Les said, the better II

Sonata

It seemed to me, when I stumbled upon this form, not knowing it’s rich history, that I had come upon something that was itself a metaphor for listening to music. The form opens with something introductory, to draw the listener in. Then it moves through some ideas, drawing the experiencer into the landscape and logic of the piece, until they reach the center of the piece, then the climax (as it’s called) and then back out to the real world, the same way they went in. But the ideas are modified a bit, just as the listener has (hopefully) changed a bit by listening.

Microsounds

The latest chapter we’re reading in Xenakis’ Formalized Music is about how waveforms are not static in real life. For example, tones shift slightly on the violin. Certain partials become more or less present and drift tuning a bit. He talks about how this is a huge problem in electronic and computer music, because such forms use static waveforms, whereas live music does not. Static waveforms are uninteresting, he alleges.
Now, this is a problem with UPIC for sure. You can create “samples” that are 1/10th of a second long. A sample of somebody singing that’s 1/10 of a second, repeated over and over does sound static and awful, because it doesn’t conform to expectations we have about the human voice. However, I object to his characterization of analog electronic music as static. Did he listen to the same people that I did? Was he not aware of oscillator drift? If you have a problem with electronic music not changing it’s tuning over the course of a note, there are several synthesizers that I could introduce you to that will drift whether you want them to or not. Alas, if only he weren’t dead. Alas, if only I had a Moog.
Actually, this is a problem I have with my hardware synthesizer. It doesn’t drift enough. There are many ways to work around this, most of them involving FM. You can even attach an electronic thermometer to a plug to make meandering drift (which unlike synthesized randomness, does not tend to center around 0). You can also create analog chaos, where sine 1 FM modifies sine 2, which FM modifies sine 3, which FM modifies sine 1. If chaos isn’t enough variation, I don’t know what is. Also, a lot of work was done at Stanford on using FM to model instruments in a convincing and less mathematically challenging way. The Yamaha DX7 was born from these efforts. One can also do phase modulation (better than FM for many applications) and even pulse width modulation (wherein you alter what percentage of square wave is spent at -1 and what percentage is spent at +1). And any analog synthesizer worth it’s salt produces both noise and filtered low frequency noise which simulates randomness. Another method of changing is using envelopes to modify the amount of FM (or PM) over the course of a note and by using filters also controlled by envelopes. Enveloped filters are especially effective, however, they’re not present in UPIC because Xenakis felt that they reduced richness, which he only wanted to increase.
The issues of subtle changes within electronically produced sounds was a large issue. It seems somewhat reduced in importance now, probably because of his efforts. He was extremely mathematically inclined and set up research centers to solve problems in electronic music. Also, I have spent a significant amount of the time I spend working with my synthesizer trying to introduce the kind of minute variations that Xeankis rightly characterizes as essential. However, I can’t go along with how he talks about synthesizer music from the 60’s. Had he not heard Pauline Oliveros or what?
The amount of applied and actual mathematics in electronic music is kind of staggering, also. I learned all these equations at one time and I can use the applications of them no problem, but it’s dizzying to sit and think about all the harmonics, the different kinds of randomness and drift, etc. He’s right that synthesizer music that doesn’t take all those things into consideration, at least intuitively, is crap. Early electronic music is certainly not crap, doggone it. They did not have the technology then to produce that kind of crap! It takes a computer or much more advanced analog circuits to make flat, static, awful sounds! Earlier beasts could not hold a tune well enough to have this problem. A lot of effort had to go in to allowing this problem to come into being. (Similarly, a lot of work was spent on the signal to noise ratio of systems. Only with the introduction of very low noise digital technology did it become clear that a certain amount of noise is absolutely essential. Low level noise is generated by your CD player and mixed into playback. The nice thing is getting just the right amount of noise and being able to control your oscillator drift.) Maybe it doesn’t seem convincing to say “this is a problem and I have some solutions” if other people also have solutions or at least workarounds.

