Celeste Hutchins and David Jensenius will be playing Wednesday, May 4 at 7:00 PM at Javapalooza, 330 Main Street, Middletown CT
Celeste will be playing her 6-foot tall rack of analog synthesizer modules, which is rarely seen in public. David will be playing the laptop computer. Come by any time around or after 7:00 to hear some electronic experimentalism. Kick up your energy after the Spring Fling with some coffee and tunes.
Free. All ages.
Tag: Celesteh
I was supposed to go to an awards thingee tonight in NYC, but I got confused about the time and ended up flaking. I know I should be all liberated and stuff, but thinking about going into the city by myself actually stresses me out somewhat. It’s so big and full of people and hustling and bustling. Middletown has softened me up and made me suburban. Once I get into the city, I’m usually fine, although I find the lack of personal space stressful, which is more of a problem after a few days of couch surfing and more caused by couch surfing than anything else.
The silver lining here is that I get to go see a performance of Stimmung tonight, which is an insanely complicated vocal piece by Stockhausen. A group has been preparing all semester to sing this. It’s a setting of erotic poetry that apparently Stockhausen wrote. the choral director spoke about this morning, reading naughty snippets in class, including references to “cocks,” “rising semen,” etc. The classroom reverberated with low pitched laughter. And suddenly I was very aware that I was the only woman in the room and felt decidedly uncomfortable.
I felt excluded from the piece in some fundamental way. It’s for a mixed group, but it’s not something I would sing even if I could. I don’t think of myself as a prude, but I wouldn’t want to do. I played tuba in a sex-themed Luc Ferrari piece whilst I was an undergrad in the most male Contemporary Performance Ensemble at Mills. I remember the same low pitched laughter. Didn’t like it much then either. But sex is sex right? I mean, who cares?
I think my problem is that I don’t want to perform male sexuality. It’s not heteronormative as much as it is male-normative. Many or most composers are male. Therefore many or most composers using sex as a metaphor are doing so in a male model. Male sexual response is something that concerns the vast majority of people on this planet. But not me. I never see myself represented, except as can be appropriated by a male voice and put into a male perspective. Not without a major change of heart and/or a lot of not-currently-technically-possible-surgery will this ever apply to me. Maybe I’d feel differently if there was balance, but there isn’t. And the power dynamics culturally inherent in the whole endeavor are offputting.
Also: this is not my art, this is not my place. Women are for singing high pitched lines when a male soprano just doesn’t sound right.
I’ve defended my thesis. I went to my last class today. I have nothing left to do but pack and pay off my student account. The lack of purpose has left me feeling grumpy.
Tag: Celesteh
I just installed the new version of Mac OSX. Holy cow, it is awesome. Safari now tracks RSS feeds. It alerts me when one of y’all posts to your blogs and can show bookmark folders all aggregates together into one document like a livejournal friends page. RSS is really deeply integrated into Safari now.
The new search function will let you search for the same old same old stuff, except you can now search through your mp3s by what’s in the header, your iphoto library by your description, your iChat archives by what you said, your bookmarks, etc etc etc. All that metadata is now in use.
Let’s say you don’t know what metadata is. Highlight the term and then ctrl-click on it. A menu comes up. Do you want to search for it on Google. Search for it on your hardrive. Look it up in a dictionary? There are all these nifty mini-applications that let you access your data in different ways. I look forward to the day when we don’t have who applications, just tool sets. Cuz a set of well integrated tools would be more useful than a heavyweight application.
metadata |ˈmetəˌdatə; -ˌdātə|
noun
a set of data that describes and gives information about other data.
Apple didn’t invent any of these ideas, but it’s implementing them very well. This is a transitionary operating system. In the future, we won’t think of files and folders, we’ll think of tags like on gmail and of finding things by searching. Somebody had to replace CVS before then. Also, I want feed generation to be as easy as feed reading. I think a lot of that stuff, backups, feed generations, etc comes with .mac. Maybe I should stop being too cheap to subscribe.
Tags: Celesteh, Apple
If you have any questions about arts, I will do my best to answer them as I am now a Master of same. (Well, I will be after I pay off my student account.) w00t. Maybe to celebrate I’ll go see the Hitchhiker movie.
