Etc: female icons

De Geuzen

A collaborative group since 1997. 1996, actually in Mastericht.  They started by having a space doing workshops, etc. The street was named for Geuzen, which is a derrogative term in Dutch.  Apparently, itś abad name for women.

They have an alphabetical dictionary of slang terms for women. And they put the words on t-shirts. Secondhand. Each t-shirt is unique. They were exhibited and then sold.

The group went on to collect further lists. So now theyŕe doing female icons. These are iconic images of famous women. So they started putting images of icons on plates.  Like Cher.

Then they started an impersonation thing where people hold pictures of famous women in front of their faces and a photo is taken. They have a flickr group. Tag your photo melikeher.

All the icons have tags. Thereś a tag cloud. Beauty¨is atag, for example.

This group is really, really into lists.

Www.geuzen.orgDe

I'm at the ETC

Gender

That's the Eclectic Tech Carnival a fun mishmash of technology, feminism and social activism. I'm playing a show tomorrow night. And yesterday, I taught a workshop on Audacity and podcasting (some text from that will be available shortly).

The con is for "women and gender minorities." Which means I'm the only guy in the room. Back in the old days, I was often the only woman in the room, which, at a tech event, really bothered me. Actually, when I go into a public meeting on tech or music, I always do a headcount of men vs. women and wonder what can be done if the ratios are not good. This is entirely different, of course and ok as long as I don't think about it too hard.

I'm not the only transmasculine person here. I might not even be the only transsexual here. But I'm definitely the only male-identified person. "Women and gender minorities" gets shortened a lot to "women." I wonder how I will feel about this in the future? On the one hand, I probably won't ever be in this community again and that's a loss. On the other hand, right now I'm not overly confident in regards to gender and so when I see things get shortened to "women" I feel anxiety. Everyone is really accepting and accommodating. Alas, I think it is my fate in life to always be asking for exceptions. I ask for fewer now, at least. Nobody asks for me to wear a dress or leave the appropriate loo. So on the one hand, it's fine. But on the other hand, I can't think about it too hard.

This avoidance comes out in weird ways. People keep asking if Xena, my dog is a male or female and I find myself getting irrationally defensive around the question. She's a dog! She doesn't have a gender identity as far as I know! Who are you to say if she's a vrowje or a manje based on her genitalia!?! Ok, I know this is crazy, but better to be irrational about my dog than other things.

Until last night, I was staying with Vivian in Delft, which meant a lot of time in transit. I got back to Vivan's flat last night at 2:30 am and had to feed the dog and give myself a shot of T.

Ok, so I don't feel like my feminism is incompatible with being trans. The name of the sponsoring org for this thing is Gender Changers. It's all ok. I still feel weird coming home from being surrounded by all these great women and then shooting up T. But if I were to put off the shot, it would make me feel sluggish and unhappy, and anyway. It's ok to be trans or it isn't. The timing of the shot shouldn't have any bearing on that. And this is part of what I mean about not being confident.

So I was sitting on the floor of Vivian's guest room, naked, right before sleep, trying to flick stubborn bubbles from the needle. I'm still not good at this. It's messy. The way the British ampoules work is that first I draw all the T (in castor oil) up into the needle and then turn it around and try to get the bubbles out without spilling too much. Then, of course, I stab myself. Lately, I've been pushing the needle in slowly, which is a bad idea, but doesn't cause physical harm, so whatever. Push needle, tense muscle, relax, push slightly further, tense again . . . ok, it does cause physical harm, but so does people biting their nails.

I pulled out the needle and there was blood. Not a little spot of blood, but a coin-sized pool of blood coming from my leg. Aieeee! Blood! Aiiieeee! 3:00 AM stark naked at my friend's house and a pool of blood! I saw the antiseptic wipe I had used early and pressed it down to stop the bleeding. Oh my god! Oh my god! oh my god! I started to shake uncontrollably.

I saw this thing where you're supposed to try pulling back on the plunger to see if you draw up blood. If you did, you hit a vein or something and need to re-try injecting. That didn't happen. So where did the blood come from? Ok, weight lifters take more in a day than I just took, so it doesn't matter if it went straight in my blood. Well, 0.8mL of castor oil in my veins in probably not good, but it's not like I could do anything about it. If I can't do anything about t and it won't kill me, then there's nothing to do but shake a lot and try to sleep.

(Castor oil is secreted by beavers, according to the dictionary on my mac. Um.)

Location

This is my first time back in the Netherlands since moving away. It's even nicer than I remember. I love the bikes. I love the urban planning. I love the train system. I love Dutch people. Delft is south of Den Haag, so taking the train into Amsterdam, I could see the train station and the church tower next to where I lived. I felt such an unexpected wave of attachment for the Grote Kerk tower. That's my home. That's where I have friends. That's where I walked my dog. That's where I biked. I love Holland. I love California. I love France. I left my heart in San Francisco. I left my stomach in Paris. I left my mind in Amsterdam. So now I'm heartless and mindless.

Good Dutch food: the beer. The coffee. The little sweet things you eat with coffee. Vla. Pancakes. Appeltart.

I have to find a way to move back here.

Show Wednesday (Tomorrow)!

I will be playing tomorrow night at 21:00 at the Plantage Dok in Amsterdam. The show starts at 21:00. Admission is free and the beer is cheap! I'm be playing "electronic noise that you can almost dance to."

The address is Plantage Doklaan 8 tot 12. See the venue's website for more information.

I've been trying new methods to make fun music. I'll be using a MiniModular synthesizer, but re-sampled to 8 bit and silly 8-bit nintendo-inspired drum sounds. Hopefully, It will be exciting and fun. I don't know if you will be able to dance to it, but I hope you try.

