Les said, the better II

Please nobody comment to any of my tick posts because the comments give me panic attacks.

Ok, so I went to a pharmacy this morning and explained my issue. The sent me to a doctor. The doctor looked at my bite and said it was infected and gave me antibiotic cream. There was a bit of a language issue. He said not to worry about lyme disease, since it’s not really in Germany, more in the Czech republic. I asked about the mysterious German disease and he had apparently no idea what I was talking about. If this disease was common and cause for alarm, I think a doctor in den Haag would know what I was talking about. I asked if there was any tick left in my leg, he said he didn’t see any and told me not to worry about it.
I had been more or less successfully not worrying about it until I read a comment to my last post which said I should go make a doctor pick the left bits of tick out and get on because of increased risk. This is good advice and I asked for it and it was nice of the person to leave it. But I’m not going back to the doctor to demand that he pick apart my infected leg. Well, I dunno, maybe I should. I go back to Paris tomorrow.
When I get worried about personal matters, I deflect my attention by worrying about terrible diseases that I might catch. So I have been very terribly worried about this – sort of in a panic. Except not sort of, I actually start to panic. This does not help my thinking. I had finally calmed down and now I’m all panicked again. (This is oversharing, sorry – not doing my best thinking.)
Tag: Celesteh

If the spot where a tick bit you gets kind of red and slightly raised an a bit itchy, does that mean there’s still some tick head left or is it something else?

I’ve read that German ticks carry a viral disease, meningitis or encephalitis (I forget which and I’m not looking it up, cuz it’s freaking me out). My german friend said that you won’t get it if you get the whole tick yanked out, but this leaves me with questions: True or not true? How quickly would you have to pull the whole thing out to avoid the disease? What if there was a tiny bit of the head left a week later that was causing swelling?
I am being unreasonably concerned about this. It is alarming me unduly.
Tags: Ticks, Celesteh

I came to Germany to see Phillip Schulze’s diplome at the HFG in Karlsruhe.. He gave a concert and then his thesis committee met immediately afterwards and decided if he could graduate.
So in the morning after I arrived in Germany, I took a hike in the Black Forest, attracted a creature which I had not yet discovered, and then in the evening went to see his concert. It started with a five minute film loop. People went in small batched to see the film. This is a good way to start an event like this because it means you can start on time and still accomodate latecomers. Plus people who go first to see the film can discuss it afterwards. There were many people from the previous evening’s art opening that I recognized and so we spoke for a bit about the film.
It started in the woods, with busts of flashlight on trees. A little bit like the Blair Witch Project, with a music designed to create a certain amount of tension, but not too much. Then it moved to more domestic surroundings, but always at night and always lit by flashlight. It was very well done, something that you might expect to find in a museum.
Then he had a string quartet. It was a video score on four screens, surrounding the audience. the string players did glissandos on two strings, from a very low note to a very high note. As they progressed, they became out of synch with each other and in between the two strings they each played. The video score was a very slow motion image of a man being lifted up this scaffolding structure. Two people on an upper level would grab and pull, while two people on a lower structure would push upwards. As the movies went on, they got out of synch with each other and out of synch with themselves so that the image was doubled. This, of course, went with the glissando, always upwards and more and more out of synch. As the images doubled, the expressions of the people in films became obscured. what may originally have been an expression of joy became a grimace or a pained look. Was he in rapture? In agony? the piece was very very good.
Then, after the string piece finished, , while we were all still sitting in the performance studio, a couple of people got up and started moving the wall structures aside. The way that they did it seemed choreographed and performative, but I don’t know if this was a feature of the way the space was designed or something more deliberate. As the last few pieces of wall were pushed aside, a large door to the street was opened. The sounds of revving engines echoed. Three pimped out cars drove into the school and parked just outside where the studio wall had been.
They opened their trunks and their passenger doors. The one on the right was parked with it’s trunk to me. Inside was fuzzy lining, a glowing mask from the film Scream, a playstation and a small laser light show, which played on the school’s cement floor.
In the driver’s seat of each was the car’s owner. On the passenger side was a musician with a laptop. All of the engines were still running. The car’s sound systems and lights were attached to the laptop. The laptop guys started to play sounds through the incredibly loud car sound systems. Phillip later said they were doing a feedback piece. The car that he was in revved it’s engine loudly (no small feat to make a TDI roar like that) and for a few moments, the sound of the engine and the sound fo the computer merged. Then the physical presence of the sound died away, but the computer echos remained, getting gradually pixelated. the space was large enough that pollution did not become a problem.
Phillip said later that he was thinking about small acoustical spaces and started wondering about cars. The idea worked wonderfully and while completely surprising, was not at all gimmicky.
After the car piece, one of Phillip’s friends carried in several cases of beer. The most outrageous car (not the one with the laser light show) stayed behind, stopped it’s engine and turned up some pop music for a small party while the thesis committee met. Two gave speeches about how great a student Phillip was. The party continued. The lights were low. I was exhausted from walking all day. And my blood was slowly being siphoned away (unbeknownst to me). I fell asleep leaning against a pillar.
I was woken up by the party moving. We had to leave the space. I was staying with Phillip, so I had to go with them. Walking outside in the cold air woke me up. We went to a bar, but the bar wanted to close, since it was like 2:00 am. Nicole and Phillip’s brother went home, as did many others. The rest went on to another bar which threw us out (much less friendly/ exasperated than the previous one) at 4:00 am. We stood around for a while and decided what to do. Everyone but me and one other guy was on a bicycle. They leaned on their bikes and talked about where to go. Two guys went to a kebab called “Viva la Mexico.” The Kebab was closing because of the late hour. The sky was lightening from the approaching sunrise. There were maybe 5 of us left. I couldn’t think straight anymore. We went home, finally. I was exhausted, but I thought, “when is the next time I’ll stay out all night partying in Baden?
Somebody told me that Phillip found the pimped cars by hanging out at a gas station. I asked him about it later and he said it was true. “this gas station is the best place to hang out in Karlsruhe” he said seriously. He told a story about staying out so late drinking with friends that they had been thrown out of every bar, even a Thai Karaoke bar. The sun was coming up, so they went to the gas station and bought beer in the mini-mart. Then they sat outside of the gas station and drank beer, until finally it got so very very late that they retreated to Phillip’s flat where they listened to a long composition by Anthony Braxton played on two saxophones and a bagpipe. One of the members of the group passed out.
Apparently, the opportunity to stay all out all night partying in Baden might come sooner that I would have thought.Tags: Concert, Celesteh

