Charles Céleste Hutchins – Page 61 – Les said, the better II

Drunk Blogging

Whee, I’ve reached my magic limit of three units of alcohol, but I have not groped any women. I have achieved this by mostly avoiding them. I am pissed though, sicne I hadn’t had dinner and a packet of crisps didn’t do much to sober me up.

Things I love: riding a giant dutch bike through the British midlands in the middle fo the night. I rode home along the old industrial canal. IT’s bleak. Nex tto the train lines. Smokestacks along side. Victorian bricks. They’ve tried to make it sort of recreational by carving out a narrow path, but it’s still got a bleak quality. There’s no lights along it. When I went out to the CBSO center for the concert, I had only my little headlight to show me the way. Drunk, on the way back, I had the 3/4s moon.
Apparently, a student fell into the canal within recent memory. On his bike. I found this news to be something of a relief. The path is narrow and a bit treacherous in parts and the wind blows and I worry about falling into the canal. But more, I worry about the shame of falling into the canal. It’s much better to know I wouldn’t be the first.
A nice thing about Brits is that when you’re drunk, you’re drunk. They don’t seem to imagine that your sober behavior and your drunk behavior are overly correlated. As in, you can be stupid and they’ll say, “oh, he’s a stupid drunk” vs America, where they seem to say, “oh he’s a stupid person.”
The concert: I went to see the Birmingham University New Music Ensemble play at CBSO, which is in central Brum. The ensemble seems to have been misnamed. It shoudl ahve been called the Birmingham Bombastic Post War Ensemble. One one of the compoers played is still alive and he’s in his mid 70’s. The rest are dead. And many of the players were from the conservatory and not from the university.
I was feeling very charitable about the whole thing. University students aren’t conservatory students. They also have to take language classes, maths, general ed, etc. So you can’t expect them to play overly complicated bombastic pieces on the same level as professionals or conservatory students. . . but some fo the groupings were more than 50% conservatory. So, um. Everything ended very strongly. Everything started weakly. They played a Varese piece twice. At the start of the first half and the start of the second half. I was afriad to shout “encore” or they might play it a third time. I look forward to a concert of nothing but that piece over and over again.
It’s a nice piece. They were a lot more confident the second time and it wa much improved. The siren could have been louder. But, where the first time was overly nervous, the second time was a little too relaxed or sloppy or something. Some of the players weren’t trying as hard the second time. I want people to have fun when they play, I mean it is called “playing”, but being serious is also good.
Anyway, it was very student-y, but a good ude of my time. A big otivator for going was to figure out what I could write for the kids and expect them to be able to play without fucking up too much. If they can convisincingly muddle through Varese, then I can throw a lot at them and expect them to get it right. So this was encouraging in that respect.
Another motivator is the post-concert socializing. I like Brum more when I get out more. But my poor liver. Tomorrow is compass forum (our weird name for colloquium), which involves a pint afterwards. Thursday is SBLUG, the Linux group, which involves a pint.
Then comes easter weekend, which is a 4 day weekend and a real holiday here. Which makes me a little sad, because easter was my mom’s favorite holiday.
Monday, there’s a big anti-war protest and some nuke thing, which I’ll be going to. N o nukes! I love demonstrations. Tuesday, I finally got a doctor’s appointment, so hopefully, I can get more T without having to miss a shot, although my plan to do the next shot early isn;t going to happen. I’ll just be on low T levels for this cycle. It’s fucking weird getting a major hormone this way. Like, wouldn;’t it be great if I had some sort of self-regulating system that produced it in high enough levels? Balls. I wish I had balls. I never thought I would wish such a thing.
And speaking of my odd desire to be sporting testicles, a women’s glossy mag is interviewing me about being trans. I don’t think the magazine is in the US. Of course, I’m doing this for the chance to educate people. Not everybody who transitions knows at age 5. It’s ok to not be sure. It’s ok to not be 100% binary. Yeah. No, I’m doing it for the photo shoot. they’re going to dress me in designer clothes and take my picture in London. No. actually, I’m doing it for the money. I’m getting paid for this. I don’t think this will be like a daytime talk show or something. Vanity: a “fab photo shoot” and coins.
I hate coming out to people. It’s very stressful. This way, I won’t have to. Those old ladies in the dog park are bound to read women’s glossies.
Speaking of coming out. Being around hot women and passing . . .. New experience. Of course, I have a lovely gf who is far away and I miss. But, it’s an issue that might one day might come out. Hi, I think you’re hot and would like to kiss you. Now I would like to inform you, before we have sex, that I don’t have a penis and I used to be a lesbian. That’s what coming out is now. Hi! No penis!
I mean, fuck.
Oh, and the other reason I’m doing this magazine thing is really mature of me. I got in a dumbass flame war with some transdude on the internet about the article in last sunday’s nyt. I thought it was ok. I have low expetations for the times. They used the right pronouns throughout. They didn’t feel like they had to disclose everybody’s former name. They referenced Judith Halberstam. That’s not terrible. I’ve seen worse. It’s something I can forward to my dad without upsetting or confusing him too much. But the main guy in the article was kind of a drama king. I mean, he was 18 or 19. College kids are full of drama. That’s life. But a bunch o internet trans dudes, were talking about how non-binary guys need to stfu. So, yeah, I’m going to be in a glossy magazine because I’m annoyed at a stranger on the internet.
Meh. You know what I hate about articles about ftms? The part where they talk about how it might be dangerous. There’s no fucking evidence to suggest that it is dangerous. Yeah, the long term consequences are kind of unknown, we’ve only been doing this for about the same amount of time that het cis women have been taking the pill. Could you imagine that everytime you read an article on the pill they talked about how it carried unknown health risks? You’d think this statement had nothing to do with the pill’s risks. You’d think it would have to do with wanting to discourage people from taking it. This is the same thing, but on a more unconscious level. It’s so transgressive, it OBVOIUSLY must be dangerous. It couldn;t possibly be harmless and easy to change your sex. It MUST be risky and intense and hard.
I also hate the idea that I’m supposed to like suffer a lot before anybody wants to help me out. Like, if you possibly can get through life without transition, then you should. Yeah, and if you can sort of see where you’re going, you dfon’t need glasses. Glasses are only for the REALLY blind. Not you. You don’t deserve them. We only do LASIK for people who’ve had 32 hours of therapy and have tried every other option. We don’t give meds to depressed people, because we don’t want to medicalize, um, mental illness. No, medical intervention is only the LAST RESORT on every other aspect of life, so it makes sense that thre’s an idea that trans folks shouldn’t have access. Oh, no, wait.