Live Blogging ETC - Cuisine Interne

Brussels Organization and feminism and creative commons. They have a patchwork approach weaving many themes together.

They do women and FOSS days every 6 weeks

Also a wiki about linux and audio, tinkering with trash hardware, wiki about publishing with foss tools (all in French), parties. Also working on a mapping project with Open Street Map and also hand-drawn maps by people as sort of subjective impressions. Open Source video, and a million art projects and parties. Artistically engaging public spaces.

Wrote some audio software for doing interviews. In python. Runs from command line. looks for a text file which holds questions. Starts with a test of the audio. The questions for the program are decided on by consensus of everyone involved in the project.

we are writing down questions now . . .. We all have post it notes. I can't think of a question. Um . . . art and technology . . . um . . . .. Wow somebody else asks, "How do you connect art and activism?"

Ok, so we're writing questions on postit notes and then putting them on butcher paper that's been attached to the walls. We're going to pick 16 of them.

The questions from previous versions are for working artists. (paraphrased) "How do you make a living?" "Who owns your work when you are finished?" "What is your price structure?" "How did you determine your prices?"

Now all of us are going to pick our three favorite questions.

(To be continued)

Organ Concert Review

The Grote Kerk in The Hague is having an organ festival right now, which explains why I keep hearing organ music while walking the dog. Last night, I saw a very small flyer for it posted to the church door and decided to check it out. I really like organ concerts and I can name one organ composer off the top of my head (Henry Brant), but I've never written for the organ and don't know too much about the instrument. As a former resident of the Bay Area, though, I was pretty lucky as there are two Mighty Wurlitzer organs installed in local movie theatres. One is in the Grand Lake in Oakland and the other is in the Castro. Also, Wesleyan University, where I was in 2003-5, has a pretty nifty organ which was brand new when I was a student, so I got to hear a lot of organ music, including a new piece by Christian Wolff. This whole paragraph is a long way of saying: I don't know much about the organ (factoid: invented by ancient Romans), but I dig it.

The performer last night was Leo Van Doeselaar of Amsterdam / Leiden. There was a pre-concert talk of which I understood nothing and then he went up to the organ loft to play. Church organs are often located in the back of churches, which is the case in Den Haag's Grote Kerk or sometimes on the side. Almost never does a listener actually face the organ (Wesleyan is an exception to this). However, the chairs were arranged, so the audience sat facing the back of the church and hence the organ. Also, it's often the case that the organist can't be seen. They had set up a screen and a projector so that there was a camera pointing at the organist and the image was projected where we could see it. Kind of strange, but also interesting.

This particular organ has two panels of stops on either side of three manuals (keyboards). the stops control which pipes are getting air in them and they're a bunch of knobs which can be pulled out or in (hence the expression, "pulling out all the stops."). The organist had an assistant who was a page turner, but also did a lot of stop manipulation. The music would switch manuals without a break and while one manual was being played, the busy assistant would re-set the stops for the return to the original manual. Interesting to watch.

The first two pieces were from the 17th century. Which, alas, is not my favorite century. Also, note in the first paragraph that most of my organ listening has been with theatre organs, which often play a more popular repertoire. So the music just seemed kind of . . . sedate. The organ was not punching through and not filling the space. I could see the performer and I could tell he was playing is heart out, but it just wasn't translating for me. So I wondered if it was the music or the organ. "Well, they can't all be Bach's Toccata in d." (You know the piece. It's a very dramatic and cliche organ piece. Nicole associates it with horror movies.)

Even as my mind wandered, certain sonic effects were occasionally interesting and I wondered if I might want to exploit them by writing an organ piece. (Well, why not?) Then, the organist started on the third piece, Gioco by Peter-Jan Wagemans (wikipedia). I do not need to write an organ piece, as Wagemans used all the cool bits that I had noticed and several I hadn't. The piece was astoundingly amazing. The composer is an organist himself, so he is able to write as somebody who really, really knows the instrument. And as he's a local guy, it's very well-suited to the sort of organ they tend to have in Holland. It played off the reverb in the cathedral very well, using short notes played quickly to create textures. There was a section where a certain flourish was repeated a few times and each time there was a note repeated afterwards like an echo. The stops for that note were really mushy sounding, not cutting through at all, so it was hard to tell when it started and stopped. It was more of a presence. And I swear, it sounded like a real echo. One that boldly defied physics: believable and slightly disorienting!

There was no clapping between pieces, but the audience was all abuzz after that one. Organists, take note: you can make people very happy if you depart from the 17th century. There are composers alive today and some of their work is amazing.

Then, alas, we returned to the dusty past. But, much to my delight, the last piece actually was Bach's Toccata in d. Man, I love that piece. It's great. So unapologetically dramatic! And it's got these huge parts that should just, imo, shake the fillings out of your teeth. There's a piece for an organ, something that fills a space! A gigantic installed behemoth, an ancient roman excess! Crashing and pounding like the ocean! Huge! but. It just wasn't. Ok sure, it was dramatic. And it had a couple of moments that were kind of big. but. Maybe I've been conditioned by Mighty Wurlitzers to expect something too big, too much. Maybe what I expect is gauche and ostentatious and not what Bach had in mind at all. Maybe I'm crass. But crass is great fun but this was restrained and smallish.

I think the organ is just too small. It's also kind of recessed, which can't help.

I also think that I just must be crass, because the audience gave the organist a standing ovation and then rushed to the CD table. I do think he was a really good performer (especially the new piece was fantastic), so maybe they're used to the organ and I'm not? I'm probably going to skip the rest of the series, however it also includes carillon recitals (no wonder the bells have been so interesting lately), so I will definitely listen for those.