I asked the guy at my hotel this morning where I could do a load of laundry and he drew me a map to a laundry mat. I walked along the map route, but found nothing. A woman in a pink dress with a white flower pinned to it asked if she could direct me. She walked Nicole and I to the laundry mat, which was closed because it was sunday. I asked her if she knew another one but she couldn’t think of any that weren’t also closed. I was wearing my last pair of clean underwear and looking a bit consternated.
“You could do laundry in my flat.” she offered, “but I am going to church now. I’ll come back this way in an hour.” I thought briefly. I could wander around looking for another laundry mat and decline her offer. But then I thought “What would Sarah Dotie do?”
The first time I backpacked around Europe, I came up with three rules for travelling:

1. Never leave a place with a bathroom without using it.
2. always wash your hands
3. never step in front of a taxi cab

The third rule sucks, because there are several times in which it is a good idea to step in front of a taxi, but these involve there being green lights in your favor and the taxi being completely stopped or the taxi being empty and looking for fare. Anyway, I am changing my third rule to “Ask your self what Sarah Dotie would do.” She would say yes to a woman in a pink dress with a washing machine. At least, I think she might.
An hour later, the woman came back by and Nicole and I went back up to her flat. We started the load of laundry and she pointed out things we should see on my tourist map. Then she walked us back to where she had found us, pointing out landmarks so we could find her flat later to retrieve our clothes.
So she went back home and Nicole and I went cathedral-wards. In search of a bathroom, we stopped at a bar. I ordered mineral water while Nicole went to powder her nose. Two older gentlemen invited me to um, something about my water. I said ok. It was a day to say “ok.” Try it sometime. Say “ok” to folks when they seem sincere and you get good vibes from them. Also, standing at the bar is about 721384691 times more interesting than sitting at a table.
The gentlemen then invited us to lunch. WWSDD? Older gentlemen who invite younger women to lunch sometimes have motives that are best not encouraged. (Note to self: the way to decline a food invitation is to say that you just ate, not talk about how you must run to the cathedral so you can see it before you have to leave town.)
We went to the cathedral and an art museum. And then watched the end of the match with England. Moments after the match ended, people began t have small celebrations, although on a much smaller scale than the German win. The church bells started to ring. For evening prayers, which they do every evening around the time that the early match finishes. They hadn’t been ringing bells for Germany, just for vespers.
Later in the evening, we went back to the house of the woman with the washer. She had ironed my handkerchiefs. Ironed them! She asked Nicole and I to dinner. I explained that it had been my intention to ask her to dinner instead. Anyway, she took us to a restaurant on the other side of the river and then walked with us around for a couple of hours afterwards, pointing out Roman ruins. Cologne is full of Roman ruins. The parking garages have sections of ancient wall in them. Some of the streets were old Roman roads. Some still have original paving stones!
Over dinner, I mentioned being bitten by a tick. She asked me what the tick looked like. There are two similar creatures, she explained. One is a normal tick and the other burrows into your skin and has a different name in German. The second one is very dangerous. Years later, you can have fevers and be very sick.
If you’re ever trying to freak me out, that’s how t do it. Next time I’m online, I will be pouring over pictures of German parasites, trying to figure out if I’m going to have a mysterious and awful disease years from now. Nicole points out that this sounds a lot like lyme disease, something that I thought only existed in the United States. Whatever it is, the image of the tick wiggling it’s little legs at me haunts me. When I have a still moment, I see the six tiny legs struggling, showing that whatever I had plucked from skin was not only an animal, but a living one. Now, I want to avoid dispelling the image. I must be able to determine if I had the evil borrowing tick-like creature or a regular tick.
In other news, I saw the Ukrainian football team checking into the Hilton.
Tags: Cologne, Celesteh

