Why his(her)tory is so important to women

this photo from the Huntington Library web site is not credited; click on it to go to their site

 

I’m not referring to the herstory they taught us in middle school, or high school, or even in college in most cases. I’m talking about the herstory in useful and truthful biographies and autobiographies, the history in stories passed down from generation to generation. When those herstories are not recorded or passed, we are doomed to keep repeating the same life and world scenarios – life loops that repeat endlessly. And we, the naive and ignorant actors, destined to repeat the lives of our mothers and our mothers’ mothers and our mothers’ mothers’ mothers . . . .for better or for worse.

We are also  doomed to live in isolation, thinking ourselves unique, and alone, thinking that we are the only ones experiencing our personal struggles, terrors,  joys – and epiphanic moments.

Yesterday I attended a meeting of The Women Studies Program at The Huntington Library (& museum and garden) in Pasadena. This is a wonderful gathering of women academics and the public that I have attended for more than fifteen years. In a cavernous conference room, I have learned a great deal of the history of women that was kept from me in school – where we were primarily played the infinite loop of the history of men in politics and war. As recently as 2005, my niece’s high school U.S. History book credited President Woodrow Wilson with having obtained the vote for women – a favor to them for having worked so hard while their men were off to World War I. I kid you not: the women’s suffrage movement was given no credit, and Susan B. Anthony was given one sentence in the book – for having worked with the women’s suffrage movement. The truth of women’s struggles for the vote came to me only through my eventual involvement with the League of Women Voters, the reading of various books, written by women, about the suffrage movement, and through my attendance at various Women Studies Program events. At those events, I have learned about women of multiple ethnicities and cultures, women in unions, women writers, mothers, women and marriage, women and rights, women in politics, women and religion, women and the law.

Yesterday one of the guest speakers was a woman currently studying the subject of women in music. Specifically contemporary women who play brass instruments, “like the trombone, the trumpet and the saxophone,” she said. I will dispense, for now, with the fact that the saxophone is not a brass instrument, but a woodwind, for that will come to play later in my recounting of this story.

This woman is making a film “to celebrate” contemporary women jazz players of “brass” instruments. Bless her heart for this.

But it is time for a history lesson here. And to share the epiphany I had as I listened to her speak, and watched the video clip she brought with her of six or seven youg women playing some standard jazz tunes like Killer Joe. At the start of her talk, she asked the audience to name three women players, one each of the saxophone, the trumpet, and the trombone. The audience could not. One implicit implication here was that we are just not paying attention to women jazz players, not celebrating them like we do the men; but one of the places I am going with this blog essay of mine is to focus on the fact of the dirth of women musicians, even today, and to shift our focus.

I raised my hand when this woman took questions and answers. It is the first time I have ever done that in all the years that I have attended the Women Studies Program in Pasadena. I had not planned out what I would say, but was compelled to speak after her presentation.

This is what I said:

“My sister, Tucki Bailey, is a jazz saxophonist. (round of applause – some, including the speaker, had apparently heard of her) She just turned sixty. At fifty, she said to me, ‘Terry, I never ever imagined that I would reach this age, look behind, and discover so very few women had followed me.’

I am a guitarist. I play jazz. I am very very tired of playing only with men. (more applause) While I understand and support that we need to celebrate women musicians, I feel it way more important that we convince parents to encourage their daughters to play the saxophone and the guitar. That we ask why this is not happening.”

When the session let out, many women came to speak to me. Just to thank me for my words. For speaking up. That surprised me and gave me pause.

It made me think about what had compelled me to jump up and say my piece at this meeting. And I realized that there is an element of righteous anger in me about the infinite loop of women’s exclusion from music that this meeting, that this woman presenter and aspiring filmmaker spoke to. This woman believes that she is “discovering” women “brass” jazz musicians, celebrating them, and sharing them with the world.

What she does not realize is how many times this has been done before . . . .

to be continued


Working at Peets

I’ll post a photo from my camera when I get back to my studio. Beautiful afternoon today sitting on the patio of Peet’s in Pasadena, drinking an ice late (yes, it was warm enough!) and working on my application to the MacDowell Colony.

The last weeks I have been dealing with the technological issues of converting my web-based prototype of Amy Beach and Me to this new iBook format. It is great, as I have said before, but kind of primitive. It is fascinating to me how putting my book in a new format is making the book itself change and evolve. I have to write more text for it, the movies have a different flavor when I can only house two per page, rather than having buttons to call up the movie you want to see on the same page (as I am able to do in the web version). It’s funny, though, because it looks more like a “book” in the iBook format. That ought to please more traditional readers!

Some day new media artists and writers will not have to go through all the time consuming techie work in order to create, too. I envy future generations that. Keep reading »


Converting Amy Beach and Me to iBook

Screen capture of my Mac showing iBook interface with Amy Beach and Me as I work on it

 

This will be an interesting process – converting my Amy Beach and Me to iBook format – both from a literary standpoint and from a technical standpoint. And I will share some of that process here over the weeks ahead.

iBook Author is brand new from Apple. It allows new media authors to create their books in this interactive multimedia format. It is similar to Adobe InDesign in that one can create template pages for different sections of a book, then assign the content to those different templates. For example, a table of contents template, a chapter template a glossary template, etc.

