrange to show interactive sound artworks in middle schools and highschools that engage with political themes and are both rewarding to and demanding of particpants.
3. maybe not supercollider so much as protools, but create documentary radio artworks, audio tours, and sound installations on political issues.
4. record rallies, teach-ins, other political events, and create online sound archives. use the sound material for sound collages and interactive audio artworks at future political events.
5. use experimental music concerts, sound installations, cds, etc., esp. when related to a political event, as fundraising opportunities, or as chances to encourage attendees to participate in upcoming actions. at the very least, set up laptops so folks can sign online petitions, send e-faxes, or whatever.

these are all concrete political actions. less explicitly political stuff, through encouraging critical thinking, introspection, and empathy, might also be an important part of a big social change strategy, but that's much sketchier... that's what my interview and survey research project is about.

some of this stuff is difficult because of equipment or money issues. also, experimental music, b/c of its high cultural capital, and demographic, academic, and elitist associations, has some disadvantages as far as being a tool for social change, but it also has unique advantages: it's technological focus, it's critique of dichotomies, it's embrace of radical contexts for sound, it's ability to be something new to people.

Leftism

I see all these bumper stickers that say "Peace Through Music." Ok. Sounds good. Sign me up. How does this work exactly? Periodically, Anthony Braxton will try to fire us up to go create change "not just in happy theory land" but also on the physical plane. Change throught music. Peace through music. All horribly short on specifics. Could someone tell me how I can use supercollider to end capitalism and facism and bring about the worker's state? Seriously, now. I think it would be a good idea.

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near misses

bass book buying

Yah, so I went biking up Shattuck to go buy a book for my bass lessons. Totally for got where Bancroft was and rode way too far before turning back. Got to sheet music shop and went to lock the loverly borrowed bike. The lock was being stubborn, so I gave the key one hard jerk and got the lock to engage and then saw that I had badly bent the key and it was torn. Alas! So I went into the music shop and asked the guy behind the counter where I could get the key dubplicated. He gave me advice and told me that he spent years playign the tuba and had recently decided to take up playing upright bass. me too! He has a quartet called the "Tuba Dudes" and they're looking for another bass tuba player, so I gave him my email adress. Then I walked to hardware store to get my key copied, but they were closed. All the hadrware stores were closing. It was late. I was miles from home. The bike lock is not good enough to leave a bike out overnight in berkeley. bah. so I bought a lot of bike grease and then covered the lock with it. It came open at the same moment that the key snapped in two. Seriously. And then today I noticed that I bought book two of the bass method instead of book one. bah.

computers

A shot glass full of lemoncello landed directly on top of Cola's laptop. I blinked at it for a while and told it to run software shut down. then my brain rebooted and she pulled out the battery and unplugged it. We shook it out and pulled off the keyboard and virtually no booze got inside the case. I called my amused little brother who told me to wash the gooey parts (or maybe the GUI parts?) with distilled water and let it dry for several days and then reassemble it and it will be fine.

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Changes

Yes, a so a few days ago, I mentioned how my friends from my undergrad days, who I hadn't seen much in the last few years, had changed. Everyone wants to know how they, in particular changed. Well, lemme tell you. Everyone is, understandably, more mature, which is good given that years have passed. People's positive points have all become more evident. Several folks' annoying habits (I am not going to provide any particulars here about anyone) have receeded or disappeared entirely. There is less smack talking. Yah, I dunno. Everyone seems to have gone and had some life experience and acquired some additional thoughtfulness and charecter. I mean, these were always good folks, right, but now they're good folks a few years older. so yes, I don't want to relive my undergrad days, no way, but it's nice to have friends from then.

I am being very lazy. I've been back a week and I haven't done anything except finish and turn in my paper, get my bass (and exchange the french bow for a german one) and have a lesson. all the rest of the stuff on my todo list is festering. bah, somebody hand me stuff on a silver platter. how about a rehersal space for Tennis Roberts? Nobody in the band has a garage and my practice space has been taken over by a long string instrument. ..... must... rouse... self.....

bah. need some clothes. i haven't bought summer clothes since 2000 or earlier. need to fix bike flat. need to buy bass method book. tomorrow is bike to work day.

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zzzz... huh?

hm, I seem ot have been asleep for the lst two hours and thus not done any of my errands. bah. oh well. Yesterday, I rented a bass from Best music. Today I had my first bass lesson. I need to swap my french-type bow for a german type bow, but looks like that won't happen until tommorrow. bah, I have no work ethic, I just want to nap. At some point, I will have recovered my sleep deficit from last semester and be running a sleep surplus. that will be weird.

Yesterday, I also went to the memorial service of Margret Lyon. She is the former head of the Mills Music department and was the person who brought the San Francisco Tape Music Center to Mills as the Center for Contemporary Music. She was personally a musicologist who wrote her PhD dissertation on a Renissance English composer, but she recognized that New Music would be the next big thng and turned Mills into a center for it. She's made a huge difference for music at Mills and by extension music in the Bay Area and music in general. One of the Kronos Quartet violinists got up and told a story about how Lyon saved the quartet from doom. They were in residence at Mills for a while. She invited Terry Reiley to teach at Mills and said fine when he said he wanted to bring Pandit Pran Nath, so shared Terry Reiley. Both Kronos and Reiley played some tunes.

The memorial service was not well publicized as the family wanted to make sure that random people didn't show up. I would have felt like a random person, except a Mills faculty member told me about it and because I'm a Mills alum and stuff. I directly benefitted from the wisdom of Margret Lyon. So I felt half-random. Surprisingly, college President Jan Holmgren did not show up, even though the entire music department faculty was there. During her graduation speech, she mentioned deceased proferssor emeriti and said stuff about mourning their loss. I don't want to speculate on why she wasn't there, but given that the drama department was just killed, it does make me a bit nervous. Picture of a tiny drama-protest from gaduation:

I must now go get Cola from work. yay.

Marek rules

Letter to the RNC

Yes, I'm home

I've been around since wednesday, but I've been offline and kind of hiding in Cola's apartment. I did go see Sophie graduate from mills with her BA (it's about time...). I have pictures, which I will post later. Saw her mother. It was nice to see her again. Sophie and her mom are so cute. Danica and T also came. It's funny seeing how people have and have not changed. When I saw folks over spring break, I thought "wow, they have not changed a bit!" and thought it was odd that they could be frozen in time. But, of course, they have changed. Subtly and not so subtly. Danica, for example, is on testosterone and has acquired a certain gravitas and air of responcibility. However, still managed to run out of gas on the way to the Berkeley biodiesel station. That biodiesel station is conviently located directly behind my building, but my pickup runs on gas. oh well.

Yesterday, Cola and I went out on Mitch's boat with Mitch and Humanchu and two French women. Every time I've been out on that boat, there's a small craft advisory, but yesterday was definitely the most choppy trip I've been on ever. We bounced and got wet a lot. Mitch has a new boat stereo, which is very nifty. After boating, we went to Mitch's new house. He lives in a scary townhouse development. But it has a little pool and a hottub, so we went and sat in the hottub, which was very nice. And Mitch's household lent me a bike. yay! It needs new innertubes, which I will go get later today, after I get done lounging.

I like Cola. She makes me hapeeeee.

If you want to hang out, you can reach me by calling my cell phone 860-301-2508, which is a connecticut number or by calling my berkeley home phone, which has not changed. my berkeley abode is in a cell dead spot, so trying both numbers can be a good idea, or just call berkeley if you're in california without "free" long distance. i'm here till august. I am currently jobless (if you see anything, esp part time or audio -related, drop me a line!) so have lots of time to hang w/ you, although I must write mad amounts of music and spent 2 hours a day practcing double bass. I'm about to go rent one. yay.

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There's no place like home

I'm home. I'm in california. I have finished my last paper. I am free and clear. I am here for weeks! weeks! months! for the summer! If you want to hand out with me, you should email or call. I have my cell phone, with it's connecticut number 860-301-2508. My old berkeley home number still works as well. Yes I want to hang out with you. Yes we should get drinks / get dinner / jam / play some gigs / talk about old times / whatever.

East coasters take heart, you can fly from hartford or from jfk to oakland international round trip for $200, which is really not bad at all.

gig information will be forthcoming as soon as i figure some out. I want to play out here, i do. I want you to play out here too.

