Recently, I've been brainstorming concise ways to express the thesis of my honors project. I want to argue that while the confessional mode can lead to normalization (as argued by Foucault, if simplified), confessional can also act as the re-signifier discussed by Butler in Gender Trouble because by exploring the areas between already-defined identity sites, we destroy the notion of neat, controllable identities all together. It's easy to connect this idea to the idea that poetry illustrates and re-signifies rather than categorizes and defines. It also translates well to questioning the confessional in music; music, as the language of emotions...how can in be confessional, necessarily, in its own right? A lot of the scholarship I have come across talks of music destabilizing identity. For instance, from Judith Peraino's book:"...music demarcates a space and time wherein gender and sexuality lose clear definition" (7). This is frustrating because I just had a thread that would have been tied these ideas together in the bathroom, but it seems to be gone now.
This is good. I actually want to work on this. Unfortunately, I also need to work on grad school applications and thing for classes with due dates...
Brown application is in. After taking a closer look at their program, I've decided that if I don't get into grad schools this time around, I want to focus on creating experiments in poetry/music and send them to Brown for round two. I feel like my writing sample is much too conservative for their program, and while my personal statement is laced with allusions to the things I hope to do, I doubt my hopes will hold up next to my poems.
NYU time...
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
tangent?
"Unnatural Passions?: Notes Toward a Queer Ecology"-- needs to be reread, appears to have a lot of theoretical holes that would be easy to argue against from a queer theory standpoint, but I barely skimmed the second half so maybe the paper heals the introduction?
Part of me gets frustrated when people give me new ideas to bat around because then I just want to play rather than do my work or try to get passionate about what I need to be passionate about...
but yay! Thanks Scott!
Cornell application is in! I didn't achieve my goal for tonight, but all I have left to do is the Statement of Purpose for both Brown and NYU, which I might be able to do tomorrow night after the show. If not, Thursday...
Part of me gets frustrated when people give me new ideas to bat around because then I just want to play rather than do my work or try to get passionate about what I need to be passionate about...
but yay! Thanks Scott!
Cornell application is in! I didn't achieve my goal for tonight, but all I have left to do is the Statement of Purpose for both Brown and NYU, which I might be able to do tomorrow night after the show. If not, Thursday...
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Plan for 11/25-12/1
I've hit the grad school home stretch at the same time senioritis has hit me like the plague (chicken pox?) I'm trying to combat senioritis by changing my work environment and the structure of my day. So far-- no improvement.
Basically, what I have left to do on my grad schools apps is:
report GRE scores over the phone (do this on Monday)
doctor SOP to fit each school
submit applications
My plan for this week involves:
Monday: finish and submit Cornell application
Tuesday: finish and submit Brown application; finish NYU app EXCEPT SOP, which...
Wednesday: finish SOP and submit NYU application (I have tickets to the Juliette and the Licks show...)
Thursday: finish and submit University of Michigan and University of Arizona applications
Friday: work on University of Washington writing sample
If I don't get everything after the NYU app finished, it's not the end of the world...my last final is Tuesday, 12/11, and I think I'm going to hang around for a week to finish the rest of my applications and clean out my car and do other things I have neglected this term.
In fact, I will be overjoyed if I get the first 3 apps in this week with two vocal concerts in which I have to perform, two concerts to which I have tickets, an essay due next Monday in my creative nonfiction workshop, and a book to read for my history class...not to mention juries coming up.
It was good to go home, but I wasn't too terribly constructive. I did, however, read a lot of Adrienne Rich. I'm officially in love with the poem "Transcendental Etude." If it weren't so long I'd post it here. I'd like to write an entry about it, maybe this week; it meshes with my Gipson intentions perfectly. There's also a quote in an interview I read with her that has opened my mind to further research possibilities:
"I've written a great deal about that whole issue of dead language, the oppressor's language, a language that is no longer useful, and the need to try to find a new language, a common language, if you will. It's the question of associations with words and of the history of words, and how they come down to us and how we go on with them. But I'm beginning to think and talk a lot more again about that which goes along with language and poetry-- which is music, the vibration of a voice. I see that intonation, that vocal quality, as something that is very personal, out of the self, and then combines with the many traditions, the many histories that we've been exposed to, that we come out of." -- Adrienne Rich, from "Adrienne Rich: An Interview with David Montenegro" (1991), p. 258 of Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose
This quote, well, most of what she says in this interview has forged connections between Rich, Julia Kristeva's "Stabat Mater" (which I need to re-read soon!), Anne Karpe's work on the human voice, and Meredith Monk's music.
