Audiography: Fall 2012

Audiography: Fall 2012 at Soundcloud.

Listen to a DJ set inspired by our class, my version of a final project. If you are interested in the music, please download to your favorite listening device. (I don't know if I can host the track indefinitely on Soundcloud.)

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Does it get better? Arthur Russell's "This is How we Walk on the Moon" looks onward and upward but his signature sound is far from optimistic. His life was a comet of creativity and productivity, but he died young from AIDS-related illness. Donald Byrd's "Sky High" continues in the same bittersweet trajectory. His career has spanned the American musical 20th century, from serious jazz in the 50s, to poppy crossover music in the 60s, to Afro-influenced genre-breakers in the 70s, to straight-up (and pretty gay) disco with the Blackbyrds. Russell also worked across genres and has disco hits.

Sade. "It's never as good as the first time." Is this what Sappho sang to departing brides? If so, the fragment is lost.

Violeta Parra is a Chilean folk superstar/artist/activist and she is quoted in Borderlands/La Frontera. This song, "Aracuo tiene una pena," is about centuries of violence against indigenous people in the city of Arauco. Like Borderlands, her subject is local but her message is broadly relevant.

Stuart Hall, quoted in Looking for Langston, calls history the "smiler with the knife." The 1971 Motown track "Smiling Faces Sometimes," by the Undisputed Truth, has a similar message. The band has several social issues songs in this style, and later some interesting afro-futurist concept albums.

"You Keep Me Hangin' On" was first recorded by the Supremes in 1966 as a 2:40 minute pop song. The Vanilla Fudge covered it in '67, turning it into a 7 minute, sprawling psychedelic whine. The song has been covered many times by many artists, but women tend to do a tight pop song while men tend to do a lot of screaming and extra bars. (Although there are notable exceptions.) This dynamic strikes me as revealing about the difference between Hella's and Giovanni's relationships with David. This version, by Wilson Pickett in '69, goes out to David. (My favorite version by Hugh Masekela, goes out to Giovanni.)

Audre Lorde. "The Uses of the Erotic." The essay is in the book Sister Outsider, the recording is on YouTube. Listen to it or read it every semester.

"Reckless with your Love" is by Azari & III, a Toronto-based group producing classic 80s house, today. They recently performed in Austin and they start a queer dance party wherever they go.

Nicki Minaj sure is quare. Plus, this set needed an anthem that wasn't by Lady Gaga.

RuPaul says, "You better work!" Rupaul also says, "You're born naked and the rest is drag." RuPaul is brilliant.

After our semester, you may catch a few more references in the last and most literate track, "Reading Rainbow" by The Lost Bois—but probably not all of them. Still, it's something to aim for!

Flyleaf

fly·leaf 

n.

A blank page at the beginning or end of a book.

                                                                                                                 

Audre Lourde’s biomythography describes her life as she recalls and retells it. As most people use a book’s flyleaf to write a personalized message to the reader before getting to the novel, Audre embraces her ability to write her own story in her own manner. Here I've made a playlist by one of my favorite bands Flyleaf that I feel represent aspects of Audre Lourdes’s life followed by the lyrics and my personal connection and representation.

If you have spotify: http://open.spotify.com/user/126438560/playlist/4mWKoclFuPMCOtdjGGWY9K

If you don’t have spotify:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skxUlhJSK9w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-Dy0iqB7f8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcn_VCZv23c

Google doc with song's connection and representation:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11GZnWXa1c3pgGMOkvxGoRYSLx0oTWJfz2uiag0fN7RE/edit

“I’m so sick”: By Flyleaf

From the childhood environment she was brought up in, I always felt Audre longed to get away. I would definitely say she was “sick” of her living situation. She didn't like how tough her mother was on her and how she felt left out among her siblings. Her classmates mistreated her and society itself didn't seem in her favor. She was sick of people looking down on her and underestimating her potential. I would say Audre was sick of her body image, and how the world looked at her.  As she got older, she describes with disgust how sick she was of her living conditions. Her apartment was very filthy and the overall atmosphere was intoxicating. Her working environment was just as bad and it was even that working environment that lead to her health issues and resulted in her death.

"Dear My Closest Friend": By Flyleaf

This is a song I can imagine Audre dedicate to Gennie. The song describes how much she cared for her and even crosses into what could be a romantic love. I view the entire song as a letter for Gennie with all the things she didn't get an opportunity to say. In this letter, she describes her grief over Gennie’s death and her sense of guilt for not being able to help her. Throughout Audre’s life Gennie’s memory is especially brought in during hard times when it is clear that she wishes she could have her friend by her side. But even without her there, Audre continues to place Gennie in platform showing that their love and friendship continues even in death.