So I trimmed my old concluding paragraph

If she did, indeed, chose death rather than change clothes, then her clothing represents a highly developed technique of self. She was strongly invested in her sense of selfhood. Her gender performance, repressed and questioned, had become fully internally ingrained. The dialog she had with her judges and her voices lead her to value her nonheteronormative gender performance more than her life. If it was so central to her selfhood, then she was queerly self-aware. Her identity was evident to herself as queer. It was not just a place of opposition, it was a place of opposition that she was aware of and invested in. She "came out" as genderqueer, proclaiming it fundamental to her sense of self. She embodied a category that did not yet exist, by enduring repression and questioning in a process analogous to current queers. She lived and died the queer experience. She was so fucking queer. If she were alive right now, she'd have gotten married in san francisco earlier this term. she'd be hanging out at lesbian bars in paris. she'd be a contributer to stone butch blues. she'd inspire a generation of bulldykes to adopt page-boy haircuts. she'd be so fucking awesome. man, i would date her. she'd be the lead singer in her own punk rock band. she'd wear badass jeans with a big leather belt. she'd have big stomping boots. nobody would mess with her. she'd take the chunnel to england to go raise hell in london. she would tell english tourists to get the hell out of france and leave her alone. she'd have like 700 girlfriends and break all of thier hearts cuz she was like 19 and 19 year olds are wont to do that. 700 broken hearted exes and a line a mile long to snag her after her shows. people who were older and should know better would fall for her. older guys in the buisiness would respect her, they wouldn't even see her as a piece of ass, they'd think she was an equal. and man, she'd get action. she told her judges, "as for where she lodged or slept at night, she usually had a woman with her; when she was fighting, she would lie fully dressed and armed, if there was no woman to be found. In respect of the end of the article, she refers herself to God." (Barrett 217) yah, all those chicks refer to god too. "ooohhhh god!" she'd be like cara crash, "i've got a crush on cara crash. her fast fingers make me trash . . .. ejaculate when i hear the sound of her playing." (Breedlove) she'd fucking rule. so fucking punk rock, but with really fancy clothes, cuz she was into the bling. and man, anybody smart would stay the hell away from her. she's going to burn out and die young. but her heart won't burn, oh no. they have to toss that into the seine. leaving a trail of bodies behind her, her heart unburned, she'd flame so spectacularly, they'd be talking about it for like another 600 years. man, and every young dyke would fucking want her, but ever more, they'd want to be her. be her major ass kicking badass girl-getting never sleeps alone self. and what about her? the bourgeois of paris would be as perplexed now as he was then. "what it was god only knows" he'd still be talking about exposing her body like you could tell something about what the hell she was by looking at her naked corpse. he just wants to feel better about things. say, yah, it's just a girl after all. still. lifeless. dead. not so inexplicable. not so awesome. just weird. she's a fucking heretic. things are better this way. we're going to win cuz god is on our side. but god is not on his side. god is with her. she's taking over even from after death. what she started isn't going to stop when she does. it's bigger than a signle charismatic figure. her guys are going all the way. your sorry ass is going to be kissing theirs. you don't mess with her, cuz she'll kick your ass, even if you think you won. you'll just make a martyr out of her. you'll just turn the crowds against you. just do what she says, man, it's easier. you can't mess with her, she's inspired. she's guided by voices. she is SO FUCKING QUEER. so back off motherfuckah. this is not your spritzhead girlfriend this is hothead fucking joan of fuck arc paisan, yeah. FUCK YOU

But seriously folks

Please give me feedback. Paper: http://www.xkey.com/~celesteh/acad/wes/joan-queer.rtf and bibliography: http://www.xkey.com/~celesteh/acad/wes/joan-queer-bib.rtf .   Feedback pretty please? Especially the end paragraphs, cuz, um, I stayed up way too late. but i can sleep on the plane. and maybe nap before my flight after i finish all my chores i have to do.

Status update

My TA stuff is under control. My gear is returned to the lab. I'm waiting till fall to ship Christi's stuff, even though this means shipping it to france, which will be much more expensive. My hosue is still a disaster. I have 8 pages left to write. The paper in progress is continually being updated at http://www.xkey.com/~celesteh/acad/wes/joan-queer.rtf

Todo:

• Pack to go home (augh, still don't have big suitcase - i should go check out thrift stores, but alas, i bet other students have already cleaned them out)
• Buy more dogfood
• get two sets of key copies made for folks that will be around my wes house over the summer
• clean room. do non-essential laundry. don't want ot come home to a festering pile of months old dirty underwear, no i don't. anymore than folks luring around my house in the summer would like the idea....
• completely empty the refrigerator. all the way empty. i do not want to repeat spring break fiasco.
• return the 30 or so library books i have out

If it's not on this list, I've forgotten about it and need to be reminded.

So how is that paper going, anyway?

You can read my paper in progress at http://www.xkey.com/~celesteh/acad/wes/joan-queer.rtf . Feedback is always welcome, at least, it is before Friday as that is the final due date. I'll be periodically re-publishing my paper to that url as I work on it.

and, alas there is more on my todo list:

• Pack and ship things to christi's parents, including CDs, books, dished and vinyl records
• Go get images from the lab for documentation, including any unphotographedhardware and screen shots from lab specific software, like the MOTU interface thingee
• Pack to go home (augh, still don't have big suitcase - i should go check out thrift stores, but alas, i bet other students have already cleaned them out)
• Buy more dogfood
• get two sets of key copies made for folks that will be around my wes house over the summer
• clean room. do non-essential laundry. don't want ot come home to a festering pile of months old dirty underwear, no i don't. anymore than folks luring around my house in the summer would like the idea....
• completely empty the refrigerator. all the way empty. i do not want to repeat spring break fiasco.
• return the 30 or so library books i have out
• return equipment to the lab

bah. there's probably more. I must have all of this done by 2:00 wednesday.

temptest in a teapot

Ok, so a couple of weeks ago there was a student-organized composer's concert. I had a piece in the firts one of these. The first concert was a small test run with only a few composers willing to try something new, meaning that, on the whole, it was a lot better than the second one. I don't likie to post negative reviews, so I usually don't, but the second concert had a high level of suckage. Most of the pieces by undergrads. Many had a tendency to go on way too long. At least twice as long as they should. Hello, we have compositon faculty who would love to help you edit (read: shorten and modify) your work. Also, it would be really helpful to consider such elements as a structure. And having at least one rehersal might be a good idea. And the reason I don't say these things is because I know the composers of these works and I don't want to hurt their feelings. And they're students. Student works are supposed to be exploratory and not necessarily materpieces. One unrehearsed piece that went on far too long was written by a very talented young composer. The piece had good elements in it that I hope are developed more in future pieces. I look forward to seeing the composer mature and find a voice. Great things ahead. Part of being a community means going to concerts full of works that are not going to be fabulous so you can see what your comrades are working on. It means, obviously, not critizing the hell out of something, unless you're making a specific helpful point. And really, unless you're good friends, a TA or a prof, you might want to hold off on making these points. I mean, if you gave a concert and your piece had a great ending point 5 minutes before the actual end and you missed five notes at the beginning, would you want every signle member of the sudience to tell you "great piece, but . . .." So as a community, we support each other. We go to each other's concerts. We offer criticisms when it's appropriate or when we are asked for feedback. We offer encouragement.

I played in the second composer's concert in the opening piece by my housemate. It was an unsual piece in which all the players dropped marbles in unison down clear plastic pipes, which fell to the concert hall stage floor. the parts indicated how long players should wait until picking up the marble. The interesting thing about the piece, more than the sounds of marbles hitting the floor in-semi unison, was the theatrical aspect of watching people pick up marbles at different times. The parts were distributed at random. The timing markers in the piece were non exact. So what looked to me like count 4 & 1/2, might have been 3 or 4 or 5 to somebody else. And there were a bunch of lines in the score. So on count 2, for example, a cluster of people on the right might grab their marbles. Then, the next time, on count 5, some folks in the corners, might bend down. An interesting idea. I can't critique it too much, cuz i was in it, not watching it.

another person who failed to watch this theatre piece, apparently felt like he should not only offer criticism, but write a letter to the newspaper ciriticising all wes composers and the audience for clapping. Hey kid: you're wrong. You missed the piece, you missed the point and you don't understand community. And what the hell with invoking Hilter?? Um, I know that The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is not required reading or anything, but as a rule, and in that specific case, right wing governments are also against new art. Wrong analogy. Wrong side of wrong analogy. I hope nobody takes this kid too seriously on this article and some teacher or good friend or TA gives him some criticism on how to better formulate his ideas.

