Engaging and Adjusting

The thing about negative feedback is that it’s extremely useful for knowing how to improve. (Mostly, not counting the guy who wondered if our mothers were proud (I’d like to think mine would be.)) And the topic that stands out most glaringly is audience engagement.
This is a long standing problem for many groups dating back to the start of the genre. Somebody left an anonymous comment on my last post comparing us to “geography teachers.” Scot Gresham-Lancaster wrote that The Hub was compared to air traffic controllers. Their solution was to project their chat window, something we’ve talked about, but never actually implemented. There are papers written about how the use of gestural controllers can bridge this gap, something we have implemented. But what projected chat, gestural control, and synthesised voice all have in common is hiding behind technology.
Thus far, we usually physically hide behind technology as well, sat behind tables, behind laptops and do not tend to talk to the audience. However, not all of our gigs have been this way. When we played at the Sonic Picnic, we were standing and we had a better connection to the audience, I think because we were behind plinths, which are smaller and thus we were more exposed. Other concerts, we’ve talked to the audience and even even have given them some control of our interface at certain events. This also helps.
Performers who have good posture and good engagement are not like that naturally; they practice it like all their other skills. A cellist in a conservatory practices in front of a mirror so ze can see how ze looks while ze plays and adjust accordingly.
Also, it turns out that it wasn’t just me that ‘crashed’ due to user error rather than technical failure. There’s two solutions for this – one is to have a todo list reminding the player what they need to do for every piece and to automate as much of that process as possible. The other is to be more calm and focussed going on stage. When we were getting increasingly nervous waiting to be called on to perform, we could have been taking deep breaths, reassuring each other and finding a point of focus, which is what happens when gigs go really well. Alas, this is not what we did at all.
So, starting next week, we are practising in front of a ‘mirror’ (actually a video projection of ourselves, which we can also watch afterwards to talk about what went right and wrong). We are going to source tall, plinth-like portable tables to stand behind or next to. The composer of every piece will write a short two sentence summary explaining the piece and then, in future, we’ll have microphones at future gigs, such that whoever has the fastest change will announce the piece, say a bit about it and have a few bad jokes like rock bands do between songs. We’re also going to take deep breaths before going on and have check lists to make sure we’re ready for stuff.
On the technical side, I’m going to change the networking code to broadcast to multiple ports, so if SuperCollider does crash and refuse to release the port, the user will not have to restart the computer, just the programme. Also, I’m hoping that 3.5.1 will have some increased stability on networking. My networked interactions tend to crash if left running for long periods of time, which is probably a memory management issue that I’ll attempt to find and fix, but in the mean time, we get everything but that running ahead of going on stage and then start the networking just before the piece and recompile it between pieces. To make the changeover faster, we’ve changed our practice such that who ever is ready to go first just starts and other people catch up, which is something we also need to practice.
A pile of negative feedback, even if uncomfortable, is a tremendous opportunity for improvement. So our last gig was amazingly useful even if not amazingly fun.

Gig Report: The adoration may not be universal

BiLe had two gigs yesterday but I’m just going to talk about the second one. However, first I’m going to talk about some gigs I played a few years ago. One was a cafe gig, or possible several cage gigs. They tend to blend together. I was playing tuba with some free improvisers, including the owner of the cafe. A bunch of people were there talking, we started to play and just about everybody left.
It’s slightly uncomfortable, but it’s well known to anybody who has ever played in a cafe. And there have been times when I’ve meant to have a cup of coffee and talk with friends and then, rather than talk over the music, we’ve moved on when it started. At other times, I’ve been happily surprised by live music and there have been many times I’ve gone out to a cafe specifically to hear the music that was programmed.
The other was in 2004 and I had just started doing live computer pieces in SuperCollider, but they were not interactive, they were live realisations. (I called them “press the button” pieces.) I was testing out a new one at an open mic night at a restaurant. My friend had organised the evening and asked me to play, but it was me and all acoustic guitars. It was a very early version of the piece and it still had some major aesthetic problems, which became glaringly apparent as it played. Many people in the room left to go home over the course of the piece. It was not a cafe, it was a restaurant. People had plates of food in front of them which they apparently abandoned during the longest 11 minutes of my life. (I blogged about this at the time.)
A few things happened as a result of this. One was that a busboy came out and game me a thumbs up, I’m pretty sure because he liked the music, but you never know. Another was that I instantly got much more respect from my colleagues at the university. For my own part, I pledged to become more aware of how listeners may respond to pieces I was working on to try to prevent a repeat of this. And finally, I learned the value of playing things in front of people as part of the path to finishing a piece.
The reasons for the increased respect from my colleagues is slightly complex. Part of it was simple elitism, but I think a part of it was an encouragement to take risks. Being likeable is not enough. Some fantastic music is loved upon first listening. But a lot is hated. A lot of fantastic an important pieces caused riots on their first playing. 4’33” by John Cage, Rite of Spring by Stravinsky and Ballet Mecanique by George Antheil are all well-known examples of this. Of course, causing an uproar does not mean that you’re good. You could just be terrible. But it does mean you’re taking a risk.
Of course, I tend to blunder into risks blindly and be caught a bit by surprise.