Let’s see, what other stupid ranting do I have left in me? Last night I dreamt tht I awoke this mornig to find a dark, full, curly beard on my face. Everybody around me was amazed that it had come in so suddenly. It looked fake, though. The 5 or 6 hairs I’m sprouting on my chin now, irl, are all kind of reddish. yay.
I’ve been having a series of dream about a recumbant, tandem trike that can be reconfigured into an inflatible canoe with a sail and pedal power. I’m goin to get it built in real life somehow. I don’t know how. It will be carbon fiber for weight. At the back, there’s a platform for holding the inflatible parts, other cargo and the dog. Maybe a sort of a ball joint, so it can turn tighter? I will find a way to make it happen!
Lately, I kind of suck at saving money. Everything here is really fucking expensive. I do the math and am horrified by the prices. but as the dollar goes into freefall, the prices are actually higher here every day. I feel like I should spend my money quickly while it still has any value at all. Quick buy Tv dinner while you still can!

Managing Extremes

Puberty . . . wow. I won’t say that being 20 years older than last time isn’t making it easier, because it is. But getting used to a really different hormonal situation still takes some time to get used to it, like probably several months. In the mean time, I’m kind of feeling at extremes. I’m not neutral about much of anything. Things are either amazingly great or the worst fucking thing ever. Sometimes my mind can change on whether something’s fantastic or awful within a a very few moments. It’s emotionally exciting and as such is completely awesome! It totally fucking sucks!
I try to moderate my responses when I’m around people, and this actually helps keep them moderated. So I’m trying to get out more. Also, music helps. My appetite for loud, angry punk rock has recently re-emerged. And, again similar to my youth, making music helps a lot. Even esoteric, algorithm driven, computer pieces that sort of play themselves. They almost help more because of the emotional detachment necessary to get them working, but the need for emotionality in evaluating the results. It’s like slowly releasing pressure from a canister.
Although, it doesn’t sound like slowly releasing pressure from a canister. It sounds like the canister has just fucking exploded and killed three people. Or something. Yesterday morning, I was actually shaking the music building. I feel a little guilty about that, because the studios are supposed to be soundproofed, but I kind of forgot about how low frequencies will travel through soundproofing and through walls and apparently disturb a class next door. Oops. My supervisor came by afterwards to see what was going on, mentioning only once his class was over that it had been hard for them to hear. Oops. He left, telling me to “rock on.” So maybe it’s ok in moderation, as long as I don’t disturb all his classes?
I could get night hours and not disturb other people, but then I would lose all the value of interacting with other people. Valuable interactions like, “what are you doing??” and “I feel sorry for your ears.”
A couple of years ago, Brum got a gigantic grant of something like £500000 to buy speakers and fix up the studios. And they did a great job. We can gig with well over a hundred discrete audio channels and speakers. It boggles the mind. When I was a wild and crazy youth, I really wanted to have a million dollars worth of speakers and A/D converters. Think of all the things you could do! But my laptop only has stereo outs, and it turns out that if you have 8 or 16 or N number of speakers, you have to carry them and all the cables and everything, so I learned to love stereo. I don’t think that I had a real idea of what to do with 60 speakers then, and I really don’t now. I mean 60 speakers! You can do it just to show off your vast speaker wealth (and thus how incredibly sexy you must be), but I think it’s better to justify it somehow. The piece you do with 60 speakers should really need that many of them. My colleagues all succeed at this, but I want to work within my pre-existing vocabulary of very artificial sounds. If you’re using recordings of water drops, you can just send a bunch to the upper left side and then that part of the audience feels like you’re going to drip on them. But what do you with sine tones?
Well, obviously what you do with sine tones is to come up with something that will hurt the audience! You assault them with sine tones! Out of tune, slowly phasing low frequencies shaking you from every direction! Muahahahaha.
I think I want to do an installation. There’s a lot of hierarchy and social control inherent in the concert hall paradigm. People come in before everything starts, sit quietly and appreciate your music, clap at the end and the shuffle back out when everything is finished. But 60 or 100 speakers really creates a physical space. There’s no one sweet spot in the middle where everything sounds best. There’s sounds coming from every direction. If you’re close to one particular speaker, that’s entirely different than being in the center or at another edge. I don’t want to dictate to people how long they should listen or where they should listen or how they should listen (or if they should bother at all). I’d like to give them something that slowly evolves over several minutes and gradually returns to it’s starting state and then re-evolves. That kind of music requires a patience that I don’t want to enforce. I don’t want to make people wait it out if they’re not drawn in on their own. I don’t want to tell them them what to do. Of course, anything presented has some hierarchy, it’s inescapable. I’ve got control of the speakers and they don’t. But it does have a slightly more anarchist edge to it when they don’t have to just sit and suffer through if they don’t want to.
So I want to hurt people, but in a non-heirachical, listener-empowering fashion. I can’t decide if that’s the most fucking stupid contradiction ever, or the most fascinating idea to ever emerge from the academy.

