best week ever

Music: The Sea and the Cake: Oui EVERYDAY IS LIKE SUNDAY

There was a Homeowner's Association Meeting at the Old Town Condominium Complex Clubhouse at 3:00 p.m. It lasted for almost two hours. I was the youngest person in the room. I've never seen more old people in one place, except at small evangelical churches and at buffet style restaurants. The "board," arrayed behind folding tables in the "front" of the room consisted of a middle-aged man with a lisp, a no-nonsense woman in a suit who was, apparently, "phase 1" representative, a woman in her late thirties with a blue turtle neck sweater (circa 1988), and a short fat man with glasses and cowboy boots with that glaze of stupidity in his eyes. The short fat man, obviously an ex-military type, was the HOA president and brought the meeting to order with a gavel, which he WHACK WHACK WHACK whacked three times so loudly there was an audible gasp from a blue hair and it sounded like gunshots. There was not a quorum, so they "opened the floor" for "discussion," which turned into a glorified bitch session punctuated by the punitive WHACK WHACK WHACK of Der Fuhrer. We broached such important topics as: dog poop and those naughty folks, none of whom were at the meeting, who refused to scoop it; the surprise (for me, at least) $500 insurance bill that will be issued in January; the reason there is no access to the pool restrooms (brown-skinned teens from the "other" complex, of course); and, gee, since its Christmas wouldn't it be nice to have a Jacuzzi for Phase I residents. We kept coming back to the dogs. Said an older African American woman, in her sixties: "look y'all, I never come to these meetings because I like to keep to myself, but more importantly, because there are more things to talk about than dog shit. I left church to come here, can't we talk about something else but dog shit? I mean, me and snauzer, I take care of his business. There's no reason to spend this meeting talking about his business." Another older lady, very thin, balding, stood up to tell us about her roach issues; someone butted in about the raise the HOA was giving to the management company. "If you want to really understand how much Carol Wolf Management does, you should run for the board." "I don't want to run for the board," responded another middle-aged woman (the same woman who wants an exercise room for Phase I residents), "I just want information, and that's why I'm here. Can you tell me what Carol does, because I'm not sure . . . ." Run for the board, they say (everything the board said was either punitive WHACK WHACK WHACK or "run for the board for the answer to your question"). To which someone responded that they have children, and their toddler was tracking in dog shit, which is a legitimate health concern, so let's get back to the dog shit issue. Did I say WHACK WHACK WHACK this lasted for two hours? I would have left, but I felt like I was in the best sitcom ever!

MONDAY, MONDAY

Booked a flight to see Betty in Minneapolis; I leave a week from today, will be back the following Monday, have meetings on Tuesday, then off to Baton Rouge on Wednesday, then Atlanta, then Baton Rouge, then a week and class starts.

But I'm ahead of myself and should be chronicling the behind: Writing, writing, writing. Editing. Finis! Tracy and I finished up our article on the haunting of music in performance. Here's a sample:

In this essay we have argued that, owing to its slippery in-betweeness, music in/as performance is an agent that can "haunt," and we have suggested that performance as such aspires to this condition. We have also suggested that music might be used to negotiate the haunting of difference and the racialized Other. We attempted to illustrate these suggestions with a discussion of Tracy's adaptation of The Secret Life of Bees for the stage. Thinking about the performance as an unending, memorial event—that is, in terms of its many iterations on the stage, on the page, and in the memories of performance audiences and readers—we were led to the conclusion that the music does haunt us, if only in terms of failure. Indeed, failure is a condition of haunting and uncertainty is its ethics. We are increasingly persuaded that letting race continue to haunt as an un-transcendable limit is the route recommended by the false promise of reconciliation often present in popular music. There is no reconciliation, but we try (and should try!) anyway; insofar as music is made, the failure to be made whole—to transcend race or sex—is the starting point that is never realized, to which we can never truly return.

Despite the admittedly frustrating conclusion that we have no conclusion, we can nevertheless identify two important insights: first, as Tracy's use of the music of Motown suggests, music is an agent of its own, even when it fails to perform they way one had hoped it would perform. Music will outwit us, even when we believe we are "in control." Second, and perhaps more importantly, performance aspires to the hauntology of music. We opened this essay with a discussion of Sam Cooke's song "A Change is Gonna Come," which Cooke said "feels like death" to him. We noted that "death" was both a recognition of failure (that the change is not going to come) as well as the hope that this failure could be overcome. Analogously, we advanced a discussion of Tracy's adaptation of The Secret Life of Bees as if it were a song: it is both a moving story that promises transcendence at the same time as it announces its impossibility. In retrospect, then, as with music, the point of the performance was/is not to reconcile Self with maternity or race or even an original violence. The point is to mark out the possibility of joy in the truth of failure. Recognizing or reckoning with the slavery and genocide repressed by Whiteness does not make slavery and genocide go away. The dead should be allowed to haunt, and we should welcome them.

In (false) closing, we would encourage more writing and thinking about and performing with music. As performance studies scholars and practitioners, we have something useful and unique to say about music in/and performance. From our perspective, when we stop looking at music as an object of our study and consider it as an agent in itself, divorced from this or that "persona," new questions begin to emerge. Moreover, by noting that performance aspires to the hauntology of music, we mean to specify music or musicking as the way we approach performance, perhaps even as a term for a new "paradigm" that places hauntology at its center. Musicking is the ghostly center of performance studies, and race and sex are its objects.

TUESDAY'S CHILD

It was movie day in class as we wrapped up a discussion of Hakim Bey's "temporary autonomous zone." I showed clips from Better Living Through Circuitry, a documentary on rave subculture. I tried to have a class discussion, but the students were obviously worn out and ready for a parental recharge.

