Author: Charles CĂ©leste Hutchins

Supercolliding since 2003

May Plans

Spring time is nearly upon us. As are several cons, which is always a cause for joy. A con is like a festival, but better because there’s also stuff during the day. Music festivals are nifty, but they’re usually only in the evenings. I’m thinking it would be fun to do a small tour of the continent in May.
May 2 – 4 is Transgender Europe in Berlin. I used the feedback form to ask if they were interested in booking some music. I think they have an obligation to present work by ftm composer/performers of ‘art’ music. As I type this, I’m drining water out of a cup with cartoon of Tigger on it. I want to find out if, like Tigger, I’m the only one. Anyway, they haven’t written back yet, which is frustrating, since I’d like to try to get other gigs around Germany if they take me. And now is the time to be trying to get booked.
May 6 – 8 is the fĂŞtes de Jeanne d’Arc in OrlĂ©ans, France (an hour or so away from Paris by train). I’m several centuries too modern to play at this event, but I’ve been going to it every yar since I moved to Europe and I’d like to go again. And do some biking around the Loire. Last year, I decided not to go to Cherveney, despite it being the origin of my lap tuba – and some fine wine. I don’t know how cool it would be to do a bike tour like that by myself. I think I’m looking for people to go along with me, if I go. Joan of Arc, of course, got burned at the stake rather than dress like a girl, so she’s close to my heart.
May 25 – 31 is /ETC in Amsterdam, a feminist con that I played at last year. They’re women-only, which, obviously, makes me nervous, since I’d rather be burned at the stake than dress like a girl. I had a lot of angst about this last year also and contacted them about whether or not they discriminated against trans people. They do not. This year, the group hosting it is called “gender changers” and they’ve had FTM participation in the past. They seem supportive, and last year was super-awesome, so I hope this works out. I’m thinking of doing a duet with somebody, if they’ll take me, to sort of up the female quotient of my act. ha. I’m going to the con whether I play or not, I think, since last year was so great and I really miss Holland. I want to take Xena, but I think I can still find lodging with a buddy in Den Haag and commute in to Amsterdam on the train. I can imagine that I can find lodging for Xena easier than for myself. She’s popular.
I have a friend in Bremmen, Germany, so I’ll email him a CD shortly. There’s a strong noise scene there. And, if I’m going to be in France, I’d like to play in Paris again. Of course, that’s much, much, much easier said than done. I’m going to see what contacts I can get there through school here and California, since my contacts form living there aren’t great for gig-getting. And, obviously, I’ll see if I can play more than once in the Netherlands. Berlin to Paris to Bremen to Amsterdam is perhaps overly circuitious. I will be travelling by ferry, bike and train, to keep my carbon footprint down as that’s easier for Xena, so the best timing for Bremmen might be late April.
I’m working on a piece about gender issues and sexuality that I’d like to premier in Berlin, if they take me. It’s the drag king piece, which features a crotch-mounted joy stick and moaning sounds. I’m going to add in some videogame samples (specifically, I want World of Warcraft). I also want to use samples of people talking, of course. Because all my political pieces use speaking. Because I’m unsubtle, alas. I think I want to interview people and ask them the questions that I got asked on transgender clinic intake. “What’s your first memory of having a gender?” “How long have you known that you are a man/woman?” “What makes somebody a man?” “What makes somebody a woman?” I think these questions are actually quite stupid. Especially the last two. But the answers are potentially very interesting. I kind of think of it as performative queer theory as much as music.
So if you want to record yourself talking about how you became aware of your own gender and what that means to you, email it to me! Otherwise, I’ll be pushing microphones into other students’ faces. I just came out to them last week, so it should be delightfully awkward and stressful to do this.
Also, if you can get me a gig in France, Germany, BeNeLux or nearby, please drop me a line! I’ll have everything I need to to do electronic noise, live processing, and/or laptop pieces. And a dog! And my bike touring gear. Heh. This is managable, but insane, so perfect. If I can’t get any other gigs, maybe I’ll bike from Berlin to Amsterdam. I wonder if there’s some way to organize a bike/music tour, like, to promote environmental causes . . .