Cue Whining

It’s time for my biweekly whine about trying to self-inject. Expect to see this series continue every other week for the rest of my goddamn life.
So I go through a certain amount of psychological drama every damn time and I thought two things about this: 1. visually, there might be something interesting in there with art applications. 2. I’d have a lot of motivation to “be a man” and suck it up and just do it if the camera was running.
(Yes, I am indeed aware of how completely problematic “be a man” is. I have to emotionally abuse myself in order to force myself to stab myself. It’s problematic all the way around.)
In case you’re wondering, this actually turns out to be quite a poor plan. Not only are my hands kind of shaking, but I’m self conscious about it. Finally, despite knowing it’s usually a poor idea, I pushed the needle slowly into my leg. Because if you can’t force a blade quickly though your skin, doing it slowly is such a great idea. But I’ve done this all of 7 times before. Clearly, I know what I’m doing. I can tell, for example, that I seem to be deep enough because as I push down the plunger, nothing is leaking up around the needle.
No, that leaking will wait until I’ve pushed the plunger all the way down. Because if a little leaks while I’m injecting, it means the last day before my next shot, I’ll feel like shit, but on the other hand, I can just push down further and the rest goes where it belongs. Contrast this with everything looking fine until I remove the needle and all the T comes running out after it. It’s soaked through the bandaid I put on. It’s soaked through my trousers. Of course, it’s really hard to eyeball a greasy puddle of Cholesterol and guess how much less than 1 mL it is. Did any get in the right place at all? I’d guess about half came back out, but what do I know?
I’ve been procrastinating on calling a local doctor. I know I need to, because I run out of T in two weeks. But now I have extra motivation. Like, wtf now? Wait two weeks and hope not feel overly unhappily numb? Do it again right away and hope I don’t get way too much?
I hate needles. I hate doctors. I hate puberty. I hate acne. I hate psyching myself up to a shot. I hate psyching myself up to use a public loo. I hate not knowing any other trans folks where I live.
I mean, there are good things about transitioning. Many, many good things. I’m just not in that space right now.
And below . . . the final 4:20 of me trying to get myself to inject and finally doing it wrong. Hooray for the internet.

Cooking and Eating for Postgrads: Winter Soup

You’re poor. You’re stressed for time. You need to be mentally alert and able to produce quality output. You need to be as healthy as possible. You food fuels all of that and actually makes up your physical matter. So to be at the top of your game, you need to eat right. This is the first of series gives you pointers for what to eat and how to cook it.
Because I never measure anything and I’m too lazy to start now, I’m going to give very approximate directions. But you’ve gotten this far in your education, so you’re used to dealing with incomplete cues.

Winter Soup

Hardware

Knife
Cutting Board
Pan
Spoon

Food Items

Uncooked Rice
Dried, split lentils
Olive Oil
Salt
Herbs (Italian, Herbes de Provence, whatever)
Onion, or leek or other member of this family
Some root vegetable: like half a Swede, a couple of parsnips, half a celery root or some combination thereof.
5 brussels sprouts or some broccoli
Vinegar (optional (I prefer apple cider vinegar because it’s tasty and versatile))
Garlic clove (optional)
Half a dried pepper (optional)

Preparation

Put 0.1 or 0.2 liters (0.5 – .075 cups) each of rice and lentils in the bottom of a pan. Or use more. Fill up the pan with cold water. Add a pinch of salt and a splash of olive oil (around a tablespoon (2 mL)). Put the pan on the stove on the lowest possible heat setting. Go away and do some work. You can do this for just 20 minutes, or much, much longer. It doesn’t matter. When you think of it, come back to the kitchen.
Add a couple of teaspoons of your herbs. If you’re going to add some dried pepper, cut it in half and shake the seeds out and throw away the seed. Drop it in. Cut up an onion or leek into small pieces that you would want to get in a bowl of soup. Add them to the pot. If you’re adding garlic, do that now too.
Wash and peel your root vegetables. Cut them into little pieces and throw them in.
Wash your sprouts and and cut them into quarters. throw them into the pot.
If you want to add a splash of vinegar, do it.
When the brussel sprouts sort of start to look like they’re blooming: the leaves are starting to separate a bit, your soup is probably done. Test a swede (or whatever root) to be certain. Also, add salt if you need it.
Hopefully, you’ve made more than you need to eat in a single night. After you eat as much as you want, stick the rest in the fridge and reheat it tomorrow. You can add more brussels sprouts the next day to keep the vegetable count high.

You’ve just gotten

You’ve got fibre and protein from the beans and rice. Omega 3 and 6 from the olive oil. A large portion of your 5-a-day from the veggies. The brussels sprouts, in particular, have a bunch of vitamins and prevent some cancers. I’m too lazy to calculate the cost for this meal, but it’s really economical: you get what you need for a good price. All of the vegetables are in season right now.