More on this when I don't have a paper to work on.
Basically, what I have left to do on my grad schools apps is:
My plan for this week involves:
If I don't get everything after the NYU app finished, it's not the end of the world...my last final is Tuesday, 12/11, and I think I'm going to hang around for a week to finish the rest of my applications and clean out my car and do other things I have neglected this term.
In fact, I will be overjoyed if I get the first 3 apps in this week with two vocal concerts in which I have to perform, two concerts to which I have tickets, an essay due next Monday in my creative nonfiction workshop, and a book to read for my history class...not to mention juries coming up.
It was good to go home, but I wasn't too terribly constructive. I did, however, read a lot of Adrienne Rich. I'm officially in love with the poem "Transcendental Etude." If it weren't so long I'd post it here. I'd like to write an entry about it, maybe this week; it meshes with my Gipson intentions perfectly. There's also a quote in an interview I read with her that has opened my mind to further research possibilities:
"I've written a great deal about that whole issue of dead language, the oppressor's language, a language that is no longer useful, and the need to try to find a new language, a common language, if you will. It's the question of associations with words and of the history of words, and how they come down to us and how we go on with them. But I'm beginning to think and talk a lot more again about that which goes along with language and poetry-- which is music, the vibration of a voice. I see that intonation, that vocal quality, as something that is very personal, out of the self, and then combines with the many traditions, the many histories that we've been exposed to, that we come out of." -- Adrienne Rich, from "Adrienne Rich: An Interview with David Montenegro" (1991), p. 258 of Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose
This quote, well, most of what she says in this interview has forged connections between Rich, Julia Kristeva's "Stabat Mater" (which I need to re-read soon!), Anne Karpe's work on the human voice, and Meredith Monk's music.
More on this when I don't have a paper to work on.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
"When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision" by Adrienne Rich
"Until we can understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves. And this drive to self-knowledge, for women, is more than a search for identity: it is part of our refusal of the self-destructiveness of male-dominated society" (Rich 167)*
p. 168 has a very rich paragraph about the position of Man in the poetry of Sylvia Plath and Diane Wakoski, but it is the following quote that serves what I'm looking for at this moment: "And, in the work of both these poets, it is finally the woman's sense of herself-- embattled, possessed-- that gives the poetry its dynamic charge, its rhythms of struggle, need, will, and female energy" (168).
"...I was looking in them for the same things I had found in the poetry of men, because I wanted women poets to be the equals of men, and to be equal was still confused with sounding the same" (171).
"Looking back at poems I wrote before I was twenty-one, I'm startled because beneath the conscious craft are glimpses of the split I even then experienced between the girl who wrote the poems, who defined herself in writing poems, and the girl who was to define herself by her relationships with men" (171).
"For a poem to coalesce, for a character or an action to take shape, there has to be an imaginative transformation of reality which is in no way passive. And a certain freedom of mind is needed-- freedom to press on, to enter the currents of your thought like a glider pilot, know that your motion can be sustained, the the buoyancy of your attention will not be suddenly snatched away" (174).
"You have to be free to play around with the notion that day might be night, love might be hate; nothing can be too sacred for the imagination to turn into its opposite or to call experimentally by another name. For writing is re-naming" (174; emphasis mine)
"...much poetry by women...is charged with anger. I think we need to go through that anger, and we will betray our own reality if we try, as Virginia Woolf was trying, for an objectivity, a detachment that would make us sound more like Jane Austen or Shakespeare" (176)
When I read this essay, I can't help but think about how it was written in 1971; this version was taken from Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose: A Norton Critical Edition, edited in 1993. In the introduction to "When We Dead Awaken..." the editors note that: "The challenge flung by feminists at the accepted literary canon, at the methods of teaching it, and at the biased and astigmatic view of male 'literary scholarship,' has not diminished in the decade since the first Women's Forum; it has become broadened and intensified..." essentially by challenges made and questions posed by other identity groups (166). As it is necessary, people in society cling to people of similar experience, whether they claim a name for themselves or not, which means the challenge to this canon is going to be constantly evolving, constantly re-signified. In 1993, Judith Butler had already released Gender Trouble, which points to this...hmm. A guess a good next step to take would be to revisit "A Poetics of Transit" and see how my thoughts can really be used for re-vision (as well as other things?). I need to revise this essay as well, as it will serve as an excellent jumping-off point for the rest of my project.