Terror, Trafficing in Evil

I've already posted twice about the NYTimes article that said we should "traffic in evil" to win the war on terror, which the author defined in such a way as to be unwinnable. Well, looks like we've been following that advice in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course, this has completely defanged all the terrorist organizations that hate our government and caused the Middle East to love us and fear us. Rush Limbaugh calls it a "thoughtful" approach. Those of us who have not falled off the wagon (he must be back on drugs), are somewhat appalled. However, this is exactly what the NYTimes seems to think is a good idea. this is exactly what has been suggested. And it's what we've been doing, according to the Red Cross and other groups, for more than two years in Iraq and Afghanistan. Remember Afghanistan? the justified war? Where prisoners have now been held in inhumane conditions for two years with no access to legal counsel and without being charged with any crime. Remember how we were bring freedom to Afghanistan, quoth Bush, "once ruled by the brutal Taliban regime." Now ruled by the brutal american regime.

Human Rights Watch articulates the problems with the reasoning behing the nytimes article,

But imagine for a moment that you're an interrogator, and that you have in front of you a person who has information about an imminent attack on the United States. What would you do to get that information?

That is the classic "ticking bomb" scenario that proponents of torture always bring forward ... But what we've found is that it puts you on a slippery slope that leads to extensive torture. If you can use torture against somebody who today you believe knows where the ticking bomb is, why not use torture on the person who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows where the ticking bomb is going to be in two weeks?

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/05/07/iraq8562.htm

and this reasoning leads directly to the kind of abuse that has been photodocumented in Iraq. I mean, these prisoners might know something, even if they haven't done anything wrong themselves, right?

The Times suggested that we torture suspects for information. Not people convicted of something. Not even people who are charged with something, necessarily. People who might know stuff. The abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan are what happens when that reasoning is followed. And if this is not enough to convince you, if you think maybe these soldiers are not systematically "softening up" inmates, maybe they're "blowing off some stream" (says Rush) or it's not worse than Frat Hazing (say many people who are apparently unaware that frat boys volunteer for hazing and anyway it's illegal at many schools), or maybe it is actually systematic, but who cares these guys are all foreigners, or whatever. If you want to excuse it: the NYTimes thinks we should start this sort of thing at home. That's not just foreigners, in that case. That's your neighbor. That's your kid. That's you. You, even as an upright Republican voter, have a duty to protect yourself by standing up against this at home and abroad.

and

Obviously, I'm procrastinating on my paper. This abuse thing is very very bad. but I must write my paper. I wonder if I have any "upright republican" readers.

shoutouts

thank you to David for recording, webcasting and photodocumenting thursday cocnert.

thank you to tim for organizing thursday concert.

thank you to dan for promoting thursday concert.

thank you to tim, dan and charlie for playing in thursday concert.

thank you to aaron for providing beer, seating, hospitality, mixing board and monitor speakers for thursday concert.

thank you to people who came/listened on the web to thursday concert.

thank you to sophie for offering a ride from airpot on wednesday.

thank you to david for offering a ride to the airport on wednesday.

thank you to angela for taking xena for the summer.

thank you to cola for offering me temporary lodging (while CN was to be unavilable)

thank you to mitch and to jean's friend sarah for offering me bicycles (I will take one of you up on the offer)

thank you to ellen for offering me summer lodging

oh my, I am quite lucky to have had so many people be nice and helpful. I must now go back to working on my paper.

more pictures

pictures by david

woot

I have republished my photo library. Concert pictures start on Page 12 or Page 13, depending on how you count.

There were a lot of people here last night. Every chair in the house was used. People were sitting on the coffee table. People were sitting on the floor. People were standing in the back. I didn't count. But I was very nervous. I get very scared when I play, which is why I don't do it very often and is why I should do it more often. I kept grabbing the wrong cord. And my hands were actually shaking, so it was hard to plug them in. When I play with my modular, I keep all the cords around my neck, so easy access. So eberytime I move, there's the sound of cable ends clacking against each other. Something I didn't think about. Normally, I just take a line out and don't play in front of people, you know, so the cable sounds don't exist. Weird playing in front of people. I have no idea how long I played or what I did. I started with a chaos patch. That's when you take three oscillators and take the ouput of one of them and use it to control the frequency of the next one. So if the first one is a very low frequency and the next one is higher, it sounds like a siren as the first oscilator frequency modulates the second one. If you turn the first oscillator up into the audible range, you can't hear the siren anymore, because the frequency modulation [fm] is too fast. So It makes a very complex wave form. In a chao patch, you take the output of the second oscillator and plug it into the FM jack of a third one. Then you take the output of the third one, and plug it into the FM of the first one,s o they're all cascading down a line. This is chaotic. Then take the ouput of any one of them, chnage the base pitch of any of the other ones, and un predictable things happen. It's complex. It tweaks in interesting ways. It's a good foundation. I feel like if I play again, I need to start with a different base. Good thing I'm not playing again for a while. The downside of starting with a choas patch is that it uses all three of my main oscillators. I have a few more, including three below-audio-range LFOs (low frequency oscilalators - synths are full of TLAs) and two more audio range oscialltors. But those and two of the LFOs and in a tiny little adjunct synth, which I don't know as well (and for which I have too few cables!). I want another oscillator. I know exactly which one I want. Alas, hardware is expensive, which is why I've been all laptop recently as it's portable and software is free. I actually need a mixing board way more than I need a new oscillator and new filter and a new MIDI->CV (cv = control voltage) converter and more more more stuff. A new row of modules! After I win the lottery. But I'm happy I played and I think I will do it again, Cuz actually, my synth does have a pretty good performance aspect for experimental music. ooooh, Wiard makes a very nifty controller. It's two joysticks, each of which gives you an X axis voltage and a Y axis voltage and a couple of buttons which can function as gates. somebody should sign me for a record deal and give me a huge advance which I can blow on modules and controllers. This is why analog synths were a great hobby during the dot com years and laptop music is a better plan for the immediate future.

Ok, yes, where was I? A ton of people showed up and then all quickly dispersed. Among the people who did not exit immediately, reviews were positive. Two professors came, including my advisor. If you missed it, there is a recording some place on the internet world wide web (as david calls it), but David has not told me where the recording exists. I want to listen. Will post when I know.

Webcast

Check tommorrow at 8:00 EDT: http://www.xkey.com/~celesteh/music/stream.html. That's 5:00 PM on the west coast, btw. The stream will be archived for posterity, btw.

It's just me jamming on my modular. People are more excited about seeing the synth than anything else, I think. I've never played it in front of anyone before. I use it for tape music. Because it takes up a long time to set up a patch and then it's just one sound. Normally, I'll spend half an hour setting up a patch and the record it for 10 minutes and repeat the process 8 times to make a 5-10 minute piece. It's a nice way to work, building up layers, doing sections. By the time I have everything recorded, I usually know what the mix will be, so it takes me another 20 minutes or so to mix. then I have a new piece of tape music. Woot. In this case however, I need to set up faster, I guess, and come up with a patch that is interesting by itself. I've been practicing a bit. I dunno how much I can plan in advance. I know I'm going to build up a chaos patch and use that, cuz they're interesting. After that? Hopefully people will dig it.

Wine, Women and Song

Yesterday was the last day of classes. Today was something called Spring Filng. Outdoor concert with 21934325146723 undergrads swarming like ants. Stopped by for a minute. I've been drinking and whatnot since the afternoon. woot. So I've started my summer in the wine dept. Tommorrow night is song. And my still lurking Joan of Arc paper will have to do for women. I need to get that dern thing written. Or hell, maybe I'll get groupies from my synth gig. heh.

More on terror

As I read the nytimes article one page at a time.... The author talks about winning or losing the war on terror. He does not define his terms, yet he seems to imply that one more terrorist attack on US soil would constitute a defeat. Presumably, the abscence of such an attack would constitue victory. But since an attack is always possible, victory is unattainable. It is an unreachable goal state, since it cannot be assessed until the end of time. This is a problem inherent in letting the pro-perpetual war folks define the terms of debate. They create a perpetual, unwinnable war, which is ultimately against ourselves. The writer "warns" against this pehnomenon, saying we want to hang on to some of our freedoms. But since he quotes the highly reliable Rice talking about terrorists absolutely planning on tampering in the november elections (oh, i just bet they will. i feel fear, and not from angry foreigners), his biases are clearly evident.

He is also too willing to excuse government misdeeds, stating, "Even so, after 9/11 we were frightened, and Congress and the government weren't always thinking straight." Right. The patriot act, passed by congress without having been read by any of the lawmakers, was definitely an act of political expedience, if not fear. But from whence did this act come? Who wrote it? Who had it sitting ready until the time was right to broaden police powers? Somebody planned it. They wrote the legislation and then sat on it, waiting for an opprtunity. That is not fearfully not thinking striaght.

