So I trimmed my old concluding paragraph

If she did, indeed, chose death rather than change clothes, then her clothing represents a highly developed technique of self. She was strongly invested in her sense of selfhood. Her gender performance, repressed and questioned, had become fully internally ingrained. The dialog she had with her judges and her voices lead her to value her nonheteronormative gender performance more than her life. If it was so central to her selfhood, then she was queerly self-aware. Her identity was evident to herself as queer. It was not just a place of opposition, it was a place of opposition that she was aware of and invested in. She “came out” as genderqueer, proclaiming it fundamental to her sense of self. She embodied a category that did not yet exist, by enduring repression and questioning in a process analogous to current queers. She lived and died the queer experience.

She was so fucking queer. If she were alive right now, she’d have gotten married in san francisco earlier this term. she’d be hanging out at lesbian bars in paris. she’d be a contributer to stone butch blues. she’d inspire a generation of bulldykes to adopt page-boy haircuts. she’d be so fucking awesome. man, i would date her. she’d be the lead singer in her own punk rock band. she’d wear badass jeans with a big leather belt. she’d have big stomping boots. nobody would mess with her. she’d take the chunnel to england to go raise hell in london. she would tell english tourists to get the hell out of france and leave her alone. she’d have like 700 girlfriends and break all of thier hearts cuz she was like 19 and 19 year olds are wont to do that. 700 broken hearted exes and a line a mile long to snag her after her shows. people who were older and should know better would fall for her. older guys in the buisiness would respect her, they wouldn’t even see her as a piece of ass, they’d think she was an equal. and man, she’d get action. she told her judges, “as for where she lodged or slept at night, she usually had a woman with her; when she was fighting, she would lie fully dressed and armed, if there was no woman to be found. In respect of the end of the article, she refers herself to God.” (Barrett 217) yah, all those chicks refer to god too. “ooohhhh god!” she’d be like cara crash, “i’ve got a crush on cara crash. her fast fingers make me trash . . .. ejaculate when i hear the sound of her playing.” (Breedlove) she’d fucking rule. so fucking punk rock, but with really fancy clothes, cuz she was into the bling. and man, anybody smart would stay the hell away from her. she’s going to burn out and die young. but her heart won’t burn, oh no. they have to toss that into the seine. leaving a trail of bodies behind her, her heart unburned, she’d flame so spectacularly, they’d be talking about it for like another 600 years. man, and every young dyke would fucking want her, but ever more, they’d want to be her. be her major ass kicking badass girl-getting never sleeps alone self. and what about her? the bourgeois of paris would be as perplexed now as he was then. “what it was god only knows” he’d still be talking about exposing her body like you could tell something about what the hell she was by looking at her naked corpse. he just wants to feel better about things. say, yah, it’s just a girl after all. still. lifeless. dead. not so inexplicable. not so awesome. just weird. she’s a fucking heretic. things are better this way. we’re going to win cuz god is on our side. but god is not on his side. god is with her. she’s taking over even from after death. what she started isn’t going to stop when she does. it’s bigger than a signle charismatic figure. her guys are going all the way. your sorry ass is going to be kissing theirs. you don’t mess with her, cuz she’ll kick your ass, even if you think you won. you’ll just make a martyr out of her. you’ll just turn the crowds against you. just do what she says, man, it’s easier. you can’t mess with her, she’s inspired. she’s guided by voices. she is SO FUCKING QUEER. so back off motherfuckah. this is not your spritzhead girlfriend this is hothead fucking joan of fuck arc paisan, yeah. FUCK YOU

But seriously folks

Please give me feedback. Paper: http://www.xkey.com/~celesteh/acad/wes/joan-queer.rtf and bibliography: http://www.xkey.com/~celesteh/acad/wes/joan-queer-bib.rtf .   Feedback pretty please? Especially the end paragraphs, cuz, um, I stayed up way too late. but i can sleep on the plane. and maybe nap before my flight after i finish all my chores i have to do.