Hmmmm....I'm still up for the challenge. I keep thinking of a poem I wrote last spring, "The Mummer at the Caldwell Night Rodeo." It feels almost like a summary, the seeds of images that need to be inhabited in order to be felt. I think it's a nifty juxtaposition to ponder; the pageantry of the festivals of cultures on separate coasts, and there is no need for me to introduce the "I" into the poem, but at the same time I need to inhabit the bodies of a mummer and of a cowboy and insert some real feeling, something sensory, luscious...
I will start this experiment with revising this poem.
p. 168 has a very rich paragraph about the position of Man in the poetry of Sylvia Plath and Diane Wakoski, but it is the following quote that serves what I'm looking for at this moment: "And, in the work of both these poets, it is finally the woman's sense of herself-- embattled, possessed-- that gives the poetry its dynamic charge, its rhythms of struggle, need, will, and female energy" (168).
"...I was looking in them for the same things I had found in the poetry of men, because I wanted women poets to be the equals of men, and to be equal was still confused with sounding the same" (171).
"Looking back at poems I wrote before I was twenty-one, I'm startled because beneath the conscious craft are glimpses of the split I even then experienced between the girl who wrote the poems, who defined herself in writing poems, and the girl who was to define herself by her relationships with men" (171).
"For a poem to coalesce, for a character or an action to take shape, there has to be an imaginative transformation of reality which is in no way passive. And a certain freedom of mind is needed-- freedom to press on, to enter the currents of your thought like a glider pilot, know that your motion can be sustained, the the buoyancy of your attention will not be suddenly snatched away" (174).
"You have to be free to play around with the notion that day might be night, love might be hate; nothing can be too sacred for the imagination to turn into its opposite or to call experimentally by another name. For writing is re-naming" (174; emphasis mine)
"...much poetry by women...is charged with anger. I think we need to go through that anger, and we will betray our own reality if we try, as Virginia Woolf was trying, for an objectivity, a detachment that would make us sound more like Jane Austen or Shakespeare" (176)
When I read this essay, I can't help but think about how it was written in 1971; this version was taken from Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose: A Norton Critical Edition, edited in 1993. In the introduction to "When We Dead Awaken..." the editors note that: "The challenge flung by feminists at the accepted literary canon, at the methods of teaching it, and at the biased and astigmatic view of male 'literary scholarship,' has not diminished in the decade since the first Women's Forum; it has become broadened and intensified..." essentially by challenges made and questions posed by other identity groups (166). As it is necessary, people in society cling to people of similar experience, whether they claim a name for themselves or not, which means the challenge to this canon is going to be constantly evolving, constantly re-signified. In 1993, Judith Butler had already released Gender Trouble, which points to this...hmm. A guess a good next step to take would be to revisit "A Poetics of Transit" and see how my thoughts can really be used for re-vision (as well as other things?). I need to revise this essay as well, as it will serve as an excellent jumping-off point for the rest of my project.
Hmmmm....I'm still up for the challenge. I keep thinking of a poem I wrote last spring, "The Mummer at the Caldwell Night Rodeo." It feels almost like a summary, the seeds of images that need to be inhabited in order to be felt. I think it's a nifty juxtaposition to ponder; the pageantry of the festivals of cultures on separate coasts, and there is no need for me to introduce the "I" into the poem, but at the same time I need to inhabit the bodies of a mummer and of a cowboy and insert some real feeling, something sensory, luscious...
I will start this experiment with revising this poem.
"I"
I have been wondering lately, as in the past two days, whether it would be a helpful exercise for me to try to eliminate the word "I" from all of the writing I work on until the new year (writing as in poetry and prose pieces, not this blog...) I am not foolish enough to think that I can capture a universal perspective and eliminate my "eye," but as of late I've been wondering if my writing has been limited in terms of the stance that I take in relation to my words.
