Les said, the better II

And I have to write it down, or I’ll have no memory of what I’ve been doing.

Biking

Last Saturday, the weather was lovely and I had the idea of going for a nice relaxing bike ride. And then I saw that it was the weekend for velorution. velo = bike. revolution = revolution. velorution = critical mass type bike ride to save the earth. So Cola and I went to this thing. It was very low key and mellow. Somebody showed up with brightly colored flags on long sticks which were zip-tied to people’s bikes. I got a green flag and Cola got a purple one. Oodles of literature was handed out. Meanwhile, while we were setting up at Place du Châtelet, Greenpeace was also setting up a small table and a group of anti-choice activists was screwing a small virgin Mary statue to a tripod. Châtelet is the place for all sorts of activism.

Then we set off for a nice leisurely ride around the city and especially along the St Martin Canal (right by chez moi!) where we blocked traffic for several minutes, because of the planned manifestation for more bike lanes, and many minutes more because the bridge closed to make way for a boat on the canal. Drivers were annoyed, but, we explained, “c’est une manifestation!” to which they would concede it was entirely proper that we block traffic, but why must we do it so long and can’t we just let them through. Despite these arguments it was very chill and we chanted bike chants “[something something] la solution? c’est la velo — rution!” and “something something abandonez votre voiture!” and sang bike songs, which I didn’t even catch part of. After a nice bike ride around the canal and another traffic blockage, we went to the nice little park that I always go to and we all drank some beer.

The dangers of old oatmeal and late-night restaurants

Then I went home, ate old oatmeal and went to Michelle’s house to try to figure out what the heck is wrong with her computer. It’s sometimes failing the POST, which is not good at all. I got home extremely late and went to an Italian food place that’s open late at night, which I used to go to quite frequently. And quite early Sunday morning I was struck suddenly ill. I am never going to that Italian place ever again. Also, it is unwise to eat old oatmeal. And waking up at 5:30 AM and tossing your cookies pretty much ruins your whole day. Cola went out to a giant concert at Place de la Republique which was in favor of immigrant rights (w00t), but I stayed home and felt crappy.

School

Monday I went to school where Jean Claude Risset was the teacher for the next several days. He was at Bell Labs in the 1960’s, when computer music was shiny and new. And then he was at Stanford while they were inventing FM synthesis, and basically every important computer music thing, he was there. He figured out how to successfully synthesize a trumpet using additive synthesis. Now, not but a week earlier, I had been thinking about how (I thought) that synthesizing natural instruments was a waste of time. Why emulate a trumpet when the world is full of trumpet players? Well, synthesized trumpets are sometimes decidedly cheesy, but the lessons you learn from making such simulations are directly applicable to to more abstract electronic sounds. It was immediately clear this was the case as he described the difficulties in discovering all the transients and the different amplitudes of different overtones and different times. It was just so clearly right and worthwhile.
So my mind was completely changed in that regard. Also, having been at Bell Labs and Stanford, he knew everybody. He would just mention names conversationally. He wrote some fractal piece and then mentioned in passing Mandelbrot’s reaction to it. Yeah, Mandelbrot. Holy cow. Also, he would sort of pace around the room and lose track of where varios obstacles were. He would fall over his chair about ever other hour. The class was awesome.
So he asked what we were interested in and I mentioned that I was interested in adapting tuning to timbre. We learned about dissonance curves in the fall, usually as applied to samples. But, I reasoned, it would be much easier to analyze FM sounds. They’re very rich (full of harmonics) but all the harmonics are completely mathematically predictable. Thus you could quickly pick some timbres and have the tunings sort themselves out automagically. So Risset promised he would talk about a pice by John Chowning called Stria
This is the second time in the last year or so that I’ve been working on a pice only to find out that somebody at Stanford has already done it. In this case in 1977. Curse them for coming up with all my ideas before me.

Leisure

Meanwhile, I went back to Michelle’s Monday night and further swore at her computer. One of the RAM simms keeps falling out. When I got home, Aaron, Cola’s ex was at my apartment. He stayed for the next several days. Every evening, when I would get home form school, he would just be opening a bottle of wine and whatever cheese he was determined to try. Then we would go out to a restaurant and have a nice leisurely meal. Oh yes, Paris. Food. Wine.
Also, we got Easter candy. Chocolate sea creatures. Also, you can get rabbits, eggs, bells, chickens, turtles, frogs, lions, elephants and um, it’s kind of weird. But the chocolate is really good, so all is well.
We also connected with Herf, somebody from San Francisco who lives in Paris, but whom I haven’t spoken to in months. Apparently the winter hibernation thing which I experienced is actually pretty typical. But now it is glorious, wonderful spring

