Concert

Tonight was the Graduate Composition Seminar concert, officially titled Five Minute Wonders. We all wrote five minute pieces. A lot of people came to hear them. Really a lot. I was impressed.

We started setting up at noon. I finally left the building at about 11:30 pm, after striking. (Striking as in, striking the stage, not as in doing a walkout to protest long hours).
My piece seemed to be well-received. I’ll have a recoding of it to post later. I would like to hear it again, perhaps played by a pianist who had more time to practice it.
the second half of the concert was a performance of John Cage’s songbooks. It is an extremely silly collection of “songs.” I can probably be burned at the stake at Wesleyan for calling it silly. For one of my songs, I was to attack a microphone to my throat and drink cognac. I got concerned about drking cognac without eating immediately beforehand. Fortunately, one of the songs in songs books says eat or drink three things. Jascha made an arrangement with a local pizza place, so that they would deliver pizza during the performance. the pizza delivery guy was actually Neely (the professor in charge)’s grandson.
when the pizza guy came on stage and I handed him cash, the audience was luaghing like crazy. I could barely stop giggling. So I ate some slices of pizza and then sipped my cognac. I had been practicing drinking cognac the last few evenings, with the idea that it would be good to know how to pace myself and build up my tolerance a bit before the concert so as to not be drunk by the end of the performance. So at the end of the performance tonight, I was disturbingly sober.
this problem has sicne been fixed.
tomorrow is a symposium about sacred spaces. Most about medieval christian music. so i’m going to most of it. hopefully it will somehow aid my paper.
speaking of my paper, i realized last night that the dissertation-copy of the play (the one I’m writing about) that I have is in medieval french, instead of modern french. I don’t speak modern french either, but i really don’t stand a chance with old french. But I have a book out of the library which has it in side-by-side translation into modern french. joy! but that book was due today with no renewals. I knew I had no time to do anything about this. with a heavy heart, I went to plead with the Inter Library Loan office.
I am dedicating my next piece to the ILL office, especially Kate. She told me just to hang onto the book. I’ve never had a librarian tell me to just let something get overdue. So Sunday, I’ll be photocopying all the pages with musical pauses. Fortunately, this is only about 400 pages or so. arg.
I couldn’t get a paper today, so i dunno if they printed my letter. i wonder how i would find out?

Alaxander Nevsky Paper

Celeste Hutchins
Proseminar
Nevsky Paper

I read Eisenstein’s explanation of how the Nevsky images and sound work together and I remain unconvinced. However, what was clear both in his writing and his film were strong issues of Russian identity.
These were very obvious in the film, where the characters openly discuss what it means to be Russian and the importance of the homeland. This was contrasted with the German other. Today’s Colloquium speaker noted that the music used for the Russian themes in the film were based on Russian folk modes. Thus it is somewhat similar to Stravinsky’s Svadebka, as they both use folk elements to re-imagine folk life.
I recognized other things common to Svadebka including that the female love interest had her hair parted into two braids, thus indicating her status as an unmarried woman. However, at the end of the film when the two couples pair off, neither woman starts singing a platch, but instead look happy with their future husbands. However, the matchmaker (mentioned early in the movie) has not yet been sent, so perhaps the platch would be premature and might interfere with the happy ending.
Russian identity is obvious in Eisenstein’s writings as he quotes Pushkin. Pushkin’s poetry is strongly linked to Russian identity. He is widely quoted and revered.
Despite the obvious and strong Russian identity in the film, certain American film conventions were used. For example, as one of the Germans fell through the ice and slowly slipped in and drowned, there was a Mickey Mousing downward trombone slide matching his action. Eisenstein goes so far as to claim that all of the score in the waiting scene is Mickey Moused, drawing diagrams and making claims of eye motion. Some scenes had music pre-written for them and Mickey Moused in reverse, so that the action was made to mirror the score.
This type of Mickey Mousing however, goes far beyond anything that would be found in an American film. The score, with it’s folk modes and choral works is distinctly Russian. These Russian identities in the film are contrasted with the film’s portrayal of German otherness. The creepy bucket-style helmets make the Germans look like aliens. Issues of religion also figure in very prominently.
The Germans have crosses on their uniforms. They have crosses on their shoulders. Even the eye holes in their helmets are cross shaped. Many scenes show the German holy leaders raising crucifixes. The religious leader goes so far as to say that there is only one world emperor and he must bow to the Pope. The Germans are in Russia on a religious crusade to impose Catholicism.
In contrast, there was only one scene showing Russian Orthodoxy. It was a short shot of some people standing, one of them holding an icon. The Germans are evil Catholics and the Russians are practically atheists by comparison, but they do have this other religion, which they get to keep, at least until the revolution.
Musically, Catholicism is represented by the organ that the priest plays. Also, since the trumpets are first blown at a church service, they also represent catholicism as much as they represent the threat of the knights. It is hard to draw a distinction between Catholicism and the Teutonic threat as Catholicism is the Teutonic threat. It is their motivation for coming to Rus and their justification for committing atrocities. Religious baiting is a tired old form of propaganda, but probably useful in a legally atheist society, as it helps build national religious (or irreligious) unity.
There is also a single character who was probably supposed to be a Jew. This character tells the angry nationalist mob that nationalism is not as important as money. Some nobel character kicks the Jewish man and calls him a cur. Because of the diasporic nature of Jewish peoples, they were viewed as stateless. In the Soviet era, Jews were not considered Russian citizens, but rather resident aliens. Their legal nationality was Jewish.
This possible Jewish character does not get a musical theme. He has about the same amount of screen time as the Russian Orthodox church, maybe a bit more. He is represented by stereotypes and carries no iconography. Thus religions in Russia are barely present in the film, whereas German religion is threatening, gets a lot of screen time and has musical themes and instruments associated with it.
Russian identity is thus defined, both as what it is and what it is not. Russian identity uses folks modes, quotes Pushkin and is forever optimistic. Enemy identity is religious, faceless and threatening, with odd instrumentation of bassoons and strange trumpets. Most horrible of all is the traitor to Russia who gets killed by an angry mob. Real Russians – the ones not kicked to death by the proletariat – love their country and will fight for it.