TEDxBrum

Localities can put on their own, independent TED conferences. One in Birmingham decided to invite BiLE and despite having a gig already lined up the same morning, we agreed to to play.
I’d been at the LoveBytes festival in Sheffield (which was excellent) the day before and stayed over. Alas, it turned out that the reason that my hotel room was so cheap was because it was directly over a Reggae club. I think my room must have been right over the bass amp. One song was in the same key as the resonant frequency of the door frame. We woke up early yesterday morning, played a set at a headphone concert at the LoveBytes Festival, and then got on a train back to Birmingham and got to the MAC centre just in time to set up and play another set at TEDx
We waited nervously back stage for our turn, filed in and started to play XYZ by Shelly Knotts. For some reason, there was a lot of crashing. Chris missed the entire piece, trying to recover from a crash. Julien and Shelly both crashed mid-piece, but were able to recover quickly. I did not crash, but I’m the last to come in. It was sparse and a bit stressful, but we got through it. We’ve played that piece a lot previously. It’s not our first piece, but it’s the first we proposed, as we spent our first-ever meeting writing a vague proposal to NIME last year and this was the piece that we played there.
Then we played Sonnation 2 by Julien Guillamat. We’ve only played that piece a couple of times before, but it’s not difficult. I forgot to plug in my faders and spent the first two minutes trying to figure out what was wrong and then recovering, so it also had some sparseness. The end was not as tight as it could be and I smiled a bit at the error, but then it was over and we filed back off stage.
We always have problems with having the right sort of game face for playing live. I’ve been working on my posture, but we still sometimes slip into head resting on arm with elbow on the table. And I should have kept a straight face at the end. I typed some lines into the speech synthesiser to announce piece titles, which is something I’ve seen other bands do at laptop concerts. I have mixed feelings about it. It seemed better than not engaging at all (which is what we usually do, alas) and we didn’t have a microphone.
Afterwards, we went outside to wait for the talks to end so we could break down our gear. It was then that somebody pulled out their smart phone to check Twitter.

Reactions

The tweets are below in chronological order (oldest first). While it was clear the performance had some technical issues, it had not seemed unusual in any way. We picked pieces that I thought would be accessible. XYZ has computer game elements, including players competing for control of sound parameters and lo-fi game-ish graphics. Sonnations also seems accessible in that is uses live sampling of metallic instruments, something that has worked with Partially Percussive and because it has a physically performative element at the end. Plus it gets nice sounds.
It may be that the difference between reactions to Sonnations and, say, Partially Percussive may have to do with managing audience reactions in some way. The bells do sound nicer than the kitchen hardware, but, because they look like instruments, the audience may be expecting something much more conventionally tonal. They resonances of the metal bowls might be a nice surprise vs the cow bell sounds might be slightly disappointing. Of course, it’s even more likely that the audience would have found the use of kitchen objects to be unbearably pretentious. It may have been better to play Act 2 of the Laptopera as the second piece. It sounds weirder, but the obvious references to spam email, especially the penis-enlargement ones are funny and may have engaged them. Or maybe not. It’s hard to know.
We’re playing at the symphony hall in May and this does have me a bit worried in that I would not have predicted these crashes and I don’t know what caused them. And I’m worried that we might be too brutal for fans of minimalism. It’s caught on much more than other genres of 21st century art music and appeals to a mainstream audience. Just because an audience wants to be challenged a bit, doesn’t mean they want what we do.
On the other hand, as somebody who often specialises in noise music, I’ve never expected to get mass approval or even approval from the majority of people at any given gig. Probably the only exception here is that I’m not usually as directly exposed to audience reaction. And, indeed, there were people who liked it. So maybe it’s a storm in a teacup? It’s impossible to get perspective on things from the stage, as it were.