UPIC

Xenakis’ sketches of his UPIC scores are framed on the wall around the lab. They’re strange organic shapes, like some sort of fantastic or undersea life. I thought I should try entering in the kind of data that the system was designed for. The default waveform with UPIC is a sine wave. The first piece I posted from UPIC uses only sine waves, however it uses more of them than system supports. (The magic of overdubbing!) I created change in the piece by having the sine waves glissando (slide) around each other. They were all changing pitch in relation to each other, creating constantly changing beating patterns and thus resisting staticness.
Today, I drew a triangle wave. (ooh) It has it’s own harmonics already in it, so it takes fewer of them to make a rich sound, however, the harmonics do stay in tune with each other. The richer sound plus the organic forms is nice. And because a triangle wave is one of the basic building blocks of electronic music, it is what it is. I don’t feel disappointed because it doesn’t hint at being a voice or violin or something without actually being it. And, again, having a large number of them going at the same time, not staying constant to each other, creates the kind of constant change that music seems to need.
Hopefully, I’ll have something to post tomorrow. I cannot also post my (overly similar to Xenakis’) drawing, because UPIC doesn’t export art.
Tags: Paris, Celesteh

I will start this off with some definitions, so non-musicians can follow along. Music: the organization of sounds in time. Form: The structure by which sounds are organized. Composition: the act of organizing musical material, usually by deciding which sounds (or materials) should be used and what form should be used for organizing the piece. MAX: a popular program for electronic music composition that I don’t use anymore because I’m cheap. KYMA: an extremely expensive hardware / software package used for electronic music composition (that I know nothing about yet, except that I’m too cheap to buy it.) Protools: awesome hardware /software package for doing audio editing, which I’m willing to shell out cash for.

