Les said, the better II

In 2003, when I first started at wesleyan I blogged about one of the first students whom I attempted to befriend. Things were going fine but then, out of the blue, an exhibition of racism, to which I said nothing, unsure of how to react. Oh no! this student is not from this immediate region, but hails from much closer to here than I do and certainly has more culturally in common with the locals than I do. Also, why the heck didn’t I object at the time?

In 2005, well.
In 2003, my house had no working smoke detectors and there were constant fire sirens, evidence of the danger of that situation. So I went to k-mart and bought a bunch of them and installed them.
In 2005, well, how do you say “smoke detector” in French? I haven’t seen any fire trucks go by, but a bunch of someone’s burned possessions appeared on the street several days ago and still they sit out there. A ruined dresser. I wonder how the fire was discovered? Or is my lack of smoke detection an aberration?
In 2003, I felt as if I had moved to an alien culture where I could barely communicate with the natives, causing unintentional offense all the dern time and having perplexing social interactions wherein it became clear that I had totally different values than the person with whom I was conversing.
In 2005, I actually need a dictionary to go buy something. le fil de dentaire = french for dental floss. The pharmacy guy spent like five minutes explaining he was very sorry for having called me monsieur, after he heard my high pitch voice asking for floss. “Dood, I don’t care, just give me my damn dental floss.” is a bit beyond me, so I only repeated my request for dental floss. The phrase I was searching for was “Ce n’est pas grave.” It’s not important. Seriously.
In 2003, I felt lonely and homesick, so I walked down to the water area to take in some sunlight on a nice warm day.
In 2005, it was like 21 degrees today and sunny, the warmest it had been in a week. I stepped outside of my apartment and discovered that I didn’t need my jacket. It’s always warmer on the street than it is in my place. I walked down towards the Saint Martin Canal and discovered that the rest of the 10th arrondissement had the same idea as I. There were street musicians everywhere, a street clown performing for a bunch of very appreciative small children and I swear to god an actual wind band in a band shell in the park. They were wearing straw boater hats, even. I stood for a while and listened to them play (mostly American) band tunes. Then I walked back along the canal and saw a boat going up it, which is exciting. They raised the draw bridge and opened one of the locks to let the boat through. A crowd gathered on top of the pedestrian bridge to watch the boat come into the lock and progress through it. Locks are cool. Then I went towards home and purchased a crème caramel, which bears an exceedingly strong resemblance to mexican flan and the afore-mentioned dental floss. I’ve been feeling sad all day, despite pudding and having a much cleaner house. I’m going to go tomorrow to buy some vitamins. I eat vegetables every day, of course, but it’s hard to get all necessary vitamins unless you eat broccoli every single day, which wouldn’t actually be so bad.

random sightings

Last night, I saw that there’s some sort of breast cancer awareness campaign going on. I could tell this because there were pictures of topless women with pink ribbons and something about cancer. Breast cancer. Pictures of breast. The french get right to the point, errr, yes. Last night I also saw a large mob of people who climbed onto the République statue to celebrate some sort of football victory, I think. Not France’s. The flag they were waving was red with a red crescent. I saw in Le Monde a list of teams qualifying for a world championship. (But I don’t know what they meant exactly. Is it time for the world cup again, already? French announcers don’t yell “gooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllll” and are thus inferior to the spanish channel.) And today and yesterday both, I saw graffiti that a local woman admitted being perplexed by. She thought it was official and it did blend in rather well with official art. But it’s not. It’s space invaders! Somebody is putting blocky figures from the space invaders game up around the city. The local woman did not believe my explanation, but the one I saw today had the word “bonus” with it and was clearly an arcade reference.
Also sighted in Le Monde: a review of Doctor Atomic. If you live near San Francisco, you must go see this opera. It’s exciting that San Francisco got the premiere. I hope it comes here on the road before I leave, cuz I want to see it.
And the moral of the story: it’s good to have had some experience moving suddenly to a school far away where I don’t know anybody, because I’ve been through it all before, so I know it will turn out fine. And I’m never moving again. Until next time. And it’s waaaaayyyyyyy better to drop everything in your life and move to Paris than it is to go to Middletown, at least as far as weekend diversions go.
Tags: Paris, Celesteh