 “ Missing” : By Flyleaf

I think this song suits Audre’s entire life. From childhood she expressed an admiration for her mother that did not compare to anyone else in her life. She desired to be loved and shown more affection from her mother. But as she received little attention from her family, she felt a void that she tried to fill with numerous lovers. With every passing lover, the relationship ultimately failed and they all ended up leaving her. Audre keeps searching for that someone to be able to finally fill that void but at the end of the novel, she finally comes to terms that maybe she should be happy with herself and the journey she has had. The song describes having a realization that you can’t be in the search for someone/something to make you happy to fill any type of void. 

Works Cited

Flyleaf. Dear My Closest Friend. N.d. MP3.

Flyleaf. I'm so Sick. N.d. MP3.

Flyleaf. Missing. N.d. MP3.

Lorde, Audre. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. Berkeley, CA: Crossing, 1982. Print.

Love Looking for Blues

Hey guys,

Here is my visual and musical compilation of Love Conjure/Blues and Looking for Langston. It encompasses the gay African American culture across time, space and gender!

Hope you guys enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOtVJW5ntCM&list=HL1355455131&feature=mh_lolz

A Day with Faye

Hey guys, here's my creative project. It's a spoof of Cheryl Dunye's The Watermelon Woman that centers around a search for... well you'll find out.
I am not sure if there was a certain time it was supposed to be turned in by today but it's here so yay!
Thank you to everyone who helped make this possible, you know who you are/you're in the credits.
Also I can't wait for Lokei to see this at the partay. ENJOY:

http://youtu.be/CS-_kAtfGJQ

-Jeremy Hasson

Sorry guys, I was in an exam and then I couldn't find my camera, then I couldn't find a scanner on campus I could use without freaking bevo bucks, then I remembered I had a camera on my phone...

Okay, so I was really interested in the "escapes" characters of the different pieces we viewed and read. By this I mean the places they went to in their heads, as well as in the physical world, to escape the harsh realities of the world around them.

In Looking for Langston, I really enjoyed the romanticism of it all. The cigarettes, the tux's, the slow dancing, the champagne; it was all very enticing to me. I drew a portrait of a young Langston Hughes  do to the influence this movie had on me. I've always been a fan of Mr. Hughes' work and way of life in general. I drew depictions of martini's and famous works of art (Mona Lisa) to try to embody the high class party life he very much so liked.

The middle piece is of Audre Lorde. As you all know from my blog post on the book, I really had a personal connection with Audre's story. I drew tropical, herbal, and phallic images in hopes of commenting on Audre's connection to her sexuality and maternal roots.

For the last portrait I chose to go with Tragic Bitches. I may be in Austin now, but I'm a New York boy at heart. Reading this reminded me of the drag queen's I would encounter basically on a daily basis when I used to dance in bars during the summer. I was instantly taken back to a world of queens strutting their stuff and telling it like it is. Whether it be clean or uncomfortably dirty. So, I drew some sperm (sperms?), crude words, and paraphernalia because this is exactly what this novel reminded me of. Down and dirty city queens.

I'll upload mire pictures when I get off work tonight so you all can make your own connection. I hope this visual interpretation helps you all contemplate these pieces in a new way.

Wilhelmina find William

Prologue

In this series of limerick poems, I look through the stages of Wilhelmina’s life up to the point where a mysterious man consummates his love with another woman. I especially found where Wilhelmina acquiesces that she favors to be called William very interesting.  From that hint, I postulated that Wilhelmina was ‘by fate’ to be a man disguised in a body of woman and that William was her other half. I believe this is why she risked to go to battlefields and serve like other male combatants. Wilhelmina also tells that she was more drawn to male counterparts than being feminine and follow society’s image of woman. The last journey to the island I concentrate on how the island seems familiar to her, which indicates that this is the place where she finds her other-self. In the end, I think it was her faith to find William but cost her life.     

Wilhelmina finds William

To a woman who dared, risked, struggled self:

In search of other-half;

If only Wilhelmina had found William before too long,

 Wilhelmina done no wrong

Except for admitting and being herself

Still in the midst of prejudice and deriding

Sickened of distasteful, of doubtful feeling

Wilhelmina “must continue blaze a lone trail danger;

Through and by the difficulties of her nature” (Hall, 241)

Wilhelmina, Wilhelmina why so trying?

Thou can enjoy life as much as Sarah and Fanny

Full of enjoy and delight as like shining sunny

But Either Sarah or Fanny cant

 What you want is different what they want;

Becoming a man with strength others find funny   

Tired with all these, to journeys

To William Wilhelmina departs

As Far as eyes could see,

As high as sun hold thee

To William Wilhelmina departs

Away Away Wilhelmina into the fears;

Valor succumbed to bloody shells

With Her stout feet within trenches

Wilhelmina vehemently searches,

Underneath unrelenting throbs

Shells flying over shaken grounds

Brought upon fire she lives;

Embraced by her great sense of keen,

 As a new character of man seen

William fights on and survives

So body and her hair wanes,

Her soul ever brighter burns.