Art

On Thursday, school was out, so we went to the Pompidou Centre to see the exhibit on Los Angeles artists. As far as I can tell, there are usually always two things going on at the Pompidou. There’s the permanent collection and then there’s a visting exhibit. The permanent collection was excellent when I saw it, and very well organized and well curated. The visiting exhibit is on the top floor and is about one subject and is very very large. Too big. When I saw the Dada exhibit, it was exhausting. I love Dada, because it was just so wonderful and, of course, an anti-war art. It could be construed as a failure in that respect. Despite gaining popularity all over Europe, the Unites States and even Japan, another horrible war followed shortly thereafter. Art signifies nothing! I left feeling like maybe political art was worthless. Why create art at all, since humanity is so barbaric to each other and engaged in constant slaughter. Art is an exercise in uselessness and deception.
Anyway, so I went to see the LA exhibit. It got off to a promising start. I started thinking about applying to CalArts (I think they have a PhD program). But then it just drug on and on and on. Several of the works could be described as somewhat misogynist. Many could be very charitably termed as self-indulgent. From walking through, you’d think that LA was nothing but white men. They had ONE room which contained hispanic and feminist art. Hispanics got one wall. Women got another. The other two went to something else. The women wall was a video of a protest. Which, cool, but uh….
Ugh I hate LA. Hate hate hate. This is the second time I’ve left the travelling exhibit feeling like art was self-indulgent and worthless. Also, LA is more than wanking white men and it’s not fair that it’s constantly presented as such. It’s the fault of the white male wankers. If only there was some way to lure them out of state and keep them there.

Loneliness

Anyway, Cola has been lured out of the country. She left for Amsterdam today. She comes back next wednesday.

Music

So thursday, I called this guy who programs music for a squat and asked for a meeting, because I want to get a gig there. He told me to come to a jam session on Friday night and we should have a meeting next Thursday. Fine, jam sessions are community building and so much of these little spaces is about community. So I showed up tonight with Mariano to the pre-jam dinner and it’s full of anglophones. Mariano and I were sitting next to a bag when the owner arrived and apologized if we thought his bag smelled like something was rotting inside. Mariano asked the obvious question and the man, very pleased with himself, produced a durian from his bag. This is a giant spiky fruit which is very heavy and covered with sharp points. Some people think they smell bad. They’re supposed to taste very good. When I last went to the Egyptian Museum in San Jose, their durian tree was producing fruit and they had to rope off the lawn, lest a very heavy spiky fruit fall on someone’s head. The man was very pleased with my story. Meanwhile, a film crew had appeared and was taping the entire conversation and me holding the very uncomfortable fruit as it’s points stabbed my hands like St Sebastian’s arrows. The film crew was doing a documentary, they hope for Arte TV. (Look for me holding painful fruit.) This was all too nifty, so the guy invited Mariano and I to come to a picnic in a park tomorrow and eat durian with this guy and his friends. We said yes and the film crew moved on to interview the guy we wanted to see.
He was really busy setting stuff up, so we talked to him only long enough to establish that he had absolutely no recollection of having scheduled a meeting. Great. So finally the Jam session started. It was funk music. This was one of the first events I’ve been to in Paris that was actually significantly integrated. I listened for a while and film crew filmed the jamming. Jamming is really hard actually. You get something going and then you have a lot of inertia. It’s hard to make a change, like in key or style and it’s harder to stop. Jam songs tend to go on far too long and it requires practice to stop them in a coherent way when they need to be stopped. Practice or hand signals. And the leader or whoever needs to have a good sense of when to give said signals. I seem to recall Tennis Roberts (a critically acclaimed jam art rock band from Berkeley, CA) practicing with a clock going, so we could learn when to stop.

the Future

Anyway, Mariano and I left for a while and sat at a bar. We’re going to meet tomorrow to go to a park and eat durian. On Monday, there’s evening class wherein I will be presenting an introduction to programming in SuperCollider. On Tuesday, we’re having normal evening class. On Wednesday, I will be presenting how to write synthdefs in SuperCollider and Cola returns. On thursday, we have normal class and Sarah Dotie arrives. On Friday Sarah, Cola and I will depart for Germany.

In summary

Everything they say about Paris in Springtime is true! Also, one day I hope to get a co-ed gig in Europe.
Tags: Paris, Celesteh

Q: Is it safe to eat oatmeal that’s been sitting out for 8 hours if you head it up first?