I went out tonight with a guy from my school who is English/Spanish and his housemate who is French/American. The housemate likes to hang out in the gay district, but appears to be straight. I know what you’re thinking: How can you tell when you’re in the gay district in Paris? This is a good question actually, because the men here generally dress well. The idea of a “metrosexual” would be, well, foreign. Drag queens might be a giveaway (saw one). Also, if the men are walking with their arms around each other, that’s a good sign. Or you could look for the Rue des mauvais garçons. heh heh heh, that’s an actual street name in the gay district (I’ve taken just enough french to be one of those very pretentious american travel writers who throws french expressions in the text without bothering to translate them, but not enough to have a conversation. But such writing annoys me even though I can now understand it. That’s “Bad Boy Street” you’d be looking for. Which is funny.)

How do you recognize lesbians, then? Ha! Got me. I saw a couple of butch women in my last gay bar adventure, but since then when I’ve thought I’ve seen butch women, it’s turned out to be fem men. Men a get a bit more wiggle room on the gender variance thing here at least as far as clothing and stuff goes. Women get less. Which probably works out to men also having as little as in the US, since clothing has so little crossover. Anyway.
So we wandered around a looong time and then finally went into a place which turned out to be a restaurant. It was full of people, but we were seated at the tiny bar, so no talking to strangers. Not that it matters because I can’t speak French and they were almost all men and the people I was with were practically strangers, although het ones. There was also a drag queen at a different part of the bar, but I didn’t attempt to strike up a conversation with her. (How do you say, “hi! I cross dress too!” in French?) There were some women there but who can tell if they’re girly dykes or just fag hags? I wonder if there’s a bar someplace that caters to Anglophone Lesbians?
I picked up a post card advertising Gay Kitsch Camp, “GayKitschCamp éclaire le Monde” (Gay Kitsch Camp lights up the World) it says over a picture of the sun with a picture superimposed over it of a male head wearing lipstick, makeup and a pink fluffy sun hat. Ah, yes, yes it does. It’s not just a bookstore, it’s a festival, a publisher and a library, but alas, it is all of those things in Lille. Where is Lille? Polly’s got a piece in a concert coming up there.
I did, however, successfully discover information about the Gay and Lesbian Film Festival starting next week. I also found out, via friendster, of a punk rock show, on the same day the film festival starts. And IRCAM is giving a concert on the very same day, but maybe not at the very same time because no place on their website does it list a time for concerts.
Speaking of cross dressing, I’ve been getting some actual glares on the metro. Not just French people not smiling, but hostility. I’ve only gotten the look once, from a man, while I was staring wistfully at a dog. (You can take your dog on the metro. You can take your dog to bars/restaurants while you drink a meter of tequila (so, it’s this meter long board with several shot glasses on it, each one full of tequila. The goal is to drink the whole thing without being hospitalized). I really miss my dog.) But, I’ve gotten women looking very disapprovingly at me. During my first week here, before I quit wearing my hat, I went to an internet cafe and the guy working there said “Bonjour Monsieur” in a friendly manner and then his whole expression changed to a much less friendly one “Bonjour Madam.” So I don’t know why people are glaring at me, but I have my suspicions. I’m not going to girl it up any further though. I mean, I already stopped wearing my hat. (Nobody here wears hats and anyway, the sun is already so low on the horizon that the wide brim doesn’t keep it off my face. Cola is of the opinion that more sunlight on the face is good because of vitamin d, but we’ve got different solar needs. but i digress) Anyway, my suspicions could be completely wrong. I had several encounters with the Prefecture de Police that started with “Bonjour monmmmmmmmmmmadam” that were fine and if anybody wanted to make my life difficult, few would be better able to carry out that plan than the prefecture.
The guy from my school told me I’m a “messy” eater. I was standing on the street trying to eat a falafel with my hands, so it was a challenging situation. But what if I have bad table manners? Will I have to leave France?
I should not blog immediately upon returning from bars….
Tags: Paris, Celesteh