Status update

My TA stuff is under control. My gear is returned to the lab. I’m waiting till fall to ship Christi’s stuff, even though this means shipping it to france, which will be much more expensive. My hosue is still a disaster. I have 8 pages left to write. The paper in progress is continually being updated at http://www.xkey.com/~celesteh/acad/wes/joan-queer.rtf
Todo:

  • Pack to go home (augh, still don’t have big suitcase – i should go check out thrift stores, but alas, i bet other students have already cleaned them out)
  • Buy more dogfood
  • get two sets of key copies made for folks that will be around my wes house over the summer
  • clean room. do non-essential laundry. don’t want ot come home to a festering pile of months old dirty underwear, no i don’t. anymore than folks luring around my house in the summer would like the idea….
  • completely empty the refrigerator. all the way empty. i do not want to repeat spring break fiasco.
  • return the 30 or so library books i have out

If it’s not on this list, I’ve forgotten about it and need to be reminded.

So how is that paper going, anyway?

You can read my paper in progress at http://www.xkey.com/~celesteh/acad/wes/joan-queer.rtf . Feedback is always welcome, at least, it is before Friday as that is the final due date. I’ll be periodically re-publishing my paper to that url as I work on it.

and, alas there is more on my todo list:

  • Pack and ship things to christi’s parents, including CDs, books, dished and vinyl records
  • Go get images from the lab for documentation, including any unphotographedhardware and screen shots from lab specific software, like the MOTU interface thingee
  • Pack to go home (augh, still don’t have big suitcase – i should go check out thrift stores, but alas, i bet other students have already cleaned them out)
  • Buy more dogfood
  • get two sets of key copies made for folks that will be around my wes house over the summer
  • clean room. do non-essential laundry. don’t want ot come home to a festering pile of months old dirty underwear, no i don’t. anymore than folks luring around my house in the summer would like the idea….
  • completely empty the refrigerator. all the way empty. i do not want to repeat spring break fiasco.
  • return the 30 or so library books i have out
  • return equipment to the lab

bah. there’s probably more. I must have all of this done by 2:00 wednesday.

temptest in a teapot

Ok, so a couple of weeks ago there was a student-organized composer’s concert. I had a piece in the firts one of these. The first concert was a small test run with only a few composers willing to try something new, meaning that, on the whole, it was a lot better than the second one. I don’t likie to post negative reviews, so I usually don’t, but the second concert had a high level of suckage. Most of the pieces by undergrads. Many had a tendency to go on way too long. At least twice as long as they should. Hello, we have compositon faculty who would love to help you edit (read: shorten and modify) your work. Also, it would be really helpful to consider such elements as a structure. And having at least one rehersal might be a good idea. And the reason I don’t say these things is because I know the composers of these works and I don’t want to hurt their feelings. And they’re students. Student works are supposed to be exploratory and not necessarily materpieces. One unrehearsed piece that went on far too long was written by a very talented young composer. The piece had good elements in it that I hope are developed more in future pieces. I look forward to seeing the composer mature and find a voice. Great things ahead. Part of being a community means going to concerts full of works that are not going to be fabulous so you can see what your comrades are working on. It means, obviously, not critizing the hell out of something, unless you’re making a specific helpful point. And really, unless you’re good friends, a TA or a prof, you might want to hold off on making these points. I mean, if you gave a concert and your piece had a great ending point 5 minutes before the actual end and you missed five notes at the beginning, would you want every signle member of the sudience to tell you “great piece, but . . ..” So as a community, we support each other. We go to each other’s concerts. We offer criticisms when it’s appropriate or when we are asked for feedback. We offer encouragement.

