30 Apr 08

Women's Incarceration Experiences: Cherry Valentine


Ever wonder what it’s like for a woman to be in a jail or a prison? In this series I am going to relay the incarceration experiences of women, starting with the Cherry Valentine (ex-SuicideGirl member Norah).

“So you’ve been to jail?” I asked.
“Twice. Well, the first time, let me start off with what I went to jail for. I was shopping at Dillard's – one of my favorite clothing stores in the mall – and ran into this girl who thinks I stole her man (who is actually a homosexual). She had this whole Revlon collection in her purse that she decided to start throwing at me. She began screaming, and something in me just snapped. I grabbed her head and threw it into a display case full of I don't remember – it could of been ties for all I know. Then I began to pound on her face. She called me a kike too, so that didn't make me any happier. Luckily for that girl they had cops around and they grabbed me away and brought me up to this office where they asked me to tell the story over and over again. I was in this office for over an hour. A squad car picks me up and it's very embarrassing to walk out the mall with cuffs on, especially when you know a lot of people. So I was very nervous to go to jail cause I had never been.
I was wearing a really nice suit with runs in my pantyhose, and all these African American guys start screaming, ‘Hey baby.’
And I remember telling them to fuck off.”

“Where was this jail?”
“Southeast Texas. In this jail there are two giant men cells and one cell for girls. Then you have three of these individual cells for the really crazy ones they put in these strange straight-jacket-like outfits. One of them got a little violent with a guard and eight of them climbed on this guy and tasered him, then he pissed all over himself. That was pretty entertaining for me. In the women's cell I was in was a group of really nasty larger girls.
I remember one of them saying she was hungry to a cop, and he replied, ‘Your fat ass doesn't need any food.’
They were very mean. One of the girls was taking a pregnancy test and there was another young lady all washed up that had fallen asleep. We had no benches to sit on, just a cold concrete floor, and of course the food was awful. I really didn't like having to stare at these girls taking their jumpers off so they could pee, ’cause there are also no stalls or anything, just one nasty toilet. If you have to go, everyone has to see. That's embarrassing for me. They took the girls in blue jumpers away to their own cells where I was alone until a girl in an orange jumper came in. She was African American and in there for murder but was very nice to me. We had quite a conversation and she made me want to turn my life around. She told me her story and that she had a daughter who wrote her a card on Mother's Day. I felt sad for her. Eventually, I fell asleep after all the finger painting that was done. Then I heard bail. I wasn't in there but a few hours the first time, my father had to bail me out.”

“What about the second time?”
"The second time I was framed. My car broke down so I called my brother and asked him for a ride. Two of my brothers were in the car along with a girlfriend of theirs. I am in this vehicle for not even two minutes, and a cop pulls us over. He arrests both my brothers because they had warrants for their arrest for whatever reasons. The cop is talking to the other girl and I asking us if we have anything on us.
I proudly said, ‘No officer I don't do drugs and you can search through all my things if you like.’
The other girl said no as well. He searched through her purse and opened up a cigarette box where he found a joint. He said, ‘You fucking lied to me, what else do you have?’
She replied, ‘I have a stash in my panties.’
The officer calls for another squad car and they handcuff her. He searches through my things and tells me I can go.
I just start walking towards my brother's telling them I would call Mom when the cop yelled, ‘Wait a second, put cuffs on her too.’
I yelled, ‘For what? I haven't done anything.’
The officer screams, ‘There's marijuana all over the backseat where you were sitting.’
I know there was no marijuana there, and I remembered that my brother just cleaned his car and he said there was nothing back there. So I started talking shit to the cops, calling them dirty, and well, every name in the book as they cuff me. So they take me back to the same place and I am pissed off. I am giving every cop in there attitude. They called me a bitch and threatened to spray mace in my face. It was very strange to be in jail with my family, but comforting at the same time ’cause we could all see each other across from one another in our cells. So we were giving each other messages back and forth. We all tried calling everyone we knew to bail us out of jail. The cops laughed as they listened to me tell my grandmother that were pulled over by a dirty cop that planted marijuana on us. They even planted a crack pipe but charged my brothers for it. That is something my brothers have never tried, so I know that for sure was made up as well. I mean, we're Jews, we aren't into that heavy shit. But our family has been pretty notorious for getting in trouble and we are the only Jewish family in this area so everyone referred to us as the Notorious Jews. I always thought that title was lame. So we all sat in jail all night waiting for someone. I saw another man get tasered like the first time and I remember my brothers thinking it was quite hilarious. In the women's cell there was only me and the other girl that was dating my brother. This girl was only eighteen years of age. But she acted like she had been to jail before. One of the guards came and checked on us and was watching the girl sleep.
I didn't like the way he was looking at her so I asked, ‘What the fuck are you looking at you pervert?’
The cop replied, ‘Bitch you better shut up before we decide to keep you in here longer.’
All night I was arguing with the cops. Luckily I never got into trouble for it. Around eight o'clock in the morning my mother bails us out leaving the other girl in jail by herself. I was still talking shit as I was leaving the jail house but I couldn't help it, I was very angry. If I can help it, I will never go back.”