In completely unrelated news, last night bush said, “[W]e must develop promising new sources of energy, such as hydrogen, ethanol or bio-diesel.” OMG! The president just backed bio-diesel! That is the awesomest thing ever. It’s too bad it comes after nuclear power (in the previous paragraph). Alas. I’ve always felt like we take too few risks with fissionable materials. There’s whole regions of America safe from a 3 Mile Island-type disaster. Increasing the number of plants and the massive amount of waste (toxic for the next 40k years) is the more masculine ideal. I’m happy to say we’ve already been making very positive steps by failing to secure Russia’s nukes and our police of dropping out the the ABM treaty. Soon, radioactivity will be in the hands of every American!
I don’t mean to slip into snark. It’s very positive that Bush has endorsed bio-diesel. It’s renewable. It’s carbon neutral. It can be produced domestically and it’s good for farmers. And better for engines that petro-diesel. win/win/win/win/win!
Tag: Celesteh
I could not wake up today at all. I finally went out after 7:00 and got some coffee. Now I’m wide awake. Which is just as well as the dog has an upset stomach and keep wanting to go outside. Just to eat more and more and more grass. Lovely standing outside in the cold while my dog grazes so she can induce barfing all over the living room after I finally go to bed.
One of the coffee jerks (what’s the male version of “barista”? Can I just modify the term “soda jerk”?) was a Catholic seminarian but is now considering his options. He seems to want to go back, but he’s having a crisis of theology. Talked to him about theology until a quarter to midnight. The coffee shop closed at 9:00. (It’s funny that I’ve read more theology than a seminarian, but he wasn’t very far in when he dropped out, so it’s not really fair of me to say this even as an aside. (I want to post something later about God’s status as an alien other (crit theory thoughts from the aptly named Scarry)))
All human institutions become corrupt. They get past some certain size and then they become more about maintaining the organization, maintaining the hierarchy and service to power. It’s funny. I was talking to the seminarian who seemed to beleive that the church ought to be an exception. And then a communist I know explained that labor unions are somehow exempt because they’re serving the proletariat. (If you’re at the top of a union that’s been established for a while, you’re not the proletariat anymore. You’re a bourgeoise bureaucrat. But that’s neither here nor there.) It’s funny how faith and pseudo-religious ideas make people think they’ve found an exception to human nature. Power corrupts. This is why I’ve got anarchist leanings. You can’t fight human nature, so you have to find structures that are harder to abuse.
I defend my thesis tomorrow. Wish me luck.
Tag: Celesteh
Remember that Onion article during the 1996 election, “Bob Dole Pledges to Build Trench to 19th Century” parodying Bill Clinton’s (real) campaign slogan of a “bridge to the 21st century”? The pope likewise continues the farcical battles of the past. Rock music is bad!!!! “‘Rock’ . . is the expression of elemental passions, and at rock festivals it assumes a cultic character, a form of worship, in fact, in opposition to Christian worship.” Also, new art music is bad!! “Modern so-called ‘classical’ music has maneuvered itself, with some exceptions, into an elitist ghetto, which only specialists may enter — and even they do so with what may sometimes be mixed feelings.” My so-called music is 2 1337 4 u, 14m3r! He doesn’t mention jazz, but I’m sure that it leads to promiscuity and racial otherness.
The article I’m quoting actually has a kind of an interesting history of liturgical music, although I question some of its assertions and some of the “problems” it poses are not at all new. For example: how to keep a “Christian” music while expanding the church beyond Europe. Can unwestern music be holy? They’ve had solutions to this “problem” since Spain and Portugal colonized the Americas. Perhaps the Church could look to how Christian music (godly) was mixed with native music (ungoldy . . . oh sure, he doesn’t say it, but if it weren’t ungoldy, why would this even be an issue?) then and know how to do it now.
The new pope: fighting the battles of yesteryear!
Apparently, he’s a good pianist. Of course, he only plays german composers from the eras of Beethoven, Bach and Mozart. I just made that up.