Letter to the Middletown Press

Dear Editor,

I was overjoyed to read that the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage rights for same sex couples. Gay people should not be considered second class citizens anywhere in the US. Hopefully, other states will soon follow suit. I married my partner in Canada over the summer and I look forward to the day when every state will recognize it.

Celeste Hutchins
Middletown

Errata

I said that Mass was the first and only state to rule that dscriminating against the marriage rights of same sex couples was unconstitutional. Yahoo news says that Hawaii decided that first. Actually, I was in Hawaii in 1998 when all of this was happening. christi, I and her parents went, hoping that we would be able to get married. while the case was pending, Hawaiians voted to amend their constitution to specifically discrminate against same sex couples. So any court decision was automatically moot and iirc, the later court decisision just said as much.

Alaska also amended it’s constitution, I believe also in the face of a pending court decision, but I don’t remember as much about this one. The Hawaii one really went down to the wire. It wasn’t certain how they would vote and there was the possibility of a ruling coming at any time and then being reversed only a few days later after the election. Alaska’s situation must not have been so close, or it would have been on my radar.
Yahoo says that Mass can’t amend it’s constitution until 2006. The Mass legislature, however is unhappy.
It is important that the pro-freedom to marry viewpoint is as visible as possible. I’m going to look into possibilities for direct action in Mass. Other things that can be done include writing letters to the editor of your newspaper supporting the Mass court ruling. That is an extremely useful thing to do. Also, posting approval other places, such as your blog or wherever. you could use the same letter for both. I highly encourage you to do this. this is the first civil rights struggle of the 21st century. writing a few paragraphs and emailing it off to your newspaper (and posting it on your blog) seems to me to be the best way for a non-citizen of Mass who lives far away to affect the process in a positive way. If you have other ideas, I’d like to hear them.

Sleep

Since I am endless facinated by my own sleep schedule, I’ll post it for your enjoyment as well. I slept yesterday afternoon from 2:00 – 5:00. I slept this morning from 5:00 – 7:00 (I went to bed before 5:00, but couldn’t sleep immediately). I slept again this morning from 9:00 – 11:00. And I drifted off in class this afternoon (alas!) from 3:00 – 4:00. So why am I so tired?

Not a Second Class Citizen in Massachusetts

the mass supreme court ruled that laws interfering with same sex couple’s right to marry violate the mass constitution. They are the first and only state in the US to reach this conclusion. Christi and I are already married in Canada, which, by international law, ought to be recognized anywhere in the world. The EU will recognize it. California and the US Federal government specifically do not.

Motivation

Avoiding being yelled at is a motivating factor, but prolly not the best one. Actually, it’s deeply de-motivating as far as asking for help, etc goes. Get suck and endure paralyzing dread while reading buggy help file after incorrect help file. It has been indicated (yelled, even) that insufficient digging through said “documentation” will result in a D grade for the class.