There are many places I can go from here; I know that this will be a helpful exercise, even if it doesn't change the way I write in the long run because imposing limitations on creation usually leads to more focused work. Still, I feel linked to what I create, and I could probably track the ebb and flow of artistic creation with the ebb and flow of my life; for the past two years, this has been the time of the year where I become fixated on the existence and instability of the "I," and how we mold ourselves and our identities. This knowledge gives me the power to know that I can change the way I write and the way I sing, I have the power to change an outcome but I can't control what that outcome might be. If anything, this exercise will just be a challenge and help me to focus on other areas of writing besides perspective.
However, I am worried about this being a limitation that would thrust my writing into a more "traditional" and disillusioned fold that, while the words sound beautiful to me, frequently the absence of the "I" or the purposeful deletion of an initial, "it sounds good this way because I bled on the page this way," rids the work of an urgency, an intensity, a pace that creates a warm, nervous rise in the chest more like the one associated with the emotional language of music. Thinking about this brings me back to Adrienne Rich's "When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision." Every time I read this essay I glean something different from it, but the most poignant part is when she looks into her poem "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers." While a beautiful poem, it lacks the ping of so many of Rich's other poems (like, say "How to Talk to a Man"), and if I am remembering correctly, she attributes this to stripping the poem of the "I"; stripping it of a personal perspective. The ping provided by Rich's perspective is what brings me back to her poems time and time again. Maybe it would be helpful for me to revisit this work...I think I will look for it on my bookshelf...
Anyway, back to considering the ebb and flow of my artistic life...I find that similar issues in my writing and in my singing voice arise at the same time. I have worked hard to get rid of a "belly vibrato" that creeps in in my middle voice when my instrument is collapsed either due to an ill-fitting bra or just poor posture. It also creeps in when in some way I am holding back. Right now, "holding back" may be synonymous with "holding on"; if I think I have control over the volume of my voice, or certain elements of my written voice, it's less scary that I broke up with my girlfriend, or that people in my family are dying. I can't imagine holding on for too much longer. The last major "renaissance" in my life occurred in my senior year of high school around the same time of year, when I broke up with my boyfriend of two years. I held on to so many little things for about a month, and then I just opened up and I having the time of my life writing and driving and creating art just for the sake of art. I don't expect this experience, four-years more mature, to be identical to this, but I have reason to hope that I will open up and just write and sing through my doubts and inhibitions and to work past this rut into a full rebirth.
So maybe I will try this challenge, because if I have a challenge, it forces me to write more poetry than I have for the past month (I've only really worked on 2-3 poems...). If it causes me to open up and pour more from my "I" and create something musical and exquisite, I won't be bummed that the experiment "failed," because it wouldn't really be a failure...
I wish I felt comfortable posting poetry in here, but there is so much ambiguity surrounding what counts as being published and what counts as copyrighted that I'm afraid to share in this public of a forum. I do know of many poets that do post to their blogs, so I might ask them about their feelings on it and go from there.
Today, I hope to: re-read Adrienne Rich's "When We Dead Awaken: Writing for Re-Vision," print off Gipson elements to put in my Gipson binder, record myself singing and work though some technical challenges, work on the expansion of my Philadelphia essay, and get at least three different version of my statement of purpose modified. I think these are realistic goals to accomplish before tomorrow's plan post for my week in Pennsylvania.
There are many places I can go from here; I know that this will be a helpful exercise, even if it doesn't change the way I write in the long run because imposing limitations on creation usually leads to more focused work. Still, I feel linked to what I create, and I could probably track the ebb and flow of artistic creation with the ebb and flow of my life; for the past two years, this has been the time of the year where I become fixated on the existence and instability of the "I," and how we mold ourselves and our identities. This knowledge gives me the power to know that I can change the way I write and the way I sing, I have the power to change an outcome but I can't control what that outcome might be. If anything, this exercise will just be a challenge and help me to focus on other areas of writing besides perspective.
However, I am worried about this being a limitation that would thrust my writing into a more "traditional" and disillusioned fold that, while the words sound beautiful to me, frequently the absence of the "I" or the purposeful deletion of an initial, "it sounds good this way because I bled on the page this way," rids the work of an urgency, an intensity, a pace that creates a warm, nervous rise in the chest more like the one associated with the emotional language of music. Thinking about this brings me back to Adrienne Rich's "When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision." Every time I read this essay I glean something different from it, but the most poignant part is when she looks into her poem "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers." While a beautiful poem, it lacks the ping of so many of Rich's other poems (like, say "How to Talk to a Man"), and if I am remembering correctly, she attributes this to stripping the poem of the "I"; stripping it of a personal perspective. The ping provided by Rich's perspective is what brings me back to her poems time and time again. Maybe it would be helpful for me to revisit this work...I think I will look for it on my bookshelf...