He writes also, "To defeat evil, we may have to traffic in evils: indefinite detention of suspects, coercive interrogations, targeted assassinations, even pre-emptive war. These are evils because each strays from national and international law and because they kill people or deprive them of freedom without due process. They can be justified only because they prevent the greater evil." Even if we accept this line of thinking as valid, it still raises numerous problems. First of all, we already do these things abroad and the result of them has not been truth justice, and the american way. The result has been Hussein, the Shaw, massacres galore in south america, human rights abuses upon human rights abuses. And who do we trust when it seems like pre-emptive war is justified? Hitler neutralized the terrible Polish menace. Now we're in Iraq, lookingin vain for Weapons of Mass Destruction. They were going to be horrible, remember? All aimed right at us. But it turned out, to nobody's surprise, that really, we wanted to increase the profits of Halliburton, get control of oil and expand the reach of the welathy elite. Hussein did not become a bad guy when he gassed the Kurds. He became a bad guy when he nationalized the oil companies. Our definition of threatening our national interest corresponds exactly with threatening corporate interests. Our government will be more than happy to defend us with pre-emptive strikes, if by "us," you mean oil companies. The greater evil, in our military adventurism since WWII, has always been the potential loss of corporate profits and power.

And how about defeating evil? When is it defeated? When we take over the capital of evil? when us troops occupy the 9th layer of hell? when jesus rises again and judges the living and the dead? Or is evil some sort of war we can win by attrition? Let's say that right now in the world, there are 1000 people in terrorist cells, currently plotting horrible things. something must be done to stop them, obviously. Let's say we bomb the hell out of villages suspected to be hiding terrorists. We kill 700 of them. And 10000 bystanders. Then there are only 300 terrorists left. And all the insanely angry freinds and relatives of the bystanders. We had 1000 terrorists. Now we have 20000. Fighting terroism with "evil" is fighting a hydra. Everytime you use violence without due cause, you inflame anger. Violence is a blunt and ineffective tool for change or communication. Moreover, it becomes the only tool. the more a stae uses violemce, the more it has to use violence. We would fall into a perpetually bloody struggle, leaving a trail of dead behind us. This is not a definition of "winning" a war on terror, unless by winning, you mean being the most effective, bad-ass terrorists. And damn, we already won that. Our elder staesmen are wanted war criminals. Look at what we did in Guatemala in the 80's! Man, look where our aid money is going. The more a country violated human rights, the more military aid they receive from us.

no, i do not have time to be worrying about this.

I lack emotional robusteness

I want to say it's cuz I'm tired, but really I just cannot handle emotional stress. I mean, if someone rejects me or I think they're going to reject me, it freaks me the hell out. Even people I don't like that much. I mean... I think this is definitely a pattern. I dunno what to do about it. Fortunately, people do not act in a manner that makes feel/fear rejection very often. And I can see how such a reaction might have come into my life recently or at least been recently amplified, although it's scary to think how many of my life descisions might have really centered around this tendency. or not. i dunno. Obviously, if I'm going to be a functioning member of society, I need to be able to deal. step 1: recognize the issue. step 2: ?

I swear, I get happier and more functional every day. But "all better" continues to ellude me. I have to much stuff to do before wednesday to worry about this. maybe i'll just live in a cave till i'm done here. and then live in a cave forever! no, not really. i should go look at my Feeling Good book, as it contains many strategies for dealing with stupid every day things. Cuz a lot of depression is just not knowing how to react to everyday things.

terror

In other news, the new york times magazine has an article on the war on terror, which i don't have time to read, but which I've heard rumors that it says we should use torture in interrogations and carry out assasinations. Well, of course, we already do these things. where do people think Hussein got all that torture stuff? the CIA has the greatest torture technology in the world. A lot of the tools for it are manufactured right here at home. Torture = american jobs. And you can get training on how to do that plus learn how to set up death squads at Fort Benning, at the renamed School of the Americas. I'm going to assume that the writer is conviently ignoring US-sponsored terror and torture in client states (we do car bombs, yes we do) and thinks we should start torturing people domestically.

Oh that's a great idea. For instance, torture in Iraq's prisons have really raised our stature in the Arab world. The question, tho, I guess for people who utterly lack a moral compass, has to do with the ends of the means and not the means themselves. What countries openly assisnate and use torture? What countries have terror? Well, there's a lot of terror in Europe. Want to know why there are no garbage cans in the London Underground? How about the see-though garbage recepticles around Notre Dame in Paris? Yes, other countries, like, I dunno, Spain and all over Europe deal with terror all the time. I'm picking them vs South American countries, because they're all democracies. Also, as the US is the source of South American, terror, it would make an odd comparison. Anyway, all of these countries have to deal with terror periodically, but somehow they maintain democracy. Of course, they've had experiments to responding to terrorist events, like say, the Reichstag fire, by adopting a more totalitarian model. That didn't work out so well.

Contrast this with Israel, a contry with a ton of terror and assymetric warfare. They torture. They assasinate. Doesn't seem to help much. Seems to make things a lot worse.

Lookit, the head of the department of education recently called the NEA a terrorist organization. If we say, "you can torture peple, but only suspected terrorists," then who is a terrorist? People blocking the entrances to federal buildings? (I've done it. It used to be called peaceful protest.) Teachers? This strategy is a pandora's box. Police forces will always use every tool available to them to solve crimes. To do otherwise would be to underacheive. Do we want them to have this tool? What if you, yes you, were mistaken for a terrorist? what if you did something that sort of brushed against a definition of terrorism? I know a guy who thought it would be cool to scribble stupid grafitti in an airplace bathroom. For a good time call, or something lame. Well, if he's done something that looked illegible, like those stylized scripts you see used in artistic grafitti, law enforcement could assume that he was communicating with other members of a terrorist cell aboard the plane. No joke. No exageration. It was a lame thing to do, but do we want to torture lame college students?

The part of the article I did read contains some errors. First of all, Al Queda was never monolithic. Politicans have asserted otherwise, but they also said Iraq had WMD. There are many groups who are upset about US foreign policy (and rightly so, as we export huge amounts of inequality and terror) and willing to respond to that with assymetric warfare. Trying to say they all follow one guy with a video camera is rediculous. The power of these groups lies in their independance. The writer goes on to talk about dirty bombs. The Journal of the Atomic Scientists, a publication which included Einstein as an associate of some kind, recently ran an article on dirty bombs. First of all, the material needed to make a dirty bomb, spent fuel rods, are extremely heavy and toxic. They are very hard to move. anyone involved in such a project would certainly quickly die of radiation poisoning. Ok, so even if you say they're suicide bombers, it would take fo team of people to grab the rods and they would all die shortly thereafter. then, the spent fuel rods are attached to a conventional explosive device. Like dynamite or something. The idea is that they spread radioactive material everywhere. Well, the folks quoted in the article that I read, a trade journal for atomic scientists, say the risk of anyone being harmed by that is low. So fuel rods, who and unexploded are very radioactive and toxic, but once they're dispersed, the little pieces are a lot less dangerous. You clear the area and then send in a cleanup team. I mean, it's not harmless. People caught in the actual explosion would be maimed or killed. but not by the radiation, by the bomb. the real, huge danger from a dirty bomb is panic. Panic that is way out of proportion to the threat. the way to prevent massive damage from a dirty bomb is to inform people about the real (much lower than they think) risks and make sure that people stay calm. That's how you fight the effectiveness of dirty bombs. Their danger and power is in the symbol, not in the actuality. Nobody would go to the deadly hassle of messing around with spent fuel rods if they knew it wouldn't cause panic. but how have our leaders responded? By whipping up fear to a fever pitch. They're smart people. They have undoubtedly been briefed on the real risks of dirty bombs and know that the real problem is panic. the fact that they have chosen to increase the risks associated with dirty bomb attacks rather than decrease them suggests that protecting us from terror is not their primary agenda. Not that this is surprising, given that they've been diverting anti-terror funds to our Iraq adventurism and totally ignored terror reports from before 9-11. As it's clear that fighting terror is near the bottom of the Bush agenda, we need to ask ourselves why they or their lackeys would be lobbying for torture and assaination. It's not to make us safer...

Got flight

May 12 Wed BDL-OAK Southwest Airlines Flight 278 Depart Hartford (BDL) at 4:55 PM Arrive in Oakland (OAK) at 10:25 PM

Need: ride from oakland. Also need use of large suitcase or duffel bag for the summer.

classes are OVER! woot. Now I just need to write longer 20 page paper about Joan of Arc's gender, clean up and document some supercollider code, and document doing stuff with digital performer. at the risk of getting a reputation for being a total slacker, tho, there is no serious deadline on the last one before fall. I should talk to Ron about it. I want to do really good docs and not rush them, and I can do them from my own little laptop, mostly.

