rural cowboy

I just wanted to recommend a blog post Anna wrote about "Brokeback Mountain," which we finally saw this week. I love the movie for saying so much but hardly really saying any of it, about the potential realities of rural gay existance and sex and mistakes. A book I read earlier this winter had a lot to say about the marginalization of rural gay life, and I think a lot of that was reflected in people's reactions to this particular movie. Except for specific formulations (living-in-the-country-with-a-big-house) urban people tend to look down on rural life, and queer people are no exception to this rule. The book I read ("In a Queer Time and Place" by Judith Halberstam) talked specifically about Brandon Teena and how the setting of rural Nebraska not only played a role in his murder but was also misunderstood in that role by many many academics with an urban-centric viewpoint. Brandon chose to live in a rural town (instead of Lincoln, a more urban center) because it offered queer possibilities to him that he wouldn't have in a bigger city. He moved to rural Nebraska to escape persecution and scutiny, but academics look at what happened and say, "Oh, he was killed by those rednecks. He should have moved to the big city, gotten some help or something." Anyway, so it's interesting to look at the rural's role in "Brokeback" and examine my own thoughts about setting and plot.
But anyway, Anna says a lot of what I thought very eloquently and humorously, so you should just read her review. But here's my favorite part:
"In an effort to promote "tolerance," many critics have applied the law of universality to the film. "This is a love story, people! Not a gay story." Yes it is! It's a goddamn gay love story. If you can't see the blatantly gay issues that ensconce this movie, then don't review it. The fact that Jack and Ennis are "victims of circumstance" is a moot point when you consider that homophobia, fear, and denial are the main circumstances they can't seem to overcome."

"You must be Mozart's sister"

I think every musician has a list of the strangest and/or most horrible gigs that they've played. My strangest until last night was probably the queer hippie birthday party I played in Washington state where everybody, men, women, and children, were dressed as fairies and my quartet played Ravel outside on a windy day next to a firepit with salmon cooking over it. It wasn't bad (it was actually quite fun, and the salmon was delicious!), but it was a fairly odd experience. I don't know if last night can compare, but it was strange in an entirely different way.
We were playing an all-Mozart gig for Europe Day (it's the year of the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth, hence the music choice), sponsored by the Austrian consulate but attended by a lot of fancy-schmancy people from all different parts of Europe. It was on the top floor of the Aon tower, which is apparently the third-tallest building in Chicago. We were on the 80th floor! It was the longest elevator ride I've ever taken, and my ears were popping the whole way. When we got up there, they did indeed have 18th century costumes for us, complete with white fluffy wigs (!). My costume consisted of a very long blue velvet skirt, and shirt with lace-trimmed flow-y sleeves and two bustle-like things that hung over the sides. Plus, of course, the wig, which would become more and more annoying as my curls kept falling onto my instrument as I played and my head became roughly 20 degrees warmer than the rest of my body. But anyway, I guess that's the most exciting part of things. Other details were more like any old gig, with people drinking way too much and trying to talk to our piano player as he was playing and everyone in general talking so loudly that we couldn't hear each other at all. But hey, it's money, and the costumes make for a good story. I'm hoping to get pictures soon and post them here.

creepiness

A while ago, I filled out a survey here and got back a painting that was supposed to represent my personality. I liked my painting and thought it was kind of neat. End of story, right? But a week or two later, I got the following email, supposedly from myself and with the subject line "We Have Moved":

Dear Ammie,

I am writing to us from my new home in the Painterbot database. I seem to fit in here, and things are going well so far. Our hosts say they like us because I am outgoing and easy going . Well, thats all for now. I will write more once I get settled in.

- talk to you soon

ammie

What is that? I don't know what purpose it surved, except to give me an early morning set of creepy chills.

Tomorrow, I'm playing a gig for somebody (the Austrian Consulate? I'm not clear on the details) where apparently we are going to wear period 18th-century clothing and play nothing but Mozart. I don't know if that's creepy, but it is certainly strange.


Here's my painting:

5 questions

From Lauren's journal, here are my five questions:

1. What do you think of Chicago's personality as a city?
I think Chicago is a very no-nonsense place. You have to be careful around her, but as long as you keep your shit together you get along okay. It's really a midwestern place to me, that kind of stereotyped no-beating-around-the-bush idea I had about this whole region before I moved here.

