ponderances

Here's what I've been thinking about today: Does the lesbian community perpetuate our own stereotypes in terms of appearance? I go to queer events, and a lot (not all, but a lot) of women there are people who, if I saw them on the street, I'd think "Oh, a dyke." I wonder if that's what we've currently been acculturated to think is sexy, and so everybody keeps striving to look somewhat similar. Or maybe it's just a good way of identifying yourself without having to say anything. I remember when I was a lot younger (early high school perhaps) I thought it would be really sucky to be gay because it would be so hard to meet people, because how could you tell? And wouldn't it be embarrassing and even potentially dangerous to ask someone out and find out they were straight? But if you can look at someone and pretty much tell (or think you can, anyway) that makes things a lot easier. It makes us a visible community.
Also, what does actually androgeny look like? I have a hard time picturing a truly androgenous person. I've been realizing more and more this past year or so that we're all really a lot more alike than we probably think. I mistake people for the opposite sex all the freaking time. I am tempted to say an androgenous person would be unidentifiable as male or female, but given my aforementioned inability to tell, that seems a little shaky. Is androgeny as an idea just something that we mostly use as a blank catagory, a neither/nor type of thing? Would it be more accurate to think about how we all have "male" and "female" traits and leave it at that?
In other news, Anna finished her bisexuality zine. If you're interested, send me a message or email :-)

you're so tragedy

Today is the high point (or low point, depending on whether you're counting hours spent or mental health), in my mind anyway, of all this doubling up of orchestra pieces I've been slogging through for the past two weeks or so. This morning, I have a rehearsal at my school from 10-12, Mahler 1 and some Dvorak overtures. Then we will all frantically rush downtown for a 1-4 Civic rehearsal, also Mahler 1 and some Debussy Nocturns. Then it's home for about an hour, and back to school for a concert of the aforementioned pieces.
The fun's going to continue throughout the weekend, but today is the heaviest as far as doubling and bulk of rehearsal. Tomorrow it's just one rehearsal and another concert, and Monday it's a half hour dress rehearsal and a final concert. I'm sure it'll be fine, but it's kind of tiring even just looking at it on my computer. But, after Monday, my life gets so much less busy, or at least busy in a different way. Then I get to start really focusing on my recital instead of focusing on it in the sparse moments between Mahler 1 rehearsals.

peering out from my coffee cup

Somthing about getting up this early sometimes makes me feel kind of introspective. I've been getting up at 5 this quarter still to have coffee with Anna, but most of the time I am so tired that I have to go back to bed when she leaves; I get too tired and my eyes hurt and everything makes me feel like having a nervous breakdown, so I try to remedy that when I get the chance. But last night I got something close to enough sleep, and I have to leave soon myself to cram for a lesson, so here I am.
Lauren posted one of these in her blog, so I'm going to be a copycat :-)

Things I feel good about:
1) I am almost done with Civic, and then I get nearly a month off.
2) The conductor at my school told me the other day that "he liked the way I play the viola, and that was his final decision." I'm not sure if he was being entirely sincere or what exactly that meant, but it was at least encouraging.
3) I checked out a book recently called "Sex and Real Estate: Why We Love Houses" that sounds fascinating.
4) All the people in my new quartet are super awesome and nice, and we all get along really well. And we're playing great music!
5) It's been mostly sunny lately :-)
6) I've been much better about practicing on my own this week, making sure I make the time to actually do that.
7) I will have at least one job next year for sure.
8) I've been oddly freaked out lately by the fact that I'm getting grey hairs, and finally I feel a little less weird about that.
9)I got a letter from Greta recently for the first time in a while.
10) Soon, I won't have to play Mahler 1 again for a long, long time.