Anyway, back to considering the ebb and flow of my artistic life...I find that similar issues in my writing and in my singing voice arise at the same time. I have worked hard to get rid of a "belly vibrato" that creeps in in my middle voice when my instrument is collapsed either due to an ill-fitting bra or just poor posture. It also creeps in when in some way I am holding back. Right now, "holding back" may be synonymous with "holding on"; if I think I have control over the volume of my voice, or certain elements of my written voice, it's less scary that I broke up with my girlfriend, or that people in my family are dying. I can't imagine holding on for too much longer. The last major "renaissance" in my life occurred in my senior year of high school around the same time of year, when I broke up with my boyfriend of two years. I held on to so many little things for about a month, and then I just opened up and I having the time of my life writing and driving and creating art just for the sake of art. I don't expect this experience, four-years more mature, to be identical to this, but I have reason to hope that I will open up and just write and sing through my doubts and inhibitions and to work past this rut into a full rebirth.
So maybe I will try this challenge, because if I have a challenge, it forces me to write more poetry than I have for the past month (I've only really worked on 2-3 poems...). If it causes me to open up and pour more from my "I" and create something musical and exquisite, I won't be bummed that the experiment "failed," because it wouldn't really be a failure...
I wish I felt comfortable posting poetry in here, but there is so much ambiguity surrounding what counts as being published and what counts as copyrighted that I'm afraid to share in this public of a forum. I do know of many poets that do post to their blogs, so I might ask them about their feelings on it and go from there.
Today, I hope to: re-read Adrienne Rich's "When We Dead Awaken: Writing for Re-Vision," print off Gipson elements to put in my Gipson binder, record myself singing and work though some technical challenges, work on the expansion of my Philadelphia essay, and get at least three different version of my statement of purpose modified. I think these are realistic goals to accomplish before tomorrow's plan post for my week in Pennsylvania.
Friday, November 16, 2007
I don't think I have anything too practical to present, but I would love to go...
Of course, I find this website the day AFTER student grant applications are due...
http://theoryandpracticeconference.wordpress.com/
While my feelings on the subjects being presented are mixed at best, I think going would be a good learning experience because I could see how my peers propose mingling theory with real life. Plus, who doesn't love the idea of an anarchist dance party?
http://theoryandpracticeconference.wordpress.com/
All Power to the Imagination! Conference on Radical Theory and Practice
New College of Florida
Sarasota, Florida
April 4-6th
All Power to the Imagination! is a conference that will bring activists, academics, and grassroots organizers together for a weekend of discussion, listening, networking, and organizing. We will share ideas, tactics, experiences, and skills as well as theories, scholarship, and research to develop our radical vision for the present and future.
While my feelings on the subjects being presented are mixed at best, I think going would be a good learning experience because I could see how my peers propose mingling theory with real life. Plus, who doesn't love the idea of an anarchist dance party?
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Senioritis, Megan-style.
I was disgustingly productive today and got through most of the grad-school related items on the list. I've decided to add Indiana University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop to my list (because a girl's gotta dream, and I've heard one too many stories this week about the Boston Symphony being the one out of 44 orchestras to accept a 22-year old horn player, or The Paris Review being the one out of 500 literary journals to accept an undergraduate's poem about Freud and toenails.) Now that that's justified...
I also worked on a poem called "There's no "I" in "tsk tsk.""
And I bought a binder.
I also worked on a poem called "There's no "I" in "tsk tsk.""
And I bought a binder.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Plan for 11/12-11/18
I have to admit that my Gipson time for today has been eaten alive by grad school prep. I feel emotionally exhausted right now; in the past week my grandfather died and I broke up with my girlfriend, so I really just want to crawl under the covers and hibernate until winter break. Alas, most of my graduate school applications are due before then, so I think it would be best if I spend the bulk of this week plowing through major graduate school goals.
Without further ado, goals!:
Gipson-related goal: finish AT LEAST the first chapter of Peraino.
Also, import notes about two other Queering the Pitch sources from LiveJournal.
Acquire a Gipson binder!! This was a goal from last week. Still...I will only print out all of those documents if I have time. This can wait until next week.
