wanted:

field recording of a group recitation of the Apostles Creed or the Nicene Creed, such as is done in the catholic mass. You’d think that with google, I could find such a recording, but I’m having no luck.

So I was looking for some text by Emma Goldman on the connection between power and violence (power is violence, I think) and then I was getting back to my reading of medieval visionaries and i realized that god is all-powerful, which means he’s all-violent. Which is why he’s running around casting people into hell left and right. I’m sure that if I’d grown up in a fire and brimstone religion instead of namby-pamby catholics, the ‘god = violence’ thing would seem so suddenly interesting. Or maybe it’s the gallon of earl gray tea i drank this afternoon. So I’m thinking of mixing a short text about “power is violence. absolute power is absolute violence” with a group recitation of “all powerful and everliving god” with dubya talking about “war on terror” and the taliban and (mystic) Julian of Norwich’s thoughts on sin (everything god made is good, so sin must serve god somehow) and maybe some gunshot noises.
this is for open mic night at the local hippie cafe. who wouldn’t want to ponder power, violence and religion while eating cajun tempeh sandwiches?

yanni

So I met somebody the other day who said she liked Yanni, and I realized that I’d never actually heard anything by him, despite his being a staple of pledge-drive season public television in the bay area. I asked Tom and he said, “Yanni’s great! I actually really like him.” But tom used these same words of praise on Britney Spears, so I thought I should investigate this for myself.

The offical Yanni website only offers 33 and 36 second previews of his work, so I can only talk about his introductions, of which I just downloaded a few. And listened to them while Xena stared at me with a confused and disapproving expression, the dog version of “wtf?” It sounds like an instrumental version of Celine Dion, but performed on Casio Tones.
Don’t get me wrong. I love Casio tones. And I don’t know what year’s music I was listening to. Perhaps it was recorded in the heyday of Casio tones. anyway, someplace, I have one, I think. I’m fond of it. It’s a midi controller and the accordian sound is really nifty when passed through an overdriven low pass filter. Actually, it’s Christi‘s casio tone, so perhaps I will never see it again, since i’m not sure where it has gotten itself off to.
I feel like there may be a strong asthetic connection between Yanni, Thomas Kinkade and Chicken Soup for the Soul. It feels like it is strongly rooted in the middle class, perhaps distinctly American (except that Yanni is Greek and Celine Dion is Canadian). It’s something born in the last decade? Perhaps earlier? The middle class is the backbone of our society. the silent majority who tromps off to work every day, pays taxes (most taxes? the rich aren’t paying anymore) and sees little benefit except in public education. Without the middle class, the US would decend into chaos and open class warfare, or at least chaos, since open class warfare is already being waged in many places. The middle class, locked into debt, is locked into non-radicalism. they have the most to lose and the most fear of losing it. the cultural values that they embrace define us a society, as they are consumers, so the rich pander to them while ignoring the poor.
Therefore, the middle class asthetic is safe. the middle class is up to it’s eyeballs in student debt, credit card debt and morgage debt, they can’t afford to rock the boat. the asthetic is comforting. while existing a few paychecks or one serious illness away from bankruptcy, the need for comfort is strong. And it allows them dreams of togtherness, unity and a social safety net. While isolated in the suburbs, with no real community around them, who wouldn’t desire to look at pictures of cohesive village social structures?
Or maybe I’m readin too much into this
I have a CD with an interview with a Dadaist on it and he’s talking about how the thing to do seemed to be to attack the bourgeois, as apparently they were unaware that it had been done to death. then they did some investigation and found out that they were all bourgeois.
“Science says we are the servants of nature: everything is in order, make love and bash your brains in. Carry on, my children, humanity, kind bourgeois and journalist virgins . . . ” (http://www.english.upenn.edu/~jenglish/English104/tzara.html)
I want to write a manifesto for an art movement. analyzing capitalist systems and Yanni is optional

googling myself

randomness. It’s too bad about mp3.com.

Maybe I should add myself to wikipedia

More

and this!. Ok, it bothers me that nobody told me that they were putting things i wrote in a book, but goddamn, i’m now a published feminist writer. a totally, uncontacted, unreimbursed published feminist writer. wow.