Basic Staples

What are non-perishable items that you’ll be using a lot of? Olive oil, salt (sea salt if you can afford it), herbs as used above, curry powder, dried rice, dried lentils.
You can almost live off nothing but those staples mixed with vegetables. Beans and rice together form a complete protein, which means that it’s just as good as the protein you get from meat or dairy, but much, much cheaper. I’m fond of lentils because they cook very quickly. Other beans also have protein.

Try This

Twice in the last week, I’ve had Brits complaining to me about how immigrants don’t even try to integrate and get too many social services. They don’t mean me, of course, they mean other immigrants. I think they might be missing some crucial data points when they make these allegations, so therefore, I encourage everyone who thinks this (regardless of their country) to try the following:
Apply for a visa to move abroad. You’ll need a mountain of paperwork. Also time and money. Start well ahead of time. If your target country speaks another language, try to also squeeze in language lessons.
Try to find a place to live in your country of destination. Write to any friends or friends of friends or friends of friends of friends to ask for advice on this. They might invite you to stay with them while you look. This is good, depending on visa requirements. Otherwise, look on the internet. Expect to pay 10-20% above market rent to anybody who is willing to rent to a foreigner via the internet.
Pack up things that you can afford to move. Sell, give away or store those that you can’t. Don’t know when or if you’ll have those things or things like them again.
Say goodbye to all your friends, coworkers, family, drinking buddies, fellow choir members, congregation and everybody that you interact with on a day to day basis. Promise to write and visit when you can. Don’t actually know when or if you’re moving home.
Arrive in the foreign country and have interactions with the police and foreign bureaucracy immediately while trying to register as an immigrant.
Immediately contact any person with whom you have any kind of connection in your new country. Hope they introduce you to all their friends.
Try to have conversations with new people around you who speak too quickly and use a lot of slang that you’ve never encountered. Hope they are willing to try to understand your odd accent.
Get used to being the alien other all the time. Best case: harmless and quirky. Worst case: dangerous. Many people will feel they already know everything they need to know about you based on your nationality. Any changes you make regarding their perceptions will be applied to your entire nationality, not just yourself – unless they know a lot of people of your nationality.
Try to integrate: feign enthusiasm for terrible food and nonsensical customs. If you try to retain your own customs or spend too much time around other expats, you may be failing to integrate fully and thus be responsible for discrimination against your nationality as group! Remember, everything you do reflects on your entire group! (Get rid of the idea of being an individual.)
Apply whatever funds you can to getting a whole new wardrobe in the style of your new country. Otherwise, you may be failing to integrate. However, be careful not to buy clothes of the wrong social group. How to determine which clothes go with which social group? Try really hard.
If you’re seen as quirky, play it up. Your failure to conform (accidental or not) will become charming. If you’re dangerous, well, try really hard to conform, but in a non-threatening manner.
Do you have a job? If not, start collecting all the mountain of paperwork you need to get one. Did you know immigrants are taking all their jobs? Since that’s true (hahahaha), it should be really easy for you to find something despite your limited language skills, strange accent, and wrong interview clothes.
Try not to miss all your friends and family too much. Remember, this new culture you’re living in is much better than your old one. If you don’t think that, you’re the wrong sort of immigrant and no good and should probably leave. You new language is better. Your new clothes are better. The new food is better. Your new leisure activities are better. The new weather is better. You should acquire some self-hatred, especially in regards to your culture, but don’t be too blatant about it or you’ll make people nervous.
Do you still have that accent? Why don’t you just go home? Can’t you even try to fit in?
How was the first year? Novel! Interesting! Ok, how the second set of holidays away from home? The ones they don’t even observe over here? How’s the third set of missed holidays? Did you know your best friend just got married to somebody you’ve never met? But isn’t this adopted culture just super, bloody, fantastic? You’re the right kind of immigrant now! Not like all those other immigrants who are much less quirky and aren’t even trying to fit in!
So, why are you doing this? On a lark? To get better opportunities for your kids? Because your home country discriminates against you? Because of warfare at home? Because your new country has a stronger economy? For educational opportunities? Because you really love pasties and wanted to be near more of them? For nicer weather? Because you really wanted all these government services that immigrants are getting (but obviously don’t deserve)?
Although I’m turning into a bitter expat, I actually really like living abroad. I get to see and do all kind of things. Sunday morning, I was completely lost, biking through the English Midlands at 1:00 AM – on a Dutch bicycle. I like the novelty, for sure. And the educational opportunities. And to know more kinds of people. And, as an artist, my economic prospects are somewhat brighter here. There’s some kind of Catholic penance aspect going on at an unconscious level too. Also, I thought maybe Europe had all the answers. I mean, they have nationalized healthcare and mass demonstrations for progressive causes. But they also have right wing politicians getting into office. They have xenophobia. They have greedy big businesses and corruption. Sometimes they have mass demonstrations for regressive causes. Europe is neither better nor worse than America, although some European forms of government are more democratic than the American system. But people are the same everywhere. As one Algerian-French woman said, to me a couple of years ago, «il y a des bons et des cons.» There are good folks and assholes wherever you are. This is true of countries and it’s true of immigrants.
I don’t know why people would think it would be appropriate to attempt to engage me in conversation regarding the worthiness of other immigrants. Because when I’m around, they’re thinking about immigration and I’m the “good” kind? Because I subconsciously make them nervous? To make certain I know I’m not entirely welcome? (Your government has already made that entirely clear, don’t worry.) But seriously, if you think immigrants have it too easy, you need to go abroad for a while. Not a semester in Spain while you’re an undergrad but something more protracted. Then we’ll talk.