Find out how to send GRE scores to graduate schools-- I don't remember which schools I sent scores to at the GRE...
Get packets to letter-writers. I am almost done with this; I just need to recompile school information, such as which ones need covers and which ones must be submitted online.
Request a transcript for University of Washington and another for UMass Boston, since the registrar sent me two for UMass Amherst.
For (at least) an hour every night, finish up applications/adjust application materials for the 7 applications due before January 5. These are: Cornell, Brown, NYU, U Michigan, U Arizona, U Washington, and Emerson.
Find a usable critical writing sample for U Washington
Pick out five additional poems for Brown-- send 11 or 12 to the other schools asking for up to fifteen.
I also need to be reading more Gipson-related poetry. As much as I love the diversity of what I have been reading in journals and on the LiveJournal greatpoets community, they haven't necessarily launched me into a tizzy of critical thinking. However, I'm afraid if I read too much Anne Sexton or Sylvia Plath right now, I might suffocate under my blanket-nest...
So on a happier note, here's a villanelle by Marilyn Hacker that struck a chord with me yesterday:
Villanelle for D.G.B.
Every day our bodies separate,
exploded torn and dazed.
Not understanding what we celebrate
we grope through languages and hesitate
and touch each other, speechless and amazed;
and every day our bodies separate
us farther from our planned, deliberate
ironic lives. I am afraid, disphased,
not understanding what we celebrate
when our fused limbs and lips communicate
the unlettered power we have raised.
Every day our bodies' separate
routines are harder to perpetuate.
In wordless darkness we learn wordless praise,
not understanding what we celebrate;
wake to ourselves, exhausted, in the late
morning as the wind tears off the haze,
not understanding how we celebrate
our bodies. Every day we separate.
-- Marilyn Hacker
Without further ado, goals!:
I also need to be reading more Gipson-related poetry. As much as I love the diversity of what I have been reading in journals and on the LiveJournal greatpoets community, they haven't necessarily launched me into a tizzy of critical thinking. However, I'm afraid if I read too much Anne Sexton or Sylvia Plath right now, I might suffocate under my blanket-nest...
So on a happier note, here's a villanelle by Marilyn Hacker that struck a chord with me yesterday:
Villanelle for D.G.B.
Every day our bodies separate,
exploded torn and dazed.
Not understanding what we celebrate
we grope through languages and hesitate
and touch each other, speechless and amazed;
and every day our bodies separate
us farther from our planned, deliberate
ironic lives. I am afraid, disphased,
not understanding what we celebrate
when our fused limbs and lips communicate
the unlettered power we have raised.
Every day our bodies' separate
routines are harder to perpetuate.
In wordless darkness we learn wordless praise,
not understanding what we celebrate;
wake to ourselves, exhausted, in the late
morning as the wind tears off the haze,
not understanding how we celebrate
our bodies. Every day we separate.
-- Marilyn Hacker
Saturday, November 10, 2007
"Musicality, Essentialism, and the Closet" by Philip Brett, from Queering the Pitch (2nd edition), II
Come back to the bottom of page 16-top of page 17- lots of complicated information that needs to be summarized for clarity.
"Music is a perfect field for the display of emotion. It is particularly accommodating to those who have difficulty in expressing feelings in day-to-day life, because the emotion is unspecified and unattatched. The paino, let us say for example, will this become an important means for the attempt at expression, disclosure, or communication on the part of those children who have difficulties of various kinds with on or both parents. To gay children, who often experiencea shutdown of all feeling a the result of sensing their parents' ad society's disapproval of a basic part of their sentient life, music appears as a veritable lifeline. But full participation in the constructed role of musician in our society can only be accomplished by recognizing its deviance and acknowledging the norms of society itself" (17).
"What was the point of all those coded messages about homosexual oppression and pedastry if they prompted only further denial of their meaning, further entrenchment of the universalism and transcendentalism that make Western classical music a weak substitute for religion in capitalist society and divorce it from meaning?" (21)
"...I have become increasingly convinced that the special dedicated roel signified by the word "musicality" is comperable to, and linked with, the role of homosexuality in our societies...Neither label is up to much good. They are tools of social control dressed up in one case as "talent," in the other as "condition." And they are outmoded" (22).