When we arrived in Köln, Germany was playing Sweden. Moments after stepping off the train, there was a station announcement and everyone in the station cheered. The little train station cafés that had TVs had standing crowds spilling out of them, people gazing rapt. I wanted to stop and stand for a bit, but Nicole, wisely decided it would be better to find our hotel.

We walked out of the station and into the square, beneath the massive cathedral. It looms over the station (as I said 5 years ago) like it might step on it. I was momentarily shocked by it’s size. Then cheers echoed from around the square, from the train station, from every direction. Other people holding bags all ran towards whatever TV was closest to see the instant replay.

I watched the rest of the game from my hotel room, but those were the two goals for Germany. As the game ended, car horns started beeping, people burst into the street singing and – I kid you not – the church bells started to ring.

The party has not stopped since. Bands of young men continue to roam the streets singing their soccer songs. The most popular one has the following words: “DeutschLAND Deutschland Deutschland Deutschland!” The others were a bit too complicated for me to quite follow.

The streets were packed with throngs of people. They still are highly populated. I initially found the prospect of hundreds of drunken, celebrating football fans to be somewhat alarming, but then reconsidered.

However, as the night has gone on, they have diminished in number, but the ones left have become more aggressive.

You may be wondering what the hell I’m doing in Köln. Me too. I don’t have tickets for any matches. This morning I was all set to get to Alsace. But then Phillip said it was “crazy” to go south before going north. He had a point.

Although announcing my plans to do something seems to be connected with them changing shortly thereafter: I intend to go to den Haag on Monday and then possibly Rotterdam. I may have a concert in Karlsruhe on 11 July, but I don’t know yet.
Tags: Cologne, Celesteh

We went hiking in the black Forest. The part we went in was very beautiful, but they do a lot of tree harvesting, since it’s near a town (and thus a tram line). It wasn’t so much the black forrest there as the shady forrest with spots of light where trees had been turned into firewood.
It really is a lovely place to hike though. Ironically, the logging roads provide good reference points and ways to avoid getting lost. after hiking for a good long time, we finally got out of sight and hearing of the town. We stood for a moment at a (unnatural) clearing and looked down into the valley below. No buildings. No chain saws. No cars. Nothing but birds, wind through the trees and the occasional cowbell (well, it’s not 100% natural, but an altogether different feeling than city noise). Ah, lovely peace! Finally, outside of a city for the first time in so long!
But this is about wildlife: On the way back, we saw a deer, running through the woods, startles by our talking. In Karlsruhe, the next evening, I was stung by a bumble bee. Two days later, while showing in Köln, I pulled a live tick from my leg. It wiggled it’s little legs at me in a plea for release, so I dropped into a watery grave.
Tags: Black Forest, Celesteh

Specifically, I have plane tickets that include a 16 hour, overnight layover in Detroit. Arg. Always read the fine print carefully, folks. (Pondering: do I try to fly standby on the earlier flight, or do I call up the airline and ask for a ticket change?) Be wary of Orbitz. Also, despite a trip through the washer and dryer in Nice, I think my passport is in good enough shape to get me across borders. The cover shrunk, though. It’s strange, as the blue part is slightly misshaped and small, but not in an overly noticeable that-must-be-modified fashion. I hope. Anyway, I leave France on August 1st and get to San Francisco on August 2nd (or first, depending).

