Author: Charles Céleste Hutchins

Supercolliding since 2003

Working On

I sent a copy of Airwaves to hAmsterdam for a prize competition thingee. I don’t think they’ll pick me. the lady at the post office was encouraging though. I spent an hour at the post office. There was a long line. And then I found I had to fill out customs forms explaining what I was mailing off to the Netherlands.
And I recorded some sounds for Tennis Roberts. but it’s also going to be it’s own piece of music called Grinding Pink, which is a rough title and very rough draft of audio.
Ellen Fullman, famous composer called the house this morning. It’s exciting getting calls from important composers. Just as an aside, my voice just sounds funny in the morning. If I’m asleep, I don’t answer the phone. I never answer the phone unless I want to talk to folks. It’s all the air pollution and my chain smoking that tweaks my voice.

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Don’t Worry, It’s Art.

So we showed up early in the castro and assembled our water jug and bowling ball wind chime and T & L were untangling their climbing gear in preperation for scaling the traffic light, when it started to rain heavily. So we started assembling another wind chime instead. It has some pipes, bike parts, a mailbox, a christmas tree stand, an empty gas can, a piece of shelving. lots of metal. It was really pouring, so we crossed through the undercrossing, to hang it from the railing of the Muni station at Harvey Milk Plaza. We had hoisted it down and were about to clip it into place when the station agent appeared with a cop who told us “no.”
We must have been called in as a homeland security threat, because there were suddenly about ten cop cars cruising the castro (where no cops had been earlier) and a news van kept driving around looking at the Muni station also. All the cops slowed down to look at us as we packed it back in. So we went to brunch. It was still early. We decided to abandon the lightpole idea, as it would have the cops back out again in a second. So we decided to wait until other musicians arrived and set up then, to dilute attention and because we realized that we probably wouldn’t be able to just leave the windchimes up all day. We could put them up during the Music Circus and take them down when the cops told us to again. Good plan.
So noon, the start time, came and went with no sign of anyone connected to the festival. Around 12:30, the tuba player from the BLO showed up and said his group was starting at 1:00. Some people from our mass email started to arrive, but still no other musicians. We decided that one other group was good enough and went to grab the water bottle and bowling ball chime, because it looks innocuos and was 100% ready to go. It was up within 5 minutes. Pictures were taken. Jesse, the tuba player and his friends played saint candles for a while and then packed it in. So we did too.
We hung one of our windchimes for about 1 – 1.5 hours with no incident and very little notice by anyone. We debated hanging the mailbox and gasoline can one again (was it the gasoline can that started the controversy with the muni station agent and the police?), but we were tired. None of the festival organizers appeared. No other musicians arrived. It was very strange.
I felt like our installation needed a label, so people would know what it was and then engage it somehow. But also felt like they needed to be reassured, so that ten cop cars and a news van wouldn’t appear. So we need two signs. One will say “Windchimes” and have an arrow pointing at them. And the other will say, “Don’t Worry. It’s Art.”

Band Practice

Rehersal with the flute band went for four hours today. 4.25 hours, actually. That’s a long time to be pressing a scab to a string. And I had an important realization: I like Tammy’s bass a lot more than I like my bass. I thought it was 3/4 size, but it’s actually the same, but the neck is narrower, so it feels smaller and is easier to play. But maybe it is smaller than a fretless would normally be. Anyway, it has a great sound and is very comfortable. My bass is theoretically considered to be better than hers. Maybe she’ll trade. OTOH, my grandma gave me my bass as a graduation present, from highschool. Everything becomes sentimental when it’s a gift from a dead person. I have a copy of the book Lonesome Dove, which I have zero desire to read, but don’t want to get rid of because my mom lent it to me. Anyway, maybe I could trade something else to Tammy for her bass, like a semi-functional church organ. Or we could just trade while I’m at school with an option to trade back later? Perhaps I should discuss this with her instead of rambling on about it in my blog.
My other band, Tennis Roberts may or may not have a gig tomorrow night, but I have no idea because Mitch has not called or emailed. I guess I’ll find out tomorrow morning when we’re hanging installations in the castro for the IDEA Ensemble as a part of the thingamajigs festival. It’s a very musical weekend. Anyway, if it turns out that TR will be playing tomorrow night, I’ll be playing Tammy’s bass! Isn’t that exciting? It would be nice if I knew, cuz we could make an email list and tell folks, and maybe somebody could make little quarter-size flyers about the band with contact info, so that if anybody wanted to book us or something, they could do that. It’s the sort of thing you want to know ahead of time. *cough*cough*

Bass is the Place

I cut off the tip of one my fingers on my left hand while making dinner last night. It’s not that terrible, but it sure smarted. My theory is that as long as I don’t play a fretless bass, it won’t affect my sound one bit. Because only fretless basses have any sort of real tone anyway.

Getting Rid of Books

I have a lot of books. Christi’s dad built us a great bookshelf to hold all of our books, but we filled it up and had to get several Billy bookcases from Ikea. This is partly because we live down the street from an almost-free bookseller. Christi used to walk past the bookseller every day after work and come home with an armload of books. After she quit working for Nolo, the influx of books slowed, but did not stop. Christi’s parents live in Portland, and every time we isit, we go to Powells Books (http://www.powells.com), the world’s largest bookstore and buy even more books. We could open a library of books on orchestration and leftist political tracts. Whenever we go to Powells, Christi makes a bee-line for the music section and I head over to the Chomsky shelf. We rendezvous later in science fiction. But we don’t have as many sci-fi books as you might expect. Probably because our arms are already full of other books.
Anyway. I really like books, although I do not read nearly as often as I used to. I even went through a period of no reading at all. The boom years were really a culturally dark time. I read again now, but not nearly as quickly as I get new books. Fortunately, Chrsti reads extremely quickly and has read almost everything in the house, which now has more books than my grade school’s library, although less science fiction.
Since I will shortly be moving a long distance away, I’m making a stack of books to be sold. It is a very small stack so far. I look at a book and I either have read it through, have started it, was assigned it for school, but never read it, or just never read it. So either I started or finished it and I liked it, or I feel guilty for not finishing it or not reading it and want to keep it until I do finish it. There are very few books that I don’t like. Really. So the stack of books to sell includes science fictions that are too auful to even be campy (although I kind of liked hem anyway, in a campy sort of way) and right-wing political tracts. All of the rest of our books are either nice, have the potential of being nice, once I get around to reading them or must belong to Christi. I know I didn’t buy Monica’s Story, so it must be hers.

Band Practice

I practiced with the rock flautist today. I think at the end, I will be a better bass player. I feel like it is my responcibility, since we’re playing at the flute convention, to play up the unconventional nature of the project as much as possible, so as not to dissappoint the flautists. But i’m not sure I want to arrive at a new school with a blue mohawk. it would certainly be an echo of my undergraduate years. . .. when I left for Mills with purple hair, Mitch’s mom said, “Well, one thing’s for certain. Everyone will know who you are.” True prediction. But it’s not what I would like to be known for.
the flautist:http://www.silverwheel.com/