Reasonable goals for the semester:
1) Have a decent graduate recital
2) Not get chastised by the Civic conductor again
3) Finish my damn cookbook zine! It's all printed out, I just ran out of energy to gluestick it.
4) See Jesse and Lauren maybe?
5) Not spend too much money either at restaurants or bars
6) But, visit a few more of the places that get good reviews in the weekly Reader
7) Visit Milwaukee, see the state of Wisconsin for the first time
8) Use my Nalgene bottle without letting it sit full for too long and get gross-smelling again
9) Play the whole Brahms quartet that my group is working on
10) Finish at least a few more good books than I have so far

Fantastical goals for the semester
1) See Tegan and Sara after they miraculously decide to re-route to Chicago on their tour
2) Play my whole recital for memory
3) Play even one piece on my recital from memory :-)
4) Write and publish a paper on RuPaul and the gender issues in his music
5) Control my cheese-eating mania
6) Actually talk to any of the drag kings
7) Visit Erica in Argentina
8) Get a mohawk, despite my highly visible and rather formal job
9) Watch Democracy Now! every single day
10) Become a gourmet chef

i'll be watching you

Some of you know I recently updated and actually started using (a little bit, anyway) a myspace account that had been lying dormant for a few years. It still said I was single and living in Tucson, that's how old it was :-) Anyway, so there's a little thingy that says how many times my profile has been looked at; so far, I'm up to 220 in a little more than a month. Now, since I have this blog I don't have one on there, so people probably aren't looking at me repeatedly for something like that. So who are all these people? It's usually gone up at least a few numbers between every time I check it. This train of thought kind of dovetails with my misgivings about the fact that on Friendster you can optionally see who has looked at you as long as they haven't blocked that option out themselves. I am kind of simultaneously fascinated and creeped out that there's just random people looking at what I felt moved to post on the internet. It's such a voyeur/exhibitionist split, these websites. You can show yourself off in a controlled way and see if people (even people you don't know) respond, and you can look up people based on various criterion and read what they chose to put up. The internet is such a fascinating social thing, isn't it? I've been thinking more these last few months about just how much things have changed in even the last few years, and the social and theoretical implications are amazing.
Anyway, my last thought in this train is a much more embarrassing one. Someone recently advised my friend Jesse to put up a "hidden counter" on his blog to see who was looking at it. I, technological imbecile that I am, didn't really know you could do that. I'm a total internet addict, even worse since I moved here, and generally when I use the internet I am wasting or killing time so I check my email and then just check through everybody's blogs to see if anything new has come up. Does that mean a lot of my friends are aware that I look at their blogs at least a few times a day and sometimes much more than that, depending on my access and my level of procrastination? Eep.

flotsam

Did you know the government appears to have a website to teach girls about shaving? I found it last year when I was trying to find pictures for my Crafty Beaver zine, and recently found it in my "Favorites" listings on my computer. Odd. I guess it's good to have information out there, I'm just kind of weirded out by the whole thing in general.

gah

After a bit of thought, I decided not to delete the last post. Hopefully I don't sound as crazy as I felt. I've been trying to think of a good analogy for non-music people as to why I was upset; in terms of inanimate objects, I think pehaps a laptop is the closest analogy in terms of price and personal stuff, but it really was more like I had left a child or a loved one alone to fend for themself. After the bar guy ran after me and gave me my viola back and I realized what I had done, I was actually hugging it because I felt so much that I had abandoned something important.
The last time I did this was in Tucson, when I was a sophomore. I played in the Tucson Symphony's young artist competition and just really fucked it up badly. I played my concerto and had a major memory slip and was just kind of angry about it, and I was supposed to drive to Sedona right after the competition was over so I could have a lesson there the next morning. I was so preoccupied by my total fuckuppedness that I left my viola there, and thank god my friend Devin picked it up for me. As it was I drove most of the way to Phoenix before I figured it out and had to turn around. I don't know that I can explain how horrible that realization is, that something that's supposed to be there just isn't. Ugh... Okay, I'm going to finish my coffee and attempt to move on.

omg

I left my viola in a bar tonight, after watching the L Word. Thank fucking god someone who worked there almost immediately realized I had forgotten it and ran after us and returned it to me. I don't know if I am vastly overreacting right now or whether hyperventilation and a feeling like I'm going to throw up and I hate myself for doing this is in any way justified. I mean, shit. After Anna, that's probably the most fucking important thing in my life right now, and I LEFT IT AT A BAR. And I'm not even drunk. What the hell is wrong with me.
Perhaps I'll delete this tomorrow. I am overreacting, and this is too much information for y'all.