“What do you think of the jail guards?”
“The guards all had pretty huge egos which really doesn't fly too well with me. When I was being searched it was hard for me ’cause at the time I was very modest and hadn't broken out of my shell. I was nineteen years of age. The female cops were okay I guess.
I got testy with one and she said, ‘Oh so you think beause we are all dressed in blue we are all the same?’
I said. ‘Yes.’"
“What’s the worst thing a guard did to you?”
“I can not remember what the worst thing a guard did to me. Just a lot of arguing going back and forth. Me being a smart ass and the cop not liking the way I talked to him. I can honestly say that I hate cops with a passion ’cause most of them are dirty and when I've needed help several times in the past, they were never there.”
“I read some of your blogs at MySpace. Your attitude is similar to that of my friend in Paradise Valley, Jill Cuomo – funny in a tough way – who I spent some of the best times of my life with.”
“Yea I like to blog a lot. I always have opinions on things but most of the time people don't know how to take it. I don't like to sugar coat things and I just say whatever is on my mind.”
“You were a SuicideGirl member. What happened?”
“Yes, I can not believe SuicideGirls. They said I was too harsh and honest, or well rude to the other girls when people really just took things I said the wrong way. The other girls and I did not get along at all. Hard to believe. But I model for all kinds of sites now so I'm not worried about it.”
"Well thanks, Cherry Valentine, for sharing your jail experiences at Jon's Jail Journal.”

You can check Cherry Valentine’s blog and modelling pics out at: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=133534047

and her horror modelling shots at: http://www.deadlycreations.org/cherryvalentine.cfm


Email comments to writeinside@hotmail.com or post them below

Copyright © 2007-2008 Shaun P. Attwood

Ensembles of Unusual Size (EOUS): Where to Look for Help, Ideas, Financial Analytics

W  e are thinking about doing piano quintets next year. We realize that it will increase our expenses. And the logistics will get more complex by adding another member to the group. We have a vague idea that there must be ways to calculate and anticipate quantitatively what the advantages and disadvantages would be, financially. But none of us really has any background in that. Is there anyplace we should look, for pointers on how to figure that out?”
  —  Anonymous.

Many ensembles’ formation can be credited to organic causes—shared “motives, means, and opportunities” the founding members have, that incline them to commit a certain species of musical ‘crimes’ together; similar personalities and temperaments; compatible work schedules and living arrangements, enabling convenient rehearsals and coordinated travel to performance locations. Other ensembles’ origins are more tactical or happenstantial—having to do with chance availability to collaborate in a particular configuration; a viola or a cello is needed and what was imagined at the outset to be transient grows into something enduring.

But increasingly ensembles look to add repertoire that will enhance the group’s repertory breadth, and provide timbral contrast and broadened ‘curb’ appeal. Frankly, the latter probably has more to do with creating market differentiation in a classical music competitive environment that is more crowded and fragmented than ever before. For presenters hungry for artists who will perform exciting, seldom-performed literature, it’s a way to construct a [yet-more-] special ‘experience’ that will attract attendees who do not ordinarily subscribe, and bond [yet-more-] tightly with regular patrons.

Easier said than done, though. Each change in programming or personnel brings marginal (incremental) income and marginal (incremental) expenses. Logistics inevitably become more complex if the ensemble grows or the repertoire involves auxiliary members. Unless your ensemble has a member already whose skills and natural propensities lean toward finance and operations, quantitatively planning and managing those incremental changes can be daunting. [For those of you who are so inclined, there are several decent non-profit management books below that you will find helpful.]

In my view, the far more difficult aspect is figuring out what the options are that you can do and that have market appeal and address an unmet need that nobody else is filling. You start with the chicken, or you start with the egg. In smaller cities / college towns, you may have the colleague (egg) at hand—the one whose instrument and playing and preferred repertoire and personal tendencies are well-known to you—and you try to devise a way of integrating that person into your ensemble or add repertoire to specifically utilize that resource as auxiliary to the regular ensemble. In larger cities, you may have the concept and the repertoire to realize that concept well in mind (chicken)—and you try to locate a copascetic colleague to help make it happen.

But it’s probably harder to find and integrate a copascetic violist into a piano trio (piano, violin, cello) than adding a pianist to three-quarters of a string quartet (violin, viola, cello). [Supply and demand! Demographics, by instrument! Sociology, of those who self-select to play each instrument! Asymmetric versatility, based on size and diversity of literature various instruments force performers to assimilate. Instruments’ ‘personalities’! Acyclic directed-graph theory, to account for all of the above! Arggh!]

Aspects regarding particular ensemble instrumentations are nicely covered in the new second edition of the Maurice Hinson - Wesley Roberts book . I’ve had a used copy of the excellent 1977 first edition on my shelf but had not seen the new edition until recently. It’s a wonderful book for many reasons, not least of which is the treatment it provides of ‘unusual’ ensembles. Admittedly, it addresses this from the perspective/premise ‘ensembles-one-member-of-which-is-piano’, and the repertoire cited is exclusively that which has the prerequisite piano part, but the principles and discussion readily generalize to other ensembles that are piano-less.