Ways to Meet People and Improve My Social Life

Yeah, I don’t know if it’s technically possible to “improve” something that doesn’t exist. I have school stuff once a week and everybody tends to go the pub afterwards and chats for an hour or so. And that’s it. Oh, and I meet my supervisor every other week. So basically, on Wednesday, I speak with people. And for a few minutes in the afternoons when i walk Xena in the park. the rest of the week, I turn down the heater and avoid my housemates who want to know why it’s so cold in the house. (“Because it’s winter” is not an answer. Anyway. I’m a bad housemate.)
Today, I took Xena to the vet. We got to take a nice long walk. And when I got there, I got to speak with the receptionists and the vet and there was joking around. The British sense of humor is fantastic. But, alas, it’s probably not a good long term plan to hang around the vet’s office. Although, I have to return in three weeks to get the second course of shots for Xena. She’s got a shiny new RFID chip and her limping is caused by arthritis. Because she’s old. But I can take her to the continent in May and back in June and it shouldn’t be a problem.
On the way home I walked past a Quaker meeting house. I’d never seen an actual, dedicated brick building for them. I went to take a closer look. It had a bust of a member of the Cadbury family on the side of it. (Cadbury’s candy company is based in Birmingham, something that would have brought me great joy as a child if I’d known I’d one day live her. Also, they have giant goose-egg sized cream eggs in the grocery store. Which I really don’t want to eat, but I feel like a traitor to myself at age 8 if I don’t, since I thought this was the highest form of food item that anyone could ever want. Anyway.) So I went to take a picture of the Cadbury bust and a woman came out to ask me what I was doing tromping around the outside of her meeting house. She explained that it had been built by the Cadbury family, as, indeed, had been most of the village surrounding. Most of the cottages had been built to house chocolate factory workers. It sounds quite a bit like industrial serfdom – the benefacting owner gives homes and worship places to adequately docile workers. And in exchange, they put a bust of him on the church, or rather, he does it. I said he must have been very humble to put a bust of himself on the church. Apparently, I haven’t quite got the hang of the British sense of humor.
This could be a way to meet other folks my age. Church! Except I have a hard time believing that the universe was created by a sentient being who can read my mind and cares deeply whether or not I masturbate. This weeds out most religions, including the gay churches like the MCC. Does those even exist in the UK? But Quakers! I could become a Quaker, since they don’t believe in anything either, right? I explained to the woman how much I respect and admire the peace activism of Quakers in the US. So she started explaining some differences between American and English Quakers. This particular meeting house has an organ and a preacher. Which sounds alarmingly hierarchical, although I do like the organ. I need a religion of anarchist atheists.
Or, I could just join an anarchist group. (Stop making bad jokes and go read up on the political philosophy. Sheesh.) When and where do they meet? Do they have a webpage? Maybe there’s a student group?
My uni is huge. There’s three banks that I know of on campus. Two grocery stores. Three bars. That I know of, and I’m not very familiar with the campus. I was scoping out the web page for the Guild of Students and they said they serve the very large post grad population. (“Post grad” is British for “grad student.”) So when the LGBTQ group said they were having a movie, I decided to go. February was Queer History Month in the UK. Don’t they know that’s for Black people? I’m sensing a trend where when a country is grudgingly forced to admit that a despised minority has been integral to their development, they give them the shortest month of the year. So I went to the movie and was the oldest person in the room by several years. Chatting with 18 year olds does make me less lonely, but I dunno. I didn’t talk much, actually. I was a mysterious, older foreign man. The women acted fascinated by me. The movie was cosponsored by the Jewish group, so I don’t know if they were queer or not, but the respect they immediately afforded me was a bit disconcerting. Or maybe I was totally misreading it and they wondered why this older, um, guy(?) had wandered in.
Ok, so maybe not student organizations, so much. Or, at least, not primarily.
But the answer is obvious. The local music scene! Institutes of higher ed are so funny in that they tend to be right in the middle of a thriving local arts scene -that they’re totally disconnected from. So how do I get connected?

Music Discovery

Ok, it’s no secret that most radio stations are kind of disappointing, especially commercial ones. If you live in an urban area, you might have an awesome local radio station that actually plays good music. You should listen! However, alas, most of the good music might be on 10PM – 2AM on Thursday nights. Or maybe you live some place with Clear Channel, Sony and nobody else? How do you find out about music?

Pandora – for Americans

There’s a couple of very interesting online services to aid you in this task, with sort of opposite philosophies. If you live in the US, you can try out something called Pandora. (Outside, the US, scroll down) Alas, it doesn’t work outside of the US, but if you can get it, it’s actually pretty cool. It’s got a very top-down approach. You tell it a song that you like and it guesses what songs you might like based on that one song. You can refine the results by telling it when it’s correct or wrong. It’s an interesting way to find out about music within (or near) a genre that you like.
How it works is that expert musicologists listen to stuff and classify it. This piece of music is electronic, is 130 bmp, has glitch elements, has IDM influences, uses minor key harmonies, blah, blah, blah. It can alternately make you feel smart when you understand what they’re talking about, or it can make you think they’re smarter than you. They don’t tell you everything about a track, because that would be giving away secrets! But it’s not secret that part of what I like about this is that it provides jobs to people with graduate degrees in music. We need the work!
So, you say you like Tag by Agf and it guesses you might also like a few tracks by Boards of Canada. Cool! But, part of the shortcomings of this is that you can’t give it more exact feedback. I had a Riot Grrl station set up, which meant I was pretty much only interested in female vocalists, aside from Huggy Bear and the few other Riot Grrl groups with male singers. It just did not get it. And I certainly couldn’t tell it that I didn’t want to hear sexist lyrics. I could only give it a lot of thumbs down and hoped it would guess that’s what they all had in common.
Nevertheless, it’s interesting and I would use it again if they offered it in the UK.