Oh yes, and southwest is doing a one way fare sale, which actually also makes them the cheapest way to buy coastal round-trip tickets if your dates are more than seven days and less than two weeks off. and by far the cheapest one-way fare. if you are a wes musician, i can try to get you west coast gigs. i may be hosting a living room concert series in my own berkeley home. fyi

My summer plans

Drink, have sex, smoke pot and write tons of music. Not in that order. So I'm prolly not going to find a groovy job. oh well. I still get my stipend during the summer months. I can live large... errr... small on my wages. ideally, somebody else will pay for the beer. or: homebrew! home soon. dunno when, but soooooon.

the revolution will be webcast

my thursday concert will be webcast. you should come in person, if you can, but if yer too far away it will be at 8:00 PM EDT. url will be forthcoming.

random question

how do i pack dishes to ship in the mail? what about records (as in vinyl) and cds?

For a Long Time Festival

I spent the weekend working at this aptly named festival. Musical events for 14 hours yesterday, counting the parking garage excursion. I see a lot of concerts at Wesleyan and they affect my thinking and that's a good thing, but I don't write about them much as I don't have time to ponder them. I'm on musical overload and it's a wonderful thing.

So on Friday night, Phil Niblock played and showed moves for two hours. His movies seemed to have an aquatic theme at first. boats. fishing. shipping things on boats. then it switched to agriculture. first wheat sort of stuff and then meat. Animals being killed. cut up. cooked and eaten. The animal part had a triumphal feel in the music. some folks in the audience said that the pictures of animals being killed and processed (by hand, as these were images shot in the third world), made them want to go vegetarian. But i dunno, with the triumphal loud drone music going on, it made me feel some sence of victory over banyard animals. there was a long section of chasing, catching, killing, plucking, cooking and eating some chicken, all with this almost victorius feel. The last two nights I've been dreaming of eating chicken. So the meat eaters want to stop and the meat avoider wants to start.

And then saturday, I saw a bunch of installations, then Jascha played a very nifty droney-piece. And I had a sudden insight. I know what I am going to do for my thesis! More later. Jascha's piece was very nifty. then I wandered around more. Talked to a reporter. The second repoerter from the Hartford Courant to interview me about the festival. Apparently, I have not been mentioned in the paper. I should have done more than just parking garage pieces. I was just so tickled by the idea. Anyway. aaron had a nifty staticky installation derived from field recordings of sounds in the area.

Too much happened to post about it. Also, no sleep.

I am working on stuff for my May 6th concert. 8:00 pm. my house. 177 Liberty Street. Analog modular synthesizer. There is a reason you never see these beasts in concert, cuz they're monophonic, they take a long time to patch and you can't "save" patches like on a computer. you have to do it manulaly every time. However, the concert is free. Bring your own beer. I took some pictures of the synth for the flyer: http://www.xkey.com/~celesteh/pics/gear.html I also have a nice patch going right now, which maybe i'll record, but prolly not.

ok, i did record it

adventures in civil liberties

so i was just walking back from the parking garage, where i went at 1:00 am to hear my pice played. (after some beer. pardon typos.) i didn't hear my piece played, but i heard three or four pieces. i dunno when mine is on. anyway, i was walkiong back, and me and two guys: a phd student and a grad alum, guys in their 30's at least were walking back towards campus down the street of the city when a public saftety guy started yelling at some kid from his car. he jumped out and demanded id from the kid and started shouting into his radio about spray paint. the kid was just walking down the street, i guess carrying a can of sprsay paint. the public safety guy was giving him a really hard time and me and the two guys were watching, unhappy about how the student was getting hassled. then the guy yelled at us about how we were with the student, so we started to walk away. he starts yelling into his radio for backup. i kid you not. for a can of spray paint. two seperate public safety officers appear and stop us. want to know who we are. want to see our ids. want to know if we're involved in some very seious incidints of vandlaism!! so they question us and demand to know ids. the alum guy gives his phone number and keeps saying he's staying in the guest house, as that must give him some non-miscreant creds. the phd guy gives out his name and id. i shake my head and walk off. /another/ public safety guy appears as we get back to campus where i'm trying to retrieve my bike. he takes my picture with a digital camera so they can id me later. for a kid with a fxcking can of spray paint. so i start yelling at him, saying, "you guys think you're the fbi!" and he comes back with, "i know who you are! i've seen you walking around campus here last year before you graduated!" this guy works night shift. there is no way he's seen before, especuially last year. so i laugh at him and he's all "i know who you are! i've seen you! i know who you are!" i think the civics department must be in trouble.

In other news, the festival is groovy. and i have an alibi for whenever this spray painting thing occured!

Offline

My laptop has just been volunteered to do duty as a part of the huge music festival happening this weekend. It will spend time locked in Ron's office and then it will deployed to run a multi-channel audio piece.

I'm doing backups now. I'm assured that it won't walk off, which is good because I would actually sob if it did. Anyway, so I'll be offline for the next couple of days, which I prolly would anyway cuz of the festival and it's prolly for the best because I have so much reading to get done. so much reading. Anyway, I don't need to be online all the time. I can go away from my computer for a couple of days. No problem. I could quit anytime. This won't affect me at all. Smooth sailing. *shakes* and theere's email in the laaab. ii'll bee ffinee.. nnoo prroblllem..

for a limitted time only

My (almost)entire photo library

Have you been living in a box for the last four years?

Um, kinda seems like it, doesn't it...

lalala

Yes, I worry too much. sometimes, I worry about how much I worry. But now I've posted my worries a few days ago and they worry me less. Do people know I have a lot of baggage and will it change their opinion of me? Well, they know now, I guess.

I was talking to somebody the other day and she told me I was telling her something I had already told her. So I switched to being entertaining instead. But really, most of the time I talk to get things outside myself. So I say the same things over and over again. This is why it's good to have many friends, so you can tell them your latest tale of triumph or woe or whatever and you end up telling 10 people and by the end, you've expelled it from yourself.

The last day of class is May 4th. One week from today, May 6th, I am giving a concert. God willing I will be done with my paper very soon. I must do some reading for it. Foucault. Something about cross dressing in the middle ages. Too many books. And I must document the lab more fully. I think I'll be home in two weeks. Hopefully less. Not that I've bought tickets yet or anything.

When I get home, I will need a bike and an internship. Somebody who reads this has an extra working bike lying around that they want to give up for the summer. Or maybe it's only a little broken? Flat tires or something? Busted breaks? Some small but annoying thing that is preventing you from riding it and if you lent it to me you would get it back fixed in August. Let's be honest. You'll never get around to fixing it yourself. It's just making you feel guilty, sitting there broken. You keep meaning to bike places, but you're always running late and that little piece of plastic over the spring thingee on the breaks is cracked and you really ought to get it fixed, but the guy at the shop will realize that yer a poser and it's too much work to get it over there and you don't have time, you'd rather watch tv or something and damn now you feel guilty again. see, you can get this out of your life by lending me your bike. then, you'll feel a little glow when I talk about how nice you are. And that will last for a few weeks after you get your bike back, before you feel guilty again for not riding it. Byt then it will be october and so hot the tired would melt off of it as it sits locked in front of a Bart station, so you wouldn't need to feel guilty then either. And then you'd kind of forget about it for a while. So you can get months of guilt out of your system...

Maybe it's just me that thinks this way? the same thing would also work for getting me an internship, by the way. I will work for very little money (alas) and you would impress your boss by reccomending me and feel like a good person all around and it would totally make up for all those secret solitare games.

I feel kind of spacey today, obviously. I have a bunch of errands to run, but I have to sit here and wait for a plumber before I can do them. I should read some of my books. Which first? Queer theory? Medival cross dressing? Or the rehabilitation trial fo joan of arc? I think critical theory goes well with scatteredness. I notice that I understand it better if I read it while tipsy or on the verge of sleep.