In a way, adding a member, even as an occasional or auxiliary to your regular ensemble, is a kind of ‘security infrastructure’, to help protect the market viability of the ‘product’ your ensemble is offering. And the return-on-investment (ROI) for infrastructure of any kind can be difficult to quantify. Some companies don’t even try to quantify ROI for infrastructure, and go ahead and implement it based more or less on instinct or qualitative argments.

Here is a very basic equation for calculating the ROI, one that neglects the time-value-of-money (applicable interest rate):

   ROI% = [(Payback - Investment)/Investment)]*100

The payback is the total amount of incremental money earned from your investment in your ensemble. Investment is the incremental amount of expense incurred, to generate the payback. (Of course, if payback is less than your investment, then ROI can be negative——not a good thing.)

At some point, calculating the ROI for ‘infrastructure’ becomes unnecessary, because the capabilities the infrastructure enables are both mission-critical and readily understood by others. For example, when is the last time any commercial business required an ROI analysis to decide whether or not to invest in enabling infrastructure such as computers or e-mail? The same might be said for your decisions about ensemble repertoire or personnel adjustments. Quantitative ROI for EOUS can be viewed as somewhere between ‘very difficult’ and ‘not necessary’, between a leap of faith and a matter of course.

If, however, your ensemble’s operating expenses are underwritten by a foundation or other sponsor who requires a quantitative financial analysis from you, you may find yourself forced to justify the marginal expenses in terms of the marginal income that will be generated—in terms of the improved operating ratio that your proposed ensemble personnel changes make possible. If you are in such a situation, have a look at the books in the link list below. Your cost estimates should be captured for a reasonable period of time, typically two to three years. Put those in your pro forma financial statement—your Excel spreadsheet [click link to open example template sheet] showing rows of income items and expense items and columns for each year. In considering a variable-ensemble framework, however, here are three obvious, but important, caveats:

1. Use incremental analysis. ‘Total Cost of Ownership’ (TCO) calculations [‘ownership’ of the EOUS ‘asset’ that your modified ensemble and its expanded repertoire represents] should include only those investments that are incremental to those that have already been made and that are directly attributable to the EOUS ‘asset’.
   
2. Use the line-item veto. Variable ensemble configurations with thematically-varied or period-varied repertoire is a sophisticated approach with many available options, and obviously not all options are required for each season. If a particular cost element doesn’t apply to a particular season within your pro forma planning horizon, don’t include it. Structure your plan with a ‘Plan B’ and a Plan C’ so that you can gracefully accommodate contingencies that may arise, with reduced impact on the ensemble’s overall market and income and with minimal risk to the financial health of the core ensemble.
   
3. Keep costs in perspective. TCO is a perfectly appropriate metric for ROI calculations if one or more of the sources of your funding requires you to prepare a financial justification for the programming you wish to undertake, but cost is certainly not the sole criterion for vetting what repertoire you will offer. Qualitative justification, in terms of social diversity or other arguments, may be equally persuasive depending on the mission and remit of the funding organization or state. Your regular management agency should be able to assist with ‘qualitative’ justifications—it is within the scope of management, servicing, and public relations services that are the routine province of managers.

In summary, by properly framing the ROI discussion you can quantify financial returns using a straightforward and widely-accepted approach, such as one of those commonly used in business management of small not-for-profit organizations.

• DeThomas A, Grensing-Pophal L. Writing a Convincing Business Plan. Barron's, 2001.
  
• BusinessCase.com pro forma financial statement templates
  
• Hinson M, Roberts W. The Piano in Chamber Ensemble: An Annotated Guide. 2e. Indiana Univ, 2006.
  
• Malvern J, McCarthy J, Shelmon N. Financial and Accounting Guide for Not-for-Profit Organizations. 7e. Wiley, 2008.
  
• McDavid J, Hawthorn L. Program Evaluation and Performance Measurement: An Introduction to Practice. Sage, 2006.
  
• Poister T. Measuring Performance in Public and Nonprofit Organizations. Jossey-Bass, 2003.
  
• Stowell R. Cambridge Companion to the String Quartet. Cambridge Univ, 2003.
  
• Berklee College of Music MB-201 Principles of Business Management.
  
• Batts S. Rodents of Unusual Size (ROUS) Exist! Retrospectacle Scienceblog 18-DEC-2007.

28 Apr 08

The Removal (Part 3) by Xena

Xena - A transsexual giant and Wiccan priest. The charismatic leader of Cult Of Xena (COX). Tattoos include a wasp on his penis and ant trails running up his legs. Recently cut off a testicle, as told in this series, which left off with Xena almost bleeding to death.

I did not want to die. That was not what I was trying to accomplish. All I wanted was to rid my body of that nasty hormone testosterone. All I wanted was to feel like a normal person, one step closer to being a woman. I didn’t want to feel what it was like and then die because I bled out.

The testicle slipped from my grasp. I breathed out heavily. I was exhausted and frustrated. I was afraid that if I were not able to finish the job I would never get this chance again. I did not want to accept this scenario. So I reached into my scrotum yet again with my right hand.
“Godammit! Where the fuck is it!” I exclaimed, as I shoved three fingers as far as they would go into my scrotum. I was searching around and could not find anything which remotely felt like the left testicle, which must have swam away inside my body somewhere.

