Came home last night to find part of a dissertation (that i’ve been using as source material) torn up and full of bite marks. What’s worse is that the post-it notes had been systematically removed. Fortunately, I own the copy that I was using and so don’t need to pay fees to the library.
bad dog
christi and i have now been together for nine years. well, we’re not “together” per say at this very moment, but you know what i mean. gosh, i miss her.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/12/02/DEAN.TMP marriage for hets only, says dean. he went on to state that allowing blacks and white to intermarry was a an issue for the states to decide. “what is appropriate in a northern state, just might not fly in the deep south.” he continued “what’s important is to give more or less equal rights to people, even if they happen to be seperate rights.”
Joan of Arc presentation on Wednesday. final project in supercollider demo tomorrow. final presentation in pedagogy tomorrow. gamelan concert thursday.
if i don’t throw myself in the connecticut river first. it’s much too cold for that tho. snow flurries at lunch time.
no food in the fucking filthy house.
Listening to George Bush say, “I beleive that marriage is between a man and a woman” over and over again is kind of depressing, even if it’s for the sake of art. This and many other Bush sound bites can be found at http://www.daveross.com/audio/.
the score for La Koro Sutro arrived today. well, i got it today. fortunately, i’ve been granted a reprieve, so the LKS presentation isn’t until a bit after my Joan of Arc paper is due.
Air France is a much nicer airline than US airlines. Rmemeber the old days before everyone was terrified that the person next to them had a shoe bomb and you could stand up and stretch without being eyed nervously and people did crazy things like walk around and stand in line for the bathrooms? Air France is like that and the stewards are polite. Downsides were that they kept waking me up for things like food or to warn me that airturbulence might break my neck is I sleep with me head pitched forward on my tray table. I’ve never heard of that before. Is it because US-based airlines don’t care if I break my neck? Is it a special feature of french airplanes?
Arrived v. tired in Paris. Took a nap. then went out to see the world Priemere of a LaMont Young piece. I don’t know the name of the piece. Christi insisited that we arrive one hour early to listen to the talk. The talk was in French, of course, so I didn’t understand a word of it. “Blah blah blah John Cage blah blah serialism blah blah.” Well, I got a few words. I didn’t mind because I know Christi has extensive experience listenign to and understanding lectures in French about music. But then she slipped out and went to a bar without telling anyone, while I and her mom (who also doesn’t understand French) stood respectfully and listened to the lecture.
The piece was three hours long and seemed to involve a few different tuning schemes, but I couldn’t tell you more than that, as I didn’t understand the lecture. There were drony MAX-based electronic sounds, I think samples of cello and a solo cello player with a couple of pedals. The auditorium was about 90 degrees Farenheit (I come to France and I can’t speak the language and I don’t do metric…) and there was inscence burning and just-intoned drone-y sounds. I fell asleep twice in the first twenty minutes. then was awake for a while, then out for about 40 minutes where I had a dream that I was on an airplane and instead of the big TV screen at the front of the cabin, they had a solo cello performer. There was a while where I had my eyes closed but was not alseep. Eventually, the cellist was playing fast rythms in the sort of the same mode as the piece started out in. The same kinds of gestures were being made, but they were all ornamented with fast notes, also in the same sort of gesture. It was sort of fractal that way. It was exciting, but then it was drony again and I’m afraid I dozed off again. Finally, the peice was over and the cellist just sat at the front and looked stressed and beat. He didn’t do the full relaxing thing that’s a clue that the piece is over. There were tentative claps here and there. People waited. Clapped quietly once, sort of testing if anyone else would join in. For four or five minutes.
Spent yesterday working on SuperCollider project. It crashes the server. Christi and her momed cooked and I coded. Now they’re out doing something interesting and I’m working on my Joan of Arc paper (and updating my blog, of course). Two French folks that Christi is friends with came over for Thanksgiving dinner. They were dubious about the holiday and about American food. But all went well. Christi ran out to get extra tomatoes (ah the convience of celebrating a holiday in a country that doesn’t recognize it) and found a computer out at the curb which has a DVD player and a CD burner, so she dragged upstairs.
I must get back to work
I want to take audio buffers and divide them up into tiny piecves and
then play all the pieces sequential, in order, but the pieces themselves
are played backwards. then i want to repeat this process several times,
with the pieces getting larger every time, until finally the whole buffer
is once piece and is played backwards.
