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.

_____________________

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

To My Sweet Pea,

I haven’t closed my eyes in 52—no 55 hours. I see her sweet face, cupped in between my clenched nails. Water everywhere, swallowing her little heart. I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry, sweet pea.

Please believe me when I say that I tried to purge myself of this vile attraction. I never wanted to love her the way I did. That bouncing ballerina: twirling her tutu, dancing through my fingers, slipping back into my dreams.

I wasn’t always like this, though.

I was a knight on a reconnaissance of the playground every day. We were all knights marking our territory. This—the safe zone encircled by our imaginary fences—was our country.

For years, our gang followed Charlie, an older boy from the junior high. He was idolized by all of us. Charlie had, on multiple occasions, invited a select few to join him on secret endeavors. Peeking from between two scrawny shoulders, I was never chosen. I carried a curse between my legs—one that would render me useless to Charlie. That was until I turned twelve.

That August, Charlie hopped off his bicycle and met us at the old pavilion behind the elementary school. He whistled me over. My heart galloped, as he gave me the look I had seen countless times before.

I grabbed my bicycle and trailed behind. He skidded to a halt when we reached the town turtle pond. He asked me to join him on a bench. I did. Then we talked about bicycles and turtles and little sisters. I began to wonder if this was part of the legendary adventures I had always been excluded from. I also began to wonder if I quite understood what an adventure meant.

I remember Charlie turning to me and tucking loose strands of my hair behind my ear. My body was alarmed by his fingertips brushing my cheek. I peered over to the drooping eyelids and pursing lips inching towards me. I clenched my fists. I knew I had to do this. It was Charlie. So I closed my eyes, cringing at the gross heaviness of his mouth on mine.

The rest of the boys heard of this and promptly branded me the enemy—a simple-minded girl. I convinced myself that this was for the best. I felt myself outgrowing it all. I could no longer wear the same clothes as them, nor could I stay out as late as them. Mother completely objected to all the time I asked to spend with those degenerates, as she liked to say.

The remainder of my time in junior high and high school consisted of excellent grades, average participation, and mediocre relationships.

There were two great affairs in my adult life.

The first was Norman, who was leaving one of the libraries at the university. I rammed straight into the pile of books blocking his thick-rimmed chestnut glasses and beady emerald eyes. He was actually very handsome, despite the occasional blemish.

A history major, Norman was an asset during my semester of Ancient histories. He spent many a night with me as I grudgingly drilled centuries of war and kingship into my apathetic brain. He did not want to be a history teacher. He wanted to be a global historian. Norman was a dreamer, if nothing else. Last I heard, he was teaching at the local middle school—wife and kids back home. Funny to think he wanted that to be me. What’s funnier is that I considered it.

It’s been six years since I last spoke to Quinn. I left her at the same building we had met that frosty night in December.

It was my 24^th birthday, and Norman and I had just ended things after his third proposal. I was sitting at a booth in an Irish pub down the street from my apartment, reading Rousseau’s “The Confessions.” A raspy voice interrupted my trance. I looked up from the page and noticed my rail-thin, tattooed waitress. With a creepily crooked smile, she inquired about my drink. Coffee, black. She nodded and fetched me another. Noticing my reading, she offered her opinion—one that I couldn’t have been more uninterested in hearing. It was after this night that I began to frequent the pub, until I became a regular in Quinn’s tumultuous life.

My time with her was everything but romantic. She frightened yet intrigued me. She bored yet excited me. Her enraged screams still echo in my head, banging against my sore eardrums. Quinn was beautiful but not desirable. At this point, I found no one even the slightest bit desirable.

I couldn’t love. I had to accept this.

But then you brought her to my home one afternoon. I hadn’t seen her since her first Christmas, six years ago. She was lovely and perfect and infectious.

It was her giggling that made my heart throb, her strawberry and cream hair that ignited a fire in my throat. I instantly wanted to be her everything, just as she was mine. She enchanted me like a fairy, weaving through every crevice of my mind, ensnaring me in her barbed wire beauty. The closer she was to grab, however, the deeper I locked my desires away.

I begged you not to leave her that night. You remember that, don’t you? I told you I wasn’t feeling well, but you insisted.

My ballerina, she was especially playful. Hiding in the kitchen, I heard the warm water ripple over my bathtub. I gripped my countertop, clamping my jaw shut. I would wait, just as I had time and time again. Donning nothing but a pink tutu and her smooth, tight skin, she scampered into my presence.

It all happened so quickly.

I remember releasing the cheaply tiled countertop, my tingling fingers desperately searching to feel her lacey skin. She leapt backwards, so I grabbed onto her tutu instead, ripping it clean off her tiny frame. She whimpered for a moment before screaming at me. I fell to my knees and begged her to stop. Every time I leaned in to caress her flushed cheeks, she’d stagger away. I apologized until her sobbing ceased. Pressing my hand over her bare chest, she smiled and led me into the bathroom, where she waited to be bathed.

Though there was no sunlight, she still glistened amidst the water running through her auburn locks, lingering over the curves in her fragile, child body. Her belly button sparkled like a pearl in the sea, and her fingers traced tiny dancers along the suds and bubbles floating rhythmically around her. She hummed something.