Tweets

About to find out what a laptop ensemble is at #TEDxBrum @EskimoDalton
And the laptop ensemble are (is?) using macbook pros, because they’re the best kind of laptops #ilovemac #tedxbrum @Dr_Bob82 (replies)
Oh…it’s BILE! Ha! #TEDxBrum @EskimoDalton
What a treat. Watch the bham laptop ensamble being streamed live on #tedxbrum websire now x @JoyOfFengShui
Using iphone as a sound control device – motion control + music = electro-weirdness! #tedxbrum @Dr_Bob82
It’s like being stuck INSIDE A LAPTOP right now #tedxbrum @Dr_Bob82
i got a headache can we get @Flutebox on pls? #tedxbrum @tedxbrum @Flutebox @aerosolali
The Birmingham Laptop Ensemble. It could only come out of the University of Birmingham. #tedxbrum #notforme @mrmarksteadman

@mrmarksteadman 🙂 @carolinebeavon
@carolinebeavon I’m sure it’s all really clever, but just a tad self-indulgent for me @mrmarksteadman
@mrmarksteadman I agree. No real musical quality from what I can tell … But then, I went to BCU 😉 @carolinebeavon
@carolinebeavon That’s kinda my point! Good, no-nonsense uni 😉 Sad to have missed @flutebox; will defo check out the @civicolive replay @mrmarksteadman
@mrmarksteadman yup. They were great. This … Hmmmm, not a fan @carolinebeavon
@carolinebeavon Guess you had to be there. Oh no, you are, sorry. And it continues. *sigh* mrmarksteadman
@mrmarksteadman let me out!!!!! 🙂 @carolinebeavon
@carolinebeavon OH GOD IT’S SO SMUG! I CAN’T TAKE HOW PLEASED THEY ARE WITH THEMSELVES! (Sorry… just… yeah, sorry.) #tedxbrum @mrmarksteadman

Not getting the laptop ensemble – will try harder #tedxbrum @mrspicto
I was expecting some form of 8bit electro music. This is not that. #tedxbrum @JAWilletts
I think the computers have taken over #tedxbrum @dorvago
Very impressive technically, although not sure if it’s supposed to be music? #tedxbrum @Dr_Bob82

@Dr_Bob82 BiLE = sound art ?! @PostFilm
@PostFilm I’d agree that it was ‘sound’ but never been a fan of electro-music 🙂 @Dr_Bob82
@Dr_Bob82 sound art: I guess it’s just a matter of taste. You don’t hang someone for not liking coffee, anchovies, or cucumber @PostFilm
@PostFilm It’s definitely a matter of taste, although occasionally I have felt socially ostracised for not liking coffee 😉 @Dr_Bob82
@Dr_Bob82 harmony, melody, rhythm are culture- and time-specific; but electroacoustic is so broad now that it’s difficult to generalise @PostFilm

@BiLEnsemble > visually Kraftwerk/Modified Toy Orchestra minus suits, audibly Aphex Twin via laptops & remote controls. Madness! #TEDxBrum @asmallfurrybear
#TEDxBrum Bored already @Keybored_KATz
Horrible feeling that this isn’t going down as expected… Please, some melody for the love of god!! #tedxbrum @Dr_Bob82
#TEDxBrum Trying to be positive – but really – pass the paracetamol @Pictoontwit
Birmingham Laptop Ensemble – using interference to create music! #tedxbrum http://pic.twitter.com/PmCOiBQG @CerasellaChis
#TEDxBrum I feel very old right now. @Stephen_Griffin
It’s like a game, where I don’t know the rules and can’t tell if it’s glitching or not. #tedxbrum @JAWilletts
Think there’s some sort of Kinect-type deal going on here as well with controlling the ‘music’ #tedxbrum @Dr_Bob82
No, sorry I tried but not for me ( laptop ensemble) #TEDxBRUM @mrspicto
somebody pls where is nathan @Flutebox come back pls! #tedxbrum @aerosolali
#TEDxBrum can Flutebox come back on please @Pictoontwit
#tedxbrum not sure what to make of this music @simonjenner
@BiLEnsemble > a possible contender for @supersonicfest 2012 line up? #TEDxBrum @asmallfurrybear
nah not for me… Seems too out of control & random…“@vixfitzgerald: I don’t get it #TEDxBrum Birmingham laptop ensemble 🙁 ??” @Soulsailor
Like War of the Worlds meets Aphex Twin meets an over-enthusiastic computer geek #tedxbrum @Dr_Bob82
Anyone else not got a clue what’s going on? Even the performers look disinterested! Smile and nod, smile and nod… #TEDxBrum @MykWilliams
Its getting an interesting Twitter reaction. Not sure whether it’s quite a bit too revolutionary. #tedxbrum @JAWilletts
As if my head didn’t hurt enough from all the ideas #TEDxBrum crammed in, BiLE start their intense sonic assault http://yfrog.com/khb13bqj @orangejon
Birmingham Laptop Ensemble at #TEDxBrum http://pic.twitter.com/DdGoqzSJ @stanchers
#TEDxBrum that made Kraftwerk look pedestrian Stephen_Griffin
Birmingham Laptop Orchestra. Industrial grunge synth from the 70s. A little to atonal for me. #tedxbrum @DaveSussman
Please. Melody. Just a little bit. I won’t tell the experimentalist musicians that you did it #tedxbrum @Dr_Bob82
Amazing stuff around here. 🙂 #TEDxBrum @CerasellaChis
Talk amongst yourselves. #tedxbrum @mrmarksteadman
#TEDxBrum I am sure there mothers are very proud – I am now reflecting on the value or otherwise of a University education @Pictoontwit
I feel like this needs an explanation #TEDxBrum @chargedatom
Hmm sorry but please don’t “play” another “track” /Birmingham laptop Ensemble ;-( #WTF #TEDxBrum @Soulsailor (replies)
WE NEED MOAR COWBELL!: http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/80a71ef8cb/more-cowbell #tedxbrum Dr_Bob82
…but i do like the guys stickers on his laptop…. #tedxbrum @aerosolali
#TEDxBrum the power of social media – and when you die on your feet even faster @Pictoontwit
Really not feeling Laptop Ensemble.I’m afraid at #TEDxBrum even they look bored. @carolinebeavon
Wouldn’t it be better to just plug an iPod in. #tedxbrum @dorvago
The cowbell is a way too understated instrument, let’s get the cowbell trending too! #TEDxBrum #morecowbell @TEDxBrum
Is it possible to rehearse this? #seriousquestion #TEDxBrum @chargedatom