Wesleyan health services does indeed have a copy of my immunization records . . . in storage. they can’t guarantee that they can send them monday. maybe tuesday morning, which means tuesday evening for me. *sigh* alas. well, at least i can tell the french doctors that i will have the required paperwork.

In other news, my house is still filthy, although somewhat improved. the power adaptor in the living room doesn’t cause much computer noise (is it the power outlet or the adaptor that’s better?). the weather was warm and nice today, but i only left the house twice, both times to go to the fax place and then buy a baguette on the way home. i think the bakery with the better baguettes has dessert items that don’t look as good as the other bakery (two doors down). I may have to buy eclairs at each and determine who wins, you know, in the interest of science.
I read in the rough guide that per kilometer, Paris has a higher population density than Tokyo, which probably explains why there are three bakeries within half a block of my building. It does not however, explain the 5 or so cell phone stores. You need a new baguette every day (at least). How often do you need a new cell phone?
I’m a bit lonely without Yuri here anymore. She left yesterday at an ungodly early hour. I went back to look at my blog from when Wesleyan had just started and it’s exactly the same, trying to get a bank account, paperwork snafus (including with vaccination records), forgotten bills going to collections (ack), not knowing anyone, being nervous etc. And then I got insanely busy with crazy amounts of school work. So maybe I’ll get insanely busy soon, although I hope not too insane.
Tags: Paris, Celesteh

Just sent me a letter saying it needs all of my medical records. on tuesday.

It would be really handy if the consulate could have given me a list of things I would need to bring. I mean, maybe it should have occurred to me that I would need a birth certificate and my vaccination records, but I’ve never lived abroad before. They just said I would need my school letter.
i had to get a shot for measles in 2003 because I couldn’t find my paperwork saying I had ever gotten the second one. Of course I had, but my mom always kept documents like that . . .
I’m going to join some religion which doesn’t believe in getting shots.
So my plan is to call wesleyan tomorrow and see if they have my records, since they made me get a @!$@#!$ shot. If they don’t, my plan is to cry.
Tags: Paris, Celesteh

So when I plug my computer into my source of power in my bedroom, it starts making a lot of noise, I think from the fan, but I’m not sure (it does not seem to be the hard disk, it might be somewhat from the speakers, i can’t tell). When I unplug it from the wall, it reverts to silence. The strange (high pitchy brown noise) is definitely connected to being plugged in to the wall: It’s plugged into an ungrounded outlet: a little skinny plug with an adaptor to make it a fake three prong plug, going to an extension cord, to a splitter, to the skinny two prong apple adaptor that could fit into the starting outlet.

1. Is this bad for my computer?
2. Will plugging my powered monitor speakers into this same (ungrounded) power source murder them dead or harm them?

Tags: Paris, Celesteh

Fumer Tue

If I make it through this year without becoming a pack a day smoker, it may be a miracle. Everyone smokes all the damn time. And when we have a break from class, everyone is smoking. Social smokers become real smokers with frightening speed. Every time folks are smoking, I want to bum one, but I must not. Nicole’s little pack of social smokes that caught me last week have left me wanting more, like after having a coffee in the morning for a couple of days in a row. Anyway, these folks in my class are almost all Americans, so they have no excuse. I have no excuse. Must not start smoking!

