Even more letters from mom

Date: Tue, 2 Mar 1999 08:48:36 -0800 (PST)
From: Eileen Hutchins
Subject: getting a cold
Dear Celeste and Christi,
I am coming down qith a cold. I ‘s not terrible but since you have
that commute you can’t afford to be feeling under par. Let me know if
you would like to poatpone it for a day or two.
Grandma appears better than she has in a long time. and is very upset
that Dad is selling her car and house and moving her into a home. She
is ready to kill Ruby because she says Ruby needlessly exagerated her
condition and caused Dad to panic for nothing.This after calling
several times a week telling Dad to find her a place. Unfortunately
she doesn’t remember that, and now Dad and Ruby are the bad guys. sigh

Let me know whether you guys will come today. I thought, since Paul
is coming, we could go to Fontana’s. Did you get my Welcome Home
email? Be sure to let me know how your trip was. Did you fight off any
more biker nuns? Love, Mom

Ruby is a relation of my grandma’s. I’m not sure how I’m related to her. Fontanas is an Italian place that we went to every single time I saw my parents after I finally said no more Hunan Palace, which is the place we went to every single time for the three previous years.

Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1999 10:23:51 -0800 (PST)
From: Eileen Hutchins
Subject: new job
Dear Celeste ,
I’m glad you are changing jobs. If you are unhappy in a
place, raising pay as a bribe to stay on won’t make it any better.
When do you staet at Netscape? I want to hear about tonight at dinner.
You,ll find Grandma better than she’s been in long time.It’ amazing.
Please excuse errors.
I’m
typing this without my glasses.
Ilove you. See you tonight. Love youu, Mom

Netscape and the doomed-seeming dot com got in a bidding war for me cuz i’m soooo coool. yes.

Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1999 21:41:01 -0800 (PST)
From: Eileen Hutchins
Subject: thank you
Dear Christi and Celeste,
Thank you for coming tonight. It was particularly important to
Grandma.Didn’t you think she seemed better than before? Her new home
(if she likes it) will be Sunnyvale Retirement Inn, on Remington. It’s
acrosss from the Sunnyvale Rec Center, you know, with the park and
fountain. It will be very important to visit her frequently, keep
calling her, and invite her out often. so she won’t feel abandoned.
Thank you also, Christi, for salvaging my computer. I thought I had
ruined it forever.
Congratulations on your new job, celeste.
Love, Mom

and thus I began taking my grandma out for coffee at Cupertino’s Coffee Society once a week, especially since her new residence was near my new job.

Date: Fri, 5 Mar 1999 17:59:58 -0800 (PST)
From: Eileen Hutchins
Subject: book
Dear Celeste,
Many thanks for the Feminine Mystique. It will make interesting
reading.It arrived today.
I spent until about midnight last night surfing the net. Thanks,
Christi, the computer is working better than ever now. It zips along.
Now I’m a cooooooool kitty from Kansas City.
love, mom

Um, so I decideed my mom wasn’t liberated enough and sent her a feminist classic from an online bookstore. And I would like to say that my mom was online in ’99, before your mom had even heard of the internet, because my mom was cooler than yours. neener neener.

Date: Tue, 9 Mar 1999 21:37:04 -0800 (PST)
From: Eileen Hutchins
Subject: feminism
To the World’s Greatest Daughter,
Thank you for the Internet address for feminist materials. I’m
starting a folder for your incoming emails, to conserve information.
You may have noticed that I have reduced the number of emails sent. I
decided that 3 a day may develop a certain nuisance value, especially
since you were kind enough to reply to all of them. .
I have sent an email to Paul, suggesting that, since he and Chuck can
both burp the alphabet, they should have a contest. They would prepare
by drinking a carbonated drink. First to vomit is disqualified. So far
he has not responded.(strange, that)
I love you , Mom

hehehehe. chuck is my uncle: my mother’s brother. Apparently, I was still trying to liberate her. Um, and that’s enough emails for today, yes.