@chargedatom I think they’re winging it. Most UoB students do 😉 @Dr_Bob82

@BiLEnsemble it’s interesting to watch here in the MAC. Physical meets digital, theres so much that could go wrong, it’s working!! #tedxbrum @Ben_R_Murphy
If we don’t get more cowbell, we may as well all go home #cowbell #tedxbrum @Dr_Bob82
Who spiked my drink with acid? Is this real? #TEDxBrum @craiggumbley
I for one, was happy to have #8bit of silence ¦-) #bless RT @mrmarksteadman Talk amongst yourselves. #tedxbrum @Jacattell
#TEDxBrum the emperor’s new laptop? @Stephen_Griffin
I’m now imagining myself in a rainforest. Away from this. Far away. #tedxbrum @Dr_Bob82
#TEDxBrum PLEASE STOP @Pictoontwit
Britain ‘s not got talent sorry #TEDxBrum @vixfitzgerald
One of them must be checking the twitter feed #tedxbrum #multitasking @dorvago
Oh dear twitter generated laughter in danger of breaking out now. At least it is a more positive effect than i expected #tedxbrum @mrspicto
Ah, so they played instruments at the start, recorded them, now they’ve digitised and resampled them and are playing them back #tedxbrum @Dr_Bob82
I’m not at #TEDxBrum, but finding the tweets about the “Laptop Ensemble” hilarious. It sounds dreadful (but I bet you all clap at the end). @editorialgirl

HELL YEAH 😀 @Jacattell

Ordered chaos; #LOVEIT! MT @Soulsailor nah not for me… Seems too out of control & random… /cc @vixfitzgerald #TEDxBrum @Jacattell
#morecowbell #lesscowbell would it make a difference?? #TEDxBrum @chargedatom
Massive TUNE! #tedxbrum @n_chalmers

@n_chalmers will buy u the CD for ur bday! #tedxbrum @J_K_Schofield
@n_chalmers going to download this one after for sure @kathpreston1

Twitter is my outlet. Can’t keep straight face. #TEDxBrum @karldoody
No one said innovation was going to be easy, right? #TEDxBrum @TEDxBrum
#TEDxBrum Warming to BiLE – snugly weird. @Stephen_Griffin