There will be advantage in every movement

So yesterday, I went on a date

It was my first date since becoming single and, indeed, my first date since I was 18 years old. The last date I went on was with a 17 year old French horn player who was still in highschool. (Christi and I didn’t date until after we were a couple, so it doesn’t count.) Actually, the horn player may have been the only girl I ever went out on dates with. I had a girlfriend before that, but I didn’t go out with her so much as . . . well, nevermind.
I have a memory of feeling awkward and thinking that dating girls was, suprisingly, as awkward as dating boys. I actually dated quite a number of boys when I was 15 and 16. It was awkward and stupid and confusing, because sometimes I would like them, but I never liked them.
Anyway, I went out to a coffee shop in town yesterday and met a woman from a personal ad. She’s a Middletown resident, which means she can tell me things like where to get my car fixed and where folks hang out, which is very handy. I’m horribly shy with new people. I hardly spoke, I think. She told many stories. She’s a security gaurd and wants to be a cop and is some sort of volunteer with the Middletown PD, where she actually wears a full uniform (minus the pistol) and responds to certain types of calls. (I am a nice girl and didn’t ask about handcuffs.)
She’s also an aspiring poet and sent me a poem she wrote last November which she is very proud of. It won some sort of contest at poetry.com, through which she can get a publishng deal of some kind (that sounds a bit scammy). I think she outght to hold out for Chicken Soup for the Soul. Her poem is better than some of Tiffany‘s mom’s poetry and as I recall, Tiffany’s mom was published in Chicken Soup for the Christian Soul.
I gave her the url for my music, but haven’t heard anything back about it yet.
I didn’t feel any sort of spark. I’m not sure we share an asthetic or a worldview, but she seems fun. I talked very little and was uncertain what to say. I said virtually nothing of my background. when I pulled out my post-it pad to write down my phone number, the top post-it had a phone number and said “divorce lawyer” in large letters. she must think I’m escaping from a het marriage.
The real situation is much too complicated. I want to work it out with Christi, but when she said “maybe later,” the possible time she indicated was after my graduation. I told Angela last semester that it was foolish to pretend that I had any say whatsoever over my fate. I dunno what to do with myself over the next year and half, or indeed, any time after that either. I’m just putting one foot in front of the other and waiting to see what life gives me.

I’ve been making movements, with the idea that there will be some advantage in all of them, despite my lack of a plan or even a completely clear goal state. Then I looked again. The future state has advantage in every movement. And Change is slowly occuring. Right now, movements might bring disadvantage, for all I know. Or maybe it’s just important to keep busy. Or maybe the only direction to go is up.

Telephones

Right now, we live in a very visual culture. People make biological explinations for this, which I’m not prepared to discuss, but it’s important ot note that Western Culture was not always visual. During the Medieval period, most information was translated verbally. Thus listening was more important than seeing. Even literate people were trained to read aloud, rather than silently, so in literacy there was still a sence of an auditory component through which information was relayed.
Many factors in our modern culture have changed that. Television. Movies. Widespread silent literacy. Visual images have become the dominant communication medium. Sight is now culturally more important than listening.
Thus, when you sit in a room and talk with someone, you are doing so in a visually-dominated milleu. You look at them, looking for information cues, such as facial expression, twitching, body language, etc. This makes up at least half of the communication. You also detect other stimuli, which we are less aware of, such as pheremones. The voice alone is telling less than half the story.
This means, that under ideal circumstances of perfect audio reproduction, let’s say 24 bit audio at 96 k sampling, with a perfect condenser microphone, you’re getting less than half of the cues, especially the emotional cues. And most voice reproduction is not so ideal. Take, for example, the telephone. Under a perfectly clear connection, the sample rate is not so high, the bit rate is lower and many high and low frequencies have been filtered out so as to require less bandwidth. Most phones have very cheap dynamic mics and equally poor speakers. Subtleties are lost. Voice inflections, rich in emotional content, are compressed away, filtered out, not reproducable by the speakers and not picked up by the mic in the first place. This is under ideal circumstances, making a phone call to somebody down the street on a perfectly clear line. What percentage of content is actually getting through?
Now, think of a very long distance line. If you’re calling Europe, for example, your signal is bouncing off a satalite or going through a very long trans-atlantic cable. Your phone is probably analog, with heavy filtering of highs and lows. The signal gets converted to digital part way through by the phone company, using A to D converters that are probably less than perfect, probably passing again through a filter to clear out analog line noise (and taking some of your signal with it), then it gets sent across the atlantic, then is re-converted to analog, again with not a studio-quality D to A converter, or recompressed and sent out to your cell phone, which does it’s own D ot A conversion using whatever circuts are included in the thing. your voice has been routed a long way, filtered, compressed, converted A to D to A and maybe to D and A another time again, and otherwise mangled. Some of your packets were probably lost. You’re lucky if there’s not static or echo or both.
On the one hand, it’s entirely astoundingly miraculous that you can be standing in Connecticut and hear the apartment noises of dinner being cooked in an apartment in France, while it’s actually happening. On the other hand, how much data is really getting through? It’s something like a cruel joke, in that it implies that communication is possible, but then drops so many pieces of it, making communication extremely difficult.
Having phone conversations with strangers works well because there’s often very little emotional content. Having phone conversation with someone you see frequently can also work well. We are creatures of habit. You are used to reading their cues, because you spend time around them and have the full picture of their cues fresh in your mind. But that gets lost if it’s not practiced. The cues that you can read over the phone, because you read them all the time in person, get less clear over times of seperation. Thus the phone, once a handy way of saying you’d be a few minutes late to dinner, subtly turns against you as the distance and time seperating you grows.
The parable of the frog not jumping out of a slowly heating pot and getting cooked, alas, is not based in fact. Nevertheless, it can take time to realize that the phone is not helping things. The seeming miraculousness of it disguises it’s evil intent. It’s like the devil appearing to the unsuspecting and performing false signs and miracles to lead would-be visionaries into heresy.
It is barely possible to have an emotional conversation in a long distance phone call. It is impossible to conduct a relationship over the phone. What is the answer to this dilemna?