For non-required reading, I got a book out of the library called Bisexual Women in the 12st Century. It's also full of theory stuff. But I figured that everybody seems to be bisexual these days. Makes me wonder what's going on in the world. Am I missing out on something or what? So I read the introduction and it's main point was, "seems like everybody is bisexual these days." Ok, well, I knew that. So I wonder if I might be missing out on something, but then I remember that what I'm missing out on is boys, and well, I'm ok with that. Anyway, apparently there was a huge bi movement in the early 90's that made bisexuality more and more acceptable in the GLB community, in that, that's when they started adding the 'B' to their acronyms. And this movement was centered in the Bay Area, a lot. So when I was a youth, I really wanted to be bi and I guess that made me a product of that time. But I tried it out and boys were just... boring. I have nothing against them, but they're not girls, you know. So I dunno why I'm wondering about this again aside from having so many bi peers. I guess there are very few lesbians in the world (and really, a lot of women who said they were lesbians before had secret boyfriends and stuff, so this isn't new, it's just more out and out is good). One of the few. One of the proud. One of the lesbians. My very deep thought on all of this is: "the more queer women, the better."

indeed

Dog meets skunk

My dog chased a skunk this morning. at about 2:30. bad scene. i am so goddamn tiried now.

Things Celeste Worries About

• Do people around me realize how much baggage I have? If they do, will they still want to talk to me?
• Is my music boring?
• Am I boring?
• Am I working hard enough?
• Is my dog getting enough food, attention exercise?
• Do I have any clue how to communicate?
• what if I keep making the same mistakes over and over and can't ever escape them?
• What if everything that goes wrong is my fault? Like, to the point where my actions actually ellicit, somehow, other people to be mean?
• What if I'm mean?
• what if I'm blind to all my own faults that re important?
• what if I can see them, but can't manage to change them?
• what if all the bad things I've heard about myself are true?
• Do I stand for anything?
• Do I know what my values are?
• If I had tried harder, would it have made a difference?
• Did I do everything I could for my mom?
• Do I know who I am?
• Is identity important?
• If I'm grumpy, will nobody want to talk to me?
• Should I hide being grumpy?
• what if I'm grumpy all the time?
• maybe just nobody has realized my propensity for grumpiness, crotechetyness, and angstyness?
• am i more fxcked up than other people?
• is music important?
• has anybody realized how little i actually know about harmony, history and literacy?
• am i being stupid?
• If I worry too much, will my hair fall out?

Parking Garage Music

I'm writing some tunes to be played out of the Muzak system of the big parking garage in town. Currently, it plays obnoxious baroque music, designed to annoy skateboarders. There is a pretty good coffee shop underneath it, with nice outdoor seating, but which is totally ruined by the classical music warfare, otherwise known as a nonviolent deterrent. Yeah, there's a reason the Pentagon studies how people react to music. I think it might count as some form of psychic violence. So I never sit outside the parking garage and i get coffee there less often than i would otherwise.

So next weekend, we're having a music festival which is taking over the muzak system. And I have tunes for it that will not annoy me, but may annoy everyone else.

• garage-1-mono.mp3
• garage-2-mono.mp3
• garage-3-mono.mp3
• garage-4.mp3

I dunno if I can include all of these. I think that garage-4.mp3 is my favorite and I'm not sure if garage-3-mono.mp3 really belongs in there at all.

Concert

New works by Celeste Hutchins for analog modular synthesizer on May 6th at The Assylum: 177 Liberty Street, Middletown.

More details tba

Song for Medieval Religous Practices Intersecting with Modern Critcal Theory, Thus Creating a New Symbolic Grid of Heteroglossic Discourse

what do you know, shiny little foucault
i took a relic from your grave, a little piece just to save
i keep up upon my mantle, serende you with some handle
the workers strike, it changed your mind
now a little pice of that is mine
i dug you up with a spade
in a secret midnight raid
no where to go with my bit of foucault
on a rainy day i'll put you on ebay
enjoy the present relaity
with the history of sexulaity
we'll have some dinner discourse
afetr the main course
tell me what you know, my bit of foucault
whoah whoah whoah

I was offline and not blogging

but now i am back online. well, i was metaphorically offline. busy, unhappy, etc.

I have just returned from La Domo Ĝensenius, where I playes sapce invaders and other video games on a linux arcade machine and watched maybe 1.5 hours of Tivo and consumed copious amounts of sugar!!!!!!!!!!! bounce! bounce! bounce! crash....

(picture me typing this really fast. read it alloud as fast as you can to simulate the effect. try not to breathe) ok! tv! is really weird! it has really short scenes that cut togther really fast in aseries of nonsequiters only joined together by pictographic or colorthemes or sometimes by sound or animation style or just the knowledge that yer still watching the same program. what happens from moment to moment has nothing to do with what just happened. or maybe this was because i was watching cartoons. seaforce 2021 or something. what was going on? i have no idea. and Dexters lab. every scene is like 20 seconds long. the plot is barely constructed at all. and it's a tiny bit gender normative. although there was a very brilliant james bond parody. i don't understand, tho, why they can't deconstruct the gender dyniamics they seem to purport to parody rather than reinforce them. c'mon. put dexter in a dress! i've only seen this cartoon once, but i'm an expert on it, really. and the simpsons we watched one or two episodes. i can't remeber now. i remeber there being sex on the simpsons, like that one episode where Homer and Marge discovered exhibitionist tendencies and end up hiding in mnigolf windmills and whatnot. i won't say the sex was just hinted ta, because it was really a major plot point of the episode i'm recalling, which was on when i was an undergrad. i mean, it was the plot. but it i don't think it was so explicitly discussed. also, they seem more disfunctional and adverserial than i recall. and i know that they weren't making bondage jokes when i wa sin highschool and college, cuz i would have caught those. and the plots are much fatser paced. and then this happened! and then this! and then this! and this! and this! no, we won't return to what happened to grandpa as that guy was seducing him in florida! and this! and this! no point other than the ride! flash! flash! flash! flashing lights! sugar! sugar! lights! sugar! lights! sugar! sugar! lifghts! Sugar! Sugar! Lights! Sugar! Lights! Lights! S! L! S! L! L! L! S! S! S! L! L! S! S! S! S! L! S! L! L! L! S! L! S! L! S! L!

Queer

Apparently, in the brave new world of critical theory, you don't need to be um, queer to be queer. Stright people can also be queer. As long as you're somehow oppositional to the mainstream. Also, somehow by this definition, the A-Gays or other privledged folks are not queer, even if they are LGBTTFAGIetc.

what a queer idea.

I don't want to be heteronormative for saying het people can't be "politically queer" nor do I otherwise want to be any sort of wet blanket but: do not appropriate my identity! If you have always been the gender you are now and have no problems with it and it matche yer body and the people you like are always of the opposite sex, then yer not queer. Sorry. You can be really special and interesting and nifty, but you can't be queer.

A brief history lesson: as few as five years ago and maybe still for all i know, the word "queer" was controversial when used by LGBT folks, because it was/is still used as an insult. People get/got beat up by angry folks calling them "queer." So when a group formed called Queer Nation, they were really radical for using that in their name. They were a direct action group that would do things like have sit ins where they would chant "We're here! We're queer! Get used to it!" Such was the era that a bunch of people sitting around, chanting, calling themselves queer was very newsworthy. the group was controversial. why did they have to be so in-your-face and unclosetted?

So when you use the word queer now, to self identify as LBGTTFAGIetc, you are doing so as a person reclaiming language. You are taking an insult upon yourself and saying, "yes i am queer. i am a sodomite. I am just as you say and I am proud of it. Now what are you going to do about it?" this is a powerful and important thing to do. It is claiming identity and seizing the terms of debate. It is liminal, it is transitionary, it is taking a leap. It is part of a tradition of queer activism that started before stonewall.

If you are striaght and you beleive in queer rights, then I saulte you. But you are not queer. when you say that you are, you take a powerful symbol and dilute it. you take a word that people took serious risks to reclaim and you are removing it's meaning. this is a meaning that people were arrested to claim. they were beatten up to claim it. they lost their jobs. It's not something to be taken lightly. words are powerful. If you're het, the word queer does not belong to you anymore. It was wrested from your control and seized by the people to whom it refers. Now put it down. It does not refer to you.

Gender

Can I just say that gender is kind of confusing. Like, yeah it's cultural, but it must be more than that, cuz of trans people and stuff. I mean, people actually change their bodies to match their gender. And Savage Love last week had a letter from a guy who was born intersexed, but the operated on to be feamle, but felt like he was really male. I mean, that's complicated.

When I was a youth, I was thinking about gender a lot. I remeber being in 7th grade and Louis demanding whether or not I wanted to be a boy and whether or not I would get sex resassignment surgery if I could and me not answering cuz I didn't know. I hated girl drag. I hated having to wear a skirt every day to school. I felt like it limited my motion and my freedom, but obviously I felt more than that, cuz I won't wear women's clothes now unless I have to. I try to avoid activities where I have to wear costumes that are gendered female. Joan of Arc got burned at the stake rather than wear a dress everyday. I can kind of see where she's coming from.