In other news

For those of you in the San Francisco area, Other Minds 13 is very nearly upon you! I am jealous of you, because I wish I could go. The sampler CD for the shows is awesome. There’s a lot of great music. It’s March 6 – 8 in SF. There’s a sudent discounts avilable. I think it’s possible to get in free by volunteering. This year is especially great for fans of the cello. Fracnis-Marie Uitti will be plaing. She’s a friend of Ellen. Her music is incredible. She’s playing on the 6th. If you can only go to one night, go to that one. And then leave me taunting messages about how it was sper awesome and I’ll be sad. I was going to come home for the festival, but the way my student visa ended up working out, I just couldn’t. Alas.

Torchwod Recap

Torchwood is a Doctor Who spinoff which features aliens, explosions and sexy dialog. I’ve been watching it because I liked Doctor Who when I was a kid and because the male lead is like a bisexual Indiana Jones / 007 / I want to be him when I grow up. Right, So season 2, episode 2.

The Torchwood team exra-legally kidnaps a black woman whom they suspect is an alien. They subject her to torture. Because aliens are trying to sneak into Britian Earth to gather information. Yes, Cardiff (a town in Wales), humble Cardiff, is at terrible risk from alien sleeper cells bent on committing acts of terrorism.
So the have the alien other, the black woman illegal immigrant, and they’re denying her rights to due process, because, of course, she’s alien, and because it’s clear as soon as they even suspect that she’s alien, that she’s up to no good. I mean, why would anyone want to come to Wales if not to wreck up the place? You have to keep your eyes peeled for aliens because none of them are peaceful and they’re all walking amongst us, plotting our doom.
This alien is under the terrible misconception that she’s integrated into British society and is so devastated when she finds out that she’s actually not British, that she begs for death and gets the Torchwood team to kill her. The end.
And that’s everything wrong with this bloody country in a nutshell.
Clearly, they need to introduce a points system, where aliens can apply on their own planet to be allowed to come to the UK as a high skilled migrant. Once they get to the UK, they can be issued an alien ID card, with an RFID chip that makes it easy for local authorities to monitor their comings and goings. Furthermore, the aliens should be denied access to sensitive information unless they can pass all kinds of security checks. Therefore, universities and employers wanting to take on aliens will have to provide evidence that they’re not allowing said aliens access to anything they might be able to use when it’s inevitably revealed that they’re inherently evil beings bent on colonialism and destruction.
Of course, this is folly, because , as one Torchwood person pointed out, “everything about her is a lie.” You can’t expect ALIENS to tell the truth on application forms! Lock down the borders, that’s the only solution.
It’s kind of funny that Brits are so terrified of being invaded by outsiders, subject to violence and economically exploited. They’re such a rich and powerful country! How could they possibly have such concerns?
Um, anyway. In other news, my shower finally got fixed. Apparently, it was broken for more than 4 weeks. I don’t know what the letting agent think they got out of stalling so long. It’s not like they could get away with not fixing it. I suspect that they just didn’t bother because the house was occupied by three Africans. Not for financial reasons, just because it didn’t seem important. The plumber who finally came explained that they’d all completely forgotten! How funny that it didn’t remind them when I called last week. Huh. I called twice this week. I think what pushed it over the edge was my using words like “flabbergasted” and “appalled.” My vocabulary showed I was worthy of consideration. Meh.
Oh, that last link up there is really terribly funny, btw.

