Les said, the better II

I got some audio of Ann Coulter from MediaMatters.org and I was struck by how everybody kept talking on top of each other so you can’t even tell what’s going on. You get bombarded with bombasticness and somehow, at the end, feel like information has been communicated, but none has. It’s fake news. It’s a media machine trying to pass itself off as the news story. “Hey, look at me!” the media says. So I thought, what if this got layered more and more of the same stuff on top? And not having much more ranting handy as I don’t have cable, I just layered the same clip. And I think it sounds like a machine after several layers. How Ironic! What do you think?

http://www.xkey.com/~celesteh/music/wesleyan/media-machine.mp3

That is a picture of Cola aka Nicole, whose apartment I’ve frequently been lurking in. Cola is nifty. I know her from my undergrad days. She’s a geek. Was a history major and a CS minor, now works at the seond largest toy company in the US programming toys and also takes nifty pictures. She is also my new girlfriend. Say hi.

anon commenting should be working now…

Yes, my blog looks different. I wanted to take advantage of new blogger features and unfortunately, the easiest way to do that was to pick a new look. My old look was also designed by blogger, but, i dunno, this one feels so corporate to me. i tweaked the colors, but it’s still dull. oh well. the content is what matters, right?

Jesse wrote a really good comment to my last post and I’m going to post it here cuz it’s very good

1. install guerilla public sound art pieces that undermine corporate branding of public spaces, drive folks away from malls the day after thanksgiving, or dovetail with a local activist campaign’s goals.
2. arrange to show interactive sound artworks in middle schools and highschools that engage with political themes and are both rewarding to and demanding of particpants.
3. maybe not supercollider so much as protools, but create documentary radio artworks, audio tours, and sound installations on political issues.
4. record rallies, teach-ins, other political events, and create online sound archives. use the sound material for sound collages and interactive audio artworks at future political events.
5. use experimental music concerts, sound installations, cds, etc., esp. when related to a political event, as fundraising opportunities, or as chances to encourage attendees to participate in upcoming actions. at the very least, set up laptops so folks can sign online petitions, send e-faxes, or whatever.

these are all concrete political actions. less explicitly political stuff, through encouraging critical thinking, introspection, and empathy, might also be an important part of a big social change strategy, but that’s much sketchier… that’s what my interview and survey research project is about.

some of this stuff is difficult because of equipment or money issues. also, experimental music, b/c of its high cultural capital, and demographic, academic, and elitist associations, has some disadvantages as far as being a tool for social change, but it also has unique advantages: it’s technological focus, it’s critique of dichotomies, it’s embrace of radical contexts for sound, it’s ability to be something new to people.

Leftism

I see all these bumper stickers that say “Peace Through Music.” Ok. Sounds good. Sign me up. How does this work exactly? Periodically, Anthony Braxton will try to fire us up to go create change “not just in happy theory land” but also on the physical plane. Change throught music. Peace through music. All horribly short on specifics. Could someone tell me how I can use supercollider to end capitalism and facism and bring about the worker’s state? Seriously, now. I think it would be a good idea.

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near misses

bass book buying

Yah, so I went biking up Shattuck to go buy a book for my bass lessons. Totally for got where Bancroft was and rode way too far before turning back. Got to sheet music shop and went to lock the loverly borrowed bike. The lock was being stubborn, so I gave the key one hard jerk and got the lock to engage and then saw that I had badly bent the key and it was torn. Alas! So I went into the music shop and asked the guy behind the counter where I could get the key dubplicated. He gave me advice and told me that he spent years playign the tuba and had recently decided to take up playing upright bass. me too! He has a quartet called the “Tuba Dudes” and they’re looking for another bass tuba player, so I gave him my email adress. Then I walked to hardware store to get my key copied, but they were closed. All the hadrware stores were closing. It was late. I was miles from home. The bike lock is not good enough to leave a bike out overnight in berkeley. bah. so I bought a lot of bike grease and then covered the lock with it. It came open at the same moment that the key snapped in two. Seriously. And then today I noticed that I bought book two of the bass method instead of book one. bah.

computers

A shot glass full of lemoncello landed directly on top of Cola’s laptop. I blinked at it for a while and told it to run software shut down. then my brain rebooted and she pulled out the battery and unplugged it. We shook it out and pulled off the keyboard and virtually no booze got inside the case. I called my amused little brother who told me to wash the gooey parts (or maybe the GUI parts?) with distilled water and let it dry for several days and then reassemble it and it will be fine.
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Changes

Yes, a so a few days ago, I mentioned how my friends from my undergrad days, who I hadn’t seen much in the last few years, had changed. Everyone wants to know how they, in particular changed. Well, lemme tell you. Everyone is, understandably, more mature, which is good given that years have passed. People’s positive points have all become more evident. Several folks’ annoying habits (I am not going to provide any particulars here about anyone) have receeded or disappeared entirely. There is less smack talking. Yah, I dunno. Everyone seems to have gone and had some life experience and acquired some additional thoughtfulness and charecter. I mean, these were always good folks, right, but now they’re good folks a few years older. so yes, I don’t want to relive my undergrad days, no way, but it’s nice to have friends from then.

I am being very lazy. I’ve been back a week and I haven’t done anything except finish and turn in my paper, get my bass (and exchange the french bow for a german one) and have a lesson. all the rest of the stuff on my todo list is festering. bah, somebody hand me stuff on a silver platter. how about a rehersal space for Tennis Roberts? Nobody in the band has a garage and my practice space has been taken over by a long string instrument. ….. must… rouse… self…..
bah. need some clothes. i haven’t bought summer clothes since 2000 or earlier. need to fix bike flat. need to buy bass method book. tomorrow is bike to work day.
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zzzz… huh?

hm, I seem ot have been asleep for the lst two hours and thus not done any of my errands. bah. oh well. Yesterday, I rented a bass from Best music. Today I had my first bass lesson. I need to swap my french-type bow for a german type bow, but looks like that won’t happen until tommorrow. bah, I have no work ethic, I just want to nap. At some point, I will have recovered my sleep deficit from last semester and be running a sleep surplus. that will be weird.

Yesterday, I also went to the memorial service of Margret Lyon. She is the former head of the Mills Music department and was the person who brought the San Francisco Tape Music Center to Mills as the Center for Contemporary Music. She was personally a musicologist who wrote her PhD dissertation on a Renissance English composer, but she recognized that New Music would be the next big thng and turned Mills into a center for it. She’s made a huge difference for music at Mills and by extension music in the Bay Area and music in general. One of the Kronos Quartet violinists got up and told a story about how Lyon saved the quartet from doom. They were in residence at Mills for a while. She invited Terry Reiley to teach at Mills and said fine when he said he wanted to bring Pandit Pran Nath, so shared Terry Reiley. Both Kronos and Reiley played some tunes.
The memorial service was not well publicized as the family wanted to make sure that random people didn’t show up. I would have felt like a random person, except a Mills faculty member told me about it and because I’m a Mills alum and stuff. I directly benefitted from the wisdom of Margret Lyon. So I felt half-random. Surprisingly, college President Jan Holmgren did not show up, even though the entire music department faculty was there. During her graduation speech, she mentioned deceased proferssor emeriti and said stuff about mourning their loss. I don’t want to speculate on why she wasn’t there, but given that the drama department was just killed, it does make me a bit nervous. Picture of a tiny drama-protest from gaduation:

I must now go get Cola from work. yay.