Travel Clips

More short movies! She first is from Austria. The first part is in Linz and the second in in the big cathedral in Vienna.

The second is an interaction I had with some animals in a nature preserve when I was biking in the northern part of the Netherlands.

Feel free to remix.

Holland Montage

The first bit is of a rural area near to Den Haag. The next is a windmill on a river. I could go look up where, but I'm lazy. The next windmills are around Rotterdam sort of near the area where all the tourists go, as there is a very high concertration of windmills. I got lost and arrived at a lower concentration of windmills, alas. Still nice though. Some of the noise you hear is the windmill actually working to move water around the canals! Then is an outdoor shrine to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It's in the south, near the Belgian border. There are Catholics in the South part of the country. Then, Xena runs around near the shrine while Nicole sneezes. All that long grass isn't so good for her allergies. Finally, I stayed in a campground next to a bunch of sheep. The kept baa-ing at each other. But when I went out to video them, they were scared of Xena and made no sound. I succedded only in alarming the entire flock. The farmer yelled something at me. I asked for a translation, but he declined to provide one.

I made this montage by dragging the short films to iMovie and then exporting them as Quicktime.

Next up: sights and sounds of Flanders.

My phone takes videos

I used to think it was funny. Who would want to make movies with their phone? That's before I realized I was carrying an audio recorder in my pocket all the time! Aha! So when Nicole and I were standing in the Grote Kerk in Breda, which has a fantastically long reverb, I asked her to clap.

Most of my other short films are of windmills. I don't know if anybody would watch them if I posted them one at a time, so I might try a windmill montage. Will the excitement never cease??!!

FAQ

I read somebody complaining once that the term "FAQ" is a complete misnomer. It has nothing to do with any questions that any person is asking and instead has to do with information the corporation (or in this case, me) has chosen to provide. Except that's not entirely true in this case. I once shared a hostel room (in 2001, in Prague) with a teacher at the Berkeley Psychic Institute. I asked her if she could give me the five minute version. Therefore, I'm not merely divulging whatever information I feel like sharing, I'm reading your mind to discover what you want to know and answering that!

1. When are you going to Copenhagen (by bike)?

   Well, I don't know. I don't know when I'll have a new wheel for the doggy ride and I have a gig coming up in Lintz that I have to get to and I need to figure out how to mount an N88 on my handlebars (ok the last bit might not be the most important consideration).

2. Weren't you going to bike to Friesland?

   On the way to Copenhagen.

3. What's the deal with this gig in Austria?

   At the /etc conference. I should get on the ball with that and write some some music and find out when and where I'm supposed to play, maybe get some train tickets, find a place to crash, that sort of thing.

4. This N800 you keep talking about, have you beat it into submission yet?

   no

   As far as I can tell, the best way to development on it with a mac is to use a virtual machine emulation, specifically, QEUMU, which is free. Or install linux on an intel mac, which ain't going to happen. (maybe when I find very detailed docs and/or ubuntu comes out with a release specifically aimed at minimac users.) I'm getting some mysterious error about pixels. When I figure out what I'm doing, I'll post a howto.

   There's some cross-platform net application tool called Mono which looks promising. It has the write-once, run-everywhere thing that java had. I already know java, but it's 'everywhere' doesn't include my tablet (thanks for making that decision, nokia, really swell). Anyway, some sort of flickr uploader that works like a mail reader will soon be cobbled together form pre-existing components or, if some other more enterprising programmer has already written it, will be linked.

5. Your mind reading really missed the mark with that last question . . .

   that's not a question!

6. Sorry. How's your chin doing? All healed up?

   It's been like 2 weeks since my chin had a sudden meeting with some asphalt. The stitches are out and Nicole no longer turns away in horror when she gets a glimpse of my chin. It has a scar, which is kind of nifty and the giant bump under it has mostly gone away. It's still a bit numb around some of the stitches. I can barely open my mouth wide enough to eat a banana (often, there is scraping). I can hear sounds in one ear of my jaw clicking when I chew, which also kind of hurts, depending. I think it might be possible that there's a crack in the bone in my jaw, but it's not like they can put a cast on it, so it doesn't really matter.

   On the plus side, my jaw looks more square and I have a hot new scar, so I can't complain too much. I don't believe in suffering for fashion, but when it's an accidental side effect, I can find solace in my vanity. (The seven deadly sins are so much fun!)

7. Um, that sucks

   Eh, c'est la vie. It's not that big of a deal. I'm losing weight, though, so it's sub-optimal, but whatever.

8. Ok, since you're a mind reader, what would I want to ask about if I knew to ask about it?

   That scary campground which I stayed at on my last day of the last trip had super ticks that resisted the dog's anti-tick treatment. It wasn't the kind of tick associated with lyme disease though (didn't look like mine from last year), so she should be ok. Hopefully. Somebody told me a story about a dog getting some virus from a tick and not being able to walk with it's back legs anymore. The stairs to my apartment would be pretty rough for a dog wheelchair. Anyway, dogs get ticks all the time, so yeah. I worry too much.

9. You thought I wanted to know about your dog having a tick?

   My blog is a real source for excitement. No, I just felt like sharing. I went on a canoe trip last weekend. It was fun. It was near Rotterdam. There are some really green and lovely areas there. If you travel in Holland, don't forget to check out Rotterdam. Make a side jaunt to Kinder Dijke, to see a huge concentration of windmills. Then, consider heading towards Lekker Kerk, where you can rent canoes and kyaks by the hour (you will need to find out information about this on the internets, since it's just near lekker kerk and not in it). The canals there are insanely pretty.

