Archive | August 2017

Long Beach Zine Fest

The first Sunday in August, Isabelle, her partner Olivier, and I went to the Long Beach Zine Fest. If you’re not familiar with zines, they’re typically homemade, self-published booklets assembled from folded paper about…absolutely anything you want. Stories, poetry, art, essays, comics, political manifestos… I first encountered the concept in the book Hard Love by Ellen Wittlinger, which I read when I was about thirteen, I think. Since then, I’ve come across zines here and there: my friend Miyuki makes them, I saw them for sale at Boneshaker Books in Minneapolis, Miyuki mailed me some zines (by other people) from her collection when she moved, I saw zines at the LA Times Festival of Books… More recently, I’ve read some of the zines of Yumi Sakugawa.

The zine fest was held in the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach. When we arrived, we had to decide whether we wanted to sign up for one of the two remaining afternoon workshops. The first, First Language Zine (“a writing and artmaking and zinemaking workshop to explore the power of multiple tongues [and] the languages of our families”), sounded pretty cool, though I interpreted it as being about using your heritage language in your zines and I don’t actually have a heritage language (well, I suppose I sort of have written Chinese). The second was a basics of zinemaking workshop, and all three of us decided to sign up.

We took a look at the Luis Tapia exhibit and then headed into the big room where the zinesters were tabling. There was a lot of ground to cover. We wandered the booths together, took a break for lunch under the bougainvillea at the edge of the back parking lot, and then split up for more browsing.

There was a zine that had caught my eye earlier at Oatmeal Press’s booth. It was entitled “Messy Bits: An Essay on Grief & Queer Friendship.” There’d been nobody at the booth at the time, so after lunch I checked back a couple of times until someone was there. It turned out to be Claire Stringer, the author of the zine, so I bought a copy and asked her to sign it for me! It’s a lovely, lyrical, at times melancholy but also hopeful zine.

The next thing I couldn’t resist was a small, folded-but-not-stapled zine entitled “A Handy Guide to the Things Not to Say and the Reasons Not to Say Them.” #2 is “So, why aren’t you dating someone?” and the answer includes “maybe…they just want to adopt 5 cats and eat pizza.” It’s actual good advice in a cute and funny package, and on the last page there are some suggestions for better questions to ask people.

I arrived at the table of Christina Tran, the zinester who was running (perhaps at that very moment, since she wasn’t at her booth) the First Language Zine workshop. This table had an interactive activity: there were two box-envelopes of cards, one labeled Leave a Note and the other labeled Take a Note. There was also a small zine called “Dear Daughter: A Zine Fest Letter Exchange” that was a compilation of notes from a previous zine fest. I leafed through the compilation and decided to get it. Then I wrote my own note, which the person at Christina’s table photographed before I slipped it into the Take a Note box. I took a note from the middle of the stack for myself. Like all the cards, it was printed with Dear Daughter, and inside the printed speech bubble someone had written, “This, too, shall pass. ♥” I’ll take it. Later, Isabelle and I both read the whole collection of previous Dear Daughter notes, and we agreed the best one was a very long one that began, “For you there will be:” and included “hidden passages in small town libraries,” the loyalty of bookstore cats,” “bridges of words over snow-covered hills,” “enemies redeemed as friends,” and “forever friendships,” among other delightful things.

Isabelle and Olivier had gone to explore the rest of the museum, and I walked through the galleries too. I was happy to see a couple of works by Wifredo Lam, a Cuban artist whose artwork I had first encountered at an exhibit about him and Aimé Césaire in Paris in 2011.

Around 3 o’clock, we went into the art classroom where the workshop was. It was led by Aima Rosa of frijolerx press. We sat at round tables covered in brown paper, and there were markers, pens, and pencils scattered around. Aima Rosa gave a little introduction to zinemaking and answered a few questions. Then she taught us how to make a very simple zine by folding a sheet of paper in half three times and making a single cut. The result is a booklet with eight pages, including the front and back covers. She invited us to make a zine on the theme of self-love. She said there’s plenty of stuff in the world that makes people, especially marginalized people, feel bad about themselves so it’s important to remember to love yourself and think about what you love about yourself.

