Author: Charles Céleste Hutchins

This is highly overdue, alas.

So, officially, my reason for my last visit home was to play in this concert. Alas, a travel budget was illusory, so it was more like a working holiday. I spend a lot of time practicing with Polly and pulling the piece together. It’s really hard to practice for something when you don’t really know what’s going to happen.

I arrived in California with working hardware, a vague idea of some structure, a working visualizer and one drone sound. While there, Polly and I hashed out a slightly less vague structure and got the ‘working’ hardware to actually function. I added another texture/drone and recorded some samples. We also talked about what we thought might happen. Polly envisioned something intense and serious.

We showed up to the venue and did a sound check, which took forever because of the wonkiness of my hardware setup. Also, processing.org, the video language that i used, plays everything in a window with a top window bar. I hadn’t thought to research how to get rid of the top bar, so the ‘solution’ was to point the projector such that the top bar mssed the screen and went up towards the rafters. This was suboptimal. I also had to do some code changes to make the window bigger, which, fortunately, didn’t cause side fx. (I wonder if i can embrace a top bar as part of my lo-fi asthetic, or if that’s too lazy.)

There was a pre-concert talk, which had more attendees than i expected. It turns out that many or most of them were working at the festival, but there were as many folks present for the talk as there were for my last edgetone gig, so i was a trifle intimidated.

The theme for the evening was ‘sonic light,’ which meant anything with a video projection. Technically, that fit us, but my projection was just, literally, a moving graph of the data. I think our piece needs the graph or else the tie to biometric data is just way too unclear, but it’s not like great art or anything. One of the other groups had a real-time changing holographic projection. The other had a really high-seeming hippie filmmaker who was so brilliant that he could barely form a coherent sentence. (Note: not snark.) I felt outclassed. Thank god we were opening.

Our video was more of an aside, an adjunct. Worse, only the third one i’d ever let into the wild. I’m a beginner. I kind of expect all my videos to be asides. We live in a really visually dominant culture, on the one hand, so if there’s a video, it tends to dominate. But some folks think that laptop music has too little of a performance aspect. So the challenge is to come up with a video that functions as a perofrmance aspect. The visuals must not dominate, but just augment the piece. That’s my aim, but these guys were much more visually oriented.

Polly explained, during the q&a, that she had this idea because she felt separated from the audience when she improvised and performed. There was always some artifice between her and them. She hoped that by being wired to a truth-decting device and questioned that they could really get at her inner self. Pretence and division would be stripped away.

This was really interesting. I had never thought to ask why Polly had the idea for the piece. Also, it’s an interesting idea. I mean, sometimes what’s interesting about a piece is the peek into the mind and heart of the creator. Certainly, as a creator, i expose myself in certain ways. As a listener, do i listen for the art – the artifice, notes, spaces, sounds? Or do i listen to what i must presume to be the heart of the creator? Or some combination? Also interesting is how one-way this exposure would be. Actually, there’s quite a lot there that’s intersting, but moving along .  . ..

Our audience ‘ringer’ was justifiably miffed by being caught in a trans-continental miscommunication (one of many, alas. Colaborating via email is challenging.) and so did not show up. I hastily recruited my girlfriend, who is shy and was displeased to be asked to be the first to speak.

We came on stage and i got everything started and began reading the pre-arranged ‘control questions.’ “Is your name Polly?” “Are you on a stage?” Etc. After she answered in the affirmative, i pressed the ‘true’ button. Then, still as control questions, “Have you ever told a lie?” Polly said no. I pressed the ‘lie’ button and the word ‘lie’ flashed on the projection. The audience burst into laughter. So much for revealing her inner soul.

Casual listeners didn’t know what to ask, being somewhat limitted by the yes/no format. So most participants already knew Polly. They were all game too, which is nice because if they’d left us questionless, we would have floundered. People sort of struggled to come up with questions. Most didn’t stick in my mind. One person asked Polly if she had any intention of ever returning some equipment that she’d borrowed. She said yes. I hit the lie button. Lughter ensued. A co-worker asked if she had been the one to allow a soda can to explode in the break room freezer. She said no. I hit the lie button. Matt Davignon asked if I was just hitting true or lie buttons on a whim. Towards the end, in a dramatic moment, Pamela Z asked if Polly wanted a cracker. Despite owning a pet parrot, Polly is sensitive to this taunt from her youth. Her heart rate sped up, her palm became sweaty, her temperature rose. I don’t know if anybody noticed, but it was the least-faked moment of the evening.

Then, at the end, Polly rose and began asking questions of the audience. She asked them en-masse and so they shouted back their answers. “Should I quit my day job?” got mixed replies. This section made me uncomfortable. There’s a sadistic streak to american humor, which has always been present, but has risen greatly in prominence since i’ve bewen gone as the dark and mean mood of the ruling party penetrates even san francisco. I couldn’t tell how friendly things were. When Polly ad-libbed “Are you fantisizing about Les right now?” I ended the piece. Earlier than I was supposed to.