Oh, my beloved baguette

Crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside, so long and play-weapon like. I can buy you across the street from my house and take you home fresh, baked within the last day. I can tear your end off as I walk down the street and eat your heel. I can eat you with cheese or alone or with tomatoes or with my soup and tear you or slice you. What will I do when I return to berkeley? I will have to move across from a bakery. I don’t know how I lived without you coming into my house fresh every day. Never again will we be long parted!
Tags: Paris, Celesteh

Art

So I went to Nuit Blanche and I’ve had to spend the last few days thinking before I could post about it. I went to the fêtê part of it, which I think means party. And party it was. There were folks doing really really loud pop music drumming stuff and there were women in g-strings dancing to said drumming. I went first to Saint Eustache, where I caught a short part of the all-night-long series of organ concerts. The church has really hugely high celings and incredible reverberation. The organist gave a short talk before she played, which I couldn’t really understand and she had to speak very very very slowly because of the many-seconds long delay. It’s a great atmosphere for a pipe organ, though. Those churches are why pipe organ pieces are they way they are: big, long and slow. She played one piece by Tchaikovsky which I really liked. It had short dramatic bursts like the orchestra hits in Rite of Spring but they were getting eaten by the space and the effect was more or less in vain. It did build up a nice sound mass throughout and was big and dramatic by the end, which worked exceedingly in the space.

I went out and wandered around for a while. I walked by a gallery and somebody explained that a band was playing with video projection. It was a drummer / saxophonist, an orgasm singer / trumpet player, a guitar player / fx box wanker and another fx box wanker, as far as I can remember. The room was pretty dark anyway. The band seemed to be following the video, but not to the point where it was a score or anything. The video consisted of repeating images, many of them interesting: a monument in the middle of water, a woman standing in the same position in all her shots, across the street from the camera person, 50 meters to the left of where she was just standing, scooting down the street, a LOT of pictures of porn. The porn flashed by really fast, but the video editor had positioned them so that all the naked women were about the same size, facing the same way and engaged in the same act. So first was a bunch of maybe single or double frame stills of naked women, then anal sex, then, well, you get the idea. All of this was mixed in with footage of candle light vigils and what looked like home movies (with a really nice camera) of military presence around Ground Zero in NYC very shortly after the towers fell. The performance felt like it was over an hour long, but I wasn’t keeping track of the time. I don’t know what the images have to do with each other. Candle light vigils and 9/11 I get, but why the porn? They do realize that three thousand people fucking died in the wreckage that makes such nice background for wanking guitar fx and orgasm sounds, right? Maybe I just missed some very obvious point that everyone else in the room got about capitalism, culture and tragedy or something.
It was during the middle of that show that I remembered that I left my gas turned on. My stove has a gas valve on the back of it that I have to turn off after I cook. It seems weird, but the landlord made such a big deal about it in the rental contract and put in all caps and underlines NO BURNING CANDLES. TURN OFF GAS AFTER COOKING or something and there are no smoke alarms anywhere, that it must actually be important. A few nights ago I was watching the movie of the week and the main character’s house blew up because she forgot to turn off the gas. So, um, should I be really paranoid or keep wandering?
I went by the Pompidou Center, but the line had hundreds of people in it. The whole area around Des Halles and St Eustache and the Pompidou was mobbed with wall to wall people. It’s nice to see Parisians taking in their own city. I mean, like San Franciscans, they avoid tourist areas unless there’s something worthwhile going on there. Out by Les Halles, there was an odd installation that included a video projector, a sort of spaceship looking thing, women growling on it and what looked live somebody using it either for emergency medical treatment, or a doctor was examining his shoe. I didn’t want to stare in case it was the former. Ok, right . . .. That and thong dancers. I decided to go home and turn of the gas and then go on to the more serious-art looking listings closer to my house. But it was still kind of early and I had tons of energy, since I had prepared for the night by drinking coffee all day and sleeping in that morning. I’ll just check my email first. Ooh, big crowds. Maybe I’ll just set up podcasting before I go back out. When I finished configuring the server, five hours later, I leaned back from my computer and heard a thunder clap and rush of rain. So I went to bed.
I remembered the horrific lines from the free event at the Pompidou and didn’t even try to go to the Louvre.