And getting less than 4.0 means that I flunk out.
alas

Hacking to the break of dawn

I would like to report that I’m nearly-angst free. I don’t post often enough when I’m happy. Not that doing homework at the last second on a system that I don’t really understand is a cause for celebration, but i feel mellow nonetheless.

I’m also procrastinating

Drama Free Zone

I’ve decided, as of this morning, as my mind was clearing from the smoky haze and beer of the biker bar I was at last night, to avoid people that make me feel stressed. I can keep my own stress in check by not thinking about it. Two giant papers due at the end of the term that I haven’t yet started or even know how to begin? not thinking about it. those books I’m reading about medieval drama? they’re pleasure reading of course. no need to stress. no need to panic. deep breaths.

But then when someone else starts ranting and ranting and ranting about how they have no idea what to write and there’s not that much time left in the term and they’re going to flunk out, etc, etc, etc, then I get all keyed up too. this works for other ranting subjects, as well. so I’m going to hang arund mellow people instead.

Biker Bar? Did you say “biker bar?”

What’s new?

As friday was a total wash anyway, what with having an all-day long gamelan gig, I decided to not worry about working in the evening, so some folks and I went to see Love Acually, a romatic comedy staring Hugh Grant. What was I thinking? I’ll never have those two hours and eight minutes back in my life. (Before anyone accuses me of a lack of accuracy, let me make it clear that I don’t actually know how long the film was, but two hours and eight minutes seems like a reasonable number, any anyway, you have to factor in things like previews, leaving before the credits are finished, arriving late, etc, and it could well have been two hours and eight minutes. Anyway, you don’t read my blog to find out how long movies are right? but I can give an accurate review.) What made the film even worse is that I’ve sat for two weeks of lectures about film scores. So the always-terrible movie of romantic comedies was especially evident. There was an unruly number of simultaneous plots in the film, something like 12. there were three main musical themes: one was the romantic angst theme, one was the triumphal theme and one was the much more rarely used dark theme. there was also a liet motif mostly attached to a comic relief cahrecter, but also present in the rest of the film. the dark theme was so rarely used, that I have forgotten everything about it except for it’s existance.
the romatic angst theme was played on the clarinet. It was most certainly not in major. The clarinet, historically is used as a signifier of sexual experience. Here, it retains a connection to it’s early 20th century predecessors by signifying sexual tension. In the middle part of the movie, this theme was often used as the story switched from plot to plot. So there would be some development in one of the plots, a sexual tension would develop or be made more evident, the clarinet theme would come in as the actors mimed an approximation of angst, and then the scene would switch to another set of chracters.
the trimphal theme was mostly present at the end of the movie, as all of the plots but two (more on those two later), came to a triumphal conclusion. It also appeared however, earlier in the film. For example, as the Prime Minister of the UK was calling the US a bully and otherwise dissin the President of the US in an unplanned moment in a press confrence, the triumphal theme swelled majestically. Almost all of the emotional information theme is encoded in the romatic triumphal theme. the PM’s speech was controversial enough that using the darker theme would have shown it to be an unmittigated failure. The lack of a theme altogether would have been so ambigious that the audience would have been unable to gauge the PM’s sucess or failure until later scenes where characters discuss the speech. The triumphal theme was the equivalent of having the press corps burst into cheers and appluase, the kind of rediculous movie contrivance that we are spared at least until the last quarter of the film.
Near the end of the film there actually is a scene where a croud bursts into applause, but it is not for something so boring as poltics, but rather when the writer asks his former maid to marry him. the entire Portugese quarter of some unnamed French city has followed him to the restaurant where the woman, with whom he has never had a convesation in a mutually-understandable language, is waitressing. the incidental music drops out. he asks her in broken Portugese to marry her. She says yes in broken english. the restaurant bursts into applause as she decends a staircase to his arms. the triumphal music swells. Interrestingly, the restaurant contained a band playing source music (source music refers to music that the characters as well as the audience can hear), who had fallen silent for the proposal. When the woman accepted, the band immediatly struck up again, but the sound track only contained the triumphal theme in it’s orchestral scoring. the scoring of the triumphal theme, as well as the dark theme and the calirnet theme, never varied in scoring.
the triumphal theme is unrelentingly cheesy. More romantic than the romatics would have wirtten. It saturates the sound track at the end. Assaulting the audience, and informing them of the very happy endings.
Not all the endings are happy, however. for instance, one of the plots contains an agressive female. this plot, like all the other plots, aside from the other unhappy ending, is told from the male’s point of view (the movie contains only heterosexual pairings). a woman in his office is trying to seduce him, despite his having an exceptionally wonderful wife. the other woman, like all the other characters is entirely one dminesional. One of the advantages to squeezing in so many plots is that virtually no character development is required and there is opportunity to use every romantic comedy cliche that exists. however, the other woman is even more one-dimensional than anyone else in the movie. Her motivation appears to be evil. For example, her male target is talking to his wife at the office Christmas party. his wife goes to get him a drink or perform some other small favor. the man calls his wife either a saint or an angel. then the other woman appears, wearing devil horns and a red dress. This level of (un)subtlety is used throughout the film. his story ends unhappily as his disabused wife painfully smiles at him, miming being happy at his return while the evil temptress is pictured looking evilly happy in her apartment, standing in front of her mirror in her sexy underwear, putting on the necklace that the husband bought for her.
the story of the cheating husband (who never went further than buying a necklace) is contrasted with the story of the cheating wife. this story, also told from a male perspective, involves, like all the stories except the Other Woman plot, involves an agressive male. It begins with two men in formal wear discussing the regretablity of them having recently frequented prostitutes who turned out to be men. the camera pans out and we see that one of them is getting married. the best man is angsty at the reception and iirc, someone asks him if he is in love with the groom (at least, I think that’s what I heard). the man acts alarmed, but not homophobic at the question and then changes the subject. Later in the movie, the wife views the wedding video shot by the best man and discovers it is all of her, thus indicating that he loves her. he storms out of his apartment, deliberating for a while whether to go back in and speak with her, while a score (“score” refers to music not heard by the characters) pop song plays in the background. finally, he zips up his jacket and the pop song becomes louder, thus providing a stinger and signaling that he has made up his mind to leave. Near the end of the film, he goes to her house and she kisses him. At the very end of the film, he, she and the husband are pictured together whiel the triumphal music swells, thus indicating approval for him persuing her. thus a male homewrecker is acceptable, while a female one is trouble.