2. I'm trying to figure out the difference between Hollywood movies where male characters dress as women for a laugh, and drag queens. I feel like the first one is a little misogynistic because the men are supposedly stooping to an inferior, weaker level, and the second one is more of a radical critiquing performance? I don't know. What are your thoughts?
Hmmm. Well, first you have to consider audience: The hollywood version is directed towards straight people, and drag queens are first and formost performing for a gay male audience. The intent in those two performances (culturally sanctioned and fairly specific performance techniques for drag queens and comedic value based on power displacement and physical gags for the actors) are fairly divergent, although there is some overlap. I just read a whole book about how queer culture gets siphoned into mainstream consumption and then diluted almost beyond recognition, and I think that drag queen camp is a great example of that.
However, I think a lot of the time we laugh at men in movies dressing as women because they are having a really hard time doing "woman" things (putting on makeup, shoes, walking funny, etc.). Isn't recognizing that physically appearing as a woman is difficult but very related to your ability to accessorize kind of a radical statement? It's definitely a recognition of the performative nature of gender presentation, even if it's been diluted by its transfer to the mainstream.
Whew! I wish you could know how much I deleted from this post. Shows you what you get when you ask me about drag, I guess.
(I guess you're more or less right about the misogyny, although I think that's generally pretty subtexted. I don't know if people would believe that that's why they are laughing, but it's definitely part of what's going on. Which is why there are tons of movies about men dressing as women and relatively few about women dressing as men: we're uncomfortable with that power switch.)

3. What new behaviors does spring awaken in you?
Well, I usually get motivated to take better care of myself (exercise, eat lots of fruits and veggies, etc.) It also makes me want to go shopping.

4. If Anna were an animal, what do you think she would be and why?
I think she would maybe be a koala bear. I have this sneaking suspicion that we've actually had this conversation before and I'm not remembering what we said, but oh well :-) Anyway, I think she's super cute and would have a great time just wandering around in the trees all day.

5. What was your worst job?
Tough one. My first paper route was pretty hellish: I walked like three miles a day for it laden down with my paper bag, plus I had to spend hours every month trying to collect from people who weren't home, all for very little money. I spent a lot of time calculating exactly how much I made for every paper I threw (something like 50 cents, if I recall correctly). Yeah, that was probably my worst one. Thanks god it was first and is long over!

like goodness under your feet

A great weekend, full of thrift stores and mole enchiladas (which I must get a recipe for!) and more bike riding and beers at Cunneen's, is over. Unfortunately, I can't sleep AT ALL. Which is, incidentally, one of the worst feelings that I have regularly. Grrrr.

stella marie, you're my star

I went on my first bike of the year this morning. The statistics: left at 7:05, returned at 8:40; temperature maybe around 50?; rode from the 6400 block to approximately the 1800 block, or about 2/3 of the way to downtown; estimated mileage 10 miles. I rode down the lakefront trail, which is this lovely paved off-the-road trail that runs from about a mile from my house to the southside, about 16 (?) miles long total. One of my major realizations this morning was that this trail, which runs between the lake and Lake Shore Drive (LSD, hahaha. You always see Craigslist missed connections about "seeing the hottie in the red car on LSD this morning" and I am always confused for a second.), is that at 7:30 LSD is absolutely filled with honking smelly cars and you're generally a lot closer to that than to the lake. Still pretty nice, though. The sun was behind clouds as I headed south, and the lake was this pale blue with yellowy clouds above it, and then the sun emerged shortly after I turned around and shone on my back the whole way home, which felt really nice. I saw a bunch of geese picking grass out of a golf course lawn, a man fishing, and a totem pole carved by a man from British Columbia. The only downside is that my ass hurts like you wouldn't believe, and I'll probably be wicked sore later today. But hooray for bikes!

a tiny bitchfest

It's 8:12, and I should really be studying for my midterm at 10. But, this test and this class encompasses many things that I've grown to truly hate about formal education, so I feel a need to take a break and talk about it a little bit. I'm taking this class in orchestral bowing, which has had a few interesting insights but for the most part has consisted of analyzing to death things that any decent orchestral player does instinctively (Thing I Hate #1: analyzing things that I feel don't need to be analyzed). I know this is for the benefit of the non-string players in the class (mostly conducting and music ed majors), but I dislike being used as a guinea pig to demonstrate bowings that I know before we even try them will sound stupid (consider that Thing I Hate #2). But anyway, our tests always consist of his handing us an exact copy of the test the week before it's going to happen, usually a sheet basically direstly out of the book that he wrote for the class, which we fill out, memorize, and regurgitate back at the next class. That's definitely Thing I Hate #3: Vomit Education. It's pointless, annoying, and time consuming, and really I'd rather be learning something useful, thanks. Grrr.
Anyway, back to memorizing the ideal speed for sautille bowing, at least according to my teacher.