Slipping my pinky into the wound I shoved my hand up inside my body, searching frantically for that illusive left testicle. I could hear the news report of this inside my head: This just in…Xena the prison giantess, while trying to feel more feminine, opted to remove her testicles using only a razor blade pulled from a disposable razor. During the attempt, and after the removal of one of the dreaded hormone makers, the other testicle decided enough was enough, packed its bags, and left for a vacation somewhere inside Xena’s lower abdomen. The medical term for this phenomenon is retraction. However, it is our belief that given the fate of its neighbour to the right, el lefty tesosteroni’s true desire was to hang around for another thirty-nine-and-a-half years rather than having to swim the septic canal like its dearly departed, el righty testosteroni, is doing now.

I shoved practically my entire hand through the wound in my scrotum looking for the testicle. At one point I could feel my bladder and then something large and squishy, which I believed was part of my intestines. Fed up, I stopped the search and began instead to look for the severed spermatic cord where my right testicle used to be. I searched frantically for almost a minute and then, resolved in my failure, I looked at the clock and it read 2:40.

I removed my hand from inside my body and began to ball up toilet paper and shove it inside the wound of my scrotum. Then I patched up the cut with more toilet paper. I had to name my creation the Bloody Van Gogh Toilet Paper Stucco Nut Sack. I stood up on shaking legs and went to the door. I removed the sheet from the door, and looked out the window.

Two Orangemen were out in the pod. One was inside the porter closet, which doubles as the handicap shower. He was out of sight. However the other was a medium sized man covered with tattoos named Loco. I began to pound on the door and yell for him. He looked once and then began to walk away out of sight.
So I yelled louder, “Loco!”
He came back to within my sight and yelled, “What do you want, Xena?”
“I need your help,” was my answer.
“You sure this isn’t just one of your games?” he replied, shaking his head as if saying no to himself. He walked slowly toward my door.

I thought of the boy who called wolf, standing naked in the woods with a disposable razor blade six inches long screaming, “Wolf! Wolf,” while cutting into his flesh and bleeding all around himself, then asking for the wolf, who sat on his haunches watching, to go and alert the town folk and his family of his self mutulation folly, and the wolf just sitting there laughing, then saying, “Yeah right, dumb-ass. I’m a wolf!”

Loco came to the door. “What, Xena? I swear, if this is another one of your games I’m in no mood for it. I have things I have to do today,” he said, looking exasperated.
“Look, Loco,” I began, then after a second pause, I said, “I’ve cut myself real good.” I lifted up my hands to show him the bloody proof.
But Loco wasn’t buying it. He didn’t even look at my hands. He thought I was playing some kind of sick joke, that I had chose him as my target for playing games with today. “Yeah right, Xena,” he said, turning to go away.


Email comments to writeinside@hotmail.com or post them below

Copyright © 2007-2008 Shaun P. Attwood

Meta-Revision as Practice: Brahms Piano Trio in B (Op. 8), Stanislav Ioudenitch and Friends

I  no longer know at all how one composes. One instead ‘creates’ [and creates, and re-creates].”
  —  Johannes Brahms, 1855, quoted in New Groves Dictionary of Music And Musicians, 2e, Vol. 4, p. 181, Macmillan, 2001.

B  rahms could be such a good player, but he will not stop his incessant composing [and revising].”
  —  Otto Friedrich Willibald Cossel, 1852, quoted in Hofmann (in Musgrave), p. 11.

Stanislav Ioudenitch (piano), Martin Storey (cello), and Ben Sayevich (violin) delivered a vibrant performance of Brahms’s ‘Piano Trio No. 1 in B’ (Op. 8, 1854 and 1891) on Friday evening in Kansas City. The motivations of the revisions that Brahms made are still the subject of vigorous scholarly debate. But even for an amateur like me, there are nuances in the 1854 verson that evoke a youthful stance, fascinating for the directness of the composer’s ‘voice’.

Such a piece, well played, imposes special demands on the performers, in terms of interpretation and recreating this voice. Ioudenitch, Storey, and Sayevich succeeded brilliantly in enabling the ambiguities in the music to come through and linger in the air and in our minds.

It seems to me that the point of revisions lies in ‘metaphoric indirection’——for the composer surely, but also for the performers and us listeners. The subjectivity in the 1854 version is ‘stubborn’——it valorizes experience, a succession of experiences. The 21 year-old Brahms did not at the time of composing Op. 8 have such a long experience, and the accretion of each experience could not help but carry more significance than a comparable experience late in life. The drama that we hear in Op. 8 is, I think, not so much that of a young Brahms finding his ‘chops’, but rather the urgency and fascination that someone who is 21 experiences in each day. Or maybe we are hearing in Op. 8 a sublimated expression of his love-life, or lack thereof?

F  or all the wealth of good reasons for loving differently, loving better, loving despite not being in love, etc., a stubborn voice is raised which lasts a little longer: the voice of the Intractable Lover.”
  —  Roland Barthes, Lover’s Discourse, 1979, p. 22.

Roger Moseley, Nick Cook, and others have compared the 1854 and 1891 versions of Op. 8, to see how musical allusions in the piece revealed Brahms’s attitudes to critics, friends, other composers. Allusions to the music of other composers are heard in the 1984 version, but the 1891 version expunged the allusive material. And in successive drafts and sketches and revisions the political aspects of the Trio became subdued.