@Stephen_Griffin Was that smugly weird? #tedxbrum @Dr_Bob82

So now the track is on a loop and they’re playing along ‘in real time’ with it. Except it sounds… well… it’s finished now #tedxbrum @Dr_Bob82
Balls. #tedxbrum @mrmarksteadman
#TEDxBrum …. Laptop Ensemble … Seriously … Is that it 😉 @shuhabtrq
I want to see more people preoccupied with the stuff BiLE is doing. #TEDxBrum @CerasellaChis
Well I liked it… #TEDxBrum @stanchers
Brilliant performance from Laptop Ensemble BiLE – enjoyed watching and listening to them on the live stream #TEDxBrum @PostFilm
thinks BiLE upset some #tedxbrum delegates who did not want to open up to sound art and opportunity for digital experimentation @PostFilm
Skimmed the #TEDxBrum stream – if that sad reaction to @BiLEnsemble is accurate reflection of audience vibe I’m glad I’m not there. @peteashton

@peteashton Actually the reception to it IN THE ROOM in the real world was warm. The dissenters were vocal on Twitter. Go figure. @helgahenry
@peteashton We don’t know how much info (if any) was given to the audience about what they were listening to. Tweets sounded… surprised. @editorialgirl
@editorialgirl Indeed. I just don’t think I’d enjoy being in an audience which is surprised in that way by their work. Which is fine. @peteashton
@peteashton if it’s any consolation at all, I was there, at TEDxBrum & I enjoyed BiLE. New to me, a surprise, yes, but in a good way! @KendaLeeG

@hellocatfood I think you v can now legitimately claim to be a misunderstood artist now! The #TedxBrum audience just weren’t ready for you. @AndyPryke
@gregmcdougall there was a random laptop music segment that didn’t work for me then more awesomeness #TEDxBrum @Soulsailor
for me ‘sound art’ is part of the creative “T” in TED. More radical digitral sonic experimentation please from BiLE #tedxbrum @PostFilm
Oddest moment today: watching @BiLEnsemble use modern technology to give the audience a scarily accurate experience of tinnitus. #tedxbrum @catharker
#tedxBrum @BiLEnsemble have potential. I heard some cool sounding stuff and was a little jazzy. Maybe mix with instruments/samples/beats? @RenewableSave
i see bile at #tedxbrum has caused some controversy. i don’t think any performer has an inherent right to have their performance liked. @simonjgray

(& i type this as somebody who has made music which is well far from being universally liked. #tedxbrum ) @simonjgray

Really enjoyed playing at #lovebytes and #tedxbrum yesterday… as well as the post-TED discussion 😉 @BiLEnsemble

@BiLEnsemble and we enjoyed you! @TEDxBrum, out of interest, was the #lovebytes performance different? @Ben_R_Murphy
@BiLEnsemble well done BiLE performing at #tedxbrum !!!! @InterFace_2012

@celesteh obvious there were probs at #TEDxBrum, but I enjoyed the pieces – although was brought up on Harvey’s “Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco” @davidburden
BiLE Blog #tedxbrum http://celesteh.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/gig-report-adoration-may-not-be.html @PostFilm
BiLE’s last piece at #TEDxBrum http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8693004/TedxBrum%20BiLE.mp3 Quietat points so some mobile signal interference. @Acuity_Design

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Letters

Dear Editor,

I am writing in regards to your recent headline, HEARD THE ONE ABOUT A SEX SWAP MAN WHO REPLACED A FEMALE COMIC?.
The transgender comic involved in the story is not a man, but a woman, something which you seemed to be aware of when writing the story. Also using the term “sex swap” is derogatory. A better headline would have read, “Have you heard the one about the transgender woman who replaced another female comic?”
The rest of your article seem to be fine and it’s a shame that it had this headline attached. If you have any questions or are in need of advice when writing about transgender people in future, the website for Trans Media Watch has a section in order to advise journalists and editors. http://www.transmediawatch.org/guidance_for_media.html
Thank you for your time.

Here’s an article you can just rerun every few months

Trans People Exist!

Reports in today’s Daily Mail show that there are transgender people in Britain. Their reporters were able to discover that this phenomenon, which effects one in one thousand Britons, appears to be even spread throughout society.
“Some trans people are very old, some are very young and the majority are in between those extremes” said researcher Dr Smith, “Fully half of trans people are less than the median age! Most trans people over the age of 6 have attended school – or are currently doing so.”
“We also found that trans people come from all different races and social classes.” said Smith.
Due to social pressures, many trans people do not feel comfortable talking about their past to national news papers. “Go away and leave my family alone!” said one 45 year old trans person to the Daily Mail yesterday, speaking under condition of anonymity outside his home at 134 Passing Lane, Oxford E1Q 3GL, just around the corner form the Tescos Express.
Still, trans people may be anywhere in the country. “This appears to be random, like left handedness” said Beatrix Jones of Trans United. “There are trans people in cities and in rural areas, from the northernmost bit of Scotland down to the Isle of Wight.”
Jones explained that trans people also may take a variety of jobs from showgirl, to university professor to dustman to “anything you can think of” she said.
There is also diversity in how they establish their personal lives. Many trans people have romantic partners, although a significant portion are single. Also, researchers found that many trans people have children. “As the UK does not mandate sterilisation for trans people, some have become parents post-transition. Also, many trans people forgo any form of medical transition and just transition ‘socially'” said Smith.
“Trans people do have some specific needs, like the ability to live their life without media intrusion” said Jones, shutting her door in the reporter’s face.