Stuff

Yuri flew in Sunday night and we hung out yesterday and walked around. We went to the poetry reading at Shakespeare and company. We went there earlier in the day to pick up an english-language free magazine that lists events and stuff. I talked to the woman in charge of the poetry series. She seemed very interested when I described my stuff. Seemed to want to book me for next monday(!). I didn’t know my class schedule, but I dropped off a CD for her last night. Hopefully, she will email me about it soon.

First day of school

Class started late because of a metro strike. (Yay Paris!) The teacher told us to all introduce ourselves. John went first. I’m paraphrasing even thought I’m using double quotes (as always). “I have a MA in composition. I play tuba. I’m really into this stuff called Text Sound Poetry . . ..” Dood, that’s my line! Yeah, so neither of us brought a tuba, but both of us brought mouthpieces just in case. He plays a Sanders piggy CC tuba. If you’ve ever seen my tuba and you’re wondering that a Sanders CC Piggy looks like, well, that’s what I play. We play the exact same kind of horn. It’s creeping me out. Mine has five valves though and his doesn’t, since the thumb trigger on mine was a non-standard after-market thing. We don’t have the same kind of mouthpiece at least.
Yeah, so I have scarily a lot in common with one guy. The rest of the guys (and I do mean all guys) seem kind of young, but I dunno. I was too busy being tripped out by John.
the rest of the day, we got a lecture on how to use UPIC. For those of you who are wondering how to use UPIC: you can’t. Forget it. Or you could just fake it with wavetables in your language of choice. OR you could buy metasynth and be able to do everything UPIC does and a lot of things that it doesn’t do all on normal hardware (unlike UPIC). Or, eventually, there will be a 3d open source version of UPIC, after they find a PhD student willing to write a 3D display engine. (I want said student to work on JJiCalc.)
The teacher spent a LOT of time explaining what FM synthesis was. I’m all nervous now. Why am I taking a year long class in electronic music if I have a damn masters degree in it? I could have gone to Germany and studied art robots. Or taken the art robot money and gone to Berlin. Not that Paris is bad. and the class schedule is . . . sparse, so I have a lot of time for writing music / goofing off. And it’s all about the lab time.
I know more than I think I know and I’m more qualified than I think I am and I’m going to get a PhD soon and then I will teach at a place like this.
Ahem. UPIC is so weird and constrained and archaic that I’m sure being forced to use it will give me a million ideas which I could then code up in Supercollider for years after I leave this place and it’s dedicated UPIC hardware behind. Alas, nobody in the class has anymore connection to the Paris music scene than I do. I must befriend the tech guy (he’s cool anyway. I met him a couple of years ago, but I’m sure he doesn’t remember. (Eventually somebody is going to connect me with the ex . . .)) and maybe some of the Artists in Residence.
Anything that forces me to write music is good. Anything that gets me playing in Paris is good. This is all good. I’m always so nervous about new things.
Tags: Paris, Celesteh

From an article in the Chicago Sun Times called “Boy, girl or transmale?”

”I think the fluidity of gender is the next big wave in terms of adolescent development,” says Caitlin Ryan, a clinical social worker at San Francisco State University who is conducting a long-term sexual orientation and gender survey of youth and their families. “Gender has become part of the defining way that youth organize themselves and rebel against adults.”

To some youth, playing with gender identity and roles is as much about fun and self-expression as anything. “There’s a kind of tongue-in-cheek aspect to it,” Ryan says, “as well as a celebration of oneself.”

Yo, I’m down with the kids. Or, I’m immature.
That’s it, I’m totally getting a motorcycle when I get home.
I don’t know whether to be annoyed or maybe gender fluidity really IS the next big thing for teens. Hopefully.
Tags: Gender, Celesteh

I am now Podcasting. To subscribe via itunes, fire up the application. Under the Advanced menu, select Subscribe to Podcast. In the box, paste in: feed://www.berkeleynoise.com/celesteh/podcast/?feed=rss2 .