Yesterday, the TA guy for my school positted that there should be no difference in compositional process for electronic music vs acoustic music. This alarmed me somewhat, but then I remembered that I came here because my grasp of musical form is, um, well, auto-didactic. I usually just stick things together according to how I like them, by sliding sounds around in protools. I really like sonata form, apparently. I always thought of my favorite form as sort of a lopsided palindrome, where I move through a few musical ideas and then repeat them in reverse order, somewhat shorter and usually slightly modified. I visualize this as the listener journeying into the pice and then back out again, like a trip into a sonic landscape or something. I was informed last spring that this is sonata form. Like the Mozart Sonata in B minor (or whatever, I just pulled that example out of my ass). It would probably be better if I used a few different forms rather than writing hundreds of electronic noise sonatas.
Today, I ran into my TA guy at IRCAM, and we talked briefly about the tools of electronic music. He was talking about how KYMA is way better than MAX. However, he noted seriously, he just had a conversation with Jon (the other text sound composing tuba player) about how even the most advanced tools are still not all the way there to completely realize the composer’s vision.
I find this idea to be extremely troubling. I mean, I can see how talking about ideal tools is really useful if you’re going to do research or software development. Making lists of features you might like is really handy if you’re going to program them or somebody else is. But I don’t see what that has to do with the compositional process. Isn’t it like complaining that you can’t play c0 on the flute? (c0 is a really low C, that I think tubas can play, but really I dunno this classical terminology stuff, I’m just trying to sound smart. anyway.) You don’t write for some idealized über-flute, you write for the flute you have. I’m using the flute as an example because about 1.5 years ago, I promised the fabulous Anne Casey that I would write her a piece for solo flute that she, as a hobbyist, would be able to play. I still haven’t written it, although not for lack of thinking about it. I got Robert Dick’s excellent flute book out of the library and read it (it’s more for players than composers) and I made a few sketches and ran them by a flutist, but, alas, they got a thumbs down for actually working. and now, when I’m on the subway, I sometimes imagine the flute and the sounds it makes and try to think of it’s essential flutishness. Because that’s what eludes me. I could just write a melody, but then there would be nothing that made it a flute piece. It could just as easily be for any other instrument in that range. But I want to write something that is fundamentally for the flute and explores some aspect of the flute that is unique to that instrument.
And that’s how I think about material. If you’re going to write a piece, say, for solo triangle, it should be like Lucier’s piece Silver Streetcar. Alvin’s wonderful piece is like half an hour long and it’s for a single, solo triangle. *ding*. But what’s great about it is that the performer is not just tapping out written rhythms that could be written for any instrument. Instead s/he’s exploring the sounds in the triangle. S/he is constantly varying his or her speed, amplitude, the part of the triangle that’s being struck. The performer even grabs part of the triangle to dampen it and is constantly moving his or her hand, changing locations on the triangle and strength of grip, etc. The piece is fantastic live. And the material instructs the form. the player explores different configurations of hand position, amplitude, speed and striking location by cycling through them according to an algorithm. When s/he finishes the algorithm, the piece is done.
The idea of having some sort of vision outside of the available material is . . . (I’m sorry for the slander) modernist! Composition as a realization of a platonic form! And what is a composer then, but a brilliant visionary who tries (alas in vain) to realize his or her vision onto the imperfect world? Our pieces are, alas, shadows on the cave wall, but eventually, as technology develops, we may come closer to the objects carried in front of the flame, or even, dare I mention it, the sun itself!
I had a conversation last night, over too many beers, about why we compose. One fellow positted that it’s because we all think we’re clever. Ahem, well, there’s that. But really, I compose because it makes me happy and I like to do it. Sitting in front of my synthesizer trying to come up with an interesting texture is a joy. It makes me feel good. Even writing supercollider code (which is not as much a joy) makes me happy. I do it because I can and when the money runs out, I’ll go back to engineering and keep myself happy by composing on evenings and weekends. Some people hike, some people play sports, some people knit. I compose. It’s more important than a hobby, in that I derive some of my sense of identity from it, but I don’t know about this notion of Artist with a capital A or composer with a capital C. Yeah, I’m clever. But anybody who had the patience and access to equipment could learn to do the kind of noise music that I did for years and I don’t say that to slight my own work. I spent a lot of time figuring out how to use my tools and I’ve thought deeply about it. But that doesn’t give me access to capital T Truth, because there is no such thing. Modernism is a lie.
My supercollider pieces are NOT sonata form, mostly. The explore some phenomenon for some amount of time. For instance, with my Anne Coulter piece, they use material that contains a lot of nonsense and cross-talk. So the algorithm highlights those two features by manipulating the material in an ironic manner. I figured out how fast to change it and how long for it to go by getting feedback from people. But the form itself was implicit in the material and the idea. My Rush Limbaugh piece uses what was supposed to be the third section of “Coulter Shock” (but she was droning on for too long) and looks at pitch of speech and how subtext become clearer on repeated listening. Again, the duration came from listener feedback as did the time changes. And again, the material dictated the form. My just intonation pieces mostly use a particular algorithm to move from one pitch to another. When they finish the sequence, they’re done. I used my taste to set durations and I put a bunch of bell sounds at the end of one of them because I wanted it to sound more funeral. But the form is implicit in the material and the ideas are implicit in the material. How could you have a non-material idea?
Michael Nyman’s book Experimental Music creates a binary opposition between European Art Music and American Experimentalism. I was dubious of this distinction, but I think I’ve just run into it. Experimental music explores something that exists in physicality. It’s definite ties to the real world imply a rejection of holy and pure Ideas of Art and thus the whole genre is implicitly post-modern.
Therefore: The TA is right, there is no difference between composing acoustic music and composing electronic music. In both cases, the composer has to examine the material, figure out what is fundamental to the material. The fundamental ideas already within the material will suggest an algorithm to explore them and the algorithm contains within in implicitly a form. The composer just needs to decide how much detail to include: enough so that the idea gets across but not so much that the listener gets bored. The composer then is clever, but is hardly communing with a sacred platonic form. The role of the artist (without a capital A) is a tour guide. “Come here and listen to this. See how this is kind of interesting? Listen to what’s hidden here in this material. Isn’t that cool / disturbing?”
This still leaves the problem of form for noise music. Because synthesized textures are what they are. You can morph them over time so that their composition is clear, but that’s not necessarily interesting. What’s interesting in noise music is just the sounds themselves. The composing of noise is the creation of the materials and the dropping them into some sort of form. The material is all created, so it suggests nothing implicitly, unless there’s intentional tuning stuff happening. It’s more like traditional composing of ensemble music. Therefore, if I’m going to keep sharing the results of having fun with my synthesizer, I need to look at forms the same way a European Art Music composer would. Noise is more traditional, in that way, than my other genres(!).
It will be a year of noise music, then. And this is a good thing because I still love making textures, but I think I’m done with sonatas.
Tags: Composing, Music, Noise, Celesteh