T  here is nothing innocuous left. The little pleasures, expressions of life that seemed exempt from the responsibility of thought, not only have an element of defiance, of callous refusal to see, but directly serve their diametrical opposite ... Mistrust is called for in the face of all spontaneity, impetuosity, all letting oneself go, for it implies pliancy towards the superior might of the existent ... The chance conversation in the train, when, to avoid dispute, one consents to a few statements that one knows ultimately to implicate murder, is already a betrayal. No thought is immune against communication, and to utter it in the wrong place and in wrong agreement is enough to undermine its truth.”
  —  Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia, p. 25.

So Brahms was not satisfied with the 1854 version. Possibly this derived from his conflictedness over ‘absolute music’ versus ‘Zukunftsmusik’ (“future music”), and his conflictedness over his own expectations for himself as a composer. It would be good to go and read his letters from 1853 and 1854 to see what light they shed, regarding his state of mind ...

Interestingly, Moseley comments on parallels in surgical innovations by Brahms’s friend and musical ally, Theodor Billroth. According to Moseley, both Brahms and Billroth were “engaged with the removal of ‘foreign bodies’ in order to preserve organic integrity” or improve the function and its coherence/reliability/authenticity. This observation will delight musician-physicians who have not previously known of the Brahms-Billroth connection. Iatrogenic (composerly) musical bezoars as the indication for the repeated surgeries on Op. 8!

There is persistent linguistic playfulness in this Piano Trio that distinctively resists any totalization or summation of meaning. In this respect, I feel it resembles some science fiction texts that are similarly distinctive for their discontinuous sign-functions and progressive dislocations of the author and the reader, a persistent play of reorientation and inference. Ultimately, the sci-fi composer/reader/player/listener wonders about her/his emplacement, and feels a tenuousness arising from the need to continually, actively ‘construct’ the text in the process of reading/playing/hearing it. Ioudenitch’s, Sayevich’s, and Storey’s account of Op. 8 reminds me of this—an allusion to musical ideas of others and events whose urgency is exaggerated by youth; a spontaneous youthful ‘non-terminal’ identity; and a hunger for what comes next. Brahms: This is me! Is this me, really? This is my place! Is this my place, really? Where am I?

Emplacement and displacement: just as constructing ‘landscape’ is how we turn terrain into territory and territory into something knowable and then known, so emplacement is how we figure out the specifics of selfhood and human nature in a musical ‘landscape’. This is, I think, what Brahms was doing (and re-doing)——and what Ioudenitch, Sayevich, and Storey accomplished in their performance, in their brilliant ‘meta-revision’ of Op. 8: Successive revised, tenuous, intimate emplacements, leading finally to the Allegro molto agitato and a standing ovation.

• Allegro con moto
  
• Scherzo: Allegro molto
  
• Adagio non troppo
  
• Finale: Allegro molto agitato

• Park University International Center for Music
  
• International Piano Academy Lake Como
  
• Univ North Carolina Dept of Music. 'Revisions and Rethinkings', Festival on the Hill, 16-APR-2004. [1MB pdf]
  
• Adorno T. Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life. Verso, 2006.
  
• Avins S, ed. Johannes Brahms: Life and Letters. Oxford Univ, 2001.
  
• Barthes R. Lover's Discourse: Fragments. Hill & Wang, 1979.
  
• Berry W. Musical Structure and Performance. Yale Univ, 1989.
  
• Braidotti R. Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory. Columbia Univ, 1994.
  
• Bukatman S. Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction. Duke Univ, 1993.
  
• Cook N. Performing rewriting and rewriting performance: The first movement of Brahms’s Piano Trio, Op. 8. Tijdschrift voor Muziektheorie 1999; 4:51-6.
  
• DSM. Horn Trio: Ian Dakin and Brahms's Fractured Family. CMT blog, 14-MAR-2008.
  
• Frisch W. Brahms and the Principle of Developing Variation. Univ California, 1990.
  
• Gál H. Johannes Brahms: His Work and Personality. Stein J, tr. Greenwood, 1977.
  
• Godlovitch S. Musical Performance: A Philosophical Study. Routledge, 1998.
  
• Goehr L. The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music. Clarendon, 2007.
  
• Kivy P. Authenticities: Philosophical Reflections on Musical Performance. Cornell Univ, 1995.
  
• MacDonald M. Brahms. Oxford Univ, 2002.
  
• Moseley R. Reforming Johannes: Brahms, Kreisler Junio, and the Piano Trio in B, Op. 8. J Roy Mus Assoc 2007; 132:252-60.
  
• Musgrave M, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Brahms. Cambridge Univ, 1999.
  
• Schoenberg A. Brahms the Progressive (1947), in Style and Idea: Selected Writings, Stein L, ed. Univ California, 1975.
  
• Swafford J. Johannes Brahms: A Biography. Knopf, 1997.
  
• Taruskin R. Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance. Oxford Univ, 1995.