Never before seen on the internet mp3s of my Toy Piano Nonette (what you haven’t written a piece for 9 toy pianos?) and my Fred Phelps piece just added. More to come. Feedback welcome.
Edit: You may notice that I’ve got a bunch of categories. Well, say you’re only interested in music that I do that uses the program Supercollider. I’ve tagged all of that music with the tag “SuperCollider,” so you could use that tag to only subscribe to those pieces: http://www.berkeleynoise.com/celesteh/podcast/?feed=rss2&category_name=SuperCollider , you could also sort by year, since that’s a tag or by any category listed on the right. fun fun fun
Tags: Podcast, Celesteh

Yesterday, Cola got on the train to Spain in the rain. It’s been cold and wet here. She will be nice and warm in Spain. Yuri shows up tomorrow and my school starts Tuesday, so I should be able to hold overwhelming loneliness at bay. Also, I should clean the damn house. Today there was a trans march, but I didn’t see the article about it in Liberation until two hours after it started. ActUp lists a starting location but not a destination or anything. Oh well. Protesting during only my third weekend here would have been something. Maybe I should join a student movement or something.

(skip to the more interesting part)
My day so far: Woke up late. Read news. Made coffee (Cola has made coffee every morning so far *sniff*. And we’re nearly out of coffee filters!), 25% of chores. Looked at Berkeley’s extensive documentation requirement for application. Wondered where else I should apply to. Wondered how on earth to get Anthony Braxton to fill out UC Berkeley’s required forms since I can’t call him and email is sometimes hit or miss. Placed a phone call over the internet (yay skype. username: celesteh1 . I’m also on AIM and Gtalk, but I can’t do VOIP on Gtalk with everyone, only some people). Got a regular phone call from my ISP. As soon as people hear me say «Bonjour» on the phone, they say, “oh, you don’t speak French, do you?” Well, a little. Anyway, they’re calling me back in English on tuesday, which is good, because I don’t know if I signed up for the thing where I can make unlimited local calls on a DSL phone for not.
The DSL hardware I’m renting, by the way, it extremely annoying. The metal contacts on the DSL filters don’t actually touch any of the metal contacts in my phone jacks. I’ve been forced to jam a bunch of used metro tickets under one side of the adaptor and tape the whole thing in place with gaffing tape (a relative of duct tape). My piece of hardware has a warm pulsing glow of the France Telecom logo, which should make Yuri feel warm and cozy at night. When I unplug it at night for her, it will forget all of the settings, because the “save to flash memory” button on the gateway webpage is apparently some sort of prank. Switching to the english version of said web page crashes Safari. I can’t get it to change any of the settings at all, except somewhat randomly. I’ve failed to change the password, the name of the network, or the wireless channel it runs on. It does, however, change settings by itself in exciting and interesting ways. TV over DSL (huh?) is turned on. Now it’s turned off? I haven’t tried changing settings over an ethernet cable yet, as I don’t have one. I suspect that in order to change settings, I need to connect to it via USB, which entails installing a bunch of device drivers written by the same people who can’t make telephone connectors and whose web interface claims to work while not working at all. I’ll probably do it eventually. I wish I had an external hard drive to boot from or something. I like how stable my laptop is and I sense I may sacrifice that. Alas!
I’m drinking loads of coffee and I slept in late, so I will have energy for Nuit Blanche. There’s a bunch of art installations going up tonight from 7PM to 7AM and a bunch of bars and restaurants are staying open for it. I will take as many pictures as I can, which may not be very many on account of the darkness and a reluctance to use my flash since it annoys people. Now I must go make dinner in advance of going out. Wish I knew somebody to go with.
And, tomorrow is the free day at the Louvre.
Tags: Paris, Celesteh