That night, I started another letter to let the love out; I keep as many secrets as I make. Yes, I still think about you a lot. All the time, actually. And the other You, I think about you too.

WEDNESDAY MORNING, 3 A.M.

I spent the morning trying to decide if Patti Scialfa's newest album, 23rd Street Lullaby was worth the price. I decided it was not. I decided it was too adult contemporary for me, though there are a few tracks that really are good (e.g., "Love (Stand up)"). I decided that Bonnie Raitt still has more heart in her music, even after she made the adult contemporary turn (though, you have to admit: "I Can't Make You Love Me" is a real tear-jerker). Bonnie Raitt is coming to town, and I want tickets. It will be impossible to get tickets. Ministry/Revolting Cocks is coming to town. My dog Roger II said we can get tickets to the latter, no problem.

I cleaned the condo. I read an essay (it wasn't very good). I cooked lunch: an omelet with vegetarian sausage (I live that Morning Star fake sausage; so good). I took a shower. I picked up my allergy meds from Target.

I spent some time talking to my neighbor, M____, whom I love. She was born in 1950, came of age in the 60s, and really, really lived. She said there was a time when it was unfashionable not to have been in an orgy. She married a gay man for residency in a foreign country, and so that he could have it here, and he's an image consultant (the man behind The Human League, she said, and some group called Visage, whom I don't remember). She finished her year-long medication for an illness, and alerted me she can drink again. We're going to get our drink on together, when her husband is back in town (he's working to build up some cash, but is coming home permanently soon), early in the New Year and eat Turducken. Mmm. Turducken.

I didn't get any writing done. Or rather, I blogged.

SNOWDAY!

How does that Garbage song go, I'm only happy when it rains? I agree, I'm only happy when it's complicated, but I'd change the opening chorus to, I'm only happy when it's cold! Hurrah! Last week we suffered more 80 degree days, but for the last three, its been in the 20s and 30s! Freezing rain and drizzled made hell of the roads (there are TONS of elevated highways here, and so . . . ). But the idiots at the university cancelled class, but I didn't know, cause me and Rog were dropping off Blackie (my car) at the dealership for a tune-up and when we got to campus it was a ghost town . . . . Message to students:

Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 10:00:40 -0600 (CST) From: slewfoot@mail.utexas.edu To: slewfoot@mail.utexas.edu Subject: [2005_fall_06430_CMS_367] Snow Day!!!!

Dudes and Dudettes,

DJ Joshie Juice here with some directives and what not, hailing from CMA, where it seems like there is a zombie plague 'cause me and Roger are the only cats here . . . (you know, like the beginning of that film, _28 Days Later_).

Okie, so, today's lecture was going to a bang-up funfest about music and value. Because yours truly needs to build a "teaching record" to get tenure (and to make a case for teaching this class as a permanent course) we also were gonna do course evals. Alas! Finally, your last quiz was supposed to be today. We are deprived of all of these wonderful opportunies.

University policy is that our class will be rescheduled for next Tuesday. Now, I realize the last thing y'all wanna do in finals week is come to another lecture. So, I am gonna make you a deal: I will not lecture if you come to class to take your final quiz and do course evals. What I will do is write up my lecture this weekend as an email message, and send it to ya. That way, you can read lecture while you're soaking in a hot bubble bath as the 23 degree winds kill all the plants outside.

So, stay tuned. Unless you hear otherwise, I'm supposing class is the same time and place on Tuesday.

Finally, your group ethnographies are due on Wednesday, at my office in CMA 7.126. If you can get your paper in on Tuesday, you'll get a gold star ;-)

Enjoy your holiday, and if you must drive, PLEASE DRIVE SAFELY. Me and Rog saw, I kid y'all not, over 10 accidents on the way to school. Driving tip: pump your brakes when you are trying to stop (something I learned living in Minnesota).

Yours,

Josh

THE EVE OF DESTRUCTION

Well, I'm at the screen now, obviously. I'm listening to each CD I am inserting into my computer, converting it to my i-Tunes library in mp3 format. Right now it The Sea and the Cake, and we're about to move to Sasha and John Digweed. I've been doing this for the whole semester. I have over 4,000 CDs, so obviously, it's taking some time. But I suspect by the end of January, I'll have them all in my computer. I have a home wifi network, so the idea is basically to turn this machine into a glorified jukebox. It's very cool, I must admit.

Today: lunch at the Campus Club, meeting with prospective student. I'm astonished that so many applicants to our graduate program make it a point to visit and love it up with professors . . . I don't think applications are due until February. I will also admit that putting names to faces probably does make a difference (so if you are one of my peeps applying here or elsewhere for graduate school, try to visit your top choice before the application deadline; and get good GREs, even if you have to take one of those cheating on the GRE classes).

Back to Target. I love Target.

Tonight: dinner with our commencement speaker this year, a former graduate of our program. One thing that is very different about the University of Texas, compared to my stints at the University of Minnesota and Louisiana State University, is that I participate in a lot of wining and dining. This semester, I've been to SIX fancy restaurants on the college's dime; I'm seriously going on a diet January 2, if only to balance the wining and dining that's coming next semester. I mean, I absolutely love the $30 swordfish fillets with fancy mashed potatoes, but one's body cannot sustain that sort of dining with a broken ankle . . . .

Andrew's synthpop band Iris is playing at Club Elysium tonight. He says this is very, very rare. They're gearing up to go on tour with De/Vision in Europe. I love Iris. Tonight is going to be a real (and rare) treat. If you're from Austin, please come to the show tonight. I regret I have yet to meet any "clubbing friends" here, and it's kinda bummin' me out. I mean, Andrew will be behind a keyboard and probably mobbed with fans, so, I'll be standing alone for the show. So come out and tap me on the shoulder and introduce yourself.

10:15 SATURDAY NIGHT

Dunno yet.