I decided to give it a try, though I spent a while figuring out what approach to take and then struggled to come up with things to put into my zine. Turns out it’s actually kind of difficult to come up with nice things to say about yourself, whether it’s because you can’t think of things you like about yourself or because it feels self-centered or like bragging or because of any number of other things. In the end, I was happy enough with how my zine turned out, and Isabelle said I should post the whole thing, so here you go. It was fun to make, and I’d like to make more zines someday.

After the workshop, we walked around Long Beach a little bit. We found the mural Yoskay Yamamoto did on the temporary walls surrounding the city hall/library construction site. It was pretty and whimsical, and in the yellow section I found a wug, the adorable bird mascot of linguistics!

A wug!

After admiring the mural, we rode the train back to Los Angeles, reading our newly purchased zines.

Solar Eclipse!

Aug21

I was a little worried when I woke up this morning to cloud cover, but Los Angeles’s typical sunniness came through in the end, and I was able to witness the partial solar eclipse (about 60%) visible here. A few of us from the department went to the UCLA Court of Sciences to view it. When we arrived, there was an enormous line we were afraid was for eclipse glasses. Turned out it was for both eclipse glasses and looking through the telescopes. Getting glasses looked like a bit of a lost cause, and indeed after we’d waited in line for a while someone else from the department farther ahead told us they’d run out. We improvised a pinhole camera from a sheet of paper nabbed from a campus newspaper stand and a business card someone poked a hole through with a pen. Then we abandoned the line and went to the center of the Court of Sciences. People who had eclipse glasses were happy to lend them to people like us, so we all got to peer at the eclipse directly after all.

We amused ourselves for quite a while by making improvised pinhole cameras out of various configurations of our hands and that same sheet of paper, and we attracted people who were curious about what we were doing and wanted to take pictures or try it out for themselves!

My hand, my head, and partial eclipse! (Photo by Isabelle)

We also saw some leaf shadow effects, though the crescents aren’t as spectacular as those I saw in photos from people who saw a more complete eclipse.

Octavia Butler at the Huntington

Aug16

At the beginning of August, I went to the WriteGirl workshop at the Huntington. WriteGirl is an organization that runs creative writing workshops for teenage girls in Los Angeles (that’s really just a fraction of what they do–you should check them out!), and I’ve been a volunteer with them for almost a year now, though I’ve only been able to serve as a mentor at a few of their monthly workshops.

The summer workshop at the Huntington featured a private tour of the current exhibit on Octavia Butler, the celebrated black science fiction author. The promised tour was part of the reason I really wanted to make this workshop. A WriteGirl staff member gave me a ride, and we arrived bright and early to help set up. Upon our arrival, I realized that the Huntington is closed to the public on Tuesdays, meaning that we had special access to the library and gardens and that the only other people there were staff and researchers using the library.

I wound up with two mentees for the day, both rising high school seniors, and our group was the first to visit the exhibit Octavia E. Butler: Telling My Stories. We were welcomed by the exhibit’s curator, Natalie Russell, who told us how she’d spent a little over three years sifting through and cataloging all of Butler’s papers when they came to the Huntington after her untimely death. She’d selected about a hundred items for the exhibit.

The only novel of Octavia Butler’s I’ve read is Parable of the Sower, on the recommendation of my friend Leland. I bought it at graduation from the Swarthmore bookstore and read it shortly after. One of the many fascinating items on display was Butler’s typewritten outline for Parable of the Sower, with additional handwritten notes and highlighting in pastel colors. Some of the notes that caught my eye were: “ADD more racism”; “Add more Hispanics. …More Hispanic surnames on people…who seem ordinary blacks, or ordinary whites.”; “More casual, horrible death”; “GOD IS HER OPPONENT, AND/OR HER PARTNER” (Parable of the Sower is in part about the protagonist’s elaboration of a religion founded on the notion that God is change).

