Author: Charles Céleste Hutchins

Bah.

I woke up this morning feeling sooooo angsty. Unbeleivable levels of angst. Is it the late winter snow or what? then I went off to improvise with Anthony Braxton and he’s an angsty guy too. The level of angst was high and stressed ack-i’m-running-late energy from both of us and then we sat down and played . . .
and it was magical. I’m going to try to play my tuba every day. or a synthesizer. but a computer doesn’t count. Anthony was talking about how music makes him sane etc, etc etc. It’s true for me too. sometimes musicians look down as elitists on non-art types. “how sad for them to have no art” we say. But they should look down on us. “how sad for them that they get paralyzed with angst if they don’t play a tuba. what a handicap.”
i generated some email asking about study abroad next year. IRCAM’s deadline was in October. I’ve heard that CCMIX has a late deadline. I dunno. Friday evening in Paris by the time I emailed. Maybe I’ll hear Monday. And my advisor wants me to email him about my thesis but is as bad at reading email as I am. So, just like with the German exchange folks, I’m not going to hear squat. The german exchange here is good for any university in Germany. Maybe I could go to Berlin or Köln or a big city. I wonder how I would go about researching music schools in Germany . . . before the start of spring break. AND write my thesis.
My computer has almost all of my applications working now and all the data is happy, as far as I can tell. I think I should go work all day tomorrow in the studio, as I have an idea that being in a more public place will enable me to concentrate better. It’s hard to sit home alone and work. also, periodic interactions with people prevent me from stewing in angst.
Major sources of angst include thesis (big cloud of doom hanging over head) and study abroad (what will i do next year, ack) and gf (why would she want to go to Karlsruhe, does this mean the end). And if matt, anne judy and everyone else I’ve talked to all say negative things, why do I want to go? A couple of those people have a certain tendency to take a more balanced view of things. As in, for all the drama and frustration and my near constant whining, I see my experience at Wesleyan as completely positive. Some of BW exchange alums took their Wesleyan frustrations more to heart and can’t say that their experience was completely positive. Which is to say that I tend to overstate the positive in a way that makes me rate things more positively than others might given my same experience.
bah. doom. maybe i should just be doing phD applications.
and writing my thesis
maybe i should take next year off get a job.
Tag: Celesteh

Ok, so next year, I really want to study abroad. I’m thinking someplace in continental Europe. I’m applying for Wesleyan’s exchange program where I would go to Karlsruhe. But . . . several of the last people who went have not said good things about it. One guy was unable to answer the question whether he had gotten anything out of the experience. I’ve been pushing forward anyway, because I really want to go abroad and because I speak some German and I’m sure it will work out somehow and I really want to have some sure thing for next year . . . but . . . today I heard a professor say something about how you didn’t want to spend any more time in Karlsruhe than was strictly necessary. Ok, red flags are starting to pop up. Or rather, I’m starting to notice them.

I should find a different way to go abroad, I guess. I talked to my advisor about this and he told me I should go to Karlsruhe. He’s always promoting it despite unhappy grads from the last three years. Maybe the CT department of education has him on the take . . .. Um, but seriously. Several people I know have applied to C.C.M.I.X.. Every person I know who has applied has gotten in. Most have not gone because it’s not a funded program. I know that sustainability as a composer means people paying me instead of vice versa. But a year in Paris could be very groovy. If this program sounds familiar to you, it’s cuz Christi went there in 2003-4. . . . Which is a bit of a complexity, or not. I know she had a positive experience. And she’s not in Paris anymore. And Paris has a very nifty music scene. Getting in on it would be very valuable connections.
If you know of any year long music program in Europe, tell me about it. I’m electronically focussed and not very academic (in the Milton Babbit sort of way). There’s also IRCAM, but would I have to know how to speak French before I arrived?
Tag: Celesteh

It has my home directory on it, but none of my applications. time to reinstall.

