& I applied to many overseas conferences and they all accepted my abstracts. Now I have to decide which ones to go to because I am too poor & my university doesn’t support its students like York does.
& Just because someone doesn’t resort to physical violence DOES NOT MEAN THEY ARE NOT BEING VIOLENT. Violence is a complicated, multi-layered act, and affects everyone, because its consequences can painfully appear years later in very different ways, even turn into physical violence.
Indeed, the system is not set up to deal with the complexities of violence against women and children (men too, in so many ways, but that’s not my point here). The system is set up to maintain a double oppression of its victims. One: being a victim and not having proper resources in place to help you, especially if you are living under the poverty line. Two: If you do seek help, it is all in your hands and with your time and with your money, and consequently you might give up because it’s too difficult.
I am living in Montréal now, in the St-Henri neighbourhood in a beautiful pre-war rowhouse. The woman living below me was one of the women that influenced Gabrielle Roy’s Tin Flute. There’s only two of them left and everyone else is dead. My doctoral studies have commenced and I’m not sure what to make of it yet, other than the superficial, oh wow, it’s great, my supervisor is too-good-t0-be-true, the food is great & I’ve made fast friends with people in the Film Studies Department and not my own. I’ve been obsessively updating my Instagram and focusing on color and perception and immediacy.
I bike a lot everywhere and eat cheese and speak broken French in a terrible Anglophone accent.
Lately, I’ve started really missing my brother. A LOT. I wish he hadn’t been so stubborn. He wishes he hadn’t been so stubborn and applied to Concordia for Studio Art instead of just being focused on Illustration at OCAD. He’s 18 now and we listen to the same music and like the same things and generally have a similar outlook on life, although his is filtered through the angsty suburban teenage gaze and mine through a gone-through-too-much-school-too-fast ‘am I an adult or a kid still?’ PhD gaze. I fantasize about us going to shows together, and me showing him off to my friends and him fitting in here much more, and being able to live, because everything is so cheap in Montréal, and Concordia has so many initiatives that you can take advantage of if you’re willing. I have access to a free delicious vegan, and often wheat-free lunch when I’m at SWF campus.
I remember my first year in university. I was on sex and drugs, so self-absorbed that only bass moved me. No future. I need my hair done. I’ll feel better. Next week I’m coming back to Toronto for my Masters Convocation. I’m disproportionately excited for this institutionalized spectacle.
A collection from my iPhone from my first month here.
ps. several of you asked me when I would update this! OK! I’ve not had much to say, words, taking up space, when I am writing and talking, it’s about issues of perception and symbolism and #occupywallstreet & everything else that subsumes me. Maybe more like drowning in the ineffable. Is it possible to have a relationship with the ineffable? Activate a correspondence with it? With a yet-t0-become/yet-t0-be-signified? – the activating of the molecular level of radical empiricism.
pps. I am working on a large several-year project reviving the lost rivers of Montréal.
When John Maus played this at Il Motore last week, tears came down all over me and then I started screaming until I lost my voice and was full of cramps from thrashing my body – the abject becoming the sublime.
Pray God you can cope.
I stand outside this woman’s work,
This woman’s world.
Ooh, it’s hard on the man,
Now his part is over.
Now starts the craft of the father.
I know you have a little life in you yet.
I know you have a lot of strength left.
I know you have a little life in you yet.
I know you have a lot of strength left.
I should be crying, but I just can’t let it show.
I should be hoping, but I can’t stop thinking
Of all the things I should’ve said,
That I never said.
All the things we should’ve done,
That we never did.
All the things I should’ve given,
But I didn’t.
Oh, darling, make it go,
Make it go away.
Give me these moments back.
Give them back to me.
Give me that little kiss.
Give me your hand.
I know you have a little life in you yet.
I know you have a lot of strength left.
I know you have a little life in you yet.
I know you have a lot of strength left.
I should be crying, but I just can’t let it show.
I should be hoping, but I can’t stop thinking
Of all the things we should’ve said,
That were never said.
All the things we should’ve done,
That we never did.
All the things that you needed from me.
All the things that you wanted for me.
All the things that I should’ve given,
But I didn’t.
Oh, darling, make it go away.
Just make it go away now.
..
alone in my own head, i’m exploding. keep busy, keep busy. project out, project out. one more month here. one more month.
John Maus’ “Streetlight” is only managing the high ends through my shitty iPhone speaker. It’s late and congested. Probably over 30 degrees. The sticky mountains of white cotton suffocate me. My sheets are crumpled up, and the cover for the duvet is only half on. I forgot to masturbate today, so I make an effort to do it even though I am tired, but not the tired that makes it feel all woozy and better, but the exhausted anxiousness you feel when you have to sleep even though there’s a never-ending list of tasks you haven’t done. The ceiling fan is growling, it’s tired too. I never let it stop. It’s so loud and the high ends make me uncomfortable. I start but nothing is happening. So much to think about, so many people to negotiate, school, project, moving, money, vacuuming, hospital bills, sick best friend, missing lovers. I change it to, Shostakovich’s “Piano Concerto No. 2, Andante,” because it reminds me of Chopin and the strings work to subdue the fan. I can hardly breathe and my legs chafe against the bare mattress. Going back and forth between fantasies and memories, I manage and finally fall asleep.
Mileece is a composer, SuperCollider sonic artist and a genius, like, a total holy-fuck-how-?!-genius. I am honoured and grateful to have been able to hang out with her for a couple of days in at her home in West Hollywood before she left for the south of France to start a renewable sustainable sonic commune with her husband Nate (who is starting his PhD in England in some fancy fuel cell research stream, which he plans to do on a boat off the coast). She’s one of the women in my documentary project, microfemininewarfare. You should buy her whole album, released on Lo Recordings, here.
(photo taken from her Tumblr, uncredited)
ps. I won a little bit of money to fund the travel and accommodations for this project. I am very happy that someone on the York University committee thought my work is important and meaningful enough because I know MA-student based experimental, feminist, emerging technology documentaries about women electronic music composers that reside outside of Canada isn’t exactly the highest on their funding radar.
Certain I’d seen all the electronic music documentaries available, I discovered the incredibly informative techno documentary, Universal Techno done by the French production team Arte in 1996 through Mira Calix. The interviews are in-depth and focus on the building up of techno in Detroit and how important place is to not just creating a music community but also its impact on the musical aesthetic. Ken Ishii also discusses Detroit’s influence on him in Japan. The YouTube excerpts feature Juan Atkins, Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson, Jeff Mills and Ken Ishii. I love documentaries that aren’t all flashy flash and really get into a discourse about their subject.
If you know me, you know I have an unabashed obsession with my younger brother Tomek. He’s turning 18 next week. He’s an amazing skateboarder, musician and artist and everything he does makes me swoon. Here’s some of his work I was able to find online (he’ll probably kill me for this, because unlike me he’s reserved and not a show-off):
He’s alsobeenmaking music since I got him Reason 2.5 in 2003. This is one of my favorites by him from 2007. He was 14! His abridged list of aliases include: mundanething, glib, fusechild, jazzhole.
&
I sometimes post music links. If you want yours taken down let me know. & for the rest of you, if you don't buy music & just d/l links, you should feel like an asshole.