There was another item in the exhibit that featured Butler’s brief reflection on how science fiction treats religion. She said there was a prevailing attitude among science fiction writers of “Oh, we all know this is BS,” but she pointed out that no human society lives without religion (I think she acknowledged that some had tried, but she stood by this statement). This made me think about Becky Chambers’s The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and its companion, A Closed and Common Orbit, two science fiction novels I recently read. I enjoyed them (I loved Angry Planet), but I remember being struck by how despite all the exploration of different sentient species and cultures in the galaxy, there was almost no mention of religion. Shouldn’t many of these cultures have religions?

Another item was what I think was a self-interview with Butler, perhaps a stock of answers to questions she might get in interviews. The first question was something like, “Who are you?” and about halfway through her answer there was: “I am also comfortably asocial–a hermit in the middle of Los Angeles.”

Yet another item was her answer to “Why do I write about mixed-race couples?” She said it was for the same reason she wrote about egalitarian societies (in terms of gender, I believe).

One of the drafts on display was of the short story “Speech Sounds,” which won the Hugo Award. I was curious about the title, since it sounded very linguisticky/phonetics-y. It’s about an outbreak of a mysterious illness (hmm, sound familiar?) that strikes Los Angeles, depriving people of the ability to use language. The page of the draft that was exhibited was from a scene on a bus, and the curator’s notes said that Butler would have been familiar with buses because she didn’t drive! It reminded me of the bus stories at BUSted!.

The exhibit also had the manuscript of a short story called “Flash-Silver Star” that Butler wrote at age 11 in cursive on lined paper. It was about horses. It reminded me so much of how I wrote my stories around that age!

Among the most striking parts of the exhibit were the motivational notes that Butler wrote to herself, long before she came successful. There were different variations on these, but they included affirmations about her writing life: “I am a Bestselling Writer. I write Bestselling Books And Excellent Short Stories. Both Books and Short Stories Win prizes and awards. Everyday in Every way I am researching and writing My Awardwinning Best selling Books and Short Stories” as well as what she intended to do with her earnings as an author: buy her own home in a good neighborhood, obtain the best healthcare for herself and her mother, fund the educations and aspirations of young black people. It was inspiring. I have to admit I’m skeptical about this kind of motivational technique even though I’ve heard it touted before. I’m sure it can’t hurt, and it can probably actually help.

After we’d seen the exhibit, which you can probably tell I loved, my group had lunch and did some brainstorming of speculative fiction story ideas. The workshop wrapped up with some of the girls reading pieces they’d written that day. Afterwards, I got to catch up briefly with two mentees I’d worked with at previous WriteGirl workshops, which was lovely.

The staff member I’d gotten a ride with was running a focus group for some of the girls after the workshop, so that meant I had almost two hours to wander the gardens by myself. On a day the Huntington was closed to the public. I cannot overstate how excited I was by this prospect.

I made my way to the Chinese garden, which I’ve visited multiple times. On those occasions, the garden was always teeming with people, but this time it was beautifully empty. For most of the hour and a half I spent there, I felt like I had the whole garden entirely to myself. It was very hot that day, around 95°F, so I sat in the 愛蓮榭, my eponymous pavilion, writing in my journal and listening to the koi splash around the lotuses.

愛蓮榭, amid the lotuses

When the sun was somewhat lower in the sky, I left the pavilion and wandered along the blissfully empty paths. It was glorious having the Chinese garden all to myself. So, thank you to WriteGirl for an amazing day at the Huntington.

Obon

Aug9

Two weekends ago was the Sawtelle/West LA Obon Festival, hosted by the West Los Angeles Buddhist Temple. I went last year for the first time and returned this year because I’d liked it so much. Obon is a Japanese Buddhist festival for remembering the dead and celebrating with joy and gratitude because of the life they have given us. At the West LA Buddhist Temple, there are countless food stalls and carnival games. The temple itself is also open, and there are displays with many photos documenting the history of the temple in the neighborhood. I don’t know very much about the history of Japanese-American Buddhism, but last year I was struck by how much the structure and activities of temple life resembled those of American churches. (Although I’m pretty sure there was a youth accordion band, and I’m not sure how many churches have those!) I interpreted these similarities as an assimilation strategy, but I should emphasize I know very little about this.