I played in the second composer’s concert in the opening piece by my housemate. It was an unsual piece in which all the players dropped marbles in unison down clear plastic pipes, which fell to the concert hall stage floor. the parts indicated how long players should wait until picking up the marble. The interesting thing about the piece, more than the sounds of marbles hitting the floor in-semi unison, was the theatrical aspect of watching people pick up marbles at different times. The parts were distributed at random. The timing markers in the piece were non exact. So what looked to me like count 4 & 1/2, might have been 3 or 4 or 5 to somebody else. And there were a bunch of lines in the score. So on count 2, for example, a cluster of people on the right might grab their marbles. Then, the next time, on count 5, some folks in the corners, might bend down. An interesting idea. I can’t critique it too much, cuz i was in it, not watching it.
another person who failed to watch this theatre piece, apparently felt like he should not only offer criticism, but write a letter to the newspaper ciriticising all wes composers and the audience for clapping. Hey kid: you’re wrong. You missed the piece, you missed the point and you don’t understand community. And what the hell with invoking Hilter?? Um, I know that The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is not required reading or anything, but as a rule, and in that specific case, right wing governments are also against new art. Wrong analogy. Wrong side of wrong analogy. I hope nobody takes this kid too seriously on this article and some teacher or good friend or TA gives him some criticism on how to better formulate his ideas.

Terror, Trafficing in Evil

I’ve already posted twice about the NYTimes article that said we should “traffic in evil” to win the war on terror, which the author defined in such a way as to be unwinnable. Well, looks like we’ve been following that advice in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course, this has completely defanged all the terrorist organizations that hate our government and caused the Middle East to love us and fear us. Rush Limbaugh calls it a “thoughtful” approach. Those of us who have not falled off the wagon (he must be back on drugs), are somewhat appalled. However, this is exactly what the NYTimes seems to think is a good idea. this is exactly what has been suggested. And it’s what we’ve been doing, according to the Red Cross and other groups, for more than two years in Iraq and Afghanistan. Remember Afghanistan? the justified war? Where prisoners have now been held in inhumane conditions for two years with no access to legal counsel and without being charged with any crime. Remember how we were bring freedom to Afghanistan, quoth Bush, “once ruled by the brutal Taliban regime.” Now ruled by the brutal american regime.

Human Rights Watch articulates the problems with the reasoning behing the nytimes article,

But imagine for a moment that you’re an interrogator, and that you have in front of you a person who has information about an imminent attack on the United States. What would you do to get that information?

That is the classic “ticking bomb” scenario that proponents of torture always bring forward … But what we’ve found is that it puts you on a slippery slope that leads to extensive torture. If you can use torture against somebody who today you believe knows where the ticking bomb is, why not use torture on the person who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows where the ticking bomb is going to be in two weeks?
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/05/07/iraq8562.htm

and this reasoning leads directly to the kind of abuse that has been photodocumented in Iraq. I mean, these prisoners might know something, even if they haven’t done anything wrong themselves, right?
The Times suggested that we torture suspects for information. Not people convicted of something. Not even people who are charged with something, necessarily. People who might know stuff. The abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan are what happens when that reasoning is followed. And if this is not enough to convince you, if you think maybe these soldiers are not systematically “softening up” inmates, maybe they’re “blowing off some stream” (says Rush) or it’s not worse than Frat Hazing (say many people who are apparently unaware that frat boys volunteer for hazing and anyway it’s illegal at many schools), or maybe it is actually systematic, but who cares these guys are all foreigners, or whatever. If you want to excuse it: the NYTimes thinks we should start this sort of thing at home. That’s not just foreigners, in that case. That’s your neighbor. That’s your kid. That’s you. You, even as an upright Republican voter, have a duty to protect yourself by standing up against this at home and abroad.

and

Obviously, I’m procrastinating on my paper. This abuse thing is very very bad. but I must write my paper. I wonder if I have any “upright republican” readers.

shoutouts

thank you to David for recording, webcasting and photodocumenting thursday cocnert.

thank you to tim for organizing thursday concert.
thank you to dan for promoting thursday concert.
thank you to tim, dan and charlie for playing in thursday concert.
thank you to aaron for providing beer, seating, hospitality, mixing board and monitor speakers for thursday concert.
thank you to people who came/listened on the web to thursday concert.
thank you to sophie for offering a ride from airpot on wednesday.
thank you to david for offering a ride to the airport on wednesday.
thank you to angela for taking xena for the summer.
thank you to cola for offering me temporary lodging (while CN was to be unavilable)
thank you to mitch and to jean’s friend sarah for offering me bicycles (I will take one of you up on the offer)
thank you to ellen for offering me summer lodging
oh my, I am quite lucky to have had so many people be nice and helpful. I must now go back to working on my paper.

woot

I have republished my photo library. Concert pictures start on Page 12 or Page 13, depending on how you count.