The reason for this plan is because I’ve read that when speech is
processed this way, most people do not hear the reversal until the
reversed pieces are pretty large, so i hope to slide by the threshhold of
people’s perception.
I’m looking at help files for buffers. I will also be looking at the SC2
help file on granular synthesis. I have to write this project in SC3,
because the computer that I can use over break is OSX only. My idea
for how to do this (note that I am not asking you to respond in any way
that would get me a D in the class), is to create an array of integers
that represent start (and end) frames, then play them backwards one right
after another with an envelope. then the array is recomputed.
it’s the 25 anniversary of the slaying of the US’s first openly gay politician, Harvey Milk, a member of the San Francisco board of supervisors. Dan White, the killer, also killed Mayor Moscone. The gay community responded by having a candle-light march. White, a former police officer, plead temporary insanity and his plea became erroneously known as the Twinkie Defense. Although it mentioned ho-ho’s and whatnot, it didn’t hinge on junk food. The jury was selected to be pro-death penatly, as White might have been sentenced to death. The conservative, pro-police jury, widely described as homphobic, sentenced White to eight years in prison, of which he served five. The gay community responded with a somehwhat angrier march. Some marchers wanted to commit vandalism. The march leaders had formed a human chain keeping the rowdier deonstrators out of trouble. the overwhelmingly homophic police department promptly arrested all the leaders and provoke the crowd, which responded to the provocation. The police then went into the Castro (the city’s gay neighborhood) and started pulling people out of bars and arresting them. Gay folks in bars were as apolitcal then as they are now. Guys just looking to drink and cruise were beaten by police. The police joked about getting cute guys and boyfriends as they assaulted bystanders. A riot thus errupted. Police cars were overturned. This eventually became known as the White Night Riots. Queers do fight back.
My Inter Library Loan book was just granted a renewal! I can keep it until January. I love ILL. I love the librarians.
This is all very good, becuase I got little work done yesterday as I woke up at 4:00 or 4:30 pm. I guess I might have been running something of a sleep defecit. Also, I really do not wake up without an alarm.
I must go do work now. work work work. I have one paper due the 8th, another one the 9th and my supercollider final project is due a week from thursday. arg arg arg
This in the mail this morning:
Public Safety would like to notify the community that this morning Saturday, November 22,
2003 at approximately 2:50am a male student reported he was assaulted on High Street near
Huber Ave.The male student was walking by himself when he was approached by a male who made a
homophobic comment and struck him. The student continuing walking a short distance and
then was approached by the same suspect and four others who began punching and kicking
him. The suspects then left the area on foot and headed north on High St. The student was
brought to Middlesex Hospital for treatment.
that’s the opposite side of campus from where I live, about a 5 minute walk from the CFA. I have walked home from the CFA by myself at such an ungodly hour. In the future, I’m going to either bicycle (it’s downhill going home) or take Xena with the hope that she might intimidate somebody. High Street is a major enough street that I would have thought it was “safe.”
I will not be going home during winter break. A mis-reading of schedules lead me to beleive that there would be time for christi and i to spend a week at home. but this was in error. i won’t be home for thanksgiving either. my thansgiving day tickets are non-refundable, so i’m not going to be able to change them, even in the unlikely event that i could book a flight home at this late date.
however, I have a two week spring break, at least one week of which will be spent in California. Possibly (hopefully) both weeks.
the good news is not as good as the bad news was bad, but i felt that if i just said “bad news” and “other news,” that would come off as too pessimistic.
I went to the Music in Sacred Spaces symposium and head many lectures about church architecture and a little bit about music. Nothing came up that was useful for my paper, aside fromthe notion that processions create a sort of temporary sacred space, through the music used and the objects carried. but my paper, while it involves processions, is a bit more secular.
Went to a concert of 17th cenutry sacred chamber works afterwards. the program notes seem to be very interresting. i’ll read them later. the trio used a 17th centure tuning system, which was not meantone. it was closer to equal temperment, so more keys sound better, but was period appropriate.
after the concert, several symposium participants and grad students went to the organizer’s (prof Jane Alden)’s house for drinks. The party didn’t break up till like 2:00 am. she served some sort of apple brandy. it’s two nights in a row that i’ve perhaps gotten a bit loopy in a social setting, but rest assured, a trend is not starting.
One interresting thing is that all the musicologists there can look at a score and hear how the harmonies work. none of the composers there (grad students) have that skill, although aaron can read rhythms very well, as he’s a percussionist.
I think I’m missing a fundamental musical skill.