So when I was an undergrad and some folks started coming out as trans, it was something I wanted to think about, but Christi was having none of it. she did not want to date aboy and if I became one, she would leave me. So I liked her and I wasn't sure and anyway, I was at a women's college and I liked beign surrounded by women and feeling like I was among my people, so I didn't go there. If I had gone there, maybe I'd be a boy now? Who knows. My first girlfriend is a boy now and a bunch of women that I admired or was attracted to or both have switched.

Lois, in Dykes to Watch Out For questions her gender for a while and then lies about being trans becauase she's annoyed at one fo her friend's transphobia. Then she comes out as untrans and explains that she enjoys being a girl "in a perverse sort of way." which is kind of how I feel. I'm finally comfortable with my body, at least for the last few years and I really wasn't for a long time. So when I write about Joan of Arc being on both sides of some sort of gender binary/hiearchy, that's kind of me projecting myself onto my research, which everybody does and in this pomo period we can all be somehwat honest about it. so before I didn't know whether I was a girl or a boy and now I say that I'm defintely a girl, but maybe I'd rather be a heretic than wear a dress. Does this make me genderqueer? I dunno. I'm about to go put on a tux for queer prom. Seriously, wearing dresses makes me as uncofmortable as hell. It's not right. It's not me. It's like hammering a peg into the wrong shaped hole or something. I used to feel happy when people called me "sir," but then other times I would be annoyed by it. It's annoying now.

I wanted male privledge, but obviously something more was going on...

This is me sharing too much. goodnight.

too drunk for homweork

ok, i'm not really drunk. i had less than one pint. but ifeel like i shoudl not drive, for example and i'm eschewing going to the library due to the late hour and the rain and my level of confusion. So not TV. People I would instant message are offline. I'll post to my blog.

I just got back from a bar-hangout after a concert. One of the concert pieces was 4 blogs set to music. These two guys culled funny blog posts and harmonized them. It really shows how stupid blogs are. Yes indeed. Glad they didn't pick this one. The concert was very long seeming, but it closed with some excellent steve reich. I want to sound like that guy. I played in Aaron's piece, which was very nice.

On tuesday, my composition seminar went to Mass MoCA to see the sound installations. Mass MoCA is a museum of modern art in the Berkshires, which is a mountainious region where new yorkers go on cultureally themed vacations.

There are four sound installations in the museum, of which we only managed to hear two. One is a free way piece. There is a long pipe, open at one end and with a mic at the other end on an overpass. The sound from the ic is amplified and played back on two speakers under the overpass. The mic and the speakers are far apart. It's nice cuz it sounds like pipes and pipes are cool.

The other piece was by Ron. Mass MoCA used to be a power plant before it was a museum. So there's a bunch of power plant and power plant -closure related stuff. Ron has a permanent sound installation about the plant and it's closure that's set up in a narrow walkway between two buildings. There's speakers set up overhead. And if you look through the windows, there's electric generation equipment laid out all installation-y and a long table with capacitors on it. The big coke-can size capacitors - one for every worker employed before the plant shut down. The apeakers had sounds from the plant's history and workers talking about the plant shutting down and the museum moving in.

This next one was temporary. It was the best installation ever. It's not really pink. It's a big white room with papers all over the floor. The room is as big as a foot ball field. And those things hanging down that look like lamps are loudspeakers like for making announcements. And attached to the roof are penumatic devices dropping down signle sheets of paper. So periodically one or more of them would go off and then a piece of paper would flutter to the ground. The whole thing was monochromatic except that the windows had pink film on them. nd the loudspeakers were making announcements, but sort of like poetry inspired by reading too much critical theory. In the very back was a door to another smaller, dark room with concert-type speakers whirling around overhead, playing choral parts by meredith monk. In the big room, you can hear the chorus, the announcements and the paper dropping. I think it's the most beautiful piece of art i've ever encountered. Awe inspiring. When I'm sober, I'll look up the name of the artist.

Chris sits, watching a piece of paper drop to the floor. It was so beautiful how they twisted and fell. It was onion skin paper, it said, thin and light. There were big, slow spinnign fans on the ceiling, changing the pattern of falling. they driften bauetifully to the ground, twisting in the air. The annoucements were about text and bodies and representation. It was really very wonderful.

how much sleep do i really need?

Less than 8 hours, moe than 4-5 of been getting. too bad. i liked having all those extra hours.

How much time do I have left at school?

And today, I suddenly realized how alarmingly close to May 4th it is. good lord. I must write a 5 minute piece or two sutibale for playing out of mono parking lot speakers by monday. and then i got ta stuff and my 20 page paper that i should start researching. yes, i should. none of those are due till the 14, but the faster i get done, the faster i can go home.

and now, i think i'm going to take some action regarding my sleep defecit, despite that i have no job lined up yet. alas. hire me. Resume.

Gender and Joan of Arc

Celeste Hutchins
Gender and Joan of Arc

In her trial, Joan of Arc testified "that, from the age of thirteen, she received revelation from Our Lord by a voice which taught her how to behave." (p 47) This revelation eventually told her to dress like a man and take up arms. Centuries later, during her lengthy trial for sainthood, one of the Devils Advocates arguing against her suggested "that perhaps all of her voices were manifestations of hysteria . . ." (Kelly p 221) If we use hysteria as a tool for unpacking Joan of Arc's gender identity, then what Freud wrote in General Remarks on Hysteric Attacks comes to mind. "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." (p 23-4) We do not know if Joan showed "a boyish character and inclinations" before she started hearing her voices, but we do know that the voices guided her in such a direction.

Joan's voices may have functioned according to what Foucault terms "Christian techniques of the self." (p 368) In Sexuality and Solitude, he discusses how Christians formed sexual identity through confession. Joan testified that she had a confessional relationship with her voices. When she was being questioned about leaping from the tower of Beaurevoir, she said "that she knew by revelation from Saint Catherine that she had received forgiveness after she had confessed. And it was by Saint Catherine's advice that she confessed it." (The Trial of Joan of Arc p 112) She was no stranger to the confessional, telling her judges earlier, "One cannot cleanse one's conscience too much." (p 110) Therefore, Joan sought to fulfill her "Christian truth obligation" as often as she could and continued these conversations further with her voices. Because these truth obligations cover thoughts as well as actions, her virginity, something which she must have thought often about, did not mean that she would not have thought deeply about sexuality.

The voices had an immediate sexual effect on her. During her trial, "[s]he said also that the first time she heard her voice, she vowed her virginity as long as it should be pleasing to God. She was then of the age of thirteen years or thereabouts." As soon as she was a pubescent age, she began to hear voices and swore off sex. It seems these are linked, but perhaps a Freudian reading is more correct than a Foucauldian one. The transcript immediately continues, "Asked if she had ever spoken of these visions either to her her curé or to any other churchman, She said no . . .." (p 96 - 97) Thus, even to her judges, voices, virginity and confession are linked. However, Joan fails to make the final link. Presumably, as a pious youth, she was already cleansing her conscience. Yet she never mentioned divine voices or, presumably, her pledge to her confessor.

Joan's path to adult sexuality thus took place outside of normal paths. At puberty, she rejected gender roles assigned to her. She refused marriage, even suing to escape one, and she refused the convent by making her virginity pledge outside of the confines of the church. Having rejected a female role, she seemed to turn to a male role, but not fully. She did not attempt to pass as male. It may have been possible for her to put on male dress, adopt a male name and join the French side of the conflict as a peasant soldier. In so doing, she would have joined the bottom rung of the military. As a military man, she would have had more freedom, would have been able to take part in the conflict and would have lived in fear of discovery. Instead, she chose a third path.

Cixous, writing about western thought, claims that "thought has always worked through opposition." (p 63) She starts Sorties: Out and Out: attacks / Ways Out / Forays with a series of oppositions. She notes, "And all these pairs of oppositions are couples." (p 64) All thought is subject to binary oppositions, which must then somehow be "related to 'the' couple, man/woman." (p 64) However, Joan did not simply switch sides of the male/female dichotomy. She clung hard to her female identity by proclaiming her virginity, even adopting it as a title. The second Devil's Advocate during her trial for sainthood argued that Joan "was hardly consonant with modesty to boast of [her virginity] and to offer her body for inspection." (Kelly 217-218) She made too much of her virginity, and thus her femaleness, according to him.