There were a lot of people here last night. Every chair in the house was used. People were sitting on the coffee table. People were sitting on the floor. People were standing in the back. I didn’t count. But I was very nervous. I get very scared when I play, which is why I don’t do it very often and is why I should do it more often. I kept grabbing the wrong cord. And my hands were actually shaking, so it was hard to plug them in. When I play with my modular, I keep all the cords around my neck, so easy access. So eberytime I move, there’s the sound of cable ends clacking against each other. Something I didn’t think about. Normally, I just take a line out and don’t play in front of people, you know, so the cable sounds don’t exist. Weird playing in front of people. I have no idea how long I played or what I did. I started with a chaos patch. That’s when you take three oscillators and take the ouput of one of them and use it to control the frequency of the next one. So if the first one is a very low frequency and the next one is higher, it sounds like a siren as the first oscilator frequency modulates the second one. If you turn the first oscillator up into the audible range, you can’t hear the siren anymore, because the frequency modulation [fm] is too fast. So It makes a very complex wave form. In a chao patch, you take the output of the second oscillator and plug it into the FM jack of a third one. Then you take the output of the third one, and plug it into the FM of the first one,s o they’re all cascading down a line. This is chaotic. Then take the ouput of any one of them, chnage the base pitch of any of the other ones, and un predictable things happen. It’s complex. It tweaks in interesting ways. It’s a good foundation. I feel like if I play again, I need to start with a different base. Good thing I’m not playing again for a while. The downside of starting with a choas patch is that it uses all three of my main oscillators. I have a few more, including three below-audio-range LFOs (low frequency oscilalators – synths are full of TLAs) and two more audio range oscialltors. But those and two of the LFOs and in a tiny little adjunct synth, which I don’t know as well (and for which I have too few cables!). I want another oscillator. I know exactly which one I want. Alas, hardware is expensive, which is why I’ve been all laptop recently as it’s portable and software is free. I actually need a mixing board way more than I need a new oscillator and new filter and a new MIDI->CV (cv = control voltage) converter and more more more stuff. A new row of modules! After I win the lottery. But I’m happy I played and I think I will do it again, Cuz actually, my synth does have a pretty good performance aspect for experimental music. ooooh, Wiard makes a very nifty controller. It’s two joysticks, each of which gives you an X axis voltage and a Y axis voltage and a couple of buttons which can function as gates. somebody should sign me for a record deal and give me a huge advance which I can blow on modules and controllers. This is why analog synths were a great hobby during the dot com years and laptop music is a better plan for the immediate future.
Ok, yes, where was I? A ton of people showed up and then all quickly dispersed. Among the people who did not exit immediately, reviews were positive. Two professors came, including my advisor. If you missed it, there is a recording some place on the internet world wide web (as david calls it), but David has not told me where the recording exists. I want to listen. Will post when I know.

Webcast

Check tommorrow at 8:00 EDT: http://www.xkey.com/~celesteh/music/stream.html. That’s 5:00 PM on the west coast, btw. The stream will be archived for posterity, btw.

It’s just me jamming on my modular. People are more excited about seeing the synth than anything else, I think. I’ve never played it in front of anyone before. I use it for tape music. Because it takes up a long time to set up a patch and then it’s just one sound. Normally, I’ll spend half an hour setting up a patch and the record it for 10 minutes and repeat the process 8 times to make a 5-10 minute piece. It’s a nice way to work, building up layers, doing sections. By the time I have everything recorded, I usually know what the mix will be, so it takes me another 20 minutes or so to mix. then I have a new piece of tape music. Woot. In this case however, I need to set up faster, I guess, and come up with a patch that is interesting by itself. I’ve been practicing a bit. I dunno how much I can plan in advance. I know I’m going to build up a chaos patch and use that, cuz they’re interesting. After that? Hopefully people will dig it.