Media

So I’ve had 6 or so hours of lab now. I recorded a piece on Tuesday night, gave it a silly title and posted it to my podcast. The first 1:30 are REALLY low and won’t play through the built-in speakers on your powerbook, (if you happen to have a powerbook with built-in speakers), but the rest is in a higher range. It’s inspired by my refrigerator (no really) but doesn’t quite sound as good as the fridge.
I’m listening to “FG Radio” right now. FG used to stand for «Fréquence Gaie», but it seems to have turned into just a commercial radio. . . . And just as I type this sentence, “We Are Family” comes on. So Snoop Dogg, R&B and the occasional gay anthem. I was hoping it would be talk radio. I had the idea that if I listened to talk radio while sitting at my computer, the French would sneak into my brain through osmosis.
I understand that philosophy is important in educated society in France, so I bought Meditations by Descartes. I wanted to buy Camus or Foucault, but the bookstore I was at didn’t have any. Anyway, Descartes writes about the luxury of getting to sit by himself for a day in a room with a stove. During this one day, he came upon the idea of radical doubt, wherein he was able to prove his own existence “I think, therefore I am” and the existence of God (The idea of perfection is itself perfect and thus must originate from something perfect, which, if perfect, would be omnipotent, omnipresent, etc.) The mere idea of god proves that god must exist. Whatever. The whole inventing the scientific method thing was putting him in danger of the inquisition. Showing that he started with a proof of God was insurance against being put in jail. But the “proof” has a few problems, so I was re-reading it closely, trying to see if maybe I wasn’t following because it was complicated or it really was like saying the idea of purple hamsters proves they must exist. And I missed my metro stop, because I was concentrating on Descartes. I may not be educated by French standards, but I’m hella pretentious by California standards.
However, I can’t help but notice that I often have the great luxury to get to sit by myself in a heater room and I’ve never come close to inventing a new system of thought or proving my or anyone else’s existence, despite being free from distractions and potentially having the entire collected knowledge of the internet at my fingertips (maybe that’s the problem). If I could just stop day dreaming and turn my mind to rational inquiry!

In other news

I think I have located a conversation partner via the internets. I’ll keep you posted.
And Shakespeare and Co never emailed me about me playing some text sound at a “reading,” so I’m going to go by today or tomorrow afternoon with another CD and see if it just got displaced or if I’m too weird.
My computer spell checker is now set to multi-lingual which is just strange. It makes me feel so cosmopolitan.

Water / Smells / Clean

The water here is rather hard, in that it tends to generate hard water type stains. This is rumored to be very hard on clothes, but I have not yet experienced a problem. There exists a water softening device that people hang inside the rim their toilets. As the water goes rushing past, it’s softened and hard water stains are prevented. It also emits a smell which is probably thought to be preferable to smells more naturally occurring in that environment. The same perfume is also lurking in my dish soap. And the floor cleaner. And my clothes washing soap. It clearly is a social signifier of cleanliness. As a foreigner, I can’t stand it. I want my own culture’s signifier of clean. Or better, no scent.
I don’t know if it occurs in human soap, as I’ve managed to find a source of hippie soap which seems to be unscented. It may be the case that humans are not subject to the same indicators as the inanimate. My mother came to France twice in the 1960’s. At that time, there was a discrepancy in how often Americans and French people bathed. My mom used to say that Europeans called the US “the land of soap and water.” Therefore, when, as a 7th grader, I decided to only bathe once a week, I met with disapproval from my peers, but not my parents.
As people here have increased their frequency of bathing, appliances such as the bidet have been disappearing, as it’s sort of a between-showers kind of thing. There is widespread ignorance in the US about this device, so I will describe it here: it is a very low sink with a stopper for the drain. Under a porcelain outcropping, there is a faucet which points down into the bowl. The faucet is constructed in such a way that it can only be used to fill the sink, and does not squirt upwards or in any other direction aside from down. Paris to the Moon reports that in place of bidets, people are installing electric toilets with garbage-disposal-like grinders built-in. I can report that I have actually seen one of these, at an internet cafe. It was alarming when I flushed it, as enormous, loud motors sprung to life and built up so much pressure in the drain, that water squirted from the drain trap of a nearby sink. Yikes.
Tags: Paris, Celesteh