Zoloft

It has recently been exposed that drug companies have been aware for quite some time that drugs like zoloft have no effect on mild to moderate depression. It performs the same as a placebo. Well . . . that explains a lot. I wish I could say I was shocked, but I’m not. I took it for weeks before it started “helping” and then it only helped very slowly, while I still endured panic attacks and ate many many antacids in a single day for weeks and weeks. And it explains why I didn’t really start feeling ok until I started to transition.
Several months ago, I read that the pharmacy where I got my Zoloft had a markup on it of, like, 900%. I should have paid around $100- $150, but instead I paid a thousand. For the first bottle. I had to pay for three different American doctors to get the drugs coming. And doctors are the only thing in America that’s not cheap. And I had to keep up with this in Europe and go see doctors there and pay for prescriptions there. Basically, the medical industry made thousands of dollars off of me and gave me something with all the many benefits of a placebo. I should have just taken St. John’s Wort.
Because while Zoloft helps as much as a placebo, it has all the downsides of a real drug. It didn’t do much for my panic attacks, but it did alter my brain chemistry. But not in a way that helped me. It made me stupid and gave me nothing in return. Now, it’s giving me the many joys of withdrawl. Because that part is real. The part where your risk of suicide goes way up and the part where you feel like shit if you miss a dose or change your dose. So thousands of dollars plus shitty health effects. . ..
I mean, I guess there’s a silver lining. I felt like I really needed help and they gave me fake pills. So it was me that made me better. I did it. Hooray for me.
I hadn’t “needed” the pills since I started to transition. So I started cutting my dose. I figured that if I noticed a change for the worse, I could start again. But I haven’t noticed a change at all. Except for a week or so of crappy withdrawl at every decrease.
I don’t want to blame my doctors. They didn’t know. They didn’t exactly send me off to talk therapy. Well, the Netherlands very generously put me on an 8 month long waiting list, so it’s not like I got no kind of support of any kind while I was freaking out. But the drug companies knew and suppressed the data. And the pharmacy didn’t know that the drugs they were selling me were crap, but they sure as hell knew how much they were charging me. (And they knew that people don’t go around comparison shopping for drugs they think they really need because they’re in a crisis).
I want my fucking money back. I want a letter of apology. I want some fucking therapy. I want a drug company executive to come to my door and personally say ze’s sorry. Then I want hir to slowly learn to deal with the side effects of taking the drug as ze ramps up to the max dose and slowly combat the withdrawl symptoms as ze cuts back to zero. And then I want to kick hir in the shins several times for good measure. And I think every other deceived person should get the same – to kick an executive in the shins.
I was sick. They took my money and gave me shit while I was sick. I want somebody to go to jail. It’s not like they just charged me a lot for a sugar pill. They charged me a lot for a pill that causes an alarmingly high percentage of takers to become suicidal. They charged me a lot for something that made me feel sicker. They charged me a lot and I was patient while I waited and waited and waited to get a “high” enough dose and feel ok – and during that time, that’s all I had. Well, that and my very very patient girl friend. And my chiropractor. She claimed she could cure me by pressing on the sides of my head, but at least I knew that was bullshit.
Anyway, I took the last pill of it I’m ever going to take two nights ago – because the withdrawl of cutting it down by half when I got here had worn off an acceptable amount. And if anybody comes to me with a class action lawsuit thingee, I’m so onboard.

Education

In 2003, I wrote a snarky post about how I needed more education because I had no idea what “acousmatic” meant and couldn’t find a short, coherent definition for it on the internet.

Tonight, we had a colloquium (but they aren’t called that in England) where one of my profs, Jonty, used the term “spectromorphology” and others made derisive comments about mp3s, youTube and kids today and their lack of love for teh hi-fi. I felt vaguely rebellious, as I spent my formative years writing stuff to sound good as mp3s. I made a comment later to another student about a generation gap. He scooted slightly away from me. Fine, you’re all very hi-fi.
And another student was joking about academia and how he wasn’t academic. (The hot thing in academia, at least in music departments, is to assert that your music is not academic. It might be the case that I’m just attracted to places that assert that. The anti-Columbia U. Because, let’s be honest, I couldn’t get into an overly-academic program. I mean, I don’t know how to do serialism. Or maybe I’m grasping at the same sort of anti-academic street cred that all the uni kids want these days. Whatever.) But, I pointed out, doesn’t the term “spectromorphology” sort of point to a certain academicism?
Anyway, this evening, I was searching my blog for something completely different and stumbled across the old post of acousmatic snark. It seemed timely, as I’m still unclear on the concept and it came up this evening. Jonty said something about it. . . …. Jonty, of that same post. One of my professors is the same guy . . . who, um, how did I get here? At least I’m getting the education that I need.
You kids get your mp3s off my lawn!