"Music is a perfect field for the display of emotion. It is particularly accommodating to those who have difficulty in expressing feelings in day-to-day life, because the emotion is unspecified and unattatched. The paino, let us say for example, will this become an important means for the attempt at expression, disclosure, or communication on the part of those children who have difficulties of various kinds with on or both parents. To gay children, who often experiencea shutdown of all feeling a the result of sensing their parents' ad society's disapproval of a basic part of their sentient life, music appears as a veritable lifeline. But full participation in the constructed role of musician in our society can only be accomplished by recognizing its deviance and acknowledging the norms of society itself" (17).
"What was the point of all those coded messages about homosexual oppression and pedastry if they prompted only further denial of their meaning, further entrenchment of the universalism and transcendentalism that make Western classical music a weak substitute for religion in capitalist society and divorce it from meaning?" (21)
"...I have become increasingly convinced that the special dedicated roel signified by the word "musicality" is comperable to, and linked with, the role of homosexuality in our societies...Neither label is up to much good. They are tools of social control dressed up in one case as "talent," in the other as "condition." And they are outmoded" (22).
Thursday, November 8, 2007
"Musicality, Essentialism, and the Closet" by Philip Brett, from Queering the Pitch (2nd edition)
Note: I need to purchase this book- it is going to be a valuable resource...
"If musical pleasure can indeed be linked to this primordial experience then here at another level is a possible explanation for patriarchal societies' ambivelence toward it. Nonverbal even when linked to words, physically arousing in its function as initiator of dance, and resisting attempts to endow it with, or discern in it, precise meaing, it represents that part of our culture which is contructed as feminine and therefore dangerous" (Brett 12).
On how the Bach chorales taught in undergrad harmony courses become "a paradigm for the patriarchal appropriation of music": "The student, who is rarely made fully aware of the historical or stylistic context of these hymn-tune arrangements, then imbibes theirs as a "normal" technique rather than the concentration of elaboraton that is represents and is thus encouraged to see them as miniature organisms" (14).
This reading: interrupted by news of my pap's death. To be continued...
"If musical pleasure can indeed be linked to this primordial experience then here at another level is a possible explanation for patriarchal societies' ambivelence toward it. Nonverbal even when linked to words, physically arousing in its function as initiator of dance, and resisting attempts to endow it with, or discern in it, precise meaing, it represents that part of our culture which is contructed as feminine and therefore dangerous" (Brett 12).
On how the Bach chorales taught in undergrad harmony courses become "a paradigm for the patriarchal appropriation of music": "The student, who is rarely made fully aware of the historical or stylistic context of these hymn-tune arrangements, then imbibes theirs as a "normal" technique rather than the concentration of elaboraton that is represents and is thus encouraged to see them as miniature organisms" (14).
This reading: interrupted by news of my pap's death. To be continued...
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Today's Composition: String Quartet?
Oh absolute music, how you haunt me and elude the point of my Gipson project! On my way to Langroise from KAIC I couldn't kick this violin melody, so I figured I'd put it down in Finale. It is rapid, 6/8, and in quasi-D minor, but I can't imagine that it will keep a key center for very long. I played through what I want to do with the viola entrace on the piano, but I have a voice lesson in a few minutes, so here are the notes...
Notes: What I would like to do next is move the theme into the viola, sorta pantonally, based on Bb. As the viola reaches a tiny bit higher into
the range of the piece, I would like to introduce a little bit of romantic-style chromaticism, and have it grow only to devolve into the first melody
which will become more complex than the first time around by means of ornamentation and crafty chromaticism.
Hopefully further reading of Peraino will help make absolute music concordant with my cause...
Notes: What I would like to do next is move the theme into the viola, sorta pantonally, based on Bb. As the viola reaches a tiny bit higher into
the range of the piece, I would like to introduce a little bit of romantic-style chromaticism, and have it grow only to devolve into the first melody
which will become more complex than the first time around by means of ornamentation and crafty chromaticism.
Hopefully further reading of Peraino will help make absolute music concordant with my cause...
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Notes on Listening to the Sirens
Article to read for tomorrow: "Musicality, Essentialism, and the Closet" by Philip Brett- Peraino says the article describes how "...music is double-tongued, participating in both the normalizing and abnormalizing of the subject..." (Peraino 7).