Because the software is new, it is exciting, and frustrating, to use. I feel on the cutting edge working with it. Which is exciting, except not as exciting as it might be for some since I have been working on the cutting edge for twenty years, and must admit that familiarity can be comforting sometimes instead of all new. There are features missing; I’m certain this software will grow and evolve over time and use. Most frustrating is the difficulty “getting under the hood.” While to authors who only write and are completely new to interactive coding and design, this is probably a relief; but to those of us accustomed to working with interactive, the fact that one can, for example,  hyperlink text but not images is a huge gap.

While I will talk  about software and the technology of this more in the future, what is of even greater interest to me is how the iBook Authoring system and platform is impacting my interactive writing itself. Keep reading »


Moving Forward with Amy Beach and Me – News

My first iBook Cover for Amy Beach and Me

My first iBook cover for Amy Beach and Me - will update it later

 

I am even more excited about my plans for Amy Beach and Me now. Innovations in the world of tech are going to allow me to finish this interactive book and begin publishing it commercially. This is very exciting to me. Apple announced their new iBooks store and authoring software last week. I am already on it! I am porting my book to the iBooks format as we speak. When I am finished with this port, I will be able to offer Amy Beach and Me for sale in the iBooks store in interactive multimedia format. I am also going to publish a hard copy print version of it. Finally the commercial world catches up to the interactive writing I began on this book four years ago!

Well, this is not exactly true. I will have to make compromises in order to publish now. The iBook format is constructed with HTML 5 and Javascript and uses a proprietary template formatting system. I will not have all the creative options that I had when I first wrote the book in its web-based format, using Adobe Flash for animations, music and interactivity. Appple’s format also restricts my ability to re-imagine books themselves as much as I was doing originally. Keep reading »


More about Amy Beach and Nannerl Mozart

Maria Anna Mozart (Lorenzoni)

Yesterday I saw the 2010 French film about Maria Anna Mozart (nicknamed Nannerl), the sister of composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The film is just doing the rounds in the United States.

Although the movie description online begins, “A speculative (my emphasis) account of Maria Anna “Nannerl” Mozart. . . .” The movie certainly does nothing to inform the viewer that this movie is a work of fiction. As a matter of fact, the movie trailer runs its very first title as: “The True Story of Mozart’s Sister.”

How do the myths we create from history impact our human evolution, I wonder? When is it justified? Ever? There are current nonfiction writers who have been blasphemed for fictionalizing parts of books they proceed to call memoir or nonfiction. Yet, some say of these accounts, that the authors get at the “real” truth through their fictions, so it is okay.

One concern I have is in the fact that many, actually probably most, moviegoers leave this movie about Nannerl believing that they have learned the truth of her life. But, that was a concern of mine, coincidentally, also when the movie of Nannerl’s famous brother, Amadeus, was released in 1984. That movie, too, was a fiction, but how many who saw it (or the play on which it was based) realized that, for instance, there was no such rivalry between Amadeus Mozart and his contemporary composer, Salieri, as portrayed in the film? The account was fictionalized in order to create dramatic tension and story.

I knew about the Amadeus fiction at the time of the movie’s making because I was just two years out of film school and managing the film studio that created it. Keep reading »


Nannerl Mozart movie a fiction – even though they advertise not

Amy Beach and Me has a chapter devoted to child prodigies, and talks about Nannerl Mozart – who was speculated to have been one (like her famous brother Wolfgang Amadeus). A movie was released here in the Los Angeles area last week (actually released in France in 2010) purportedly about the tragic life of Nannerl and her neglected musical gift.

I have not seen the movie yet, but in the preview, which I did watch, the film marketing narration announces: The TRUE story of Nannerl Mozart. Problem is there is not a true story. The reason there have been only a couple of novels written about the woman – no biographies – to date is because there is scant information about her. Keep reading »


I made a bar code for Amy Beach and Me!

Don’t know how to bring the full animation file into my blog  yet, so I will just have to link to it. But here is a link to an animated explanation of the image above: LINK


Amy Beach and Me was in its first art show

Amy Beach and Me in Digital Eclectic exhibit May 8-June 18, 2011

My prototype / work in progress version of my interactive multimedia biography/memoir, Amy Beach and Me, was exhibited as part of the Digital Eclectic art exhibit at the Art Institute of California – Hollywood. The interactive exhibit was reviewed by NoHo News. Click here for the link to that review. Here you  get a glimpse of some of the show and in the background, a bit of my digital painting, Digital Olympia, too.


Research Research

for the past months I have been conducting research for my Amy Beach and Me book. Now I will get back to the process of writing and journaling about the writing. The writing, of course, is also making art, creating animations, making links to other information, recording audio, learning her music, etc.