   Then I went to a wedding reception in Eindhoven. I brought Xena with me. She's been to three weddings now, which is a lot for a dog. I had a very confusing conversation with a Russian family. I think they wanted to buy Xena's puppies? They were sneaking her food when I wasn't looking. Alas, she will have no puppies.

I detect no further questions from you at this time, but, of course, you haven't read this yet. Further questions can go in the comments. I detect that you find this so fascinating that, um, something about laundry needing doing? Desire for a Pop Tart? It's all fuzzy.

6 June 2007 23:20

Oh my gods, I'm in Antwerp!

I learned a few things yesterday. Not like, about myself. When people start talking about their recreational activities and learning things about themselves, it's because their recreational activity sucks. Also be aware of words like "tough" and "challenging" and phrases like "pushing myself" and anything involving "limits." These key words signal people who like to punish themselves. They do things like run 26 kilometers for no good reason and learn something about wanting to barf while running. I learned nothing about myself, but did acquire information that may be useful to travellers:

If you walk up to a stranger and, without any polite words or words in their language, ask where to find a bank AND you're covered in blood, the person will be happy to help. In fact, strangers will offer to do a lot of things, like drive you to a doctor.

Also, I learned that Bromptom's messenger-ish bag's support frame is pretty tough and will protect a laptop from death. Also, bike gloves are great for preventing road rash. Oh, and I learned it's important to look where you're going. If you're gazing off to the side at deer and some fool road engineer decided it might be a good idea to put a huge wooden post in the middle of the road, you might hit the post. Your bike will stop, but you will not. I took my first trip over my handlebars and landed on my hands and chin. My hands are fine, but my chin was not. I've got three stitches in it now, but all of my teeth are still in place. I got stitched up and was back on the road in about an hour.

So, yeah, I was looking at deer and ran into a pole. I remember seeing the pole in front of me and thinking I was going to hit it. Then I remember flying through the air and I remember hitting the ground and thinking "oh good, I'm ok." And then I noticed that Nicole had fallen too and I wondered why. And I saw people stopping in alarm, so I thought I should get up off the ground and try talking to them in broken Dutch. Somebody alerted me that I was dripping blood everywhere. I asked if the dog was ok. She was fine. Her trailer hadn't even tipped over. She wasn't even freaked out very much.

A passerby and the postman had a discussion and decided that I needed stitches, since the bandaid that Nicole handed me wasn't really helping. The passerby drove me to the doctor and had a talk with the receptionist, explaining what had happened. The first thing they did was tell me I would have to pay cash and ask if I had the money. While I was leaking blood everywhere. That conversation would not have occurred in France. There, they stitch first and ask about money later. But in Holland, I can drip blood on the floor while folks discuss my ability to pay.

The stranger who gave me a ride to the doctor waited for me the whole time and then gave me a ride back to where I crashed and Nicole and Xena were waiting. Nicole had righted my handlebars and checked my laptop for visible dings and removed smashed things from my bags - including an orange and plastic wine glasses designed for camping. Alas, my wine glasses are dead. But my laptop seems ok. And then we biked slowly for a while longer and stopped to camp for the night.

I don't want to say that it was anybody's fault but my own that I ran directly into a pole. But. Why the hell would you put a pole in the middle of the road anyway? It's dangerous! A car that hit it would maybe not hit bikes on the other side, but certainly hurt the occupants of the car. Those poles would not be legal in California. Markers have to break away in a crash or cause a vehicle to glance off of it. The start of barriers, where a car could smash into the end and cause injury, are padded. they have big reflective garbage cans full of sand at the start of every barrier on the highway. Ok, to be fair, if I had run into a barrel of sand, I still probably would have fallen and my chin would still have hit the ground, but I think those poles should go.

Anyway, after biking a while longer, we stopped in Essen, Belgium. For those of you following along on your Landlijke Fietsrouten maps at home, Essen, Belgium is not the same town as Essen, Germany. There are several important differences. 1. One of them is in Flanders and the other is in Germany. 2. One is a famous city and the other is a tiny village. Anyway, we went to Essen, where, ironically, I couldn't eat so much because smacking your chin in to the pavement is much like getting a big punch in the jaw. I couldn't open my mouth very far and it hurt to chew. I drank a liter of the soymilk in my bag. It was light! Curses! Why would anybody want low calorie soy milk?

A guy at the campground said he knew another guy who could fix the wheel of Xena's trailer. Nicole ran her bike into it and it was all askew in a comical sort of way. If you ever want people to stare at you in the border region of Belgium, bike along with a huge bloody bandage on your chin and a dog trailer with a warped wheel. Anyway, the bike fixing guy seemed a bit, well, off. So instead of having him spend the whole next day fixing the wheel, Nicole and I walked to dinner.

It's hard to eat when you can't really chew or open your mouth. Also, vegetarians are sort of at the mercy of the chef. You usually only have one option. "It is squishy?" I spent 2 hours mushing up my pasta with my fork and slowly putting it in my barely open mouth. I went to the bar to pay and a drunk guy looked right at me, surprised, and made a comment to the great amusement of all gathered there. The bar tender declined to translate. An old drunk guy started talking to me in English. He wanted my address. He wanted me to know that he had connections in California, with a very sexy lady. "Not a man, a sexy lady." Oooo-kay. I got my change from the bartender and was leaving. The drunk old man said, "you're a very attractive person. A man or a woman, I don't know." Apparently, he's bi-curious. I've got nothing against bi-curious folks, but I do try to avoid them in bars because often they'll want to kiss you and then run away. My heart gets broken too easily. I did not tell him he would break my heart and his boyfriend's too (not to mention the sexy California T-girl), but instead said "me neither." He called back "You're neither?" but I was already out the door.