however, some of the conversations earlier in the film may have ben intended to convey a much more complicated relationship. In the old days, a converstaion about male prostitutes (and the shared sexual experience) and a question about his relationship woth the groom would have been enough to signify the best man as a bisexual. As romantic comedies do not tend to be on the cutting edge of film convention, it may have been the intended implication here as well. Perhaps playing triumphal music for the three of them is designed to show that they all manage to live happily ever after.
the other unhappy ending is the sole one told from the female point of view. All of the other stories end at the arrival gate of Heathrow airport, while the triumphal music swells for all but the cheating husband. this story doesn’t even get to the airport. A woman, working at the same office as the cheating man, has a crush on one of her colleagues. Junior high-style, they slow dance at the office Christmas party and thus are then dating, or something. He asks her to dance, so she is passive during their plot. they go back to her apartment and are making out (his idea) when her phone rings. Her phone rings constantly throughout the movie. In this scene, it is revealed that the person she talks to is her brother, who is insane. the male is annoyed at the interruption. they resume making out when the brother calls again and she agrees to go see him. the male love interest objects. this may be one of the scenes where the dark theme is employed.
near the start of the film, the woman is encouraged by her boss, the cheating husband, to make a pass at her colleague and told that the colleague is aware of her interest in him. Despite this, she continues to act entirely passivle until she goes to visit her brother in the mental hospital, rather than have sex with her colleague. when she become active, she annoys her potential partner and their relationship is ended. During her second to last scene, she is seated, at her computer, working late, while he, the second to last person to leave the office walks by and they awkwardly wish each other a merry christmas. In the last scene, she is wrapping a scarf around the neck of her brother in the mental hospital.
the theme that plays in the mental hospital is the leitmotif theme, a major theme in the movie, but also attached to an aging rockstar, one of the few people not persuing anyone. He has re-recorded a version of his old hit song, which used to go “Love is all around us./ I can feel in my fingers./I can feel it in my toes.” the new version has been changed to “christams is all around us.” the movie open with him in the recording studio accidentally singing the wrong version several times before getting the right one. the song thus functions both as a love theme and a holiday theme, thus reminding us that it is a christams (and christian, really) movie.
the christmas/love theme is often source music, as the rock star frequently appears either on a television watched by one of the other characters or on the radio, however it also occurs in the score, but possibly with a different scoring in that case. It has been stuck in my head for days. the theme acts as intermediate theme, signifying love, but not sucess or angst. the 11 year old boy, while running through the airport to tell a departing classmate that he loves her, pauses for a minute to watch a television with the rocks star on it. after his pause, he runs past the final security barrier to talk to his classmate. the pause thus reaffirmed somehow his love for her and thus was worth the possibility of the persuing secrity gaurds catching him.
there are a few instances where the music is ambigious in regards to being source or score. For example, characters will be at a party where source music is playing, but then they are shown in a car with no cut in the soundtrack, so the pop song has changed from source to score. In one scene, a radio station plays a love song in honor of the Prime Minister and in movie cliche fashion, he dances all over his house until someone walks in on him. the music is assumed to be source, except that it cuts off suddenly as he is discovered, thus showing that it must be score. this is such a movie cliche, that the audience does not pause for a moment to wonder why the prime minister would be dancing around his silent house.
The last elemnt of the movie worthy of discussion involves body image. All of the women are exttremely skinny except for the Prime Ministers’ love interest who is an average weight. Most of the other women look emaciated. the chaeting wife weights about 10 pounds, for example (this is an exagerration, please don’t raise issues of accuracy). This normal-looking woman is discussed several times, being described as having huge thighs and giant butt. In my opion, she was one of the most attractive women in the movie, and she does get her love interest in the end (the Prime minister, at that), but her weight is criticized several times.
the other character to have her weight discussed it the Portugese maid’s sister. the maid first brings her up as she declines an offored pastry. then the sister later appears in the film as comic relief. the writer appears at the door of the maid’s father to ask for the maid’s hand in marriage. the sister appears and the father orders her to marry the writer, despite never having met him, as nobody else would want to marry someone so fat. the writer asks for the other daughter. the father takes the writer to the restaurant where the maid works while more and more people follow along to see what will happen. the conversation along the way is half people wondering what will happen and half the father insulting the daughter for her weight. He calls her “Miss Dunking donuts 2003,” for example. the musical cues, the comic setup inherent in the cliche of the confused follwing crowd and the predjudices fo the audience solicitted a laugh from the theatre that I attended. Other fat jokes along the way were also laughingly approved by the audience.
In conclusion, I have written far too many papers and I can’t make it stop. Also, this movie, like many romantic comedies, is hetero-normative and essentially conservative, urging women to adopt conventional social roles and to be passive in relationships. Non-passive women are either evil or alone. It may even be dangerous to have a story told from your own point of view. The anti-feminist viewpoint is most prevelant in romatic comedies, a genre of films made for women viewers. why some women enjoy cheesy movie cliches, being assaulted by triumphal themes that Wagner or even Bruckner would have been ashamed to write, and being programmed to be helpless and undernourished is a mystery to me, but somehow it seems to work finacially for the studios. I’m not seeing anymore films unless they’re somehow art films or the last section of the lord of the rings trilogy.