Last.FM

Where Pandora is top-down, organized by people who are smarter than you, Last.FM is bottom up, organized automagically using some smart computer algorithms and it’s user base. Pandora is like Yahoo, or the Open Directory Project and Last.FM is like Google.
Last.FM is more general and can be used in many different ways. A typical user pattern would be that you go install the spy software called a scrobbler. This software spies on what you’re listening to and reports back to last.fm. Ok, it’s moderately creepy. However, you can see when it’s running and when it’s not. When you don’t want people to know that you’re secretly listening to Esperanto Subgrunda, you can turn it off. Note, also, that Pandora is also tracking what you listen to. If you want to keep your listening habits secret, then you’re not going to be able to use any music discovery tool that I know of.
Ok, so you have last.fm installed and you’re listening to Madonna, Justin Timberlake and The Coup. Based on that, it’s created a sort of radio station of stuff you might like. This doesn’t happen because smart people have noted that these artists have a pop sensibility, make heavy use of sampling, have major key and pentatonic harmonies and have a beat you can dance to. No, this happens because a bunch of other users also these same three artists and also like a bunch of other musically-related acts. The correlation happens automatically based on people’s listening habits. Nice!
Additionally, you can find your friends on the service (I’m celesteh1). You can go listen to their radio station and see what they like. ~~Maybe mock them behind their back.~~ And find out they like some cool band that you’d never heard of. Boom, musical discovery based on your friends. It’s like the old days of tape trading, but less interactive. In addition to being able to check out your friends, it gives you a list of users who have closely related tastes to yours. You can scope out their stations and also find stuff.
Finally, you can use it like Pandora in that you can just ask for stuff based on an artist or song that you like. It generates a play list and will play it in a web browser or in it’s own client. The client doesn’t have ads and uses a lot less CPU than a web browser, so it’s much less resource stealing to have the last.fm client than it is to have pandora in a browser. But since all the playlists are generated based on what other users have listened to, they can lack subtlety and can be way off for lesser-known acts. I almost never use this feature. However, for example, the similar to Maggi Payne station is really interesting, so it’s definitely worth checking out.
Ok, I don’t know about you, but I hate making choices. It is possible to use last.fm and pandora at the same time. This is left as an exercise to the reader. Or, if there’s interest, I’ll do a follow up.
Finally, let’s admit it, you think your musical taste is stellar, cutting edge, amazing. You secretly relate to Indy Rock Pete. Ok, maybe that’s just me. But you can get some sort of listener creds through last.fm. You can show of how cool you are. (White people like that.) It’s appealing, at least at first. And then you miss the new Madonna album or SexyBack and it’s all downhill from there. (But seriously, the Confessions on a Dance Floor is awesome. Timberlake? Not so much. But still somehow compelling.) Take it to the bridge.

For Musicians

Ok, what about artists? People are listening to our sol la ti, so we should get some do re mi, right? Indeed. Pandora will only consider CDs with UPC codes. And they don’t take everything. “Top down” means curated. But they do pay royalties. Anyway, you can be on both. If you want to be on Pandora, mail them a CD. The pay according to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
Last.fm keeps track of everything that people report to it. If you listen to that mp3 of your best friend’s garage band while scrobbling, they know about it. Which means that they know about a lot more stuff than does Pandora. If you have mp3s in circulation or a released CD, they probably already know about you. Go look yourself up on the service. Maybe they already have a bio and a picture for you. If they do, it’s because some friend or fan set it up – or because you’re already famous. If they don’t, you can add that stuff. (and terrible candid shots of your musician friends. ahahahaha!) You can also upload some of your own music.
Last.fm has a plan in place to pay royalties, but have not yet started to do so. However even in this pre-royalty time, it’s in your best interest to give them a couple of tracks for the same reason that it’s in your best interest to put some tracks up on your website. The point is to get people listening to your music through a sort of word-of-mouth(-like) buzz. People see that a friend or musical neighbor has been listening to you. They get curious. They try to listen also. Make sure there’s something there for them.

Attention Composers!!