However, she also clung hard to her male role and identity. Her "maleness" was not simply her military knowledge and abilities, but also manifested in her male attire. This attire was a powerful symbol for her enemies and the official reason that she was finally burned. It also seemed to be a powerful symbol for her. Her male dress is often described as pragmatic. During her trial for relapse, she stated that "it seemed to her more suitable and convenient to wear man's dress being with men, than to wear a woman's dress." (The Trial of Joan of Arc p 157) If she wanted to be around soldiers and avoid rape, it was necessary for her to wear men's clothes. However, among her own troops at least, her clothes did not hide her body. "They had seen her dress and undress in their presence, as a fellow-soldier concerned little with her privacy while on campaign." (Joan of Arc: A Military Leader p 33) Her squire testified during the nullification trial that he had seen her breasts. The duke of Alençon testified, "sometimes he saw her breasts, which were beautiful." (ibid p 33)

During her trial, she was repeatedly asked about why she was wearing men's clothes and repeated over and over again that it was God's orders that she do so. Her clothes seemed to have meant more to her than a pragmatic explanation suggests. There is a telling scene during her trial when she is suddenly offered what she wants most, if she changes clothes.

her questioner said: I promise you that you will hear Mass if you put on woman's dress.
She replied: And what do you say if I have sworn and promised our King not to put off these clothes? Nevertheless I say, Make me a long dress, right down to the ground, without a train, and give it to me to go to Mass, and then when I come back I will put on the clothes I now have.
Asked if she would wear woman's clothes at all to go and hear Mass,
She said: I will think this over and then answer you. she further asked, for the honour of God and Our Lady, that she might hear Mass in this good town.
They then told her that she must take a woman's dress, unconditionally and absolutely,
And she replied: Bring me a dress like that of a citizen's daughter; that is, a long houppelande, and I will wear it, and also a woman's hood to go hear Mass.
But she also begged, with the greatest urgency, that they should leave her the clothes she was wearing, and let he go hear Mass without changing them.

(The Trial of Joan of Arc p 114 - 115) The argumentative nature of her replies in that section is not unusual. However, more seems to be at stake than her typical obstinance. The promise of mass almost seems to have alarmed her. She asked for a dress to be made, making specific demands. This seems like a delay tactic. And even if the dress were made to specifications, she would change back out of it immediately. The questioners asked her directly if she would change clothes for mass and she directly asked for time to think about it. She asked frequently to hear mass, but could not commit immediately to making the compromise of changing clothes just for Mass. It's clear by the end of the exchange that she very much wanted to keep her clothes and hear mass. She "begged, with the greatest urgency." Her clothes were clearly very important to her and had a meaning for her beyond the pragmatism of avoiding rape.

Male clothes and virginity were technologies of the self; her identity was formed through her voices' instructions to stay a virgin and to wear men's clothes. She constructed her self through her abstinence and costume. Her virginity was her title. She died rather than switch dress. At puberty, she began a path both towards "boyish character and inclinations" and also away from them. She did not simply change sides of the male/female binary opposition; she stood with one foot clearly planted on either side of it. She straddled the male/female dichotomy and would not budge from one side or the other. She denied the hierarchal ordering of things. She existed outside of patriarchal system of thought and dominance. What did it mean for her to be on both sides?

It meant that, at least while she was with the French, she escaped the male gaze. Her squire testified at her rehabilitation trial that, "never, despite any sight or contact he had with the Maid, was his body moved to carnal desire for her, nor did any of her soldiers or squires, as he had heard them say and tell many times." (Joan of Arc: A Military Leader p 33) The duke of Alençon also testified that, "he never had any carnal desire for her." (ibid p 33) In fact, the royal esquire went so far as to testify that the soldiers "believed it was impossible to desire her." (ibid p 34) Joan existed fully outside of the male gaze. To put her back within it would be impossible. She no longer belonged to the category of beings to be gazed at. Not only did she escape the subordinate side of oppositions, she jammed the system. The male gaze broke down her presence. The royal esquire testified, "And often when [the soldiers] spoke about sins of the flesh, and used words that might have aroused carnal thoughts, when they saw her and approached her, they could not speak like this any more, for suddenly their sexual feelings left them" (ibid p 34) Her presence as a masculinized woman changed the soldiers to de-sexualized, feminized men. By straddling the binary opposition of gender, she caused the men around her to do the same. When she refused to function as woman, the subordinate other, they ceased to function as dominant men.

She offered them victory and "religious possessions, in particular salvation." (A Woman as Leader of Men p 5) In exchange they were willing to offer her loyalty and suspend gender hierarchy. No such arrangement existed with the English after she was captured. They wanted to place her back within their gaze; to show her to be a witch and thus following a female gender role. The trial returned again and again to her clothing. The clerics wanted her in woman's dress and offered her everything short of freedom to change. They would let her hear mass, if only she would step back into the box labeled "woman" and become subordinate, trapped in their gaze and, as Cixous explains, asleep. From age thirteen, she had rejected "beauties [sleeping] in their woods, waiting for princes to come and wake them up." (Cixous p 66) She danced around the fairy tree like other little girls in her village, until her voices told her not to; a different path awaited her. Other women, Cixous explains, "[have] slept, [have] been put to sleep." (p 66) If she would not go willingly they would push her.

They did push her, all the way to the final sleep of death. If she would not exist within their system, then she could not exist. It was not enough to call her a witch and discredit her; she must be killed. Indeed, they would not allow her to willingly go to sleep, she must be "put to sleep". Pernoud reports that after Joan finally agreed to wear woman's dress either rape was attempted against her or her dress was removed while she slept and replaced with male attire. (p 132) She was thus condemned to die a violent death by trickery or by force. She was already very ill. One of her doctors, who treated her while she was in prison, testified at her rehabilitation trial, "more than anything in the world the king did not wish her to die a natural death. . . . he did not wish her to die except at the hands of justice and he wished that she should be burned." (Pernoud p 125) This was political. It was a reaction to her power and her specialness. She had lead Charles to Reims for coronation. If she had done it through witchcraft, then Charles' claim to the throne would have been tainted.

However, her specialness arose from her voices, her gender and her identity. Her disavowal of gender roles was both the political weapon against her and her political strength. If she had joined the French forces disguised as a boy, she would have been at the very bottom. Her family was not "wealthy enough to train their sons for military service, let alone their daughter." (Joan of Arc: A Military Leader p 37) Only by creating a special niche for herself was she able to gain power. This niche was dangerous. It was only big enough for herself. As far as we know, she did not inspire a generation of girls to take up arms. Cixous writes, "today, writing is woman's. That is not a provocation, it means that woman admits there is an other. In her becoming-woman, she has not erased the bisexuality latent in the girl as in the boy." (p 85) Joan of Arc did not know "A from B;" she could not read or write. She existed as a person of actions and not words, aside from her letters. However, she inspired Christine de Pisan to come out of retirement to write one final poem. She inspired her troops. She was inspired, by her voices. Instead of being a writer, she was written on. Her voices inscribed her identity and sexuality. They dictated her actions and told her to answer her judges boldly. They told her to lead Charles to Reims.

Joan of Arc as actor, not writer, inspired by voices, carved out a niche just big enough for herself, which collapsed on her when she was captured by the English. Her voices transformed her, from female to "bisexual" as Cixous would define it - "the location within oneself of the presence of both sexes." (p 85) They, as a technology of the self, lead her to wear male attire and take male actions, while also leading her towards virginity, a female construct. They formed her identity such that she was unwilling to renounce either her femaleness or or her maleness. These pubescent visions may have resulted from hysteria as Freud describes it, but they function as confessor, writer, and formers of identity. They formed her self and her gender and gave her strength.

---

Cixous, Hélène. "Sorties: Out and Out: Attacks / Ways Out / Forays." In Hélène Cixous and Catherine Clément. The Newly Born Woman. Trans. Betsy Wing. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986.

DeVries, Kelly. Joan of Arc: A Military Leader. Thrupp, Stroud and Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing Limited, 1999

DeVries, Kelly. "A Woman as Leader of Men: Joan of Arc's Military Career". In Fresh Verdicts on Joan of Arc. Ed. Bonnie Wheeler and Charles T. Wood. New York and London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1996

Foucault, Michel. "Sexuality and Solitude." In On Signs. Ed. Marshall Blonsky. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1985.

Freud, Sigmund. "General Remarks on Hysterical Attacks." In Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria. Ed. Philip Riefe. New York: Collier, 1963

Kelly, Henry Angsar. "Joan of Arc's Last Trial: The Attack of the Devil's Advocates" In Fresh Verdicts on Joan of Arc. Ed. Bonnie Wheeler and Charles T. Wood. New York and London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1996

Pernoud, Régine and Clin, Marie-Véronique. Joan of Arc: Her Story. Trans. Jeremy Duquesnay Adams. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999

The Trial of Joan of Arc. [Trans. W. C. Scott]. Evesham: Arthur James, 1996.