This year, my friends and I arrived in time to snag good seats (on the asphalt) for the taiko performance. I always like watching the drummers’ movements and feeling the drumbeats in my eardrums and my chest. After the taiko, we bought bowls of udon with sliced pork and fish cake and plunked ourselves down on the end of a driveway to wait for the dancing to start. The dancing is my favorite part of the festival. The street is blocked off, and the dancers move in one big circuit following chalk lines drawn on the asphalt. In the middle of the block is a platform/tower called a yagura, where a taiko drummer plays along with the recorded songs.

The minister of the temple delivered a meditation from the yagura, and then the procession of dancers entered in from one end of the street as the first dance began. During each dance, they’re moving forward, but it takes longer than one dance to complete the circuit of the block. The dancers wear beautiful yukata (summer kimono), often with floral patterns, or happi coats representing the different area temples, or just their regular clothes. There are dancers of all ages, from toddlers to the elderly, of all genders, of all races, and it doesn’t matter how well you can do the dances. The announcer encourages anyone to join in. The reason I love the dancing at Obon is because it’s so joyful, everyone is welcome, and it looks like a diverse community and neighborhood coming together to share something on a pretty summer evening. It’s rooted in a specific religious and cultural tradition, but it embraces everyone who comes.

Next year, I’m plotting to rope my friends into going to the dance practices in the weeks leading up to the festival so we can dance too.

How Come That Blood

Aug2

You might know that I’m a big fan of Tim Eriksen. Back in 2013 I heard him perform at the Ginkgo Coffeehouse in St. Paul, and he sang some songs from his new-at-the-time album, Josh Billings Voyage Or, Cosmopolite on the Cotton Road. I don’t remember for sure whether he sang “How Come That Blood” on that occasion, but this song is from the album, and I like it very much, for its melody and its sinister text. A young woman (presumably) is asking her love how came that blood on his shirt sleeve, and at first he answers that it’s the blood of his little gray hawk. She says that hawk’s blood was never so red, so he says it was his gray hound’s (greyhound’s?) blood. Same objection. So he says it’s his gray mare’s blood. Nope. Finally he reveals the blood is that of his “brother dear, whom lately I have slain.” Ahhh!

Anyway, not long ago I stumbled upon the duo The Vox Hunters and discovered that their song “Edward” is a version of “How Come That Blood.” The text is similar, but there are differences: in “Edward,” the young man kills his brother-in-law, not his brother, and their falling out was over a holly bush instead of a little nut tree (evidently some people have strong feelings about plants). And then somehow I found out that Sam Amidon, who’s sung some lovely arrangements of shape note tunes, had a version too. In his, it seems like it’s a mother questioning her son. My favorite is still Tim Eriksen’s rendition, probably in part because I heard it first.

In other musical connections news… Last year Isabelle taught me a 16th century French pavane by Thoinot Arbeau called “Belle qui tiens ma vie.” The other day, she heard it on the radio, specifically on KUSC, the classical music station out of USC (which I hadn’t heard of before this!). I was curious, and happily, KUSC posts what pieces they’ve aired, so I was able to look it up. To my surprise, what was listed wasn’t “Belle qui tiens ma vie” but something called “Capriol Suite” by Peter Warlock. Peter Warlock turns out to be a 20th century English composer who apparently chose the pseudonym Warlock because of his fascination with the occult. The movements of Capriol Suite are based on Renaissance tunes. I read that the suite can be considered an original composition, but the Pavane, the second movement, is quite recognizable as “Belle qui tiens ma vie.” I also recognized the first movement as a Susato dance.

Hmm, while writing this post I discovered that Tim Eriksen and Eliza Carthy’s “Castle by the Sea” and Annalivia’s “False Sir John” are clearly related (but it looks like there’s a whole big family for that song). Time to bring this pseudo-musicology post (brought to you in no small part by Wikipedia) to a close, I think.