I have gig on August 3 at the Luggage Store Gallery at 9:00 PM. I don’t know what the door charge is there. There is a zero drink minimum. The space is absolutely not handicapped accessible, there are like 2 flights of stairs. (Well, maybe they have an elevator someplace that I don’t know about and that they don’t offer to people carrying gear. You should contact them or something if you need to know this.)
My time is otherwise completely unallocated, although I must visit with family and my dog gf’s family who are in the southern part of the state. I am super excited to see people after so long. Please send me email or leave a comment if you want to hang out.
P.S. I have recently updated my podcast for the first time in many weeks
Tags: San Francisco, Celesteh

As the Rough Guide to France notes, it is wise to book in advance for Avignon. This might go double for if one is planning on arriving after 7:00 on a Saturday evening in the middle of June, which is well past the time the tourist office is reported to close. The TGV station is no where near the center of town. If it were, I probably would have gone for the wander-around-for-looking-for-something-that-looks-cheap-but-not-too-mouldy method, but instead, I am back in Paris. Thanks to the miracle of SPF 50 sunblock, I am no tanner than when I left. This is a good thing, given my skin tone and family history of skin cancer. Modern technology really is amazing. You can sit in the beach in the direct Mediterranean sun for HOURS and not change shades a bit!

So I did some beach reading:

Parable of the Sower

By the recently departed Octavia Butler. An exploration of middle class angst and fear of falling. Declining social services, peak oil and global warming have caused the gates and walls around LA suburbs to actually be needed. The dirty, sick and dying masses are trying to break in and take everything they can because they have nothing. It’s only a matter of time before desperation, drugs and crime drive the homeless to break down the gate and burn down the homes! The solution to this is to, um, move farther away and build more walls. And start a second law of thermodynamics-influnced religion.
In the book, the US government decides to respond to joblessness by relaxing labor laws. In the book, this leads to slavery. Alarmingly, the book predicts a hurricane hitting New Orleans, only the rich getting to evacuate and private guards shooting at the poor folks left behind. Sound familiar? Ack, is it only a matter of time before we have slavery again and drug-crazed desperate pyromaniac mobs attacking the burbs?
This book get s a zero for class consciousness. People without insurance dying of disease? Mad homelessness? The solution is banding together, not putting up walls!!! For christssakes, everyone having a gun is not the answer. This book is like a libertarian’s wet dream. think general strike people! The people have the power. I know the middle class is terrified of the logical consequences of income inequality and the terrible destruction wrought on our “enemies” being inflicted upon us, but there are other answers. Also, from an economic perspective, slavery isn’t really useful aside from the agricultural sector and other really unskilled labor. Even in the nightmare scenario in the story, it would still be cheaper to run an overseas sweatshop than have American slaves who you have to feed while inflation is spiraling out of control, etc.
Let’s all work together against Octavia Butler’s future vision, shall we?

The God of Small Things

by Arundhati Roy is another book seeped in class issues, but in this one, the author gets it right. It’s really really lovely and beautiful, exploring the meanings of love and childhood as the story slowly spirals together. It tells the story circularly, always surprising even when you know what’s coming. Fantastic language. It’s the kind of book that makes you want to write. It’s about love and death and class and colonialism and everything that life is about.
It won the Booker Prize, well deserved. One of the best books I’ve ever read. Just finished it today, so I need to think about it more before I can say anything more coherent than “fantastic”