Objective of Peraino's book: "This book presents a series of case studies, using Foucault's four technologies as a framework for examining how music functions as a technique in the conceptualization, configuration, and representation of queer subjectivity and identity" (5).
Other useful ideas:
"Music is notoriously resistant to legibility; and althought cultural, feminist, and queer theorists within musicology have worked hard to revea the signatures of subjectivity and ideology in musical sounds, it is arguably music's resistance to legibility that allows for the use of music as a strategy for negotiating queer identity within dominant heterosexual culture" (7).
"...music demarcates a space and time wherein gender and sexuality lose clear definition" (7).
This book will not only be an awesome resource, but reading it should thrust me back into a Gipson project mindset!
I finished and sent out a rough draft of my statement of purpose today. I also worked on finishing a rough CV to have edited, hopefully by CEL.
I did not, however, get to compose, as a result of many factors. This will have to happen tomorrow, but I am NOT missing Anthony Doerr.
I should probably be looking up potential conferences to present at...grant applications are due November 15th, so somehow, I think I'm a little too late for that.
Goals for tomorrow: I would like to both finish the first chapter of Sirens and read the Bret article, but it is more than likely going to be one or the other. I also should compose and talk to Ryan about a possible fourth song for his film-- it might be a good way to ease myself back into the practice.
Organization will happen this weekend.
Objective of Peraino's book: "This book presents a series of case studies, using Foucault's four technologies as a framework for examining how music functions as a technique in the conceptualization, configuration, and representation of queer subjectivity and identity" (5).
Other useful ideas:
"Music is notoriously resistant to legibility; and althought cultural, feminist, and queer theorists within musicology have worked hard to revea the signatures of subjectivity and ideology in musical sounds, it is arguably music's resistance to legibility that allows for the use of music as a strategy for negotiating queer identity within dominant heterosexual culture" (7).
"...music demarcates a space and time wherein gender and sexuality lose clear definition" (7).
Goals for tomorrow: I would like to both finish the first chapter of Sirens and read the Bret article, but it is more than likely going to be one or the other. I also should compose and talk to Ryan about a possible fourth song for his film-- it might be a good way to ease myself back into the practice.
Organization will happen this weekend.
Post 1: Plan for 11/4-11/10
The goal for this week is to compile what I have and figure out how to unify all of the elements of my project. Is there something that I want to say that I haven’t said with any of the papers/elements? What would be the best way for me to say these things?
I need to acquire a binder and hard copies of all works looking to be included. Start composing music again—everyday! Try to alternate between practice suite/lab. Brainstorm thesis ideas for music/academic element…look for notes in notebooks.
Update Gipson blog every day!
WHAT AM I TRYING TO SAY WITH MY PROJECT AS A WHOLE? WHAT IS ITS CENTER OF GRAVITY?
WHAT IS THE FINAL PROJECT GOING TO LOOK LIKE?—a series of interlinked essays interrupted by poetry and music (?)
Personally, I need to be reading more poetry. I should submit to two more journals this week.
Other necessary reading?: Listening to the Sirens: Musical Technologies of Queer Identity from Homer to Hedwig by Judith Peraino.
What I wish I could read?: The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch
Other goals that may get in the way of these: finishing an appropriate draft of my SOP and sending it to Dora/Scott. Finishing my CV. Making sure everything is kosher with my recommenders.
What I am going to do before bed tonight: READ (and not Iris Murdoch. Peraino.)
I need to acquire a binder and hard copies of all works looking to be included. Start composing music again—everyday! Try to alternate between practice suite/lab. Brainstorm thesis ideas for music/academic element…look for notes in notebooks.
Update Gipson blog every day!
WHAT AM I TRYING TO SAY WITH MY PROJECT AS A WHOLE? WHAT IS ITS CENTER OF GRAVITY?
WHAT IS THE FINAL PROJECT GOING TO LOOK LIKE?—a series of interlinked essays interrupted by poetry and music (?)
Personally, I need to be reading more poetry. I should submit to two more journals this week.
Other necessary reading?: Listening to the Sirens: Musical Technologies of Queer Identity from Homer to Hedwig by Judith Peraino.
What I wish I could read?: The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch
Other goals that may get in the way of these: finishing an appropriate draft of my SOP and sending it to Dora/Scott. Finishing my CV. Making sure everything is kosher with my recommenders.
What I am going to do before bed tonight: READ (and not Iris Murdoch. Peraino.)
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