And today, after getting a bike shop to de-warp Xena's wheel, I biked to Antwerp. We went back across the border to get back on the Fietsroute and followed it for 50+ kilometers. This evening was the first time I felt brave enough to try the laptop. It works! (so far) Those of you following along at home will not that we're late in arriving in Antwerp. Oh my goodness, we got lost around Breda. We spent half the day sightseeing and the second half of the day lost. Somebody put duct tape over many of the signs for the LF-13b. Is the route closed for some reason? Is this a joke? Why would you put duct tape over the signs? I cursed the LF-13a/b for being confusing and poorly marked and it extracted revenge in the form of blood.

We went in wrong directions for hours. My landlord called my school and left a message saying that my rental contract had expired. My school called me, while I was pondering which way to go. So I called my landlord, who explained that he's been reading my blog. (Hi Yuric!) So I'm not being evicted. Hooray.

I'm too tired to continue for now. Perhaps I'll find wifi tomorrow.

2 June 2007

I am sitting in a tent in Dordrecht. It is 22:37 and the mosquitoes are swarming. Little bastards. I was supposed to be much further along today, but for some reason, I left map 9 at home. We spent all of yesterday and part of today on map 9.

The major cycle routes here are (mostly) very well marked. But not always. Much of today was spent going in unplanned directions. One of those directions took us down a tractor path through a line of canals (pretty normal) but which were supplied by working windmills like you see in the Holland Dutch Delft pottery stuff (not at all normal). some guy was mowing the lawn in front of one of them. Xena stopped to relieve herself. always a good citizen, Nicole stopped to pick up after the dog. "What do I do with this?" she asked the lawn mowing guy. He told her to throw it in the canal.

Dear citizens of the Netherlands, Your canals are really lovely to look at, especially in the summer. They have blooming lillypads, ducks and other waterfowl, moss, little bridges and cute little boats and sometimes awesome windmills. But they would smell a whole lot better if they weren't also full of cow shit. Sincerely, me

Yesterday, we biked from Den Haag to Gouda. We followed the major cycle route. They have routes like highways for bikes all over the country. They're perfect for tourists. They take you through the woods, in twisty paths around fields and canals and through historic centers of adorable villages. They add several kilometers to the trip, but it's still great. Except the marking is sometimes lacking. So there are maps you can get, which also list fun things like ferry crossings and camp grounds. Today, Xena had her first ferry ride.

I think a skeeter just bit my foot through my socks. gah!! bastard. I should put on toxic bug spray.

Last night, we camped near Gouda. We were biking in Gouda, on the LF-02, hoping to stop by the VVV (tourist office) around the central train station, when an old woman and a little girl stopped us to ask about the dog. I explained in broken Dutch that we'd towed her from Den Haag and wanted to camp tonight and continue on to Brussels in the morning. The woman didn't know about camping, but soon assembled a small crowd of passersby to solicit opinions. One woman knew exactly where the camp grounds were. Another biking by, heard her describe the route and stopped her, since the camp ground is closed for a week.

If some stranger asked you about camping in your town, would you know two alternatives?

So she described another camp ground, 10 km away and described the route in detail. We got there and soon figured out why she knew. In addition to caravans (known to Americans as "RVs") and folks in tents, there were a bunch of tiny cottages. The cottages all faced a road on one side and a canal on the other. Almost all of them had a small boat on the canal. All of them had a little patio by the boat, with a little umbrella. The camp ground was full of people. I'm guessing many middle class people have these little summer cottages that they come to on weekends. They were charming, but packed together at very high density. This is amusing about the Dutch. They escape from their high density cities to go to their high density camp grounds.

We went to the bar seeking food, but, unsurprisingly, they only had bar food. I had friend cheese. Nicole had a burger.

We sat down next to a Dutch woman who had lived in Dallas for 22 years. Then she came home because her father was dying and she realized she had enough of Dallas. She was talking about taking care of her dying parent while her marriage fell apart, something I can also speak about. And we talked about how loss makes you really see the beautiful things in life. The conversation got intense. Nicole started to cry.

Today, there is no bar, except for the mosquitoes. Alas, I am the bar, as is Xena. I forgot to put her pesticides on her before we left, so this morning I went to a pet shop and bought flea and tick stuff to put on her. I asked if they had stuff for heart worm. The pet store clerk didn't know what I was talking about. I hope this means that it doesn't exist here. Her immunity from last month has not faded away yet. I will ask again in another shop tomorrow and I'll ask after that. Maybe there's heartworm in Belgium but not here.

Today, after we passed the windmills, the tractor lane got very narrow. We let Xena out to run along side the bikes and stopped after a while to give her water before we went on. We gave her the very last of the water. Alas! So we biked on some more kilometers until we came to a grocery store. I was hungry, which is bad for being in a store, but also very thirsty. they were having a sale on soymilk. There is now 2.75 liters of soymilk packed on the front of my bike. I purchased one liter more than that, but then drank it quickly. Things not to do: chug most of a liter of chocolate soy milk and then go to get a heavy dinner. *urp*

I am suffering from massive pack creep. Not only am I taking around the computer which I am not typing on, but also a small coffee-making setup. It includes a tiny gas stove. A tiny pot for said stove. Two gas cartridges. An adaptor for the other kind of gas cartridge in case those two run out. Two 0.25 L cups with coffee filter attachments and little tote bags for them. And bag of ground coffee, stored in a plastic container with a scoop. Also, I have two settings of silverware, two plates, two wine glasses, two napkins, a cutting board, a cheese knife and an insulated container for food and an insulated wine holder, which is, alas, empty, or the mosquitoes might be getting tipsy. (little bastards).