A: Nonononononono it is not.
Tag: Celesteh

Is France still on a general strike or what? The Journal en Français Facile is on strike. This is my primary source for news. Otherwise, I pick through Liberation articles or read anglophone expat blogs, which sadly and annoyingly mainly contain the idea that French youth should be grovelling for shitty jobs at which they can be fired without cause, rather than demand their rights be respected. Yeah, this is why American unemployment is much much higher, unions are weak and wages are low and you can lose your house over a health problem in America. No offense, but the anglophones have done a terrible job of protecting workers rights in their own countries and maybe should stop criticizing French protesters and start emulating them. Also, if the French social system annoys you so much, maybe it’s not the country for you?

Before you quibble with me about American unemployment stats, please note that France uses a different method to count, which is probably more accurate and that America’s unemployment in minority communities is much worse than in France’s minority communities. Much, much worse. And being able to fire people left and right doesn’t seem to be helping.
Anyway, could you imagine how different things would be in the US if journalists belonged to a union and did things like went on strike? I mean, sure, you could say it would hurt the idea of them being impartial. But if they don’t ever do things like that, aren’t the just being partial towards business and the owning class?
Still, I want my news. I listen to the podcast first thing before I go outside. It’s like booting the french-understanding part of my brain. It eases me into speaking French for the day. Also, no news. I try getting my news from Radio Canada, but the accents are harder and they speak so quickly. And so often about Steven Harper.
Speaking of strikes and politically active Highschool students, the kids in LA give me so much hope for America. Maybe if the youth rise up, the government will stop oppressing folks so much. Alas, on the other hand, the Catholic church is a driving force behind this. Sometimes they are right and sometimes they are wrong. Their ability to mobilize people for civil rights is fantastic, but I worry they will also be able to mobilize people against civil rights too. The communal nature of a mass movement is not what gives it moral authority, but rather, the rightness of the cause. People marching for immigrant rights is fantastic, but the church has also tried to get people to march against women and gays. If they get skills at turning people out, this is not good overall. The kids, however, are organizing via mySpace with their own tools and of their own volition. I have faith in the youth.
Tags: Paris, Celesteh

“Le week-end” is a French term. True. Anyway, on Friday night, I went bar-hopping with Solène around the 4th. It was pretty fun. On Saturday, I went to a party thrown by one of the guys in my program. Music school parties are the same everywhere in the world. Too much wine, too much smoke, too much arguing about which composers suck and which are great. And, of course, talking about sex, maybe too much fo that too. In all it was really too much as I got home at 5:00 am, after having too much of a great time.
On Sunday afternoon, I woke up with a headache and decided to walk down to Place de la Sorbonne. Informed readers will know that the police have put up large barricades around the square and are not letting students assemble there. However, I recently learned that the café there is still open. So I walked towards there from Châtelet, smilingly stupidly in the warm weather. It was around 18 degres C. So lovely. People speak of Paris in the springtime. So far the trees are still bare and the weather gray, but the Parisians are blooming. People are wearing colors other than black. French folks are smiling. They are making out with each other in public in the middle of the day. A couple of days ago, I saw a middle aged couple kissing in the street. On Sunday, I was pointing at a brass band by the very touristy St Michel and saying something about it in English to cola and an old Parisian man explained to me in French the history of the fountain and where the nearby museums are. He smiled and was helpful to the tourist! There is something magic about spring. When I got to the Place de la Sorbonne and started explaining to the gendarmes that I wanted to go to the café, they smiled at me!

so I went to the café there and had chai. It was a surreal scene full of napping cops and really, I’ve never seen that square so deserted. I keep going to weird places with Cola during protests. An empty Time Square in NYC. Anyway, if you stay up until 5:00 AM defending the honor of Charles Ives and drinking wine, it’s a bad idea to have a hot sweet milky beverage in the warm afternoon the at follows. Ugh. But when I got home around 6:00, the sun was still shining. Thank god for spring.
Tags: Paris, Celesteh

Oh my god, It’s NOT cold out!! I feel deliriously happy every time I venture outside. Today I went out without wearing a coat or even a jacket!! People have started sitting outside at cafés again. A (very) few things are blooming. There are new plants appearing in the community garden in the park by the canal. Oh, and it’s gray and rainy pretty much non stop. But my god, it’s not cold!! I don’t feel depressed by the weather anymore! huzzah!