Can she forget the spirit breathing

Within her mind and body dying?

From ashes arise new desires

Seen once her desires once heard in a strange place,

Deep within her own abated face

She is in need of escape again

Till time will help her regain

So she follows a lonely trace

An island standing against the tides of waves;

Surrounded by tranquility of nature gazes

At her with utmost serenity and security

Is this what she has been missing?: a unity,

  Of desolation and sentiment she craves

Odd unknown distant to her memories  

Engulf her with akin sense of stories

She may or rather have already been this island.

  Nothing more familiar than facade of the island,

Like Her dreams, her fear and hopes

In the vast reflection of sun against ocean

She lays unconsciously into deep sleep motion

A man, an energetic and stout man watching

As she hurls rocks into abyss falling

He that stands beside her with emotion

His presence with his mysterious mate

  Soon make unexpected love await

Before the eyes of beholder, a man

Inside of the love with a woman

  Wilhelmina finds William by turn of fate   

Kindred Bonds

My father had something of a catchphrase when I was growing up: “Children suck.” He used it all the time: when my brother was suspended from school a third time, when I got my car towed from my boyfriend’s apartment for parking illegally, when my aunt described how her youngest had taken to ruining her walls by grinding crayons into their surface. Every time he said it I would roll my eyes or laugh, but inwardly I flinched – did he mean it? Was this “joke” just a thinly veiled expression of his genuine feelings? I didn’t know then, and remain slightly unsure to this day.

           

This tension, between being about 99% confident that my father loved me, but only 45% sure that he liked me as an individual differentiated from his child, was the source of much of my childhood angst. It was difficult to negotiate the idea that while I trusted my father implicitly to care for me, to pick me up from school when I was sick and make macaroni and cheese and chicken nuggets when my mother was out of town, I was afraid to share anything with him for fear that would be rejected. I wanted him to come to my track meets, but I didn’t want him to know I wasn’t the fastest girl on the team; I wanted to share my writing with him, but was thought he would judge me or laugh.

It is this relationship that colors my interpretation of the final scene in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home. In the final panel when Alison jumps into her father’s outstretched arms she writes, “But in the tricky reverse narration that impels our entwined stories, he was there to catch me when I leapt” (232). Yet I do not interpret this as a scene of catharsis, but as recognition of a paternal relationship analogous to my own. Alison’s father is more than the rudimentary definition of a father, one that “conveys vagueness and distance” (197) because she is able to find in him the paternal love and safety that every child is entitled to, and for that, at least, she is grateful to him. However, I also feel that Alison also makes a distinction between kin, being familial bonds of blood and shared ancestry, and kindred, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “allied in nature, character, or properties”. Her father is established as being kin, but it is a kindred relationship she desperately craves.

When Alison finds this bond through literature, she clings to it vehemently. As she says on page 204, “it was nice to have his attention… however vicarious it may have been.” Even though literature is perhaps not the interpersonal connection Alison had initially hoped for, such as when she first shared her poetry with her father, it is still something through which she can receive the praise and affection her father otherwise refuses to offer. The panel on 204 in which Alison asks, “So… what should I read this weekend?” and her father has an arrow labeled “elated” is one of the only moments in the novel in which Alison’s father has a confirmed, positive reaction to anything. As a scene reminiscent from my own life, this made me laugh. How many times had I crept into my father’s study and had him look up at me, anxious, “like a splendid deer I didn’t want to startle” (220) only for me to ask, “Do you have any music suggestions?” and watch his face light up with rare pleasure.

If there is a singular exception to the tenuous relationship between my father and me, it is music. I didn’t listen to N*Sync or Britney Spears when I was younger – instead, I loved The Fixx, The White Stripes, and Spoon. I loved them even more because my father loved them, and seemed proud of me for sharing his passion. I was the only one in our household who would sit gladly at his feet for hours, listening to him play guitar or introduce me to new and obscure bands. Hearing the excitement, the piqued interest in his voice when I’d found a song to share and he liked it, gave me these moments of connection that I longed for in our everyday coexistence. Music was the thing that rallied together my father and me, the thing that I could wrap around me like a shroud and nestle up to in moments of uncertainty. Even now, while my father and I rarely talk outside of my visits home, we regularly email each other: “Did you hear this song yet? Did you know Britt Daniels has a new band?”

I love my father; I know that there is very little we wouldn’t do to assure my safety and wellbeing. But, simultaneously, I am able to acknowledge that we didn’t, and likely never will, have the romanticized daddy-daughter relationship I envied in so many of my friends as a child. In reflecting on her childhood and coping with her father’s death, I think that Alison Bechdel comes to a similar conclusion, and is able to find a way to cherish her father in spite of, or maybe even because of, their imperfect relationship.

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Works Cited: Bechdel, Alison. Fun Home. 1st. New York: Mariner Books, 2006. Print.