Now is time for sleep.

On etsy / getting royal / advertising

While I work my way through the eBay appeals process, I've moved my eCommerce to Etsy. I exchanged a few emails with them before setting up shop, and they're totally cool with hosting music commissions. Their fees are also less than eBay, but there's no chance of anybody bidding up the price.

I've got 22 opportunities for commissions remaining. Well, 21, because I really want to get one from Queen Beatrix. To show my appreciation for her allowing my use of the Royal Conservatory, I will wave my fee. It's the least I can do. And, of course, I'll use her equipment to make the piece.

Since I attend the Royal Conservatory, there actually is some connection to the queen. She regularly exchanges letters with the head of my school. So, to reach the queen, I have to convince his secretary that I'm worth his time, and then him that I'm worth the queen's time and then the queen herself. I've heard that she likes ballet and goes to the ballet performances at school, so I could wait for one of those and attempt to approach her. And/or, I can try going through the three filter approach. I really am quite fond of Stravinsky, so I think I will aim for something like Stravinsky-meets-IDM-meets-noise, with emphasis on the Stravinsky. There's now some documentation to use the OSC->CV converters at school, so I can get the kind of tuning I need to make a (micro)tonal piece.

I'm not sure entirely how to pitch this. I mean, I really want to write something that she'll like. And all my pieces are really short. If I write something a minute long and she doesn't like it, at least I haven't taken up too much of her time. I think I'll leave that last bit as unspoken, since it's not really compelling.

Anyway, if any of you, dear readers, has some connection to the Queen of the Netherlands (or, you know, any royalty, but other monarchs will need to pay the $14), please let me know.

Of course, there are still the other 21 unpurchased commissions. Apparently, it's possible to buy metro ads in Rotterdam for 17,50€ / week. According to an ad I saw. I haven't contacted them to see if I can really just get one. I haven't put any effort into buying banner ads on the web yet, but I think I'll approach some New Music blogs. I'm not sure what to put in a print ad. a picture of myself? A cool closeup of some synthesizer knobs? A picture of myself in front of some close-up synthesizer knobs?

Yesterday, I discovered a pocket notebook that I got in 2003 to jot down my musical ideas. This morning, I went to read it. What half-forgotten ideas could I return to and realize? The sole idea that I wrote down starts with, "Patron system: possibility of running a commission service" and continues like a Marketting Requirements Document. Ha ha ha. Awesome.

Composers, of course, have something called cultural capital. They help forge identities for their communities. American composers bolster the American identity. Gay composers bolster the gay identity. And so on. Many composers are slightly outside of the mainstream of their culture. By writing music, they gain additional access to the shared culture, while having a hand in forming it. The problem for the last several years has been how to turn cultural capital into monetary capital.

But I see the commissioning/gift economy as something more than just a capital-based solution. One of the huge problems of the current broken copyright system is that people do not own their own culture. Our shared myths don't belong to us, they belong to corporations! The gift economy of music puts our culture back into our own hands. Furthermore, commissioning directly involves the community. Commissioners have a say in the formation of their culture. They share cultural capital with the composer. They directly participate in society and culture. Commissioners are catylists for cultural creation and change. They help build a shared identity and strengthen their culture. Commissioning music is the patriotic thing to do.

What is a country? Is it just a land mass? Is it a particular government? Is it a collection of people who happen to live within certain geographical borders? No, a nation is an identity. A country arises from the people. When somebody loves a country, they love the people, they love the art, they love the history, they love the culture. And if you love something, you don't passively watch it, you participate. You vote. You hike. You create community and participate in institutions. Art is patriotic.

I, like most folks, have many different identity affiliations. I'm American. I'm queer. I'm Californian. I'm a student. I'm a composer. I live and learn in Holland. (I'm a manly man.) I have an exerimental asthetic. etc etc etc. When I make music, I am all of those identites making music.

So how do you concisely, pictorally represent the possibility of expanding cultural capital on the basis of music and identity and sounds? Maybe a screen shot of Ardour?

Gender Therapy in the Low Lands

I've been putting off posting about this for a long while, so I'm hazy on the details. But how many Americans can give a first hand account of gender therapy in the Netherlands? I feel a duty to post. This kind of meanders into TMI a bit, though. Be warned.

Ok, so when I last spoke of my therapy issues, I'd seen a regular shrink who wasn't sure what to do with me and who did not speak very fluent English. (I want to clarify that I'm not criticizing anyone when I say they don't speak English well. It's not like I speak Dutch well, which is the language of the land. When I mention that somebody doesn't have high English skills, it's just to clarify that communication was not overly clear. This is a sub-optimal situation to have with a shrink.) She asked me about going to see the gender specialists at the university in Amsterdam. There was back and forth. Finally, she referred me to a center in Voorburg.

Several days later, a letter came in the mail giving me a date and time for an appointment. Fortunately, my assigned time did not conflict with my class schedule. I biked the several kilometers to the PsyQ building there. PsyQ is some sort of organization that deals with people's mental issues. I don't know if they're public or private or some mixture thereof. People seem to largely have private insurance in this country. Anyway, so I showed up and walked through an automatic door to an entry alcove. There was a large glass window with a woman behind it and a microphone. There was no opening in the window at all. It was solid glass (or whatever). I had to show ID to the woman behind the glass and also present my appointment letter. She pressed a button and the automatic glass sliding door to the lobby opened.