More letters from mom

Date: Wed, 3 Mar 1999 18:44:25 -0800 (PST)
From: Eileen Hutchins
Subject: what is this?
Dear Celeste,
What is this? I don’t have any email!
What is happening re your work? I couldn’t ask on the phone.I am
anxious to hear what you are doing. Hope everything is OK. We’re
looking forward to seeing both of you tomorrow evening. Love, Mom

I was thinking about quitting my startup dot com job to go work at Netscape

Date: Sun, 28 Feb 1999 12:08:01 -0800 (PST)
From: Eileen Hutchins
Subject: welcome home
Hi, Celeste and Christi!
It’s Sunday noon, youre’ not back yet, but I want you to have message
waiting when you get home. Acctually, I’m sure this will be one of
many you’ll
have waiting.
I hope you had a wonderful trip. Wasn’t it great to
get away for awhile? Drive carefully on the way home
and watchfor those biker nuns! You can’t be too careful! I want to
hear about your trip when you get back. Don’t forget to come Tuesday.
Please call when you arrive in Berzerkley.
PAUL HAS REGISTERED AT DE ANZA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HE’S taking 11 units of computer (2 classes) df programming. Please,
please encourage him. Now is the time for him to create his future.
I am now the new recording sacretary for the Volunteer
Committee at the Museum! Wowsah!
oops got to leave for Mass, and I’ not dressed
See you soon, love, Mom

Paul is my brother. De Anza is a junior college.

Letters from mom

Posting emails my mom sent me.

Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 19:12:36 -0800 (PST)
From: Eileen Hutchins
Subject: friendly hello
Dear Celeste and Christi,
How are you? Hope everyone is OK.
Did I tell you that Dad is in Tempe now? He got her into a place in
Sunnyvale. They are coming here on Monday so she can check the place
out.It is not at all like the one where Grandpa was. She can come and
go from this one, as long as they know when she’s leaving and
returning. Everyone seemed to be friendly and nice;they were all
nicely dressed, and most are ambulatory. I saw a couple of walkers and
one wheelchair. The only problem I could see is that there are so many
ancient ladies. They make the Ladies of Carmel look like spring
chickens. But, the place is NOT dead! There was an elderly couple
embracing in the hall. It seems they met there! Everyone calls them
The Lovebirds.
Why do museums use volunteers as docents? Because they are cheaper by
the docent.
Keep in touch. Love, Mom

My grandma lived in Tempe, Arizona, but got sick, so my dad went out to get her and found her a place to stay in Sunnyvale, CA that was assisted living…. and my mom was a docent at the San Jose Historical Museum

Date: Fri, 26 Feb 1999 06:17:28 -0800 (PST)
From: Eileen Hutchins
Subject: have a good trip
dear Celeste and Christi,
I hope you have a wonderful trip to Portland. Please call me (collect)
when you arrive. I think it will do you both a lot of good to get away
for a few days into a completely different environment. Work
situations can really get to be the pits. Celeste, I’m praying for you
to get into a job that is something you can enjoy and take a pride in,
not stressful. Work related stress is a primary source of emotional
and physical health problems. Anyway, drive carefully and be careful!
All I hear about on the news now is those three women who disappeared
on the road between Yosemite and Stockton.
Three of them! So much for safety in numbers.Don’t get friendly with
anyone on the road, even if ther’re nuns! Anyone can rent a nun’s
outfit (habits, I believe they’re called) The old advice about not
speaking to strangers is taking on new meanin , especially where women
are concerned.
Are you bringing your bowl-shaped sled in case there’s snow? Please be
sure to say a big hello to Christi’s parents.Have a great time! Love,
Mom.

My mom was funny… I miss her

Explination of how pitches are picked for avant-happy song

Why? Because it’s homework

There exists an overtone array: [ 2, 5, 3, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23]

notes can be constructed from this array as overtones:

2/2 5/4 3/2 7/4 9/8 11/8 13/8 15/8 17/16 19/16/ 21/16 23/16

or the inversions:

2/2 8/5 4/3 16/9 16/11 16/13 16/15 32/17 32/19 32/21 32/23

the three notes played are always adjacent to each other, for example:

17/16, 19/16, 21/16

Melodies are formed by taking a triad, picking one of the ratios to be a pivot, inverting it and then picking adjacent ratios. For example, if
we pick 19/16 as the pivot from the above triad, we would invert it to get 32/19. We then pick adjacent ratios. We can take the two ratios above the pivot, the two below the pivot or one on either side. 23 wraps around back to 2 in case we go off the edge of the array. So we could pick

32/19 32/21 32/23

as out next set of triads. then we would pick a pivot from that array, invert and pick adjacent ratios.

Each set of rhythmic patterns for the marimba sound goes through this process and saves the result in an array, so the marimba plays the same triads every time it plays a particular pattern.

The pivot ratio is played a bit louder than the other two. It is also sent to a sustained baseline tone. The adjacent frequencies played by the marimba and are put into another array for the counter-melody.

The counter-melody gets it’s pitches from the array created by the marimba routine. It treats this as a FILO queue. It does not play when the marimba is playing or if it’s current rhythmic pattern calls for a rest. The length of the note played is the length last used by the marimba.

Some patterns, especially in the first and third section, add more notes to the FILO queue than they leave space for the counter-melody to play them. the patterns in the middle section have a lot of space (and long durations) and the FILO queue may empty by the end of the section.