My fingers slid down her slippery torso, dipping below the water. She gasped and flinched and cried, all before I could register my actions.

I was so enraged. I needed to destroy it. The demon desire was at my mercy, as was she.

She grumbled for a few minutes, bubbles bursting at the surface. Her fingers sank. Her lips pouted. Her eyes ceased to blink.

I never meant to take her from you.

I will not die with this secret, though. 

I pray you can forgive me one day, sweet pea.

Your loving sister

Cabeza de Calabaza.

Feathertop was a scarecrow

with a pumpkin head.

His mother thought he should live

but he thought otherwise.

He looked into the mirror

and broke his pipe in two.

Now, his mother props him up

and says he's better just a scarecrow.

"Such a jumble of charlatans in the world,

yet they live and never see themselves for what they are."

Moma: A Biomythography of My Mother

Moma: A Biomythography of My Mother

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Sometimes, it can seem like my mother is an average woman. But I know she is a storyteller, she is, much like Audre’s mother, a woman who can command a room and build a home/community out of nothing. Sometimes, I think she has the ability to conjure. This is why I call her moma, a respelling of mother/mama/mom.

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frost bit banks
hugging a river
dead as leaves rotting in the composts of
Drift Drive.
all the houses were old.
old as the church, old as the graveyard, old as the Swoonig Bar.

moma’s house was old as the river’s name,
even though it wasn’t a river no more.
it was a dry thing
that trickled and curled in, wanting
a name to be called

it was moma’s fifth christmas ever,
when all the lights were being twirled around trees
and the catholic school was trying to teach the littlest ones
like my mother
Jingle Bells

when granma stole them
away to those
frost bit forsaken banks
of that
Used to be River
 

cause grampa left them alone for some frilly little
thing
in a stewardess outfit.

the house. was big    and old      and rickety,
cracks and leaks and no working stove
making good meals was hard.
but it had that long,
sway-side barn that used
to hold twenty shining horses/ ready for pulling, plowing, and showing.

well, one christmas month, a bundle of kittens needed finding,
and some other ghost was found.
cause late one night, moma stayed up longer than she was suppose to
watching snowflakes
and heard a noise in the hall.

a lanky black man with brass buckles on his blue shoes
was standing with horror on his face.
he looked like he had been running for days/    or people
were trying to break down doors.
their eyes met and/        she screamed what he couldn’t

time came left
gran had gathered/   a stranger was roving
through her halls,
and by the time moma’s big brother bobbie searched
the place
that man was gone/ like he never was
moma, auntie sue wiled their way to gran’s bed, all three of them
sharing dreams of memories
they didn’t have

later for december
root beer dropped her bloated belly
but there were no kittens to show for it
all the cousins brought in for christmas dinner demanded to go
searching through snow/ no parent approved
root beer was licking her tail in the barn
and the kids made moma follow her around until the cat
jumped     up the rafters
and went missing
cause there was no attic or loft or
any sort of storage that they knew of.

so they made moma follow her up through that hole.
she spilled up into a secret room.

a molding, carved table
and chairs,
an iron bed,
a bundle of kittens,
white, red, black,
splotched.

and while her five-year-old self was distracted/ she stumbled out into the upstairs hallway
kittens and all/
asking why they never got to play in the room.

turns out, the original owners of that ancient house
had been part of the abolitionist movement
and,
rumor has it,
they helped runaways get across to the Canadian border, right off that underground railroad

moma thinks that that explains the blue, brass-buckle shoes.

when moma was nine, and sue was twelve, and bobby was twenty-one,
gran came home/        holding limes
Key Limes, expensive and precious and smelling like Home,
that the neighborhood gals had all saved up for
so they could have key lime pie at the neighborhood party that saturday.
which was really something
since the apples in quinn’s backyard were already being plucked.

but the pie never got made
and our family never got to party
cause bobby was dead/ on the floor/ of the upstairs bathroom.
we say it was an accident.

between eight dead cats buried in back to railroad spirits to his hands clutching at the air duster bottle/
gran could only handle so many ghosts.

south carolina was a lot more like home.
a lot more rum, a lot more limes.
a lot more of gramps’ calls,
talking always, always about his new son rob.

the old house never left
though
when moma dream walked

moma said bobby liked to visit in her dreams
always in the old house
he wouldn’t say much/ or anything at all
but she knew
when he had advice to give
he told her not to marry that musician

too bad she never was much good at listening

so what had happened was

handsome, moody
guitar strings of shakespeare
heard moma sweet-turning a crowd,
ocean waves background notes
and left her churning

short, she joined the band on escapades across state lines
all the way to alaska and back
one ring in the champagne
a wedding dress, worn, sitting on
a white horse
down a lane, with ribbons

too bad he was cold/ as the banks of that nameless river
twisting and turning
curled in, wanting
there were a lot of whispered rumors
a lotta warnings and tittling tales
before moma finally ripped that dress, beads all strewn on shores
to carolina

sometimes,
it’s letting go that finds you home
though
it took a few years/ a few lost loves before
she walked over nameless banks
again
house as lonesome as before

and found something a lot greater than ghosts
and broken memories
she found dad
the way it’s told, to me, there was nothing that could have held that love back
cause it filled that whole river
bursting