It’s a day for good news. Now I just need to reinstall, get my thesis finished and find a German visa for Nicole. A grant would be nice too.
Tag: Celesteh

10:00 pm tonight at Eli’s, for those of you who can make it to Middletown, CT.

those of you on the west coast ought to go to Other Minds.
Tag: Celesteh

huzzah huzzah huzzah! I’m a free woman! huzzah huzzah huzzah!

Tag: Celesteh

companion toys for Japanese elderly people

As Japan produces fewer children and more retirees, toymakers are designing new dolls designed not for the young but for the lonely elderly — companions which can sleep next to them and offer caring words they may never hear otherwise.
Talking toys have become such a hit that some elderly people have embraced them as substitutes for the children who have grown old and deserted entire neighborhoods in the rapidly greying country.
. . .
“Thank you for giving me a heart-warming baby. I’m no longer alone,” an 82-year-old woman wrote while another senior woman said she was raising the doll “as my own child”.
. . .
The robot’s maker Dream Supply said the Snuggling Ifbot had the conversation ability of a five-year-old — considered just enough for small talk to keep the elderly from going senile.

What does it mean to love a machine?
We can program them to be what we want.
The toy will never forget us.
&nbsp
But we forget it.
No need to worry about finding it a home for
. . . afterwards.
 
It has no soul.
Cast it aside.
Tag: Anthropomorphize

I’m going to cheer up any damn day now. But in the meantime: super exhausted all day. Slept through morning class meeting thingee. And then super grumpy. I hate everybody on earth. Except I don’t. Playing in Braxton’s ensemble always makes me happy (even though I’m late every goddamn day). Colloquium does not. It has complexities. I’m having a lot of complexities. Came home and napped for like half an hour and then went to my usually deserted office hours. there were 37264191724 people there. they all have stuff due tomorrow. they are all trying for the first time to figure out how to use the software. It’s kind of endearing. also, I laugh at their ill planning. Ha ha ha. Nothing personal. It’s what comes from hating everyone on earth.

Braxton came in and I wrote an Event thingee for him. Ron told me to figure out Events when I met with him this afternoon. (The meeting mostly included me cussing and him saying I should rewrite stuff in a bunch of different conflicting ways. This is exactly what happened with my text project. He’s always thinking “what’s a different way to write this?” It’s sort of helpful with writing code, because he’s going to touch upon a better method and then I’ve learned something. Not so helpful with text.) so, I had a hammer and Braxton’s thing looked enough like a nail.
I am extremely fond of Prof Braxton. We’re going to jam on friday.
Ok, I don’t actually hate everyone on earth. It’s much too tiring. I don’t hate anyone, really. Also, I am drinking calm tea before bed. It’s working.
John Cage has a pretentious quote about being willing to dedicate his life his art. Me too. Sign me up.

Thoughts on Death

I spend a lot of time thinking about death. Anyway, a hospice worker told me that people often experience a period of wakefulness before they die. sometimes they sort of come-to and say goodbye to everyone and then die a few hours later. This didn’t happen to my mom, but she did have one sort of dramatic waking over a week before she died. I think it’s different when you have a brain tumor.
Anyway, I’ve been over anthropomorphising my laptop. It booted and I logged in and looked at the desktop, thinking I was never gong to see it again. And then half an hour later, it died. Sort of not like a person. Like a pet rabbit that hops a few last hops and then goes back into a coma. So, ok, it’s inanimate. I still grieve. I’m thinking a memorial service would be overkill . . . although we had a wake for Leroy the gerbil when he died last spring. I’m going to write a requiem for my laptop disk.
No, I haven’t really written a requiem for my mother. there’s a major difference between a dead pet rodent and a dead mom. I don;t cry when recording Chopin’s funeral march because I’m thinking of my disk. However, I did write a piece for my grandmother. Maybe I’ll post it later.
Tag: Celesteh

My problems are all temporary. they will all evaporate. their resolution is in sight. One day, somebody will ask me about my rube goldberg backup system and i’ll furrow my brow and think “oh yeah! remember when my laptop died?” and my thesis is due in april or may, so i’ll have something by then and my concert date will come and then pass. the only thing that’s really worrisome is lack of data surrounding brining Nicole to Germany. If you’ve got ideas on that, drop me a line: celesteh@gmail.com or leave a comment.