Signs of spring

[Signs of spring]So first things first, we’ve got the current status of my todo list. I’m filing an extension on taxes. My floors are clean. My two short papers are done. woot. still left:

  • Write up description of tuning + algorythm for avant happy music (due thursday)
  • Write more lab tutorials (asap)
  • Ask advisor for resume advice, figure out where to send resume, send it off (asap).
  • do paperwork for out of department course (should have done this weeks ago)
  • installation idea for first weekend of may symposium (due?)

I went to class this morning and it was lead by Jess because the teacher is still sick and might be out for most of the rest of the semester. We listened to music and discussed it. Some of us brought in stuff to play. One of the two undergrads brought in a CD by a Canadian pop artist called Peaches. It is so low-fi. Her drum beats were cheesy, as were her baselines. Her lyrics were tawdry, but it was still somehow compelling. I was ready to dismiss it when she started singing over and over again “fuck the pain away.” Oh my god. right fucking on. Seriously powerful statement, something worth pondering. Deeply angsty. It resonated a deep and powerful chord within me. So I give a thumbs up to Peaches. And I am ready to officially proclaim that angsty music is better than non angsty music almost all of the time. something trvial can be made awesome through use of angst.
Went out later today to do Deep Listening meditation. http://www.deeplistening.org/ I had a hard time getting into it because somebody was playing some bass-heavy music that my heartbeat kept matching, so I kept focussing on it instead of the whole sonic world. But then we went outside in the cold but pretty weather to do something called the Slow Walk. you walk as slowly as possible with your eyes closed while trying to listen with your feet, sicne they’re sensitive to vibration. The turf was uneven and rough. My feet felt like they were gripping the ground, even through my shoes. They listened their way along the uneven path. I felt grounded for the first time in forever. when we stopped slow walking, I tried my pagan trick of visualizing tree roots growing out of my feet and a beam of light out the top of my head (connecting to the universe or something). I’ve been trying this periodically since December. I would end up imagining all the space between myself and the ground, if I was indoors. there were many meters to traverse. And outdoors, well, the ground is really hard. There’s prolly cement buried right below the surface. but today, I tried for a moment, and it was right there. I felt like throwing my arms up over my head in joy. Seriously.
[dunkin donuts]Then Angela and I went to Dunkin Donuts. Ironically, this is something to write home about. I said earlier that I’d never been to one, but that was wrong. I went once when I was 16 to buy coffee for folks doing clinic defense at the Sunnyvale Planned Parenthood. they do exist on the left coast, but only in suburban areas.
And finally, there was a seder at my house this evening, lead by Aaron. Much food was made and consumed. Many folks came over. Every dish in the house was eomplyed. Mchu wine was consumed. All good.

Pictures

[My Humble Abode]That’s my house in Connecticut. the thing sitting in front of it is an oven. You may wonder where there is an oven sitting in front of my house. I did too. My upstairs neighbor said he thought the landlord left it there. There’s always trash in people’s yards left out like that. I asked a local woman why folks did that and she said, “because they’re renters.” but now I know it’s the owning class using our yards as temporary dumps. Eventually, it will be big trast pickup day and then and only then will the oven go away. Seriously. Anyway, I live on the first floor of that house.
[Tom]That’s Tom in a customary pose. For some reason, he shaved his head. His thesis is coming very very soon. Maybe he wanted to save the time he used to spend washing and combin his hair?
[Everclear]And lastly, you can acually buy this stuff here. I saw it while going out to get Manischewitz.

Confess

Celeste Hutchins
Mystic Voices
Foucault, Sexuality and Solitude
Foucault makes the point the identity is formed through repression. The self-examination of thoughts required for Christians to confess their sexual sins, including impure thoughts, lead people to develop strong senses of self and sexuality. During her trial, Joan of Arc frequently asked that the bishop hear her confession. However, peasants during her time did not confess frequently. It would have been normal for her to take communion only once or twice a year, thus necessitating few confessions.
Although the correct thing for her to do when she first had visions would be to seek the advice of her confessor, she did not. She heard mass with unusual frequency for a person of her class and took communion frequently enough that it was discussed at her trial. It’s difficult to guess how often she went to confession before she decided to “go into France.” We know she learned religion solely from her mother, so it may be unlikely that she confessed often.
Nevertheless, Joan of Arc seems to have a complicated gender identity, where she takes on male traits, while retaining female traits. Gender and sexuality are clearly linked. While we can see the technologies of the self that she uses to assume her chosen role, but how she got there remains mysterious. Perhaps her dialog with her visions was a recreation of her dialog with her confessor. When asked about jumping from the tower while in prison, she reports that she was doing penance for the sin of jumping, a penance assigned by her voices. Therefore, she does seem to have a confessional dialog with them, which may have facilitated her forming of gender identity.