Wine, Women and Song

Yesterday was the last day of classes. Today was something called Spring Filng. Outdoor concert
with 21934325146723 undergrads swarming like ants. Stopped by for a minute. I’ve been drinking and whatnot since the afternoon. woot. So I’ve started my summer in the wine dept. Tommorrow night is song. And my still lurking Joan of Arc paper will have to do for women. I need to get that dern thing written. Or hell, maybe I’ll get groupies from my synth gig. heh.

More on terror

As I read the nytimes article one page at a time…. The author talks about winning or losing the war on terror. He does not define his terms, yet he seems to imply that one more terrorist attack on US soil would constitute a defeat. Presumably, the abscence of such an attack would constitue victory. But since an attack is always possible, victory is unattainable. It is an unreachable goal state, since it cannot be assessed until the end of time. This is a problem inherent in letting the pro-perpetual war folks define the terms of debate. They create a perpetual, unwinnable war, which is ultimately against ourselves. The writer “warns” against this pehnomenon, saying we want to hang on to some of our freedoms. But since he quotes the highly reliable Rice talking about terrorists absolutely planning on tampering in the november elections (oh, i just bet they will. i feel fear, and not from angry foreigners), his biases are clearly evident.

He is also too willing to excuse government misdeeds, stating, “Even so, after 9/11 we were frightened, and Congress and the government weren’t always thinking straight.” Right. The patriot act, passed by congress without having been read by any of the lawmakers, was definitely an act of political expedience, if not fear. But from whence did this act come? Who wrote it? Who had it sitting ready until the time was right to broaden police powers? Somebody planned it. They wrote the legislation and then sat on it, waiting for an opprtunity. That is not fearfully not thinking striaght.
He writes also, “To defeat evil, we may have to traffic in evils: indefinite detention of suspects, coercive interrogations, targeted assassinations, even pre-emptive war. These are evils because each strays from national and international law and because they kill people or deprive them of freedom without due process. They can be justified only because they prevent the greater evil.” Even if we accept this line of thinking as valid, it still raises numerous problems. First of all, we already do these things abroad and the result of them has not been truth justice, and the american way. The result has been Hussein, the Shaw, massacres galore in south america, human rights abuses upon human rights abuses. And who do we trust when it seems like pre-emptive war is justified? Hitler neutralized the terrible Polish menace. Now we’re in Iraq, lookingin vain for Weapons of Mass Destruction. They were going to be horrible, remember? All aimed right at us. But it turned out, to nobody’s surprise, that really, we wanted to increase the profits of Halliburton, get control of oil and expand the reach of the welathy elite. Hussein did not become a bad guy when he gassed the Kurds. He became a bad guy when he nationalized the oil companies. Our definition of threatening our national interest corresponds exactly with threatening corporate interests. Our government will be more than happy to defend us with pre-emptive strikes, if by “us,” you mean oil companies. The greater evil, in our military adventurism since WWII, has always been the potential loss of corporate profits and power.
And how about defeating evil? When is it defeated? When we take over the capital of evil? when us troops occupy the 9th layer of hell? when jesus rises again and judges the living and the dead? Or is evil some sort of war we can win by attrition? Let’s say that right now in the world, there are 1000 people in terrorist cells, currently plotting horrible things. something must be done to stop them, obviously. Let’s say we bomb the hell out of villages suspected to be hiding terrorists. We kill 700 of them. And 10000 bystanders. Then there are only 300 terrorists left. And all the insanely angry freinds and relatives of the bystanders. We had 1000 terrorists. Now we have 20000. Fighting terroism with “evil” is fighting a hydra. Everytime you use violence without due cause, you inflame anger. Violence is a blunt and ineffective tool for change or communication. Moreover, it becomes the only tool. the more a stae uses violemce, the more it has to use violence. We would fall into a perpetually bloody struggle, leaving a trail of dead behind us. This is not a definition of “winning” a war on terror, unless by winning, you mean being the most effective, bad-ass terrorists. And damn, we already won that. Our elder staesmen are wanted war criminals. Look at what we did in Guatemala in the 80’s! Man, look where our aid money is going. The more a country violated human rights, the more military aid they receive from us.
no, i do not have time to be worrying about this.