Music

So yesterday, I got my first shot at UPIC. It has a number of quirks one might describe as bugs, if one were not charitably inclined. Bugs that nobody anywhere will ever fix because the software is forever abandoned, which is kind of sad if you spend too much time thinking about it on the metro. So what’s the use of learning dead software? A lot of the school is sort of a hagiography center for Xenakis. And what’s a saint without some holy relics? The teacher said almost as much in class, even using the term “relic” but probably not in quite the same way. However, there are things to learn from UPIC:

1. Glissandi: When you “draw” notes by drawing lines, they after often not straight. Also Xenakis was a man of glissandi. (for you non musical types, it means a note that slides around in pitch)
2. Inexact cut and paste: When you want to copy something in UPIC, you first use your mouse to describe a box where said object should go. The paste function then scales the object to fit in the box. The chances of getting an exact copy are slim to none. It’s a little higher, a little lower, the pitch range is greater or lesser and the duration has grown or shrunk. You get similar gestures, but never the same.

And I spent a bunch of time synthesizing ok but not great artificial tones in my first brush with the tool and then the sounds I heard on my walk home were so much more beautiful and musical. And then I got home and listened to my refrigerator singing. It twists around strangled tones, like singing through a pipe (ala Brend Hutchinson) and then finds a resonant pitch and some overtones and hums them for a while before wandering off. It’s lovely. I think it would be cheating to just record it and call it my composition.

Cops

I went for my final (hooray (god willing)) visit with the Prefecture de Police today and got my medical exam. The took my height and weight, tested my vision and then gave me a chest x-ray. I got to take the x-ray home with me, um, in case I need it for anything. Then a doctor talked to me in English, thank goodness. “You are American? Do you have vaccines? A lot, I bet.” Land of the free and over-vaccinated. Thank goodness, Wesleyan was able to fax me my vaccination records yesterday afternoon. I spent much time last night looking up translations for things like “whooping cough vaccine” but didn’t end up using any of it. I got the feeling that it pretty much didn’t matter, since I’m from the first world and anyway, my chest x-ray showed that I do not have whooping cough at this time. She did care about my tetanus vaccine, however, which is certainly up to date. Anyway, then the nice doctor asked if I was in any way sick, took my blood pressure and that was it. Then I payed a tax and stood in another line and got a new sticker in my passport. In a way, the temporary thing they gave me was more official looking. I’m glad I got the bank account while I still had it.
So I was stressing out over something which turned out to be no big deal. I borrowed some of Nicole’s underwear for it, but anyway.
I’ve started walking everywhere again, because I need the exercise. Today, I walked past a large outdoor market, but I didn’t buy anything. They were selling huge amounts of vegetables. It had more produce than the Lake Merrit Farmer’s Market. And there were also people selling clothes and random hardware store-type items. I thought it would be better for some reason to remain loyal to the covered market by my house where I buy vegetables every couple of days. However, I bought a book on French cooking from a book vender by Place de Republique. And yesterday, on my way home, I bought a pommegranite because they are the best things ever and plus it will help hold off scurvy, the plague of students everywhere.
For those of you contemplating studying in France, the documentation you will need contains:

• your passport
• the visa you already obtained from your consulate
• An attestation from your landlord saying your address and that you live there
• a photocopy of the ID of your landlord
• a recent gas bill in your name or in your landlord’s name
• A birth certificate
• a recent letter from your school explaining why it exists and listing all relevant numbers and funding agencies and stating your enrollment
• your divorce papers (if applicable)
• passport sized pictures of yourself
• you immunization records
• other medical records if there’s anything special about you that they might need to know about

you might need more than these things. Oh, and have 3 copies of each. Beware with the copy of the id thing, because people will take your copy of that, so make sure you have the “master” photocopy ready to make additional copies. And take all of them but the medical stuff to a bank near you. You have a legal right to open a bank account at the bank closest to your house.
Tags: UPIC, Paris, Celesteh