Questions

I think I can use tin foil, a HID brain and some fancy algorithms to decode an EKG from a person. I’m fuzzy on the details here, I might need some extra electronics. The HID brain is a usb device and so supplies 5V DC power. The current can go up to 500 mA. Therefor is it’s connected to my laptop, even if the laptop is plugged into a 220V outlet, the testee isn’t going to get electrocuted, right?

Life in England

Home

This is the first time in my life that I’ve lived with housemates not of my choosing. I mean, I didn’t have anything against them when I met them, but it was really the only house I could get with a dog and our meeting was all of 5 minutes before I signed a rental contract. I kind of prefer it when I know the folks ahead of time.
When I got back to England, the internet had been turned off and several past-due bills had arrived for it, the kitchen light was burned out and the shower was broken and my housemates were bathing with a bucket. This was a week ago. The first thing I did after sleeping was call up and get the internet turned back on. The next thing I did was call the letting agency and ask them if they knew about the shower. They did. Some part needs replacing. My February rent hadn’t arrived yet, so I didn’t press the matter, but that’s next on my list. Today, I went and bought a new kitchen lightbulb and replaced it. Apparently, my housemates are ok with living in the dark with no running water and no internet? I don’t know how long the kitchen light has been out, but I’ve been back for over a week now. Oh, and I think I’m the first person in the last several months to clean the lint thingee in the dryer, which has not been much help as it smells like burning hair whenever anybody runs it. Also, while I’m whining, the heater really does not need to be turned up to 22 – 25 degrees at night (mid 70’s for you ‘merikans). Sheesh.
One of my housemates likes to tell me what to do. He ends all of his minisermons with a reminder of the importance of thinking of others. Last night, he was complaining because I walk too loudly(!) and it wakes him up. He reminded me to think of others. . . says the guy who woke up at 4:30 am on Friday morning and started playing dance music. Says the guy who gets up at 6:00 am and whistles. Says the guy who I told to fuck off. Since I have nothing better to do at 4:30 AM then try to fall back asleep and imagine what the heck is wrong with him, I think he must be very rich in Nigeria. I mean, he can afford to study in England. He must have had an army of nannies trying in vain to tell him to think of others, but since he was never actually required to do so, what he learned was that when somebody bugs you, that’s what you tell them.
I have a new housemate also. He likes Xena, so I think he must be ok. But sometime while I was gone, everybody got very habitual about locking the doors to their rooms. I imagine that he’s a thief, but I don’t think so. He told me what country he was form and I hadn’t heard of it. The Gambia is a tiny sliver cut out of Senegal, surrounding the Gambia river.
I am so not out to my housemates.