This means you!!
Ok, you’ve decided to put up some mp3s on the internet. That’s awesome! Good for you! I commend you! It’s really a good idea. It’s a god way to promote your work. People can get a bit of a sample of your output before they commit to anything. It’s really quite smart of you. Thank you for doing it.
But for the love of all that is good and holy, just fill out the fucking metadata, already!
I just downloaded a file called Eggert_Idyl.mp3. It was a piece in a very interesting looking project. They had lots of mp3s available. I downloaded some of them. I added it to my itunes library, so that I could listen to the items in sequence and perhaps easily find them again later. And when I dropped it in the library, the name it told me was Eggert_Idyl. Who was the performer? Who was the composer? What was the name of the project? What was the real name of the piece? I might never fucking know because the otherwise brilliant person in charge of things didn’t fucking think it was worth his time to communicate that information. If you don’t think it’s worth your time to tell me anything about this mp3, why should I even care about it? If you’re going to give me no information at all, I have two choices. I can go and fill it all out myself, thus wasting a bunch of my time and doing you a favor. Or I can throw the mp3 into the trash. Guess which I do most of the time.
Oh but there’s a third option. I was at a hannukkah party last year and the host asked me if I could dig up some klezmer music. Sure, no problem. I’ve got like two hours of klezmer now, which I can listen to whenever the mood strikes me. What’s the names of the pieces? The bands who decided to show off their work? Anything at all? Some of it’s really nice and I’d like to listen to more or possibly buy some tracks. Well, tough luck. They didn’t think it was worth their time to bother giving me any information. Ok, it doesn’t REALLY show that they think their work is worthless, but it’s really getting on my nerves.
I start taking testosterone and it turns me into Andy Rooney.
Fortunately, I can tell you how to fix your problems. These instructions are for iTunes but should be very similar in any other program. Ok, you have a lovely piece of music or an excerpt and you think to yourself, wow, I bet people might be interested in this. I’m going to post it to the internet! Yay, you’re starting this off right! That piece of music is probably in aiff or wav format or some other uncompressed audio format, so you’re going to have to convert it to mp3. So drag it to itunes and there it is in the list. “Elgy-part1-xcrpt”. Ok, now, I don’t care how cutting edge avant you are, that title fucking sucks. And it’s not the real title, hopefully. So, select the new item in the list and tpe apple-i to edit the info. Or select Get Info from the File menu. A window pops up which, gives you information. It has some tabs on the top. One of them is called, “Info.” Select that one. You’ll be dazzled by empty fields galore. It asks you things like the piece name, the album, the artist, the composer, the year, the genre! The choices are dizzying! Take deep breaths! The only ones that are absolutely, positively necessary are name and artist. Now, since it seems that many of you composers have never actually gotten this far in itunes before, the name field refers to the name of the piece. Like, if you wrote a piece and called it “Elegy”, that’s what you would put there.
Ok, and then comes artist. That’s you! Put your name there. Or the name of your band. So if your name is Jon Doe, that’s what you would type there. Again, there’s no hurry. You can take several deep breaths along the way.
Then, after you’ve filled out all the fields that you’d like to fill out, hit ok.
That wasn’t so bad, was it?
But you’re not done. Keep your track highlighted. Go to the Advanced menu. Look for “convert selection to mp3.”
If you don’t see “convert selection to mp3,” but rather some other conversion choice, go to the iTunes menu and select Preferences. Click on the advanced tab. Click on the importing tab below that. There’s a field called “Import Using”. Set that to mp3 converter. Then, below that, for setting, pick “High Quality”. Or, if you’re a snob, pick “higher quality.” It’s your work, so you’re entitled to be snobby. I always just go for high quality because I pay for bandwidth.
Ok, so under the Advanced menu, you’ve just selected “convert selection to mp3” and it thinks for a monet and then, wow, there’s two copied of your file in the list. One of them is the mp3 one! You should probably listen to it to make sure it’s ok.
Ok, now you’re ready to copy it to the internets. iTunes stuck it in a folder. go to your home directory (henceforth refered to as ~) and then to Music and then to iTunes and then to iTunes Music. In that folder, you will find many sub folders. One of them is named after you! It has at least one sub folder. If you put an album name for your newly imported piece, then look for that name. If you didn’t, then look in Unknown Album. Look for your piece. If you named it “Elegy”, you’re looking for a file called Elegy.mp3 . There might be numbers before it, like 01 Elegy.mp3 . Don’t worry about those, it’s still your file. Huzzah. That file is what you want to upload to the internet, because it has all your wonderful metadata.
Hooray.