Jonathon Livingston, Le Goéland

by Richard Bach. This book is in French. It’s a children’s book and I haven’t finished it yet. It’s a little bit too hard for me, since it has some verb tenses I don’t know and a lot of avian vocabulary, so I have to read it with a dictionary in front of me, so I might not be getting it 100%. That given, what the hell is wrong with French children’s books? In this story, a seagull decides that instead of doing normal seagull things, he’s going to become the best flyer ever. Hell, he’s going to the first seagull to ever do arial acrobatics. He succeeds at this and learns to do crazy stunts and fly at impossible speeds form impossible altitudes. The fastest seagull ever! He will lead by example and bring his comrades to freedom! Instead, he gets exiled from the seagull community and lives the rest of his life completely alone and scorned by all until he dies and goes to seagull heaven. The second part of the book, this I’m still reading, takes place in seagull heaven.
Let’s stop for a moment and compare this to the endlessly beloved the Little Prince. A man has crashed is plane in the Sahara and is going to die unless he can get it fixed before his water runs out. An improbable child appears, who is from a tiny planet which is about house-sized and which he does chores for and is very whimsical and cute and talks to plants and animals and befriends the man before he decides to kill himself and has the snake bite him and then he dies. Ok, maybe there’s some sort of metaphor of lost childhood and the snake could represent adult sexuality what with the obvious allusions to Adam and Eve and other lost-innocence. But it’s read to kids. The kid is so great and then he dies. The seagull is so fantastic that nobody will talk to him and he dies broken and alone only to be rewarded in the next life.
[EDIT (14:52 18 June): Jean points out, “jonathon livingston seagull by richard bach, was a great treacle pop hit in the united states in the early 70s. it was written in english.” What’s funny about this is that the person who lent it to me did so because she was annoyed that I was reading a Harlequin novel in translation and wanted me to read something more authentic. (The Harlequin novel contained more useful new vocabulary words and was more fun to read, in case you’re wondering.)]
It seems like more than encouraging kids to follow their dreams, it comes with a warning. “You can do this, but we will make you pay dearly. We may not appreciate any of your work until you’re dead. You’ll be buried in a pauper’s grave only to have the Berlin Philharmonic do a live international broadcast of your most-loved works on your 250th birthday.” What a 19th century, romantic concept of art! Die alone and unloved, but maybe somebody will notice you once you’re dead! Sure, the glory, but the price! Better to keep in line, keep your head down than to hope for posthumous praise. I mean, I’m not saying that I don’t like the idea of having a legacy. In class one day we discussed the creation of art as being paired with the fear of death. time is fleeting, how can we create something that will endure? But first of all, if nobody cares about your work when you’re alive, nobody is going to bother digging through it after you’re gone. No audience now means no audience later. Secondly, even if that were true, why the heck would one want to create art if you only suffered social punishment and no reward? The Mozart-died-poor-and-alone story is very nice for the Romantics, but it’s not true in real life.
What with the French kids books and the dying children? I mean, yeah, death comes for all of us, but, um. while in Nice, I went to the graveyard. Death be not proud, but funeral monuments certainly are. If I’m not going to be remembered as the first seagull to fly at greater than 100km/hr, I at least want a giant statue of me over my grave, serious expression, wings outstretched. Oh and accompanying statues of angels hovering overhead and (optimally 3) women weeping and rending their clothes. I want at least hubris, avarice and lust represented, if not also gluttony and sloth. (Onlookers can provide the envy.) All of this couched in religious symbols of course, so I still stand a chance at getting into seagull heaven.
When I got home from Nice (via Avignon), my letter from Sonology was in my mailbox, so I am officially admitted. I must decide yes or no by July 1st. Of course, I want to go, but Cola is uncertain which complicates things.
Tag: Celesteh

well, so i’ve heard unofficially. yay!

I am in Nice right now, about to go to Avignon and see the papal apartments and one of the heads of st John the Baptist. When I get back to Paris in a few days? I will make travel arrangements for August. If you are on of the people waiting to hear from me about August plans? I will email you then.
huzzah!
Tag: Celesteh

This is very silly, but it’s possible that I could get some radio
play in NYC, if folks request it on June 13th (today!). Information about the
event is below. If you call or email and ask for “Clocker” by Celeste
Hutchins, that would be awesome. (Other request worthy artists are
Polly Moller and Maggi Payne, btw.)

Anyway, this short work is not on my podcast, nor will it be, so
this is just about the only way you can hear it, which I know you’re
dying to.

The 60X60 RADIO REQUEST EXTRAVAGANZA will air on Afternoon New Music Tuesday
June 13th, 2006 between 3:00 PM – 6:00 PM Eastern Standard Time

Afternoon New Music is on WKCR 89.9 is in Manhattan, New York (the heart of
New York City) and is being hosted by Martin Kostov

Live Internet broadcasts at WKCR can be heard at the following link:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/wkcr/netcastload.html

During the show please call in or email.

Our goal for this show is to have interviews with some guests in regards to
the 60×60 project as well as air phone calls, as well as broadcast some
other 60×60 highlights.

The Telephone Listener Line is (212) 854-9920 for phone requests.

There is a web site with information about WKCR, Afternoon New Music at:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/wkcr/newmusic/load.html

I also hope to be checking my gmail account for request before the show.
That address is Robert.Voisey@gmail.com

And I’m off to Nice to lie on the beach, so somebody leave a comment if my piece gets played. 🙂
Tags: 60×60, Celesteh