Peolpe talking about the piece later were generally positive. Ellen Fullman said it was ‘weird.’ Was it music? Was it theatre? (Was it comedy?) It is weird. I still really don’t know what to think about. I put the musical bit kind of in the background, to enable the question and answer to flow as smoothly as possible. I haven’t heard a recording yet, but i suspect that’s it’s not a piece friendly to that medium. Was it carried by the novelty? Would anybody ever want to see it twice? If you allowed more than yes/no questions, could it work with strangers? Would they be interested? Was it more a sort of elaborate party game?

As a final thought: lately, i’ve had the problem of people asking me too many questions. Alas, this is a side effect of transitioning. I’ve been trying to discourage folks from asking me stuff. So its weird putting my friend in a situation that i would not consent to occupy. I mean, except for PZ, nobody pushed any boundaries and she had me moderating and it was all very polite, but I wouldn’t do it. How many people would?

As i type, i’m riding the tube towards xena’s kennel to retrieve her. I’m sure she will be much relieved at her release.

I don’t recall what i last blogged in california and i won’t have internet until friday. The big news is that i’m due to become an uncle next december! I went to visit my brother and his wife on sunday. It’s kind of stupid to fly to oregon just for dinner, but, in this case, well worth it. Elizabeh is looking well, even if plagued with morning sickness to an exceptional degree.

I also saw my dad. He brings up my ttansition fairly often when we talk, which i guess is a good sign. He refers to it as ‘this thing you’re doing.’ I’m not sure how much i want to talk about it with my family, but i was glad to learn my dad has been talking with the mother of an mtf.

I love my family, but, i dunno, i feel pretty uncomfortable around them lately. This is really unfair of me. I should give them a chance. Things didn’t go so well with them when i first came out as queer, but that was 18 years ago. We’ve all changed a lot in the meantime. My brother and i were kids then, but not now and that’s an important difference. Also, membership has changed through death and marriage (and soon via birth).

I never get to see everybody when i come home, alas. It’s always too short. Therefore, i would like to encourage you all to register to vote and then cast a ballot for Obama. If McCain gets elected, all my trips back will be short stays. But don’t do it for me. Do it because attacking iran is a disasterous idea.

The day after my gig, I went to the South Bay to meet some people, including my tax accountant.  I took the train down from Berkeley to San Jose, where it depositted me next to the Sharks Arena at Diridon Station.  I biked several miles to my friends house in Los Gatos, on the far side of Lake Vasona.

She told me to take the Los Gatos Creek Trail, a bike route that runs next to the creek, through several natural areas and some large parks.  There arent that many dedicated bike trails in the states. This one was exceptionally nice, as it rolled along next to the sleepy creek.

I passed the native and invasive plants whose names I learned at childhood summer camps, but which I no longer remember.  I played along a similar creek when I was 11, trying to catch minnows and chewing on fennel.  As I biked and looked at the lazy water, I smelled the fennel plants, baking in the sun and I was transported back then.

Ive seen lots of greenery in the world, but that smell, so specific to this one place, made me feel so happy.  And then I passed a space where a skunk had been startled within the last day and then, in the park, tanbark baking in the sunlight.

Tan bark is the shredded bark of redwood trees, used as mulch.  Its distinctive.  As for skunks, they dont smell the same here as they do in other places. The reason that some marijuana is called skunk is because it smells like the skunks that we get here.  The smell fades quickly in direct sunlight.  So if your dog tries chasin one, you get an overwhelming weed odor that goes away within a couple of days.  (In connecticut, it smells like that plus burning tires filled with boiling vomit and lasts for months.)

I met my friend – actually the girlfriend that I dated in highschool and we talked and picked fresh peaches and tomatoes from her garden.  Later in the evening, I went to another friends house and had food cooked from garden fruits and vegetables. Everyone there was old California: families from Silicon Valley when it was still known as Santa Clara Valley and from when we grew fruit on the richest farmland in the world. We talked about what was in season, what was growing well this year and splitting cots. (Cutting apricots in half and removing the seed in preparation to dry them.)

Today, I went to the Grand Lake Farmers Market in Oakland and got fresh local zuccini, heirloom tomatoes, peaches, anaheim peppers, all this fabulous fresh produce.

I could live here.  I could live in Berkeley and plant fruit trees in the yards of friends and grow tomatoes outside my backdoor and ride the train to some technichal job and bike everywhere and take my dog to the park at the marina and have warm, sunny days 300 days a year.