Of course, they deal with crazy people, so they need security to protect themselves. From people like me.

The woman took my insurance card (they only reimburse and don't cover anxiety, which is specifically mentioned on my appointment letter, but whatever) and asked me questions so she could fill out paperwork for me. Because my Dutch skills are too low to fill out any of the forms by myself. People are generally very nice about my inability to communicate in their language. Anyway.

I went to the waiting room and a woman came to meet me and explained that she was filling in for whomever I was actually supposed to meet with. She asked me all the stereotypical shrink things while taking copious notes. How did I get along with my mother? My father? What was my childhood like? I told her about coming out in Catholic school. The first girl I kissed. blah blah blah. She wanted to know about my earlier childhood. At home, I played with boys. At school, I played with girls. My parents and grandparents always got me girl toys. I had a collection of Barbies, but found them to be dull. You dress them up? Who cares? Until, one day, my friend Christy from school came over one afternoon and wanted to play with my Barbies. She pulled off their clothes and a bisexual Barbie orgy ensued. Apparently, what you do with Barbies is make them have sex with each other.

"So she taught you how to play with Barbies?" the shrink asked, very seriously. Um, yeah, am I paying for this? Because I suddenly feel like I'm stupidly wasting everyone's time.

She changed the subject. "So what makes you think you might be -"

"I don't know." I cut her off. I said "I don't know" a lot. She asked me if I would rather talk to a man or a woman. Was this a trick question? If I say woman, then I'm really a lesbian? If I say a man, then, I'm really a man? Which way should I go? Ack. I asked for a fluent English speaker. Then I started coughing and couldn't stop. I went home and felt crappy and got a fever and was sick in bed on my birthday (I'm 31 now, btw) poor me.

A week or so later, I went back to the same place, still feeling like I had a cold. I met a different woman, the head of the sexology department. She explained that the woman I had talked to previously was no longer employed by PsyQ and since they are having a staff meeting on March 5th to figure out what to do with me, somebody there should have met me in person. I was very careful the whole time not to say the word "transsexual." (Because I am totally logical.) She asked me a few times the same question that the other woman had asked more than once. Did I have problems during sex? (Problems only in that the ladies can't get enough of me. heh heh.) I asked her to explain herself. Well, my lack of a penis might make it difficult. (good lord) Then she asked me how I felt about my period. (um, well, questions about it make me feel uncomfortable.) I don't think I dislike it significantly more than anybody else I know who has it. She asked me why I hadn't stopped it with birth control. I explained that I really don't like taking pills or whatever and don't want to mess too much with things like that unless I have to for some reason. I've heard women talking about birth control side fx and stuff and always have felt glad I don't have to mess with it. Emotional messes. Mojo killing. No thanks. "But it's possible to stop it. Why don't you do it?" she pushed. Yeah, but it can make your breasts bigger, I pointed out. She accepted that. She wanted to know why I hadn't gone to Amsterdam to the university. Hey, I've just been going where y'all have been sending me.

I got the vibe that if I had asked for a referral for testosterone, she would have been willing to write one right then. (Actually, normally, they make you get 5 appointments in Amsterdam and then you carry forward. I don't know if the appointments are to get a note for hormones or for surgery.) She clearly thought I was - that word that I was carefully shying away from. Which, I mean, what did I expect? A pat on the back and a "good for you being genderqueer!"? If I was fine just the way I am, why am I seeing a shrink anyway?

Then she talked to me about what she's going to recommend they do with me. Anxiety therapy is the first priority.

god help me, I'll get off Zoloft soon.

I've been off school for the last week. No classes! I didn't go anywhere. I did an application for Birmingham (UK, not AL) and sat around. Today, I had a duo recording with a improv guy from the composition department. I took a deep breath and screamed "I don't know who I am" as loud and as long as I could, though my tuba. (Metaphor, but not really.) Blat blat blat, I screamed, inhaled, bellowed improperly attacked breathy notes that don't know where they're going, what pitch they want to be, how they will resonate, where they are now, what valves are pressed or how much. Wail, blat blat blat.

Afterwards, I felt so much better. I didn't even know I felt tense, but afterwards, I just felt so like I'd worked something out. so maybe the key to getting off Zoloft is playing loud, angsty tuba? I came home and actually mixed a piece of music. this entailed both me getting Ardour to work and having the attention span to mix something. Tuba is key.

I'm trying to be proactive. I used to tell myself to wait on things. I didn't need to worry about my mental health problems as long as I could walk and eat and stuff. In the book Breaking Silence, I read about lesbian nuns developing stomach problems from stress and what I got form that was that I could wait until I had stomach problems. Yeah, last summer counted. I always wait like that. I went to a support group for FTMs once in San Francisco. One old guy there said that if you have to transition, eventually you'll have to. In She's Not There, Boylan writes of her experience at age 41, just being totally unable to carry on without taking action. I don't want to be a mess in 10 years. I don't want to delay and have my first stubble come in grey. I want to deal with this now and take action or put it behind me. I want to move forward from where I am now.

I know that's it's not a path of discovery, that it's a path of creation. I have agency. I apply technologies of the self to create my own identity. It needs to be an identity I can make some peace with. that might require some more therapy. Or more tuba.

Shrink

Before I begin, I want to clarify that the Dutch are actually pretty ok as far as restroom etiquette goes. Best are the French, then the Dutch, then a tie between Californians and Germans (I think CA might be a teeny bit better) and at the very bottom is Spain. (Also: waa, waa, waa, nobody understands me.) Ok, so on to our story.