Tags: Celesteh, Pope
Played Braxton large ensemble concert last night. It went very well. It was maybe the longest concert we’ve done in the two semesters I played in it. I got a solo, which was nice. Afterwards, we went to Eli’s. Phillip says that Jagermeister is an old lady drink in Germany, but he likes it anyway, on the rocks with a lemon wedge. At Eli’s that’s a brandy glass full, which is kind a lot of Jagermeister. It causes a feeling of happiness more than other kinds of beverages do. This is why Phillip likes it. It makes me feel kind of confused and overly friendly.
I just got an estimate from the movers. They will pick up my stuff on May 9, 10, 11 or 12. They tell me which the day before. And the me, xena, my tuba and a bass guitar hop in my car and drive to California. I’ve been considering taking a passenger. Want to cross the country, perhaps stopping periodically at Zippy the Pinhead type attractions? I can offer short term lodging at either end of the trip. You must make your own way to Connecticut and back from California. A flight from CA to CT will generally run around $100. No drugs or drug paraphernalia in the car. Send a 250 word essay on why you want to go and what you’d want to see.
Tags: Celesteh, Jagermeister, Braxton, Road Trip
I put printed copies of my thesis in the boxes of my committee members today. I am disturbed to note that network printing technology in the world is getting worse instead of better. Also, ITS does not support my font of choice in Word. Alas, but I got it printed anyway. Next time I’m using a PDF file. This gives me time for fun things like catching up on my favorite TV series.
Tonight, I watched the first and second episode of the new Dr Who. The best thing about the old series was the music, especially the incidental music. Alas, I must give the new series a poor musical review. Somebody added orchestral instruments to the theme song. I’m not against change, but this is not an improvement. In the Tom Baker years, the incidental music was awesome analog goodness. The BBC studios were state of the art and some of the best places to get access to equipment. Now, anybody can do all sorts of things on their computer, so equipment labs aren’t as necessary anymore. This democratization is a good thing. However, the culture of cutting edge experimentation that surrounded the BBC and especially the Dr Who series has apparently been lost. The incidental music has suffered, but the sound FX were really really good. The sound design is top notch. But the incidental music is X-filesish and bland, even while being obviously well produced and large budgetted. Worse, the incidental music in the first episode was mostly all derived from the series theme music. Blarg. Inspector Gadget alert! However, there were some nice cinematic conciets. For example, the introductory sequence was playing a sort of poppy track. While the character Rose was at her job in a department store, the music switched to being the piped in muzak in the store. When she was out of the store, it went back to being acousmatic (not heard by the people in the plot. aka: “score.” When the people in the plot hear it, as when Rose was in the store, that’s called “source”). Nicely done.
the special FX have a bit of computer generated cheesiness about them, but what would Dr. Who be without cheesiness? Overall, I would compare the new series to the X-Files in terms of production values, but with better sound FX. More like the X-Files movie than the TV show.
The second episode is a fairly brilliant parody of The Wizard of Oz. It references the munchkins brilliantly and most especially, a brilliant twist on the death of the wicked witch. It contains pop songs! What’s up with that? The second episode takes place in the very distant future and is full of aliens and explores Rose’s discomfort with alien others. An explicit reference to racial otherness is made when the Dr makes a comparison to the deep south. He does this to shame Rose for her close mindedness. Ironically, the most alien of the others is the last human. A flat sheet of skin suspended in a frame above a brain in a tank, the last human brags about how much plastic surgery s/he has undergone to get so flat and skinny. S/he is the classic bitter queeny character, saying things like “My that was fast! . . . A lot like my 5th husband!” This sort of genre humor continues until s/he is confronted by Rose who draws her/his humanity into question. The last human becomes more distasteful during this scene by calling other mixed species of human descent “mongrel.” the subject turns to how many operations s/he has had. S/he reminisces about his/her boyhood in the Los Angeles area and without pausing suggests that Rose get a chin tuck. Rose, overwhelmed with revulsion, tell the last human that s/he isn’t human at all and storms off.
So you see, I learned that being uncomfortable with alien others is bad UNLESS they’re genderqueer and then it’s ok, because they’re just freaks. So let’s get that down: racism bad. Queerphobia ok. Some alien others are just a little too alien. And it’s an old standby to be able to make the perverseness and otherness of a disliked group clear by calling them metaphorically queer: gay / trans / whatever. Does the BBC realize they’re playing the same game as Fox news?