Ok, so there must be both sincerity and an appearance of dignity. sincerity, obviously, must be felt in the heart. But the dignity is something in between. To put on dignity entirely for show, would lack sincerity. However, the feeling of dignity in the heart is not specifically called for. What is called for is merely the appearance, but mixed with sincerity.

There is also immaturity, “the looking of a lad.” Perhaps maturity would mean dignity felt in the heart. Perhaps for the immature, it is enough to work sincerely to appear dignified, which is to try to be dignified, but fake it when you have to. In any case, it’s a call to grow up and to approach things maturely. Hildegard of Bingen (who I’m studying in Medieval Visionaries class) had a vision of seven vices and seven virtues. One of the vices had the appearance of a dog and said that it would run dog-like towards everyone and be playful and happy forever. The virtue responded by condemning the vice’s immaturity. Running dog-like towards people both lacks maturity and dignity.
Therefore, the solutions called for are sincere, restrained and mature. Romantic comedy-type actions are therefore not called for. The failed actions of the past are similarly not called for. They don’t work. And they’re not mature: they are patterns formed in youth that have not been modified. They are regrettable in grown-ups.
The situation will be slow to change, but will end well. Taking action is advised. Even drastic action (presumably as long as it is sincere and mature and appears diginified) will lead to good things. However, it’s presumable that the slow change along with the necessity of dignity means that any drastic action must be thoughtful. Large actions must be weighed carefully, as impetuousness is immature, even if it is sincere.
I explained this to my shrink and she asked if the appearance of dignity was a large concern of mine. I said I wanted to do the right thing. Of course, there are many right things rather than a single correct course of action. Indeed, there may be advantage in every movement undertaken, although there may be varying degrees of advantage and different kinds of advantage in different life arenas. My shrink points out that crises can lead to a lot of growth, for example.
I’m using this as a platform from which to try to maintain my mood of cautious optomism. It looks more dignified than despair.

Grasping at straws

Christi’s blog says “not now.” Which means “maybe later.” Right?

I was reading about John Cage’s use of the I Ching. As soon as he could, he used a computer program. So I found one on the web. At least it’s using the right algorythm, whereas I was not, since you have to toss a coin 18 times, not just six.

The present is embodied in Hexagram 20 – Kuan (Contemplation): He should be like the worshipper who has washed his hands, but not yet presented his offerings. There must be sincerity and an appearance of dignity, commanding reverent regard.
The first (bottommost) line, divided, shows the looking of a lad – not blamable in men of inferior rank, but matter for regret in superior men.
The situation is evolving slowly, and Yang (the active masculine force) is gaining ground.
The future is embodied in Hexagram 42 – I (Increase): There will be advantage in every movement which shall be undertaken, and it will even be advantageous to cross the great stream.

Appearance of dignity, well, um, moving right along . . . “slow evolution” and “great advantage” are sounding good. Polly told me that Jupiter is in retrograde for the next three months or so, which makes starting new projects difficult. I’m mixing astrology and the I Ching . . . because I am a hippy new ager with an appearance of dignity.
Anthony Braxton came over today and left his laptop behind for me to install stuff on. He’s in the supercollider tutorial and it met at my house today because Ron, the teacher, is off in China.