Writing to the New York Times

Dear Editor,

Thank you for your article on January 12, 2012, “Should The Times Be a Truth Vigilante?” I have long suspected that the Times was entirely unconcerned with the truth and was slavishly repeating the claims of people in or seeking power, but it’s nice to have it confirmed as the official policy of the newspaper. This will especially come in handy when I am arguing with others about the lack of merit of your newspaper.

As to your question about whether you should bother yourself with reporting the truth, I would say no. You don’t have any credibility anyway and it’s cheaper just to print press releases without doing research.

Thank you for taking the time to solicit reader opinion,
Charles Céleste Hutchins

Recently, I’ve learned that freedom of the press is much, much better protected in the United States than it is in the United Kingdom. Journalists are free to make claims with good evidence without having to be in fear of overly-strong libel laws. In the UK, you cannot make a claim without absolute proof. In the US, you just need good evidence and the occasional “alleged” and you’re good. UK journalists are jealous of the many press protections afforded American journalists.
And yet, with all the freedom to actually point out lies and fraud and corruption and to let their readers know when somebody is obviously lying – with the freedom to look into things and print what they find, with all of the great and wonderful legal protections the US provides to it’s journalists, the newspaper of record wonders if readers actually expect them to do any journalism. Brisbane, the editor, writes, “I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge ‘facts’ that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.”
I wish I could say I was shocked.

America’s Last Strong Union

Dear Senator Boxer
I am writing to ask that congress take steps to stop cuts to the Postal Service. As you know, the postal service has just announced it plans to reduce service levels and fire 100,000 workers. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, these changes will put a drag on the economy, raise the prices of prescription drugs and hurt people living in rural communities. This is the last thing our country needs in a time of recession.
What’s more, as you know, the US Postal Service would be operating at a profit, were it not forced by congress to pre-fund the retirements of future postal workers who are not yet even born. The Post Services budget shortfalls are entirely a result of this mandate. This unprecedented mandate is an attack on one of America’s last strong unions, by forcing cuts where none are needed.
I hope I can count on you to protect these 100,000 jobs and do the right thing for the 99% of your constituents who rely on the postal service.

Explaining the Inexplicable: Gender Dysphoria

I was in my 20’s the first time I ever experienced snow. I’d seen it on TV and distant hilltops, but I’d never been in it, heard it fall, smelled it, gotten it stuck to my clothes. There’s no way anybody could have really explained snow to me.

And yet, I’d seen a lot of TV and movies that featured snow, read books, read descriptions. So If my attempt to explain dysphoria is confusing, imagine that you’ve never seen snow.

I asked on twitter several weeks ago, “If you were going to try to explain dysphoria to a cis person, what would you say?” Nobody replied, except one guy who said, “I’d use the pizza topping example ‘I like pineapple, it just don’t belong in my pizza.’ or something similar…” I’m not sure what he meant.
I was asking because of a particular cis person, but it did get me thinking more generally about the difficulty in communicating something that is outside of most people’s experience. But I thought I could try to explain:

I’m starting to see the convenience of the “in the the wrong body” narrative as a way to attempt to explain the inexplicable. However, I prefer to think of myself as having after-market upgrades. Because who gets the right body? One of the most good looking (cis) guys I know told me doesn’t like his body and meanwhile I wish I looked more like him. Also the “trapped” in the wrong body thing seems alarmingly close to some very problematic ideas about disabled people.
I’ve never had another body than the one I have now, he’s mine, he’s me. I’m male, so every part of my body is male. For example, I have a very manly spleen. This is why I almost always refer to having transitioned in the past tense, dating it back to when I started T. Losing my moobs was a happy day indeed, but it doesn’t make me more of a man.
St Augustine wrote about being freaked out by his private parts, cleverly disguised as a discussion of Original Sin. Adam was the first, last and only guy to get the right body, according to Augustine and then getting thrown out of the Garden of Eden screwed everything up for everyone. Which is to say that I wish I could pass naked, but everybody has issues.
On the other hand, it really does bug me that I have parts that are atypical and how I feel about them is a lot more complex than whether they’re “wrong,” because they are male and they are part of me. And that’s what I can’t explain. My experience of this is not the universal trans experience, because there is no such thing.
Which is why I don’t normally try to explain. All interested parties accept my assertions about myself and I accept their assertions about themselves and we move on.
How much could I even explain? I dunno how I figured out I was a man, just that I know I am. Not that this was an easy conclusion to come to. I spent a lot of time agonising about this, and yet the process is opaque to me now. When I read She’s Not There by Jennifer Finney Boylan, I found her glibness on the issue profoundly frustrating. She said she “just knew.” I didn’t know at the time and wished she’d said more about how this came to be. Alas, now I “just know,” and am not sure what more I can say about it. I think that if I asked a cis person how they knew they’re cis, I doubt they’s have a better answer.
It bothers me when cis people get freaked out about this. And despite my happy life in a bubble, it’s clear that they do get freaked out, even the well-meaning ones. Sometimes, I think an easy explanation might help them, but, again, it’s like snow. Well-meaning people will quickly see that they need to just accept that other people have different experiences. They will accept that snow exists without having ever been in a blizzard. Becoming a spokesman for the weather service won’t help.
It seems weird to some people, but it’s my life. It’s my identity. It’s vital. And yet, as the one who is different, I’m socially expected to engage and manage other people’s reactions, in which they are alarmed by a core aspect of my being. It’s interactions like that in which I see the great attraction of going stealth. Instead, here are some words about it.

Writing Letters to Oakland

Dear Mayor Quan,

I just watched an internet video in which an Oakland Police officer at the Occupy Oakland protest had his name taped over, so that it was unreadable.

We ask a OPD officer why he had his name badge covered…. from BLK PXLS on Vimeo.

The officer in question, J. Hargraves, was ordered to remove the covering by his superior officer once members of the public intervened. That he had his name covered at all strongly suggests to me that he was intending to break the law in his policing of protesters. I also find it troubling that he was willing to do this only a few feet away from his superior officer. This further suggests that the department has an informal policy allowing or encouraging this behavior.

I hope you as mayor investigate whether or not this is the case and order the police to issue a clarification to their officers that they are required to follow the law and respect the civil rights of protesters.

Thank you for your time,
Charles Hutchins

You can contact the mayor of Oakland via her website: http://www.oaklandnet.com/contactmayor.asp

You cannot shop your way to a better world

Shopping is not activism.
Let me state that again: a targeted, organised, specific boycott, like the United Farm Workers No Grapes boycott of the 1980’s is activism. Because it has specific goals and is part of a larger protest movement. But buying only locally produced, organic produce from your local co-op is not activism. Because shopping is not activism.
Now, it could be very good for you and beneficial for your community to buy organic produce from your co-op, but that doesn’t make it activism. Similarly, you can use voting as a way of mitigating negative political change in your area, but voting isn’t activism either.
There are images going around facebook that suggest the “real” way to occupy Wall Street is by shopping at the right stores. I want to pick apart some of the problems with that.
Many of Walmart’s shoppers are poor. they shop there because they can afford the produce there. It might not be great produce or an altruistic retailer, but they’re eating better than they would be if they shopped someplace else. While it’s true that their communities would be better off if there were more independent retailers, in the mean times, you’re asking them to sacrifice feeding fresh fruits and vegetables to their kids. This is not reasonable. Also, by implication, the people who shop at Walmart become responsible of the bad effects of that retailer, when, in fact, they tend to suffer more keenly from those same effects.
Let’s say you go to an independent shop to buy clothes. Good for you. What are you going to buy? You decide to avoid the cardigan made by sweatshop labour. Good for you. You decide to avoid the one made with polluting synthetic yarn. You decide to get one made from only ethically treated animals. And decide to mitigate pollution by only going for organically fed animals. So you buy a llama hair cardigan made by a local hippie who grew his own llamas locally, feeding them only locally grown organic feed. You have successfully avoided Wall Street, kept your carbon footprint low, bought a sustainable cardigan that will last for several years and keep you warm even when you get soaked by the rain. Good for you! That cardigan probably cost $200, every penny of which stayed local and was invested back into your community. This was a good choice of how to spend your disposable income.
However, buying your hypothetical cardigan was not activism. First of all, although it was a wise investment in your own clothes and the community, this was really not affordable to most people. Walmart shoppers cannot afford to buy your clothes. Buying that cardigan is certainly an ethical act, but it’s not an accessible act. If you want to protest income inequality and economic injustice, this protest could not possibly come in the form of expensive personal purchases.
It’s disappointing that voting and shopping are not actually enough to change the world in a meaningful, positive way. These things are, quite literally, the least we should do. And we should do them. Those of us who can vote should take that responsibility seriously and if you have enough money to be ethical with your purchases, then certainly do it, but don’t make these things out to be bigger than they are. If you want to occupy Wall Street, then you’re going to have to vote with your body, not with your money and not with a check mark in a box, but by physically participating.
Our consumer culture of predatory capitalism has gotten seriously out of control and fixing it requires people of different social classes working together. If your activism is not accessible to the poor, it’s not in common cause with them. Anybody can stand in a mass demonstration. And we need to stand together.
I know we’ve been told our whole lives that consuming stuff is voting with our money, that we have choices that empower us through buying stuff and that we can build our identity (including our moral sense of self) by what we buy, but all of these ideas came from advertisers who want to sell us stuff. It’s been drummed into our heads since birth, but it’s not true. It’s propaganda to keep us buying stuff and docile. The purpose is to prevent protest, not empower an easy for of it.
Activism is a group activity. If it’s done at the mall, it comes with a risk of being escorted out by security. It is visible. It is disruptive. It is what we need.