So I had a concert a couple of week ago. 20 or 30 people came. Afterwards, a bunch of them wanted to talk to me. They asked me what exactly I was doing and I showed them my interface (highlight this source code and press enter) and they were impressed in an “oh my god, you wrote all that code for your score??” sort of way. It was widely agreed that I am in need of some sort of visual element or perhaps I should not be on stage. Fine, I need a visible element. Therefore, I am looking for one or two USB keyboards of the typing variety. One I might want to take apart to use the keys as triggers. One I want to strap on like a uber-geeky sh101 and use to control stuff in some sort of obvious way. I’m imagining somehow attacking a keyboard to my tuba such that I can type on it with my left hand.
after playing, I fell ill and then I had class every day 10AM-6pm for many many days in a row. The subject was KYMA. Theoretically, I ought to be able to do something exciting with it . . .. but the cost. KYMA is a hardware/software solution for doing sound processing. The hardware is a DSP co-processor. Actually, more like 128 co-processors, all of which have extremely fast memory access, so your sound code never gets hung up on memory starvation or interrupts. This means that it does things like pitch detection much more accurately and correctly. The delay is like 3ms. It’s way fast and it won’t max out like my little laptop does sometimes when I write sloppy code. However, it’s like 5k for an entry-level model. If I needed things within 3ms, that would be one thing, but I don’t. Also, big and heavy. And finally, the programming interface is extremely graphical. It’s very well done and extremely user friendly, but there’s no way to get around it and just type what you want. I hate graphical interfaces to programming languages unless they can be defeated when I want to defeat them. And really finally, it is not adept at doing the sort of list processing that I am wont to do. Why does nobody think in terms of arrays like I think of arrays? Why am I always struggling against how other people view arrays? Why are the most obvious array accessing methods (such as pbinds) never well-suited to what I want to do? Arrays should evolve, people! The contents of an iteration through an array should be changed based on the last thing that happened. I’m switching to LISP. not really.
So I’ve decided that the time has come to do something with wavesets in supercollider. A waveset is a concept invented by Trevor Wishart and described in his book audible Design. Basically, it’s a set of two zero crossings. Picture a sine wave or an audio wave. You start at zero, the wave goes up, reaches a maximum and then goes back down to zero, then it continues below zero, reaches a minimum and head back up to zero. This is one period of a wave. Wishart terms it a waveset and notes several things one can do with a waveset. For instance, audio waves usually don’t look too much like the sine wave you probably just pictured. However, you could replace the bumpy real waves with sinusoidal ones. And you could do this in real time. And if you know of pre-existing supercollider Ugens that do this, I would like to know about them. Real-time programming makes my brain hurt. There’s not a single problem with it that I can’t figure out how to solve, provided I can peek into the future. Why is time not more fungible? So I’m “writing” a UGen, where “writing” means furrowing my brow, making incomprehensible doodles on scratch paper and reading source for other UGens.
Other news: I haven’t heard anything from the company that wanted to hire me since I sent them a salary demand. Alas. So I basically have no idea what I’m doing when my lease runs out in a couple of months. Do I look for a new place because I’ll have a job or do I hit the road? Also, maybe I might do the year long program at Sonology in Den Haag. They have a very late application deadline, which is good, but I dunno about Den Haag. It’s not as exciting as Paris, but on the other hand, I would actually have some sort of “in” to the music scene, which is more than I have here. Also, it’s still cold there.
I met somebody last night who had lived in the Bay Area for 5 years. She started talking about redwood trees. So we spoke of trees, the coast, banana slugs. I thought of how pretty it was. Everything has already gone into bloom, I’m sure, and the farmer’s markets are full of strawberries and most of my friends and family lives there and yikes, homesickness. (I don’t often speak about missing my friends, this is because I am trying not think about it, not because I don’t.) My dear friend Jean got bit by a tick and got a weird rash about it. I comment in her blog “go see a doctor!!” I wrote. She did. It cost $135. You can get dental surgery in a hospital for about that amount here, not counting prescriptions. How the hell are people with insurance supposed to fork over $135? For most people, it’s not a question of if they get sick, but when. Most folks will have at least one major illness in their life. How are they supposed to pay for it if just a tick bite costs $135? And also, Bush is president and Ahnold is governator and SF is the next NOLA when the big one hits and living in the US sitting on the edge of a precarity. We all know the big one is going to come and knock down our house. And we know that no insurance company or government or anyone who holds the public trust is going to do a damn thing about it. None of these questions are “if.” They’re “when.” Added to this, there is no real support for the arts. So I don’t want to go home. Except that I do.
Tag: Celesteh

I’m not prudish or naive. I know that some folks get their testicles waxed and I’ve got nothing against that. I was just kind of surprised to see it on broadcast TV.