26 Apr 08

From Iron Man (Letter 2)

Iron Man - A martial-arts expert and personal trainer whose crimes include smashing someone’s door down: "I didn’t hurt anyone. I just wanted my fuckin’ money." His workouts are brutal. "I’ll have you in the best shape of your life by the time you get out," he told me.

3-29-08

Dear Shaun,

Hello bloke! How are you doing? I hope that you are staying focussed and bending the world and shaping it to your will.

Things are going alright for me but I am dealing with some kind of intestinal problem. It may be something serious. I don’t know for sure yet. Some blood work has been done and I am trying to force them to do some more tests. The symptoms I am suffering from most often indicate something terrible. Whatever it is, I am determined to beat it. First I am going to identify it, and then I am going to kill it.

I am still working out as hard as ever. About a month or so ago a guy came to me and asked if I could help him get in shape in 100 days before he went home. I told him that if he would commit to my program and put in the work, then I would have him in the best shape of his life by the time he got out. He lasted for two weeks. It takes a lot of heart to stick to an intensive workout program. Some people have it, some don’t.

It is real hard for me to find someone to have an intelligent conversation with. I miss you, brother.

Shane moved into my building. He is doing alright. He showed me some pictures of you and Posh Bird and your recent blog entries about her and Hammy. I have a couple of comments I want to make to you. First of all, this girl Posh Bird doesn’t know you at all if she thinks you are easily influenced. Does she think you are naïve or gullible? She obviously either doesn’t know you very well or she has exactly the impression of you that you want her to have.

I am enjoying the argumentation/persuasion tapes you recommended. I’m on my second time listening to them. They were difficult to absorb the first time around. I’m happy about that because it would have sucked to have spent the money on that course just to find that I already knew all of it. I’m finding this course to be extremely interesting and useful.

I bought an Air Stream travel trailer with the money I had saved last year. It is 27 feet long and worth about $10,000. I got it for $600 from my sister because she needed the money to move to California. The trailer is sitting at my mom’s house right now and my sons are going to get it all fixed up and ready for me.

My son is out of the joint and back with his fiancee and his son. He is working construction making $15.00 per hour.

How is your family doing? Is your sister’s marriage working out for her? How are your mom and dad treating you?

So are you still working out? How long has it been since you did burpies? Did you ever join a gym or a dojo?

Did Kat the Nutless Navajo write you?

So what is going on with you? What are the big issues you are dealing with in your life? Drop me a line and let me know how you are doing. I’ll let you know what is wrong with me as soon as I get the test results.

I think about you all the time, brother. Seize the day, every day, and stay focussed on what is most important to you. The world is yours for the taking, so take it, and make it your own.

Love and Respect,

Iron Man

Email comments to writeinside@hotmail.com or post them below

Copyright © 2007-2008 Shaun P. Attwood

Sound Art: Beyond Mere Music

Interactive Gestures, a performance of electroacoustic music and multimedia works, with guest artist João Pedro Paiva de Oliveira, was held last night at La Esquina, in Kansas City, co-sponsored by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and by the UMKC Conservatory. One could say that it was a healing of the wound between ‘fixed-media’ and ‘live’ electroacoustic performance. The unity of the aesthetic effect of the musicians who performed live and the composers who engineered their fixed-media playback was among the best I’ve ever heard.

Composers who create works for fixed-media (recorded and edited in the studio; replayed in performance halls) are maybe more comfortable in the studio than on-stage. For them, performance is in the studio, but probably not more so than for traditional composers. The spatialization that’s achieved in concert may be subject to many environmental variables and interpretive choices that are out of the composer’s control, just as any chamber or orchestral work is out of the composer’s control at the moment of performance. Last night, as in other electroacoustic events, we had the composers as performers——at the mixer control board, conducting the performance and responding (by improvisatory actions on their MIDI keyboards and controllers) to the playing of the live performers.

Although the array of 8 Mackie SR-450 speakers and the excellent mixing mitigated a number of problems, the La Esquina performance venue lacks acoustic features that are essential to the transparency and crispness of delicate, wide-spectrum works like the ones last night. (That La Esquina is an AIA venue is ironic.)

By contrast, NOVARS at Manchester University uses chilled-water cooling of the structural steel to silence the architecture of the studio and performance spaces. The total absence of architectural sounds arising from thermal expansion-contraction of the building frame—unwanted noises—is a great advantage for electro-acoustic performances at NOVARS. La Esquina, though, is a 20 x 40 meter warehouse ‘box’ with the railroad across the street, less than 50 meters away. Freight trains rumbled by every few minutes during the Interactive Gestures performance last night, an intrusive aleatoric element that seriously impaired the sonic integrity of several of the works. The roaring Burlington Northern diesel engine can ruin your ‘Time Spell’, for example, unless you happen to be casting a magical abjuration against a wizard who has morphed into a train.

Probably the works that were least affected by these complications were de Oliveira’s. The 8-channel pieces were at a sound pressure level that exceeded the ambient distractions, and the timbral and rhythmic diversity of them were riveting. The spatial articulation of sound was dramatic: we were listening to a master storyteller. The title of the event, ‘Interactive Gestures’: clinically correct. Gestures, comma, interactive, comma, in your face.