In 2003, when I first started at wesleyan I blogged about one of the first students whom I attempted to befriend. Things were going fine but then, out of the blue, an exhibition of racism, to which I said nothing, unsure of how to react. Oh no! this student is not from this immediate region, but hails from much closer to here than I do and certainly has more culturally in common with the locals than I do. Also, why the heck didn’t I object at the time?

In 2005, well.
In 2003, my house had no working smoke detectors and there were constant fire sirens, evidence of the danger of that situation. So I went to k-mart and bought a bunch of them and installed them.
In 2005, well, how do you say “smoke detector” in French? I haven’t seen any fire trucks go by, but a bunch of someone’s burned possessions appeared on the street several days ago and still they sit out there. A ruined dresser. I wonder how the fire was discovered? Or is my lack of smoke detection an aberration?
In 2003, I felt as if I had moved to an alien culture where I could barely communicate with the natives, causing unintentional offense all the dern time and having perplexing social interactions wherein it became clear that I had totally different values than the person with whom I was conversing.
In 2005, I actually need a dictionary to go buy something. le fil de dentaire = french for dental floss. The pharmacy guy spent like five minutes explaining he was very sorry for having called me monsieur, after he heard my high pitch voice asking for floss. “Dood, I don’t care, just give me my damn dental floss.” is a bit beyond me, so I only repeated my request for dental floss. The phrase I was searching for was “Ce n’est pas grave.” It’s not important. Seriously.
In 2003, I felt lonely and homesick, so I walked down to the water area to take in some sunlight on a nice warm day.
In 2005, it was like 21 degrees today and sunny, the warmest it had been in a week. I stepped outside of my apartment and discovered that I didn’t need my jacket. It’s always warmer on the street than it is in my place. I walked down towards the Saint Martin Canal and discovered that the rest of the 10th arrondissement had the same idea as I. There were street musicians everywhere, a street clown performing for a bunch of very appreciative small children and I swear to god an actual wind band in a band shell in the park. They were wearing straw boater hats, even. I stood for a while and listened to them play (mostly American) band tunes. Then I walked back along the canal and saw a boat going up it, which is exciting. They raised the draw bridge and opened one of the locks to let the boat through. A crowd gathered on top of the pedestrian bridge to watch the boat come into the lock and progress through it. Locks are cool. Then I went towards home and purchased a crème caramel, which bears an exceedingly strong resemblance to mexican flan and the afore-mentioned dental floss. I’ve been feeling sad all day, despite pudding and having a much cleaner house. I’m going to go tomorrow to buy some vitamins. I eat vegetables every day, of course, but it’s hard to get all necessary vitamins unless you eat broccoli every single day, which wouldn’t actually be so bad.

random sightings

Last night, I saw that there’s some sort of breast cancer awareness campaign going on. I could tell this because there were pictures of topless women with pink ribbons and something about cancer. Breast cancer. Pictures of breast. The french get right to the point, errr, yes. Last night I also saw a large mob of people who climbed onto the République statue to celebrate some sort of football victory, I think. Not France’s. The flag they were waving was red with a red crescent. I saw in Le Monde a list of teams qualifying for a world championship. (But I don’t know what they meant exactly. Is it time for the world cup again, already? French announcers don’t yell “gooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllll” and are thus inferior to the spanish channel.) And today and yesterday both, I saw graffiti that a local woman admitted being perplexed by. She thought it was official and it did blend in rather well with official art. But it’s not. It’s space invaders! Somebody is putting blocky figures from the space invaders game up around the city. The local woman did not believe my explanation, but the one I saw today had the word “bonus” with it and was clearly an arcade reference.
Also sighted in Le Monde: a review of Doctor Atomic. If you live near San Francisco, you must go see this opera. It’s exciting that San Francisco got the premiere. I hope it comes here on the road before I leave, cuz I want to see it.
And the moral of the story: it’s good to have had some experience moving suddenly to a school far away where I don’t know anybody, because I’ve been through it all before, so I know it will turn out fine. And I’m never moving again. Until next time. And it’s waaaaayyyyyyy better to drop everything in your life and move to Paris than it is to go to Middletown, at least as far as weekend diversions go.
Tags: Paris, Celesteh