what about the damn biker bar

We decided to go bowling with angela last night, but we got lost and we called to ask for directions, the alley told us they weren’t going to have any free lanes. So we went to a billard hall that we had passed along the way, but they had a cover. So we decided to go to the Red Dog Saloon. Tiffany loved it. it’s a real biker bar. Jessica arrived later and was given a hard time by the bartender. She has nothing of a biker bar about her and is entirely out of place in such an establishment. Angsty conversation ensued, which was widely overheard by interested eavesdropping males. Yesterday, I also gave Xena a bath, so she smells much less offensive. And I wrote the introduction to my Joan of Arc aper. Today, I’m supossed to be creaing 12 sounds for some john cage thing, but i’m posting to my blog instead. alas.

I am going insane

Ok, I’m not really going insane.

what do grad students do when they’re not studying?

I go to endless classes. I played a gamelan concert on friday at a posh private elementary school in West Hartford. It had a shadow puppet play, which went over ectremely well, but I couldn’t really see it, because I was playing the kempul, a set of the second-largest gongs. There are five of them and I sit in the back, so I couldn’t really see the puppets around the gongs, but even if I could, I get lost in the music when I look at them.
I write papers, but of course, that’s also studying. and I eat and i sleep and often I talk to other grad students about classes or homework or concerts or music or professors or whatever. but mostly grad students talk about sex. Everytime I go out to have beers with folks, they end up talking the whole time about sex. Long angsty conversations about sex.
It’s starting to stress me out. I keep having this dream that I get so stressed about classes and homework and my angsty interactions with other highly angst grad students, that my hair falls out. Almost all the men here are balding. There’s only a couple of guys here that have all their hair. Is their hair falling out because they are angsty grad students or are they angsty grad students because their hair is falling out? Could this happen to me? I’ve been checking in the mirror and so far so good. But really, the angst around here is so palpable that I can feel my hair follicles start to tingle.
I am so glad that the semester is almost over. My desire for a break has actually become greater than my near-certainty that I’m not going to get all my projects and papers finished.