I am also starting to apply for grants. I must go to the University of New Hampshire, where Beach’s papers are stored, to get my own look at them. I am very excited about the prospect of this. Research always involves reading the interpretations of other people about what Beach said, or wrote, or what was said about her. As my research and writing has uncovered  discrepancies and just plain wrong facts stated in books and reviews about this woman, it has become even more important for me to look at her diaries myself. Also, others who have written about her were writing in earlier times, and not from my 2011 feminist perspective. I look forward to interpreting her words myself.

Mostly I long to write Amy Beach and Me and my riffingonbook.com literary blog full-time. Some day. . . .


Studio back together – ready to start creating again!

One of the down sides of working with art and technology is that technology has to be tended to a lot, and it is not all that fun. There are days when I just want to create my Amy Beach book, compose music, make some digital art or a new media piece for my riffingonbooks.com literary blog, but I can’t create because I have to tend to technology.

I am always grateful that I can take care of my own technology – that our digital world has evolved to the point that I can create independently in a technological world – but the technology itself is still an inhibiting feature of creativity. And I do have concern that current software and hardware creators are not keeping their eye on the goal of making technology easier over time, not more difficult.

That sometimes feels like the Lost Goal lately.

Let me give an example. I recently purchased a new computer. Way more powerful, lots of great features, but, as with every computer up-grade, there was a great deal of time consuming technical work involved before I could get back to creating. I had to transfer all my software, connect all my hardware peripherals, deal with items that were incompatible with the new system, on an on.

I discovered last week that my sound hardware was not talking to my music/sound software. I wasted a whole precious creative day in an attempt to fix this problem. I was not able to.

Idea for software and hardware developers: when you create software that allows the user to write code, you always put those little windows that allow us to troubleshoot all our lines of code. You highlight the bad code in red, you sometimes even give us suggestions about where we went wrong and what we might try to correct the problem. How about doing the same for users of hardware and software?

My sound problem was not a really complex one (tech problems seldom are!) I had set up my audio capture interface device to be recognized by my hardware and software, but I had forgotten to make the actual software connections to it. Imagine if the software developer had simply written a check into the set-up process that gave me a specific error message: “Terry, you forgot to set-up your VST connections” (I like the idea of personalizing those error messages, too, for it softens the blow to our ego that we made a mistake in the first place!) and then gave me step by step instructions on how to do make the connections, or told me what page in the manual to look at?

But, no. There I was alone in my studio the first week-end, in a pretty bad mood, aimlessly wandering through my system wondering why there was no sound. Reading manuals, checking cables, plugging things in and out in different orders, changing system settings. Ayeeeeee. And growing more and more frustrated – both that I could not get the hardware to work and that I was wasting precious creation hours.

The following week, I broke out the manual again, and figured out my problem in less than an hour. But, still, it was an hour that I could have been creating – if only that little error message and corrective advice had been built in.

Lessons I learned:

1. Don’t attempt to troubleshoot if you have just lost a loved one, suffered a heartbreak, or experienced some great disappointment. I was in one of those states last week, and found that I went in circles for a wasted 6 hours one day, never solving my problem. Yesterday morning, a week later, in a much better frame of mine, I figured it out in less than an hour.

2. Take some time between tech work and creative work. When I am in the studio, I can sometimes actually feel the tug in my brain as I shift from one side of it, used to set up my hardware and software, mics, etc., and move to the creative side of it to write, animate, sing, play my guitar, compose, etc. I now force myself to put some space-time in-between those two acts.

3. If hardware and software developers consulted more often with creators and designers, technology could be made more user friendly and we could evolve a world where creators could devote more of their time to creating and less to technology. That was the dream of early adopter designers when Steve Jobs burst on the scene with his easy to use Apple Mac. “User Friendly” was the motto, and his theme was all about computers for everyone. That was the point of his user interface, too, take it away from the geeks, make it an Everyman (and Woman, please) Machine.

I do have concern that some of those ideals are being lost of late. Jobs keeps talking to the geeks, and about how they are so special (e.g. iPhone app developers). He has made derogatory remarks about people who are not smart enough to develop (read: “program/code in C++) and how his app world is not for them anyway. Well, I for one hope he and his staff come back to their senses and remember that the Dream was computing for everyone. Adobe’s Flash was an example of this new battle between computing for everyone and for only the programming elite.

My Amy Beach book is filled with Flash. Flash is a great tool for a designer to create interactive content with a minimum of programming learning headaches. But Apple has banned Flash from the iPhone and iPad, making it necessary for designers to learn more sophisticated programming languages, or hire professional programmers, if they want to make animated and interactive content apps. And using the WEB coding tools available outside of Flash (read:html 5), the designer is quite limited. I won’t go into great detail about this. If you would like to know more, visit posts on my riffingonbooks.com literary blog, where I tend to talk about this technology issue often.

Well, at least I have it all working again now. I can get back to the work of creating. And I will just make myself think of the technology time as my mixing paint before painting in oils time, and my cleaning brushes after painting in oils time (even though these were chores I happily relinquished for more actual painting – read: “creative time” – when I moved from painting in oils to digital painting years ago!)


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