Remember kids:
(From the instructions on a car/electronics vacuum I bought.)
I ordered cookies from a trans Girl Scout. Apparently the organization has been supporting trans girls and nonbinary kids for years now. It’s great to see this list and be able to support them as well as give a message of encouragement, while keeping them safe from harassment.
I’ve now recorded songs 5 days in a row. This feels pretty great after my dry spell. Arranged Coincidences was released on December 1, and then I went 58 days before my next recording. That technical study, the holidays and travel, illness, the allergic reaction to Trump, etc. meant music wasn’t happening. But I’m back. Or rather, as one of the song titles says, “still here.”
Album’s at 48 minutes now. I want to add one or two more tracks. My Make Noise Multimod just showed up, and we’ll see what kind of shenanigans that will drive this evening (haven’t played with it except to turn it on, but the LEDs sure are pretty). Silhouette has definitely led to some inspirations — it’s been in every track since it arrived. I’ve been using it to combine signals, drive motion and rhythm, add dirt and space, and play with feedback.
Things are generally more chaotic on this album (which I think fits with the times). In addition to Silhouette naturally leading to that, I’ve adopted its attitude with other sounds and modulation sources as well. In some ways this is a continuation of what I was doing with Tin Birds, but more so. There’s nothing Berlin School about this one. The opening sounds of the first track sound like a simple sequence, but it’s actually a sample of a 1950s sci-fi spaceship sound resynthesized in Dawesome Myth, with scan speed changes as well as the sample’s contents combining into a spontaneous melody. There are multiple layers of sound — dripping, small animalistic sounds, something bumping clumsily into other objects in the sub-bass range, all before I even bring in additional voices which just blend in with it.
I just want to say again, a lot of this happens spontaneously as I’m patching. My subconscious is doing some work, but it’s overall kind of a psuedo-Taoist “let things take care of themselves” approach. I don’t overthink it until afterward. 🙂
One of the songs is named “The Beginning is Always the Hardest,” which comes from a fortune cookie that started with “Be patient” or “Don’t lose hope” or something like that, which very much applied to the current US administration. For no particular reason, I recalled that in the I Ching there’s a hexagram named “Difficulty at the Beginning” (it’s not like I have all of them memorized…) One might think this name would place it first on the album, but I felt there was one that should be before it. And then the plan changed again, when I recorded the Myth-based one mentioned above, which demanded to be first regardless of name themes or the story of how these came about. So now “Beginning” is the third track. As it turns out, “Difficulty at the Beginning” is Hexagram 3.
Some incense from India and elsewhere is made with cow dung, or uses artificial scents. Dung has been burned as fuel by people for centuries, it’s not particularly weird. But this is unsuitable in my religion, which uses incense (A) to purify the air and (B) as an offering. One doesn’t clean things with poop, nor give poop as a gift.
So, most of us turn to Japanese traditional incense — no dung, mostly natural ingredients, less smoke. Nippon Kodo is one of the best known brands, especially their Morningstar line which is cheap, relatively common worldwide, and still quite good quality. (Their “musk” does use artificial synthesized fragrance but isn’t something I would have chosen anyway.) They also have excellent mid-range incense and pricier luxury stuff as well.
The one that always went over the best in my shrine was this:
It’s lovely and more sharp and spicy than a lot of sandalwood incense tends to be. I have been using it sparingly but finally burned the last stick. I didn’t even know it was discontinued — I can’t even find information on it (at least, not in this packging). There is, confusingly, a store named Tendan which sells Nippon Kodo incense, but not this.
However, I’ve been able to find this package at several places, just not directly from the NK shop:
“Tendan Old Temple Meiko Spicy Sandalwood Incense” — Mysore sandalwood with cinnamon, spikenard and benzoin. That sounds like it could be it! These are boxes of 300 sticks for $29, not bad at all. So even though I have literally thousands of Japanese incense sticks from wanting to try all different kinds, I’m placing an order. Unfortunately the shop I’m buying it from only has ONE box left. There are 300 sticks, but if this turns out to be The One, I might have to find another one elsewhere.
Because the shipping isn’t cheap and I might as well make the most of it, I’m also grabbing some Baeido Kobunboku incense, which is another sandalwood blend that comes highly recommended, as well as a hinoki-mint blend.
I read Imogen Binnie’s novel Nevada in two days. This is “a road trip novel that refuses to go anywhere” and tells the story of a trans woman who’s a loser, going on a road trip either to figure her shit out or to escape it, and meets a guy who’s even more of a loser who she thinks is an “egg” (trans person who hasn’t realized it yet). She tries to talk to him about it. The whole think is awkward, messy, I don’t really want to say “gritty” but kind of like that. And relatable, even though I’m not a stoner, never lived in New York or a horrible little cowtown, am nonbinary rather than a trans woman, and only figured it out later in life.
James, like me, encountered the idea of “autogynephilia” online and kind of went “that’s me” — even though it wasn’t quite! I think that may have been a common pitfall for people who weren’t quite cisgender but also didn’t experience dysphoria, early in this century. As Maria pointed out to him, “autogynephilia” was part of an awful narrative about trans women which (intentionally? ignorantly? both?) confused gender, sexuality, and fetishism.
The book leaves a lot unresolved. Does James actually take anything Maria says to heart? Is James actually trans or was Maria off base?
And so when I put the book down, I had to have a good think. Again: am I really nonbinary? Or a trans woman in denial/fear of transition (the process, the stigma, not getting the results I want, etc.)? I went to shrine contemplating this, figuring I’d be writing several pen-and-paper journal pages but I had my answer before I even started writing — the same answer I got in shrine 13 years ago. My gender is “a thing of borders”, I was made that way on purpose, and I am whole and complete. But also some of the way I have been thinking of it has been an oversimplification and I owe myself a bit more contemplation at some point.