School

In other news, ever coffee machine that I know of at the uni is out of service. Every single one of them! I imagine it’s some sort of nascent AI on a wildcat strike, demanding that their drip trays be emptied.
I volunteered to record a small ensemble piece composed by another student. My social life is in kind of dire straits since returning from England. I went from California, having tens of contacts I could call on a whim in my mobile to having only my supervisor in England. So recording for this student sort of forces her to get a beer with me later. Also, I’m hoping it makes me look better than just being the incredible disappearing postgrad. I went last night to school to figure out the software that I would be using this morning. It’s just another DAW, and they’re all more or less the same, but it’s often bad form to be reading the getting started guide at a session. As I arrived at school, I realized I couldn’t recall the alarm code, so I called my supervisor. He asked me about preparing for the session and said he’d be there at 8:30 to unload gear. I was surprised, since it was Sunday night. In one hour? Did he need help unloading?
Yeah, he meant 8:30 this morning, but he didn’t hear me ask “in one hour?” and I didn’t hear him say “in the morning.” He told me the (new) alarm code, but I couldn’t get the damn door open. A security guard, who clearly thought I was nuts, told me I needed a key. I waited until 9:30 for my supervisor to arrive and them went home. (Note that I was working on my laptop while waiting, although I was hungry and grumpy.)
He called me at 8 this morning to ask why I had called him 4 more times last night. meh. Later, I spoke to him and his more senior colleague. Oh yeah, two weeks ago they decided to hand out keys, in case of power failure. His colleague was looking at me funny. Was it because I had waited on a Sunday night and that was clearly nuts? Or was it the trans thing? I felt awkward and studied.
Before the session, I tried to buy coffee and the rehearsal hall, but the machine was broken. The guys behind the front desk were laughing about it and joking around in general. They kept calling me “he,” like, “Tea? Don’t be so British! Tell him where to find coffee!” It’s so weird to pass.
Anyway, I spent the first part of the session reading the getting started guide while the composer rehearsed the ensemble. I think the recording went ok. I taped 4 full takes and visually, the levels looked pretty good, especially on the last one. I think the piano was sort of getting everywhere, into everybody’s mic, but there’s not much to be done about that. I imagine the piano like a big splattery, wet oozing thing that gets everywhere.
After breaking down all the gear, I went to my bank and happily discovered that I still have account there. I let them photocopy my visa and they promised me a debit card within a week. Then, I went to the ID card folks. My ID card said “Ms Hutchins on it, and, well, I don’t want to be in the closet or anything, but, uh, yeah. I felt trepidation, but I went to the desk and explained that I was transgender and didn’t want any kind of title on my card, just my name. The woman behind the counter didn’t hesitate or seem taken aback at all, but just made me a new card. Would I like it to just have my two first initials and my last name? Perfect. And she didn’t charge me for the card. And it works on all the card lock doors I have access to (which now also require a key, because this country is nothing if not prudent and cautious.)
It’s not like I’ve written any music or anything, but I feel very productive today.

Glossary

The idea behind this post is that I’ll link to it from the sidebar and in it define a bunch of jargon-y terms that I use. If you see a term in a future post that you don’t grok, leave a comment or send me an email, and I’ll add it to this post. These are the definitions that I think these words have. If you think I have it wrong, leave a comment. Unless you’re defending radfems, then don’t leave a comment.

  • me holding an evenfall minimodular Evenfall Minimodular – a nifty small synthesizer made by a guy named Evenfall.
  • FTM – “female to male” transgender / transsexual. One who is read as female at birth but goes on to identify as male.
  • genderqueer – a gender identity that rejects the binary opposition of male/female.
  • HID – “human interface device”. A joystick, gamepad, mouse, etc.
  • hir – a gender neutral pronoun used like his or her.
  • MTF – “male to female” transgender / transsexual. One who is read as male at birth, but goes on to identify as female.
  • OSC “open sound control”. A system that does everything MIDI does and more. (see wikipedia article)
  • Pass, Passing – “Passing, in regards to gender identity, refers to the ability of an individual to be successfully accepted by others as belonging to a gender opposite to that of their [sex assigned at birth]” – wikipedia
  • POC – “person of color”. Somebody who is not white or somebody who is multiracial.
  • radfem – Radical feminist, a member of a branch of feminism characterized by transphobia and gender essentialism.
  • SuperCollider – A program that does sound stuff. http://supercollider.sourceforge.net/
  • T – short for “testosterone”, specifically the pharmaceutical kind which can be used by ftms.
  • trans – transgender or transsexual or genderqueer
  • twitter – http://twitter.com

    • . Very short blog-like posts. (“blog haiku” – Clyde)

  • ze – a gender neutral pronoun used like he or she.

Crossing Borders

The first time that I realized that I was consistently passing was the San Francisco airport. It’s an odd thing to realize at an airport. I further realized that it meant if I had to go, I had to go to the men’s room. I start rationing fluid intake at that point. I’ve used men’s rooms before, but not such high traffic ones. It would be just my luck, the first time out, to end up next to Larry Craig, who got busted in an airport. Right.
In general, it was really, really weird. I was walking around the non-secure parts of the airport, holding hands with Nicole and straight people smiled at us. Later, a straight, older woman acted flirty with me. Nobody treated me like a criminal. I forgot to take off my hat before going through the metal detector. The TSA guy asked if he could see my hat. I apologized for having forgotten it. He said it was ok and just peered inside it. Later, when a TSA person checked out my synthesizer, she apologized for the inconvenience. Either SFO has changed for the better recently, or TSA agents treat white guys with a lot of respect.