I went out tonight with a guy from my school who is English/Spanish and his housemate who is French/American. The housemate likes to hang out in the gay district, but appears to be straight. I know what you’re thinking: How can you tell when you’re in the gay district in Paris? This is a good question actually, because the men here generally dress well. The idea of a “metrosexual” would be, well, foreign. Drag queens might be a giveaway (saw one). Also, if the men are walking with their arms around each other, that’s a good sign. Or you could look for the Rue des mauvais garçons. heh heh heh, that’s an actual street name in the gay district (I’ve taken just enough french to be one of those very pretentious american travel writers who throws french expressions in the text without bothering to translate them, but not enough to have a conversation. But such writing annoys me even though I can now understand it. That’s “Bad Boy Street” you’d be looking for. Which is funny.)

How do you recognize lesbians, then? Ha! Got me. I saw a couple of butch women in my last gay bar adventure, but since then when I’ve thought I’ve seen butch women, it’s turned out to be fem men. Men a get a bit more wiggle room on the gender variance thing here at least as far as clothing and stuff goes. Women get less. Which probably works out to men also having as little as in the US, since clothing has so little crossover. Anyway.
So we wandered around a looong time and then finally went into a place which turned out to be a restaurant. It was full of people, but we were seated at the tiny bar, so no talking to strangers. Not that it matters because I can’t speak French and they were almost all men and the people I was with were practically strangers, although het ones. There was also a drag queen at a different part of the bar, but I didn’t attempt to strike up a conversation with her. (How do you say, “hi! I cross dress too!” in French?) There were some women there but who can tell if they’re girly dykes or just fag hags? I wonder if there’s a bar someplace that caters to Anglophone Lesbians?
I picked up a post card advertising Gay Kitsch Camp, “GayKitschCamp éclaire le Monde” (Gay Kitsch Camp lights up the World) it says over a picture of the sun with a picture superimposed over it of a male head wearing lipstick, makeup and a pink fluffy sun hat. Ah, yes, yes it does. It’s not just a bookstore, it’s a festival, a publisher and a library, but alas, it is all of those things in Lille. Where is Lille? Polly’s got a piece in a concert coming up there.
I did, however, successfully discover information about the Gay and Lesbian Film Festival starting next week. I also found out, via friendster, of a punk rock show, on the same day the film festival starts. And IRCAM is giving a concert on the very same day, but maybe not at the very same time because no place on their website does it list a time for concerts.
Speaking of cross dressing, I’ve been getting some actual glares on the metro. Not just French people not smiling, but hostility. I’ve only gotten the look once, from a man, while I was staring wistfully at a dog. (You can take your dog on the metro. You can take your dog to bars/restaurants while you drink a meter of tequila (so, it’s this meter long board with several shot glasses on it, each one full of tequila. The goal is to drink the whole thing without being hospitalized). I really miss my dog.) But, I’ve gotten women looking very disapprovingly at me. During my first week here, before I quit wearing my hat, I went to an internet cafe and the guy working there said “Bonjour Monsieur” in a friendly manner and then his whole expression changed to a much less friendly one “Bonjour Madam.” So I don’t know why people are glaring at me, but I have my suspicions. I’m not going to girl it up any further though. I mean, I already stopped wearing my hat. (Nobody here wears hats and anyway, the sun is already so low on the horizon that the wide brim doesn’t keep it off my face. Cola is of the opinion that more sunlight on the face is good because of vitamin d, but we’ve got different solar needs. but i digress) Anyway, my suspicions could be completely wrong. I had several encounters with the Prefecture de Police that started with “Bonjour monmmmmmmmmmmadam” that were fine and if anybody wanted to make my life difficult, few would be better able to carry out that plan than the prefecture.
The guy from my school told me I’m a “messy” eater. I was standing on the street trying to eat a falafel with my hands, so it was a challenging situation. But what if I have bad table manners? Will I have to leave France?
I should not blog immediately upon returning from bars….
Tags: Paris, Celesteh