I went to see a Dutch shrink on wednesday. Over the summer, I got a book that said that therapy can cure anxiety. Zoloft can also cure anxiety, but it stops working if I stop taking it. Also, it has not been stellar for my concentration. I haven't written much music since being on it. So a long-term cure that leaves me able to think would be very good.

"Why do you think you are anxious?"

If I knew the answer to that question, I would have a solution already. I dunno. I think there's something bugging me that I'm not thinking about. When I have something that is really bothering me and I try to ignore it, I tend to have panic attacks. Maybe that's the cause of all my panic attacks. I don't know. Lyme disease was pretty stressful. Lack of sunlight might be a problem. I dunno.

I said "I dunno" a lot. She took copious notes and asked extremely open-ended questions. One of them was "how is your identity?" Ok, this was not out of the blue, since I was sort of without one right after I got divorced, but how does one answer such a query?

"Is there anything else?" she asked.

"How do you mean?" I asked.

She noted that it was open ended.

I took a deep breath. "I have a lot of friends who are transexual. And it's something I've been thinking about."

She started a new page of notes. "You know people who have had The Operation?"

Gah!!! The Operation. What operation would that be, exactly? Would it be the operation where folks take T (or E, since I've known folks going both ways) until they pass? Would it be top surgery? Would it be a hysterectomy? Would that be a medioplasty? A phalloplasty?

"Um, I know a guy who had a hysto?"

Did you mother know? Did your ex-wife know? Does your girlfriend know? How long has this been going on?

no. sorta, not really. yes. I dunno, a few years. You know, I'm not at all sure about this.

So you think you are denying your real self and that's making you anxious and maybe having The Operation would fix that?

What?!! No, I don't know! Augh!

Would you like to speak with gender specialists in The Hague?

"I don't know." I'm all wary now. Outside the window, a gigantic orange cat has climbed to the very top of a barren tree. It's among the empty branches, looking around. It's not acting uncertain, but I wonder if it must be stuck, up so high in the tree. Why did it go up there?

"You don't have to make any decisions. It's your life, you know. You can just talk about it. It's an emotionally safe place to talk."

That's easy for you to say. I looked at the bookshelf behind her head. It was red and in the shape of a first-aid cross. "Um."

"They can also help you with anxiety."

"Ok, I'll talk to them."

"Your friends who have had The Operation- are they happy?"

"Um, as far as I know. I dunno."

"Well, I think we've probably covered enough for this session. How do you feel now? Relieved to get everything out?"

No, that's not exactly how I would describe my mood at all. How does it make me feel to talk about anxiety? It makes me feel fucking anxious!!

I speak virtually no Dutch. Her English skills are probably not high enough to be doing therapy sessions in English. No, I was not relieved. I left and went to class where I was all jumpy.

On the way out, I tried unsuccessfully to explain to the desk person that while I was happy to provide any insurance info they wanted, my insurance specifically excluded treatment for anxiety and regardless, they just reimbursed me for things, so it would be really better if I just paid cash now. The desk person went to ask a supervisor. Out the window behind her, I saw the orange cat running along the top of the fence, like it was on a mission, had a plan, had a place to be.

Pre-jet lagged

I never sleep well the night before flying and I seem to enjoy procrastinating, so now it's 5:00 am and I'm not packed and every dish in the house is dirty. And, I forgot about garbage day. And, while putting the (potted) xmas tree outside, I flung mud all over my bathroom (by which I mean bathing room). The upside here is that I'm all pre-adjusted to CA time, except if I don't sleep on the plane, I'll be a major mess tomorrow.

Let's see . . . I went to Amsterdam a while ago to see some sort of art opening. There's a German guy who runs a really, really tiny night shop out of just a shop window display. It's one of those life-as-art projects, where it's art because it's just a bit odd, and the artist embodies it. He was having a small showing of another artist in the shop. The other artist does nothing but pictures of sausages. He handed out tiny real sausages to everyone present. I read the program notes and they were truly insane and mentioned something called the "wurst club." It's a real club. I joined it and got a membership certificate which is actually a watercolor painting of a bunch of sausages. I'm the 6th vegetarian to join.

The next weekend, I went to Amsterdam again to go to STEIM's open weekend. They had a bunch of interactive toy instruments out for folks to play with. They were cool. then some STEIM folks improvised. I went and got my haircut. I really like my hair cutter (Cuts and Curls) because they never argue with me or try to talk me out of things. I say, "make it short and square" and the guy just nods and does it. He talked me into buying some product. I haven't gotten the hang of using it yet. I look like some sort of cross between an overly-enthusiatic-for-the-wax teen boy or the covermodel for the Amsterdam Gay Guide.

On Monday, I went again to Amsterdam to go to something called "Upgrade." There were two guys speaking about degradable art and then a couple of guys played sounds and fed them to a video projector via a video aD converter. Destruction of stuff, like data or old photos is fine, I mean, if folks don't want it anymore, it has to go someplace. But shredding old slides isn't really getting rid of them. It's just breaking them up so nobody can use them. In once sense they're destroyed, but in another they're not. Somebody with way too much time could probably reconstruct them. What's more, the amount of space they take up has not diminished. They have not transformed, only been broken into pieces. Degradable art is not biodegradable art. Contrary to audience suggestion, shredding computers is not a good idea. Our leftover technological scraps from forgotten tools and memories are toxic. They might be broken into bits, but those bits will stay around forever, unusable.

Maybe I should go pack or do the dishes or something. I wish my laundry were dry. I've been adding labels to my oldest posts and eventually hope to tag everything I've ever written here. It seems to be screwing up the feed on lj. Sorry.

Oh yeah, I'll be in CA starting tomorrow until Jan 4th.