That the sound reinforcement gear and the building itself can interfere with pre-composed material is no surprise, just as the concert hall architecture and ‘system’ can interfere with traditional acoustic performance. In fact, anytime you perform a piece you transform it—its tone colors, reverb, spatialization among the channels/speakers, and amplitude shaping are different in ways that are idiosyncratic to that performance and that venue, even if the equipment is the same and the controls’ settings are the same as on a previous occasion or the same as when the piece was composed in the studio. We get a great degree of variability in the timbre, in the directed spatial distribution or trajectory of sound from the monitors, in the acoustic morphology, and in the temporal structure as perceived by members in the audience.

In the de Oliveira pieces, the acoustic spatial diffusion that was rendered via the 8-channel playback through the Mackie SR-450 300W monitors (8 loudspeakers, placed on 5-meter centers, 4 on the left side and 4 on the right side of the audience) revealed the works’ rich internal spaces. Oliveira creates a wide range of textural and gestural acoustic shapes, with semantics and phrasing that have trajectories from milliseconds to tens of seconds long—very much like intense conversation.

From sub-50Hz to sounds above 5KHz, Oliveira establishes a captivating ‘spectral occupancy’ with figures that serve as anchors to his composition/story. He structures processes around these to ‘articulate’ or define interactions of his implied ‘characters’ within the performance space.

Fluctuations are then introduced into the acoustic material either locally (at individual loudspeakers or clusters of speakers, via EQ or layering of channels and phasing effects between channels) or globally (via pitch morphing; granulation; splintering; master output from mixing console; replaying/looping; interrupting/restarting; montage). These sonic gestures evoke dynamic relationships between the elements—imply characters/actors and processes amongst them, musically.

A particular textural motion leads the live musician who plays with the fixed-media to react and respond with her own spatial and musical trajectory. Rebecca Ashe’s interpretive sense in this regard was superb. The human responses in turn introduce yet further mutations of timbral coloring, and then meta-articulations of the textural/spatial/motion arise.

For example, Rebecca Ashe introduced a sforzando spatial articulation, and this was ‘answered’ by de Oliveira in Channels 1 and 2 in response to the gesture, not only by increasing the levels to these on the console, but with chunkier density via delay and transposition layering.


Each interpretation creates a unique realization of a piece, just as any other chamber music performance generates a unique realization. Some reshapings were vehement and improvisational, bordering on realtime recomposition. Other reshapings were gentle and dutiful—especially those near the compositions’ ends, where the composer and performers are providing acoustic gestural ‘cues’ to the piece’s ending. Electro-acoustic may be a different language than you are used to, and the under-40 median age of the audience may be a different culture than you are used to in classical music performance, but the semantics are just as understandable and trustworthy as Beethoven.

That said, the risks in electroacoustic performance are clear. Like traditional performance practice, there is the chance that a multi-channel fixed-media interpretation that is not well-planned, or that is executed poorly, will work against a piece, no matter how fancy the performance venue architecture is and no matter how state-of-the-art the sound reinforcement gear is. All performance practice carries huge risk of error or misinterpretation. Jacob Gotlib and his collaborators did an excellent job of insuring that the performance risks were minimized. Wonderful!

Admittedly, these composers’ and performers’ works are often closer to cinema or theater than to conventional music. Whether the stories they create are conscious or unconscious, narratives are implicit in the sampling and aleatory. Every story leads to another story to another story to another story. Some of these stories are, I think, surreal or ‘pre-linguistic’ ones, in the way that de Oliveira confesses. In all, a very enjoyable evening was had by the 50 or so attendees at La Esquina last night. Bravo!

• Kansas City Electronic Music Alliance on MySpace
  
• Urban Culture Project: Interactive Gestures. KCEMA and AIA UCP, La Esquina, Kansas City, 25-APR-2008, 20:00.
  
• Eno B. 'The studio as compositional tool', in Cox C, Warner D, eds. Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music. Continuum, 2004, pp. 127-30.
  
• Kahn D. Noise, Water, Meat. MIT, 2001.
  
• Labelle B. Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art. Continuum, 2006.
  
• Landy L. Understanding the Art of Sound Organization. MIT, 2007.
  
• Licht A. Sound Art: Beyond Music, Between Categories. Rizzoli, 2007.
  
• Smalley D. Spectromorphology: explaining sound-shapes. Organised Sound 1997; 2: 107-20.
  
• Smalley D. Space-form and the acousmatic image. Organised Sound 2007; 12: 35-58.
  
• Mackie.com
  
• Mackie SRM450v2 active sound reinforcement speaker
  
• Peterson G. Mackie SRM450v2 Snapshot Review. MixOnline, 01-FEB-2008.

Conversation Pieces: Electro-acoustic Music and Open-Ended Dialogue

M  y music will not break with the past or confront it … It only tries to communicate something very personal, something which may even not be communicable. I try to create something that may eventually have a glimpse of beauty.”
  —  João Pedro Paiva de Oliveira.