Occupying Oakland

I was on the West Coast of the US for a few days recently. On my last day there, I spent some time at Occupy Oakland, one of the occupation protests to spin off from Occupy Wall Street. The Oakland protest was an encampment in front of City Hall. I arrived on Tuesday afternoon to find a bunch of tents set up and people milling about. There were signs posted, renaming the plaza to “Oscar Grant Plaza.” Oscar Grant was, of course, the man shot by BART police a year or two ago. Other signs invited the 99% to “hella” occupy Oakland. Another large banner was against corporate oligarchy
Some of the people were working on stuff, so I asked a guy there if I could help. He sent me to the food tent, where there was another guy dishing up soup to passers by. I helped him out for a while and then he went off, leaving me in the tent.
Several people came up for soup, bread, grapes os something to drink. The soup was made in a large pot which was over a camp stove that was keeping it warm. It seemed like about half the people who came asking for food where people who had come specifically for the protest and the other half were people who might have been hungry anyway. I worked a shift in a soup kitchen once many years ago and this was not like that. In the soup kitchen, you have a stark dividing line between who is feeding and who is being fed. Some people bring food and others eat it. In this case, there were people coming constantly with donations, but everybody was eating together.
As long as people just wanted soup, I was fine and I could tell them where to put material donations, but anything more than that and I had no idea. I was alone in the tent for a while, unable to answer questions. Finally the women who knew stuff came back and told me to take a break.
I wandered through the tents to where I could hear music. There were native Americans playing a large drum and singing. A reporter from the local TV news recorded herself talking with them in the background. A circle of lesbians were sitting nearby with a MacBook, planning something. A woman from Revolution Books sold me a newspaper about how Bob Avakian is the second coming of Mao. I sat in the sun until the shade progressed over the entire plaza and then I moved towards more music.
I found a guy with an American flag T-shirt and a rockabilly haircut playing a guitar and singing something about a “rich man” through a PA system, when there seemed to be the sound of drumming getting gradually closer. There was a samba band marching up the street, to the occupation. As they arrived, the guitar player wrapped up his set and the drums played for at least an hour. They had a dance troop with them. Both the drummers and the dancers were amazing. After a long routine, they said they’d brought extra instruments and everybody should join them by playing or dancing. Many people did.
Meanwhile, the kitchen crew had gotten a BBQ going and were cooking something that might have been pork. A woman came by with a bag of apples and handed them out to all and sundry, so some people stood eating ribs or apples, watching people dance. This was Oakland, so the dancers were all races, all ages. Some of them were middle class, some were poor. Some were white, some were black, some were asian. There were LGB people, trans people, straight people, cis people, in what felt like a giant festival. A middle schooler lept into the middle of the dancers and started break dancing to wild cheering. Then a pair of guys in maybe their mid 20s started doing a sort of martial arts dance while the samba dancers danced in a circle around them. One of the martial arts guys was hopping up and down on his hands while the other one did some move I could never hope to replicate.
The joy, the diversity, the food, the music, the use of the word “hella” – it was pure Oakland. It’s why I love the East Bay. It’s why that protest gave me hope. With the wide swath of people participating, with the toilets donated by the unions (and by a local BBQ joint), it felt like real coalitions are happening. And while the demands of the protest aren’t entirely clear, they’re building something that seems like a movement. Real change might come out of this and it is change we desperately need.