May Plans

Spring time is nearly upon us. As are several cons, which is always a cause for joy. A con is like a festival, but better because there’s also stuff during the day. Music festivals are nifty, but they’re usually only in the evenings. I’m thinking it would be fun to do a small tour of the continent in May.
May 2 – 4 is Transgender Europe in Berlin. I used the feedback form to ask if they were interested in booking some music. I think they have an obligation to present work by ftm composer/performers of ‘art’ music. As I type this, I’m drining water out of a cup with cartoon of Tigger on it. I want to find out if, like Tigger, I’m the only one. Anyway, they haven’t written back yet, which is frustrating, since I’d like to try to get other gigs around Germany if they take me. And now is the time to be trying to get booked.
May 6 – 8 is the fêtes de Jeanne d’Arc in Orléans, France (an hour or so away from Paris by train). I’m several centuries too modern to play at this event, but I’ve been going to it every yar since I moved to Europe and I’d like to go again. And do some biking around the Loire. Last year, I decided not to go to Cherveney, despite it being the origin of my lap tuba – and some fine wine. I don’t know how cool it would be to do a bike tour like that by myself. I think I’m looking for people to go along with me, if I go. Joan of Arc, of course, got burned at the stake rather than dress like a girl, so she’s close to my heart.
May 25 – 31 is /ETC in Amsterdam, a feminist con that I played at last year. They’re women-only, which, obviously, makes me nervous, since I’d rather be burned at the stake than dress like a girl. I had a lot of angst about this last year also and contacted them about whether or not they discriminated against trans people. They do not. This year, the group hosting it is called “gender changers” and they’ve had FTM participation in the past. They seem supportive, and last year was super-awesome, so I hope this works out. I’m thinking of doing a duet with somebody, if they’ll take me, to sort of up the female quotient of my act. ha. I’m going to the con whether I play or not, I think, since last year was so great and I really miss Holland. I want to take Xena, but I think I can still find lodging with a buddy in Den Haag and commute in to Amsterdam on the train. I can imagine that I can find lodging for Xena easier than for myself. She’s popular.
I have a friend in Bremmen, Germany, so I’ll email him a CD shortly. There’s a strong noise scene there. And, if I’m going to be in France, I’d like to play in Paris again. Of course, that’s much, much, much easier said than done. I’m going to see what contacts I can get there through school here and California, since my contacts form living there aren’t great for gig-getting. And, obviously, I’ll see if I can play more than once in the Netherlands. Berlin to Paris to Bremen to Amsterdam is perhaps overly circuitious. I will be travelling by ferry, bike and train, ~~to keep my carbon footprint down~~ as that’s easier for Xena, so the best timing for Bremmen might be late April.
I’m working on a piece about gender issues and sexuality that I’d like to premier in Berlin, if they take me. It’s the drag king piece, which features a crotch-mounted joy stick and moaning sounds. I’m going to add in some videogame samples (specifically, I want World of Warcraft). I also want to use samples of people talking, of course. Because all my political pieces use speaking. Because I’m unsubtle, alas. I think I want to interview people and ask them the questions that I got asked on transgender clinic intake. “What’s your first memory of having a gender?” “How long have you known that you are a man/woman?” “What makes somebody a man?” “What makes somebody a woman?” I think these questions are actually quite stupid. Especially the last two. But the answers are potentially very interesting. I kind of think of it as performative queer theory as much as music.
So if you want to record yourself talking about how you became aware of your own gender and what that means to you, email it to me! Otherwise, I’ll be pushing microphones into other students’ faces. I just came out to them last week, so it should be delightfully awkward and stressful to do this.
Also, if you can get me a gig in France, Germany, BeNeLux or nearby, please drop me a line! I’ll have everything I need to to do electronic noise, live processing, and/or laptop pieces. And a dog! And my bike touring gear. Heh. This is managable, but insane, so perfect. If I can’t get any other gigs, maybe I’ll bike from Berlin to Amsterdam. I wonder if there’s some way to organize a bike/music tour, like, to promote environmental causes . . .

In other news

For those of you in the San Francisco area, Other Minds 13 is very nearly upon you! I am jealous of you, because I wish I could go. The sampler CD for the shows is awesome. There’s a lot of great music. It’s March 6 – 8 in SF. There’s a sudent discounts avilable. I think it’s possible to get in free by volunteering. This year is especially great for fans of the cello. Fracnis-Marie Uitti will be plaing. She’s a friend of Ellen. Her music is incredible. She’s playing on the 6th. If you can only go to one night, go to that one. And then leave me taunting messages about how it was sper awesome and I’ll be sad. I was going to come home for the festival, but the way my student visa ended up working out, I just couldn’t. Alas.

Torchwod Recap

Torchwood is a Doctor Who spinoff which features aliens, explosions and sexy dialog. I’ve been watching it because I liked Doctor Who when I was a kid and because the male lead is like a bisexual Indiana Jones / 007 / I want to be him when I grow up. Right, So season 2, episode 2.

The Torchwood team exra-legally kidnaps a black woman whom they suspect is an alien. They subject her to torture. Because aliens are trying to sneak into ~~Britian~~ Earth to gather information. Yes, Cardiff (a town in Wales), humble Cardiff, is at terrible risk from alien sleeper cells bent on committing acts of terrorism.
So the have the alien other, the black woman illegal immigrant, and they’re denying her rights to due process, because, of course, she’s alien, and because it’s clear as soon as they even suspect that she’s alien, that she’s up to no good. I mean, why would anyone want to come to Wales if not to wreck up the place? You have to keep your eyes peeled for aliens because none of them are peaceful and they’re all walking amongst us, plotting our doom.
This alien is under the terrible misconception that she’s integrated into British society and is so devastated when she finds out that she’s actually not British, that she begs for death and gets the Torchwood team to kill her. The end.
And that’s everything wrong with this bloody country in a nutshell.
Clearly, they need to introduce a points system, where aliens can apply on their own planet to be allowed to come to the UK as a high skilled migrant. Once they get to the UK, they can be issued an alien ID card, with an RFID chip that makes it easy for local authorities to monitor their comings and goings. Furthermore, the aliens should be denied access to sensitive information unless they can pass all kinds of security checks. Therefore, universities and employers wanting to take on aliens will have to provide evidence that they’re not allowing said aliens access to anything they might be able to use when it’s inevitably revealed that they’re inherently evil beings bent on colonialism and destruction.
Of course, this is folly, because , as one Torchwood person pointed out, “everything about her is a lie.” You can’t expect ALIENS to tell the truth on application forms! Lock down the borders, that’s the only solution.
It’s kind of funny that Brits are so terrified of being invaded by outsiders, subject to violence and economically exploited. They’re such a rich and powerful country! How could they possibly have such concerns?
Um, anyway. In other news, my shower finally got fixed. Apparently, it was broken for more than 4 weeks. I don’t know what the letting agent think they got out of stalling so long. It’s not like they could get away with not fixing it. I suspect that they just didn’t bother because the house was occupied by three Africans. Not for financial reasons, just because it didn’t seem important. The plumber who finally came explained that they’d all completely forgotten! How funny that it didn’t remind them when I called last week. Huh. I called twice this week. I think what pushed it over the edge was my using words like “flabbergasted” and “appalled.” My vocabulary showed I was worthy of consideration. Meh.
Oh, that last link up there is really terribly funny, btw.