When the Spanish arrived, the came to the San Francisco Bay and it was too shallow to sail their ships into, so they went down the coast to the Baja tip and did not sail all the way up.  So they thought they had found an island.  They gave this new island a name from a work of fiction. There was a popular book about an island paradise.  So they named my state for the fictional island in the book.  Where everything is beatuiful and grows and lovers can pick low haning fruit from trees and swim in the ocean and ride their bikes amidst baking fennel and semi-friendly skunks.

I could stay in this land of mythically good weather and food with the people Ive known my whole life (and some who knew my mother and grandmother) and live only a few miles from where one of my great grandfathers grew cherries and another practiced dentistry.  Or, I could go back to England, the country which the cherry-growing great grandfather fled.

I had this idea of an ancestral homeland, but it was romantic and uninformed.  I come from California, from the farming and land, from the chip fabrication plants, (alas) from the software industry, from Castro Street and the White Night Riots, from the Free Speech Movement.  All of this – the Black Panthers, the growing Trans movement in San Francisco, the constant social tumult and change spanning at least 150 years – this is home.

But Ill go back to England in a few days and stay there to finish my degree.  Maybe my home will decide to catch up with the 20th century and fix some of its political problems.  The other day, I saw a weeping woman begging for spare change and it shocked me. She so clearly needed help and there would be none forthcoming.  All the fine weather in the world is no substitute for food, shelter and healthcare.  How far are any of us here from weeping on the street?  A few paychecks?  A lost job?  A bout of depression and no help to vanquish it?  How can some place so idyllic still be so fucked up?

The things is, that political will and work from the people can fix the problems of unrestrained capitalism.  All the protest in the world cant make perfect weather or rich farmland.  So I hold out hope.  I already see positive changes in the space of the last year.  One day, Ill come home again.

I’m reading Moby Dick. I’ve been meaning to for years, of course. I had downloaded it as an e-book. And then i purchased a print copy in an airport. But i had never started reading it until poor planning and a long wait caused me to turn to the ereader on my umpc. All i had in it was Moby Dick, so i finally started it.

I’m not far in now, only like 170 pages. This book is so long, Captain Ahab hasn’t even made an appearance yet (I’m assuming he’s not a Gudot). The introductary chapters are amazingly funny. They’re also exceedingly queer. Ishmael forms a fast and deep friendship with a bed mate. Indications strongly suggest that they’re lovers.

So, despite being barely at the start, i’m considering some projects around this book. Maybe a blog feature: Moby Dick Monday. Maybe a theatrical / musical piece. The book would seem to lend itself to opera. But the humor + the queer makes me want to camp it up. I have an ensemble in mind which would  be too perfect if it could happen: The Nuclear Whales Saxaphone Orchestra.  One of my high school music teachers plays in this group. They can do camp, for sure. I have an image of them on the stage playing some of the dramatic parts as well as their saxes. Their contrabass sax would, of course, play the whale.

In adittion to the ensemble, of course, i would need a librettist.  The ideal candidate would have a campy, queer sensibility and a familiarity with musical concerns. He or she would have experience either writing librettos or, at least, genre fiction. I would attempt to enlist sophie, the genre fiction writing, queer studies, conservatory drop-out, shares my sense of humor buddy, but i think she’s probably busy.

I anticipate a  few challenges for the librettist in that this can’t be a cut and paste job at all. From the first chapter, “Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off–then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.” Ok, that’s really fantastic writing. The imagry is evocative, memorable and wry. I’ve had days where i just hoped somebody in the street would hassle me, so i could attack them. Ishmael wants to go a step further and be the agent that starts the fight. This is a potrait of doom, but it does lend itself to camp with the Harry and Maud-esque joining of funeral processions and pausing in front of coffin stores. However, for all its poetry, it is not concise. The whole book is full of witty, wry, long winded passages. This is the sort of thing that librettists are for, though. I mean, obviously you can’t set every word or you’d have a cycle that made The Ring look humble and Einstein on the Beach seem short of text.

Librettists feel free to contact me.

I will be playing a live gig with polly moller on kfjc. But i can’t remember what date, even though she’s just told me, because i am drunk on a friday night. So hopefully polly will leave a comment and you will know on what day to turn your radio to 89.7 fm or point a browser at kfjc.org.

Oh my goodness, i listened to kfjc for hours everyday during my teen years. I remember staying up all hours of the night to listen to them play noise music. I got my first bikini kill album at their record swap. I remember listening one afternoon when i was 14 or 15 and they played “Lecture on nothing” on the radio. It was like nothing i’d ever heard before. Like being struck by lightening. I remember the first time i heard nirvana when they played “Smells like teen spirit.” I remember going to see the mermen play live on the air.

This radio station defined me musically during my formative years. What i like now is from what i heard then. I can’t believe i’m going to be improving live on this station. It’s like unbelievable. Man, i really love you guys.