Tags: France, Celesteh

So 64 of 84 total universities in France are on strike. Including to Sorbonne, where Cola studies, but not her program. They’ve been having riots today and maybe the last few days. Apparently some cars are on fire. You know, the French love cars, almost as much as Californians love cars. But they seem to love to burn them as much as they love to drive them.

How are these riots connected to the riots of November? Glad you asked. As you may know, minorities, especially minority youth around the Paris suburbs get hassled and beaten by the police. They also have exceedingly high unemployment rates. All of France has high youth unemployment. The wise leadership decided the riots were not caused by police brutality or racism, but by rap music and over-regulation of workers. Yes, clearly the youth would get hired more often if they could be fired at will for any or no reason. Also, staying in school past 8th grade is a luxury for the upper classes. So they lowered ages for mandatory school attendance and passed something called the CPE.
The CPE says that you can fire folks under 26 for the first few years of them having a new job. What’s to stop businesses from just replacing new 24 year olds every 2 years? Nothing. What protects young workers who want to join or form a union or whose bosses desire sexual favors? Not very much (especially since women, along with minorities, are disproportionately unemployed.) Would a bank want to loan money to somebody with the possibility of losing their job at any moment? Not in France. Are landlords down with this? Not so much. Do folks want to live at home until they’re 26? no.
Nobody is happy with this law. More than 2/3rds of France is against it. but nobody in power wants to admit making a mistake, so it is not repealed yet. Meanwhile, the universities are mostly out on strike and more and more high schools are striking. Kids are throwing molotov cocktails at stuff. The kids in the suburbs in November mostly just burned cars at night. The middle class college kids torch presses, cars and maybe some flics during broad daylight! The youth unrest has spread.
There’s a huuuge protest planned for Saturday… someplace. I kind of want to go, as I am in solidarity with French students (hey, I’m a French student!) and workers, but I don’t want to be in a riot. Also, I don’t know where it’s going to be.
The November riots were mostly in the suburbs (although there were signs of a molotov cocktail a couple of doors down from me) and so were not something threatening my safety. These new batches of riots are in the center areas of town: swanky, posh places. Again, not so much effecting my personal safety. So if you’re prone to worrying, there’s no need on my behalf. Also, for all these riots and burnings, very few people seem to actually get hurt.
I’ve also been on strike from school from monday morning until this afternoon, but that was mostly as I had the flu. I’m better now, although we’ll see how I feel tomorrow after staying up so late. The problem with being sick is that one sleeps so much and at such weird times and then are awake feeling at odd times for the next few days after recovery.
Tags: Paris, Celesteh

Apparently, the Sorbonne and 7 other Universities in France and completely shut down by a strike while 40 more (of the 84 total) universities are partially on strike. I know this because I read it in the news this morning. Apparently, none of the strikers thought to block or even inform the French as a Foreign Language students in their building down the street. So Cola has not been striking. She has not chanted slogans. She has not sat down in traffic and blocked major thoroughfares. She has not piled up furniture in the center of the university to block the path of police. She has not thrown fire extinguishers or other heavy objects down onto the heads of gendarmes. She has not been cleared out of buildings with tears gas. Nor has she declared her solidarity with the sans-papiers. It’s disappointing, really.

The students are upset about something called the CPE. It’s a proposed change to the labor law which would give workers under the age of 26 fewer rights, but still more than they have in the US. Because the US labor law sucks. Who would want it? Anyway, France has something of a reputation for this sort of thing, but this is the first time the Sorbonne has been occupied since 1968. There has been way more youth unrest these last few months than there has been in a mighty long time. It’s a cause for concern, as there wouldn’t be all this ruckus if things were going well.
French students have unions. Not like the student union, where you can go get a cup of coffee, but like unions with meetings and whatnot. American students need unions!
Tags: Paris, Celesteh

I would like recordings of women who are fluent french speakers answering the question “Est-ce que tu es feministe? Pourquoi ou pourquoi pas?” in french, of course. If you want to do it, email me a recording in any for mat to celesteh at gmail dot com.

Je cherche des enregistrements de femmes, pendant qu’elles donnent de la réponse à la question “Est-ce que tu es feministe? Pourquoi ou pourquoi pas?”. En français, si vous plait. Si vous voulez participer, envoyez l’enregistrement à celesteh à gmail point com.
Participants will be thanked in program notes and will get a recording of the finished musical piece
Des femmes vont recevoir mes remerciements et l’enregistrement de le morceau de musique que je vais creer avec ses voix.
Tag: Celesteh