Tag: Celesteh

Went to talk to german professor about the exchange program I want to do. Asked about bringing Cola with me. Professor was less than helpful. Suggested that Cola move to the east coast, so it would be a short flight to germany and she could visit me on weekends. Cola was understandably less than pleased when I passed this along. I don’t know anything about anything. I dunno how to find out. Talking to the people in charge of this is like banging my head into a brick wall. Frustrated.

apparently you have to register for apple care. they give you a little cardboard box that says “apple care” on it. in that box is a form you have to mail off. otherwise, you need to spend fxcking forever on the fxcking phone.
Half the software on my desktop is broken. Toast won’t launch. the preview application won’t launch, so i can’t look at PDFs. I cannot figure out how to get the sound drivers to play nicely with SuperCollider. this machine was supposed to be a dedicated protools station. it’s the only thing that works on it. My last operating system upgrade failed. It crashed part way through. the computer’s fast enough, but it’s an oddball machine and probably the new OS didn’t get QAed on it. Everything on it is screwed up.
And . . . my advisor wants me to put aside my thesis project that i have thus far and instead re-implement all of my existing pieces in nicer-looking code. i’ve made less than stellar progress on this because my laptop is fucking dead goddamn it. And I get to spend hours re-coding things that already work. and i get the supreme joy of listening to ann coulter over and over and over again. Rated the 50th most loathsome person in america in 2004, BEAST magazine best describes my feeling towards her. they say, “we find our outrage slowly giving way to a baffled ‘I can’t believe I used to go out with you’ feeling.” Exactly like that, except she’s staying in my room until she gets back on her feet, shrieking at my dog about Bill Clinton for hours while I re-implement my piece as a Pbind.
In short, I’m going insane. but hey, things are still going way better than last year.
Tag: Celesteh

I thought it was extraordinary that the computer guy was taking my word for things. Ok, that’s not fair. He didn’t know anything more than a grad student walked in asking how to deal with creating a disk image of dying disk and then returned later with a laptop. He ran a bunch of disk utils and it showed no symptoms. None of my files are corrupted! huzzah! (I was nervous about my Library files.) So he yanked off my entire user directory. and then called me and told me he needed a password. (“why didn’t you just boot single user mode and change it?” “people get upset when i do that.”)

So I walked over and there was my laptop booted up. I never thought i’d see that desktop again. I explained that I was a former sysadmin and that I had heard the death rattle of hard disks before, and then he was willing to take my word for it and label it “intermittent” and ship it off to apple. If I did not have that experience, he would have run a bunch more tests while logged in and if still no symptoms, he would have handed me my computer back and told me that he couldn’t find a problem. I went poking through the console program looking for an error log. I couldn’t find squat in the way of IO errors. So, I asked him to make an image of the whole disk. the files are uncorrupted, so why not? If it works, then I can figure out if I want to ship off the computer to apple (symptom free now. do I want to sit on it until it dies for real and have it my hands, or do I figure it’s death is imminent and ship it anyway?). If it doesn’t work, then the problem has been replicated. also, I really want an image of that disk drive. really really. i think i will do an image once a month in the future, not archiving old months, but Just In Case.
anyway, so I ended up talking to a grocery clerk about how I really didn’t know if I wanted my computer back, knowing it’s unhealthy, but I have it, or sending it off and not having it. Anyway, like a minute after I left the store and not but half an hour after I left the computer center, the tech guy called up and said my disk had started clicking and grinding. He’s going to leave it off for an hour and then try again to create an image of the disk and then drop it in the mail to apple.
Goodness, I want an image of that disk in the worst way. also, I knew this would happen. It would have really sucked to walk out of there with my computer in hand and then get it home and have it start making noises a half an hour later, only to have to bring it back again. denial is exceedingly tempting.
this is all fascinating, no? Mumble an request for intercession to your deity of choice asking for a disk image.
Tag: Celesteh