Wesleyan health services does indeed have a copy of my immunization records . . . in storage. they can’t guarantee that they can send them monday. maybe tuesday morning, which means tuesday evening for me. *sigh* alas. well, at least i can tell the french doctors that i will have the required paperwork.

In other news, my house is still filthy, although somewhat improved. the power adaptor in the living room doesn’t cause much computer noise (is it the power outlet or the adaptor that’s better?). the weather was warm and nice today, but i only left the house twice, both times to go to the fax place and then buy a baguette on the way home. i think the bakery with the better baguettes has dessert items that don’t look as good as the other bakery (two doors down). I may have to buy eclairs at each and determine who wins, you know, in the interest of science.
I read in the rough guide that per kilometer, Paris has a higher population density than Tokyo, which probably explains why there are three bakeries within half a block of my building. It does not however, explain the 5 or so cell phone stores. You need a new baguette every day (at least). How often do you need a new cell phone?
I’m a bit lonely without Yuri here anymore. She left yesterday at an ungodly early hour. I went back to look at my blog from when Wesleyan had just started and it’s exactly the same, trying to get a bank account, paperwork snafus (including with vaccination records), forgotten bills going to collections (ack), not knowing anyone, being nervous etc. And then I got insanely busy with crazy amounts of school work. So maybe I’ll get insanely busy soon, although I hope not too insane.
Tags: Paris, Celesteh

Just sent me a letter saying it needs all of my medical records. on tuesday.

It would be really handy if the consulate could have given me a list of things I would need to bring. I mean, maybe it should have occurred to me that I would need a birth certificate and my vaccination records, but I’ve never lived abroad before. They just said I would need my school letter.
i had to get a shot for measles in 2003 because I couldn’t find my paperwork saying I had ever gotten the second one. Of course I had, but my mom always kept documents like that . . .
I’m going to join some religion which doesn’t believe in getting shots.
So my plan is to call wesleyan tomorrow and see if they have my records, since they made me get a @!$@#!$ shot. If they don’t, my plan is to cry.
Tags: Paris, Celesteh

So when I plug my computer into my source of power in my bedroom, it starts making a lot of noise, I think from the fan, but I’m not sure (it does not seem to be the hard disk, it might be somewhat from the speakers, i can’t tell). When I unplug it from the wall, it reverts to silence. The strange (high pitchy brown noise) is definitely connected to being plugged in to the wall: It’s plugged into an ungrounded outlet: a little skinny plug with an adaptor to make it a fake three prong plug, going to an extension cord, to a splitter, to the skinny two prong apple adaptor that could fit into the starting outlet.

1. Is this bad for my computer?
2. Will plugging my powered monitor speakers into this same (ungrounded) power source murder them dead or harm them?

Tags: Paris, Celesteh

Fumer Tue

If I make it through this year without becoming a pack a day smoker, it may be a miracle. Everyone smokes all the damn time. And when we have a break from class, everyone is smoking. Social smokers become real smokers with frightening speed. Every time folks are smoking, I want to bum one, but I must not. Nicole’s little pack of social smokes that caught me last week have left me wanting more, like after having a coffee in the morning for a couple of days in a row. Anyway, these folks in my class are almost all Americans, so they have no excuse. I have no excuse. Must not start smoking!

Oh, my beloved baguette

Crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside, so long and play-weapon like. I can buy you across the street from my house and take you home fresh, baked within the last day. I can tear your end off as I walk down the street and eat your heel. I can eat you with cheese or alone or with tomatoes or with my soup and tear you or slice you. What will I do when I return to berkeley? I will have to move across from a bakery. I don’t know how I lived without you coming into my house fresh every day. Never again will we be long parted!
Tags: Paris, Celesteh