Ok, so despite seeing my sexuality used as a metaphor for utter despicableness, I still give high marks to the show. Because I’m a metaphor everywhere. Because it’s the times we live in. Alas.
Um, and in these new installments, Gallifrey is no more! No more Master! No more Ronan! No more TimeLords except the Doctor. So the classic timelord bad guys are all gone. I think the Master ran out of regenerations anyway, though.
The incidental music on episode 4 is much improved. also, you can download episodes from http://tracker.shuntv.net/. You’ll need a bit torrent client. I got mine from http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/ and I use VLC to play the AVI files.
Tags: Celesteh, Doctor Who
Daily Kos is saying the the new Santorum / Kerry / Clinton bill isn’t so bad. He says the Times editorial is bunk. However, I’m not entirely convinced of this, especially given this Letter to the Editor of the NYT signed by Santorum and Kerry. It states, “If the bill becomes law, a pharmacist who does not wish to dispense certain medications would not have to do so long as another pharmacist is on duty and would dispense the medications.” (this text verified through LexisNexis) If another pharmacists is on duty, the original pharmacist can preach to rape victim and tell her she’s a hell bound harlot. Isn’t that special. And how long before a court rules that if there’s another pharmacy within a few miles, well, it would also be ok to send the woman on? Pharmacists are lisenced to perform a service. We give them a special status and in exchange, they provide a needed function. If they refuse to provide their function, why are we giving them special status? If we grant a special tax status and limitted liability to a business whose function is to dispense healthcare, then why do they get those benefits if they refuse to fill the function for which they were granted? Corporate charters should be revoked and business licenses should be confiscated for pharmacies that won’t do their jobs. Walmart should lose it’s license to dispense drugs.
Also, the ACLU is opposed, which is usually enough to convince me that something is a bad idea. People are already suing to overturn workplace tolerance pledges based on it infringing their religious freedom. It is already true that in states where there are no nondiscrimination laws in place, that companies have a hard time forcing employees to take down “god hates fags” banners, because those employees often sue. If the law protects expressions of hate and makes no provisions for the rights of the hated, then it is explicitly legalizing discrimination and workplace harassment. And Kerry is sponsoring it.
I think we need to stop to consider that Kerry signed a letter saying it would be totally groovy for pharmacists to hassle women, queers and anyone else they can’t “in good conscience” serve. In the old days, serving blacks was a matter of conscience. How long before that’s true again?
Tags: Celesteh, Kerry
My politics and my music have strongly informed and influenced each other during my foray into Text Sound. I’ve found the ability to work with words directly to be freeing. However, it is also limiting. The words I use come from Americans, discussing American politics. The US political process is important to the world at large, due to our economic heft and tendency towards warfare. However, there is a danger of arrogance and over-estimating the cultural capital this might carry abroad. This is a concern as I go abroad next year.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels end The Communist Manifesto with a call for workers of the world to unite. (Marx) International solidarity remains a valuable goal for progressives. However, by using the words of the American political milieu, I’ve made my music inaccessible to non-English speakers. Information accessibility requires multilingualism or non-word sources. I believe that Esperanto is a key to solving these problems, however, currently more people speak English and politicians seldom deliver speeches in Esperanto, thus reducing the amount of source material available.
In order to be a more internationally oriented musician, I can find non-verbal ways to articulate progressive ideals or I can make my works multi-lingual, perhaps mixing together politicians of similar stripes from many countries. It is also possible to create different languaged versions of an idea or to use subtitles. These multi-lingual approaches seem especially suited to installation environments where perhaps the friendly experiencers could choose the language with which they would engage the piece. Installations may also provide a way to model a political idea or a human interaction in an experiential and non-verbal manner.
I feel that there is an inherently political aspect to just intoned pieces, especially ones with low tuning limits. Giving people a space to calm down is restorative and counters whatever fear their governments may be sowing. In some sense, all music is political, as Susan McClary makes clear in her book Feminine Endings by analyzing indicators gender and alien otherness within “Absolute Music.” (McClary) Defining a term too broadly, however, takes away its meaning. I look forward to negotiating a non-English-specific understanding to political music during my coming time abroad.
Your thesis isn’t done until you quote Karl Marx.
Please leave feedback if you’ve got it
Tags: Celesteh, Thesis