Binary Oppositions

Celeste Hutchins
Mystic Voices
Cixous, Sorties
Cixous starts with binary oppositions, such as “Sun/Moon” to “Father/Mother.” She makes the point that binary oppositions are heirarchical and patriarchial. One side of an opposition is always ranked better than the other and that side is identified as male. The most tangible duality that humans see everyday is male/female, but for some this is not a binary opposition. Transgendered people may switch sides or may reject the idea of an opposition altogether. Their actions are met with hostility and sometimes violence. Transgendered people now are more likely to be victims of a hate crime than any other group.
When Joan of Arc was young, she started to have visions, which told her to dress as a man and take up arms. Freud wrote that, “One may observe that it is just those girls who in the years before puberty showed a boyish character and inclinations who tend to become hysterical at puberty.” In class, Professor Zieman remarked that at puberty, Joan of Arc became a boy. In this reading, Joan crossed sides of the binary opposition from female to male, and from weakness to strength.
I would like to argue that she did not cross the opposition, but rather straddled it. While she did start to dress as a man and take on a male role, she made no effort to hide her identity as a woman. She did not change her name. In fact, she chose a title for herself that was explictly female and feminine. “Pucelle” is a word like “maiden.” Furthermore, during her trial, she bragged that she excelled at all the womanly arts. One of the charges brought against her had to do with her telling a comrade that she would have three sons, one of whom would go on to become Pope. She did not transition fully to male, but held on to, and was proud of, her female-gendered activities and traits.

East coast style, west coast girl

[Frozen Puddle]Look at this picture of a puddle. what do you notice? Nasty cigarette butts. Good start. Lots and lots of folks smoke here. what else? It’s frozen! That’s ice on top of it! I took this picture on my way home right now to illustrate that it’s still damn cold here. And the wind is blowing like crazy. brrrrr. this post is image heavy for the benefit of any left coast folks who wonder what my world looks like.
[Ron]So Ron (see photo) noticed that I haven’t done any TA work since the start of the semester. This is because he didn’t tell me to do anything and I didn’t think to ask for a long time cuz I was distracted and then when I did think to ask, I was scared of what might happen. I must now photo document the procedures for using the [EMS]electronic music studio (see photo) and how to use Digital Performer and write a suite of small SuperCollider applications useful for testing the setup. And I need to be able to explain to the class the algorythms for my tuning pieces with handouts on thursday. A bit of work. At least, on my pre-existing to-do list, I called the tax guy and arranged to file for an extension.
[CFA]this next picture is the CFA = the Center for Fine Arts, where I spend all my time. this view is from the south and is most of the music buildings. The whole thing is in this cement block style architecture. some folks love it. some folks hate it. I kind of think it’s nifty, but the insides of classroom are a little weird, especially acoustics wise.
[Charlie and Angela]Lastly, here we have Charlie and Angela. Charlie is a composition MA and a mighty fine viola player. Angela is an ethnomusicologist MA and a mighty fine clarinet player. They’re good folks.

7 concerts in 6 days

[Telltale Signs of Experimental Music]was my week last week. tonight, there’s traditional Irish music, but i’m going to skip, since it’s not really my thing and while I saw a lot of great music, I got little work done. Yesterday, from whence the picture comes, was Anne Wellmer’s going away concert. She goes back to Europe today. It was 44 minutes of music, starting at 4:00 on 04/04/04. Lots of fourishness. Nice concert. I showed up late, so I don’t know why the fava beans are on the piano, but I did see some of them get blown off with a battery fan.

I don’t really have anything to say, I just wanted to document the kind of abuse that the piano in the student center is forced to endure. Last Tuesday, it had an encounter with wasabi peas instead of fava beans. And blocks stacked in it.
There was a little party after the concert to say goodbye to Anne W. and to wish Anne Rhodes a happy birthday. The concert goers were made up of the usual suspects. some of the people that come to every concert are not in the music department. We get undergrads from all disciplies and some science grad students. As things were winding down, some of these folks sat at the piano and in the style of Rythm and Blues, started a group piano piece. But these are fans of experimental music, so they were playing something 12 tone. Someone remarked, “I can’t tell if that’s a real piece or not.”

To do

  • Call tax guy
  • Clean floors beofre seder tommorrow
  • Two one page papers
  • Do reading for class. all of it. really.
  • arg, everything that was on the todo list before is still on it!
  • having a great time, wish you were here!