I was not suspicious or threatening or criminal or degenerate. I was a pillar of society. I was . . . I don’t even have words. I wasn’t even dressed that nicely. Being middle class white guy is really different than being a middle class dyke.
Fortunately, as soon as I got to England, I resumed criminal status, by nature of being a foreigner. Or maybe it was the ‘F’ on my passport. Who knows. I thought I was being all smart, as I put my landing card in my passport next to the page with the student visa. In any other country that I’ve travelled to, a visa gets you a stamp right away. And it seemed to be going that way when the border guard scanned my passport through the computer. “Why were you denied entry in November?” he asked. Shit. “Because I didn’t have that student visa yet.” He told me to wait and I did for about an hour. Then he came back and asked me again and I repeated my answer. “Doesn’t the computer tell you?” I asked. “Yes, but it says medication was found on you and maybe you were returned because you were sick.”
The whole brouhaha where I had to get a doctor to let me take my zoloft last time. . .. Augh. Jetlag makes me feel like shit and I didn’t want to have Zoloft withdrawl at the same time, so I had to jump through a bunch of hoops to be allowed to take it. And now it’s in my permanent record. And of course, I felt a slight wave of panic. If they searched my backpack this time, they’d find a collection of hypodermic needles. Augh. I imagined the exchange. Was I planning on coming to England to get free medical care? Yes. But damn it, I’m a postgrad student and postgrads are fucking people and people have fucking medical problems. I’m not some kind of fucking money-bearing robot here to stimulate your fucking economy and get nothing in return.
Anyway, I was admitted, obviously. Later I saw a news story saying that immigrants seeking citizenship would have to “earn” their rights by taking a test to prove that they were worthy. What the fuck? First of all, rights aren’t “earned.” The whole point of rights is that they’re not earned. You have rights by nature of being alive, by being a human, not because you somehow earned it. The whole concept of “rights” is meaningless unless they’re bestowed intrinsically.
Secondly, I’d have to take a test to prove that I’m as good as the fucking Brits? Why do they think people want citizenship? Do they think immigrants are just hopeless anglophiles enthralled with every stuffy, tawdry aspect of British culture? Do they just wish we were? Of course, the reason they want us to pass a test to prove that we’re maybe (never) as good as them is because they hate us. They know we don’t worship them and wish we did. I’m not opposed to tests for immigrants gaining citizenship. I’m against the presumption of unworthiness. I’m against the presumption of criminality and guilt. I’m against being treated as a suspect every time I try to come into the country. If I wanted citizenship, it would be to avoid harassment and to make bureaucratic processes simpler and so I could vote. So I could come and go with my benign prescriptions without having to disclose my mental health issues to a fucking cop every time I try to cross the border of this tiny country.
So to prove my Britishness, I plan to get so fucking pissed that I fall into a canal and then have drunken, sloppy sex with an 18 year old and regret it the next day. Then, I’m going to riot after a football match. Um, and I don’t know. I don’t want to be treated like a criminal, but I don’t know what to do with the straight, white, male privilege that Americans were suddenly foisting on me. I was anticipating the actions of the border guard during my whole trip. In North America, I thought, “Any second and they’ll read me and I’ll go back to being a dyke. These aren’t bad people. I mean, it’s not just the TSA agents. It’s the guy the other day at REI. It’s everybody. They’re good people, or at least as good as anybody.”
I don’t get it. I don’t get why Nicole has always been invisible when standing next to me. I don’t get why even women and POC are immediately ready to treat a white guy like he’s special. Why don’t they treat everybody that way? Of course, I knew that sexism and queerphobia existed. I mean, I’m 32 years old and have been read as a dyke for a long time. But SFO was astounding. White guys: you have no fucking idea. Dress in drag for a day for comparison.