T  here is a small left-shift, to a position where sound becomes an expression of equivocal encounters with technology’s pervasive presence ... The ‘emblem book’ is a quirky kind of hypertext that reached its peak in Europe in the mid-17th Century. Each emblem is composed of three elements: a motto, a visual symbol, and some epigrammatic prose ... The assemblage of poetic/acoustic, visual, and literary spaces invites personal reflection on the analogies to be made between its separate components. As a form, it invites readings from several directions and offers the opportunity for each reader to reach their own individual conclusions. The various metaphors, symbols, and digressions allow room for internal flight within the space of interpretation. There is freedom to travel back and forth.”
  —  Katharine Norman, Sounding Art, p. 29.

Interactive Gestures, an evening of electroacoustic music and multimedia works, with guest artist João Pedro Paiva de Oliveira, will take place tonight, Friday, April 25 at 8:00 pm at La Esquina, at 1000 West 25th Street, Kansas City, Missouri. The event is co-sponsored by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and by the UMKC Conservatory.

Portuguese composer João Pedro Paiva de Oliveira, visiting professor at the UMKC Conservatory, will be a featured artist. Oliveira has written in a variety of idioms, including chamber opera, requiem, orchestral, string quartet and other chamber and solo instrumental ensembles, and electroacoustic music. He currently serves as Senior Professor at Universidade de Aveiro where he teaches composition, music theory and analysis.

Interactive Gestures will include the following works by Oliveira:

• ‘A Escaba Estreita’ (winner of Musica Nova, Czech Republic, 2005), Rebecca Ashe, alto flute;
  
• ‘Time Spell’ for clarinet and tape, Cheryl Melfi, clarinet;
  
• ‘Aphar’ for eight channel playback (winner of the Concours International de Musique et d’ Art Sonore Electroacoustique de Bourges, France, 2007); and
  
• ‘Bloomy Girls’ for fixed media and video.

The program will also include:

• ‘MHCHAOS’, Chris Biggs, computer, Rebecca Ashe, flute;
  
• ‘Tone Goblin’ for fixed media and video, Noah Keesecker;
  
• ‘Infested Readings’, Nihan Yesil;
  
• ‘Tower of Babel’ for eight channel digital playback, Jacob Gotlib; and
  
• ‘Third Option’, Jon Robertson, narrator, Joey Crane, guitar.

These are tremendously ‘open-ended’ pieces, as is typical for electro-acoustic music. It’s especially apropos to unite the acoustic experience with architecture and art—both of which similarly place substantial interpretive responsibilities on the viewer. Here’s an example. You’re standing in front of the Vermeer painting, one with a woman in it. Looking through a doorway, the woman is holding a lute. She has just been handed a letter by another woman. Naturally, you vicariously construct narratives in your mind, in which you contemplate the contents of the letter and confabulate the relationship between its author and the woman who is beginning to read it. (This natural human tendency is specifically what Paul Lansky’s ‘Things She Carried’ is about. And it’s also characteristic of Oliveira and other of the composers whose works are represented this evening.)


It’s paradigmatic in electro-acoustic music that very little is explicitly stated and that much is left to chance. But the drama is every bit as rich as more traditional forms. The music situates you in a pleasant altered state of awareness, peering as it were into your own subconscious, watching your mind form thoughts and associations.

Socially, this is not a solitary thing. Instead, it can be a shared experience that is every bit as much a stimulus to conversation and convivial speculation as any other chamber music event can be. The audience arranges itself in the midst of 8 loudspeakers, surrounded by 8 channels of exquisitely-mixed stimulations. Private confabulations become shared conversations, on topics that would never have arisen in any other way. That’s very much the spirit of the event at La Esquina this evening. Promoted on ClassicalLounge.com, it promises to be an exciting gathering. See you there!

• Urban Culture Project: Interactive Gestures. KCEMA and AIA UCP, La Esquina, Kansas City, 25-APR-2008, 20:00.
  
• NOVARS Research Centre for Electroacoustic Composition, Performance and Sound-Art, Univ Manchester
  
• EARS (Electro-Acoustic Resource Site) at de Montfort University
  
• Algorithmic.net
  
• Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Academy
  
• Ressources.Electro
  
• International Confederation of Electroacoustic Music (CIME-ICEM)
  
• Jacob Gotlib page on MySpace
  
• Gotlib Electroacoustic Music for Flute
  
• Urban Culture Project (UCP)
  
• Subliminal.org
  
• Eric Leonardson experimental instruments
  
• Braun H-J, ed. Music and Technology in the Twentieth Century. Johns Hopkins, 2002.
  
• d'Escrivan J, Collins N, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Electronic Music. Cambridge Univ, 2008.
  
• Lansky P. Etudes & Parodies. (Bridge, 2007.)
  
• Lansky P. Things She Carried. (Bridge, 2006.)
  
• Lansky P. Music Box. (Bridge, 2006.)
  
• Lansky P. Ride. (Bridge, 2005.)
  
• Lansky P. Conversation Pieces. (Bridge, 2004.)
  
• Licata T, ed. Electroacoustic Music: Analytical Perspectives. Greenwood, 2002.
  
• Manning P. Electronic and Computer Music. Oxford Univ, 2004.
  
• Norman K. Sounding Art. Ashgate, 2004.
  
• Ohm: Early Gurus of Electronic Music. (Ellipsis, 2005.)
  
• Simoni M, ed. Analytical Methods of Electroacoustic Music. Routledge, 2005.
  
• Composers In The Schools program (UMKC Conservatory)