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Mar. 31st, 2011 09:31 amI've just been informed that it's International Hug a Medievalist Day. I'm looking around suspicously and wondering if I know whoever thought this up. Probably not.
Mar. 31st, 2011
Women's History Month: Juliet Marillier
Mar. 31st, 2011 12:47 pmWe stand on our mothers’ shoulders
When Gillian invited me to post here as part of Women’s History Month, I immediately thought about the different ways in which men and women pass down their legacies to future generations. I touched on that in a scene from my novel Heart’s Blood. Here, secular scribe Caitrin, employed to sort and translate family documents, is taking time to look at some garments stored in an old chest.
( If you want to read the rest - and I rather suspect you do - please click here. Gillian )
When Gillian invited me to post here as part of Women’s History Month, I immediately thought about the different ways in which men and women pass down their legacies to future generations. I touched on that in a scene from my novel Heart’s Blood. Here, secular scribe Caitrin, employed to sort and translate family documents, is taking time to look at some garments stored in an old chest.
( If you want to read the rest - and I rather suspect you do - please click here. Gillian )
Women's History Month: Talie Helene
Mar. 31st, 2011 10:17 pmI sat in a windowless basement room at RMIT University, the only female student in a music production class. We were studying a technique to process audio backwards in the digital environment of Protools, the industry standard recording software package. We were mostly focusing on techniques for editing around the transient of a drum strike while processed backwards, but also discussing some kooky effects that could be created with backwards audio.
The example the teacher was using, was a multitrack Protools session of the Brittney Spears song 'Baby One More Time'.
We'd been focused on the rhythm section tracks in the session.
One of the students announced, "There's supposed to be a bit in the second verse, where if you play it backwards, it sounds like she's saying, 'Sleep with me, I'm not too young.'"
The teacher processes the section of audio so that it's backwards, and isolates the vocal lead, and we listen to a stroke-victim cluster of syllables that might be interpreted as 'sleep with me, I'm not too young' by someone who really wanted to believe that's what they were hearing.
The student sitting beside me, shifted in his seat, and said, "Sleep with me, I'm moist and fun." He thought he was being terribly sophisticated.
The teacher got into the spirit of things, and made a wise crack, "I always thought Brittney Spears was a great loss to the fast food industry."
The whole room of boys laughed.
I was the only woman in this windowless basement room, and I felt my comfort in this group completely dissolve.
I'm not a fan of Brittney Spears as a singer. I'm not an admirer of her songs. But I find the way she is demonized in tabloid media to be completely absurd, and to be a kind of scrutiny that young men are not subjected to. And in my studies, we almost never looked at the work of women in the authoritative roles of studiocraft, so how we discussed female performers is pretty much the only discussion of women.
On campus, in class time, we used studiocraft to sexually objectify a professional performer, then suggest she more rightly belonged in a minimum wage unskilled job.
There are many disciplines where this would be unthinkable in a university context, but in music - objectification, marginalization, and dirty boys jokes are industry standard. And the teachers impart these values to the students without any critical cultural engagement whatsoever.
This is not the kind of music industry in which I want to participate. And this is one of my mild stories.
Talie Helene is a musician and writer. She has published poetry, fiction, and swags of music journalism. Talie is co-editor of The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror (Ticonderoga Press). She is transferring out of music production studies, and into performance. Her interdisciplinary exploits are chronicled at www.taliehelene.com.
The example the teacher was using, was a multitrack Protools session of the Brittney Spears song 'Baby One More Time'.
We'd been focused on the rhythm section tracks in the session.
One of the students announced, "There's supposed to be a bit in the second verse, where if you play it backwards, it sounds like she's saying, 'Sleep with me, I'm not too young.'"
The teacher processes the section of audio so that it's backwards, and isolates the vocal lead, and we listen to a stroke-victim cluster of syllables that might be interpreted as 'sleep with me, I'm not too young' by someone who really wanted to believe that's what they were hearing.
The student sitting beside me, shifted in his seat, and said, "Sleep with me, I'm moist and fun." He thought he was being terribly sophisticated.
The teacher got into the spirit of things, and made a wise crack, "I always thought Brittney Spears was a great loss to the fast food industry."
The whole room of boys laughed.
I was the only woman in this windowless basement room, and I felt my comfort in this group completely dissolve.
I'm not a fan of Brittney Spears as a singer. I'm not an admirer of her songs. But I find the way she is demonized in tabloid media to be completely absurd, and to be a kind of scrutiny that young men are not subjected to. And in my studies, we almost never looked at the work of women in the authoritative roles of studiocraft, so how we discussed female performers is pretty much the only discussion of women.
On campus, in class time, we used studiocraft to sexually objectify a professional performer, then suggest she more rightly belonged in a minimum wage unskilled job.
There are many disciplines where this would be unthinkable in a university context, but in music - objectification, marginalization, and dirty boys jokes are industry standard. And the teachers impart these values to the students without any critical cultural engagement whatsoever.
This is not the kind of music industry in which I want to participate. And this is one of my mild stories.
Talie Helene is a musician and writer. She has published poetry, fiction, and swags of music journalism. Talie is co-editor of The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror (Ticonderoga Press). She is transferring out of music production studies, and into performance. Her interdisciplinary exploits are chronicled at www.taliehelene.com.
Women's History month - overview
Mar. 31st, 2011 10:45 pmIt's late Thursday night and March is nearly finished. There may be a couple of late posts for Women's History Month, because Australia is hitting the end of March earlier than some other countries. Also, there may not. It's been a difficult month for some of my friends, and they've had to bow out gracefully. Either way, it's been a totally wonderful WHM from my point of view. I've enjoyed the guest posts so very much! So have readers. Not many people commented, but a *lot* of people have been dropping in and reading. Thank you all, for sharing WHM with me.
I asked if I should do it again, and the answer was a resounding 'yes' and now I can't help thinking of all the women I haven't asked who have really interesting things to say. I might ask some of the same friends back, since we haven't even begun to see all that they are. I'm very, very lucky to know so many fascinating people (the men around here are pretty cool, too, you see, just not visible this March). You'll have to wait, though, to hear from them. Only eleven more months...
To help you while away those eleven months, here are the women you've met since 1 March, alphabeticised by first name. At the bottom of the list you'll find a couple of other links so that you can see how WHM has grown and changed in Australia over the last eleven years. If you explore those links, a few of the names in those earlier celebrations may be familiar to you.( Click here for the full list of wonderful women who have given guest posts. )
A quick overview and the main site for Australia's WHM.
The archives of Australia's WHM at the National Library.
What our online discussions used to be like.
Next year, I think I'll have a coffee in the exact spot outside the exact coffee shop Helen Leonard, Lulu Respall-Turner, Veronica Wensing and I sat, when the big decision was made to actually have a WHM for Australia. Basically, Helen said "I want to do this. I have a plan. I need you." If anyone would like to join me in this coffee, let me know just a bit closer to the time (for my memory is fallible - I can't even remember if Veronica was there at that precise meeting, or came later! I'll have to ask her.)
I asked if I should do it again, and the answer was a resounding 'yes' and now I can't help thinking of all the women I haven't asked who have really interesting things to say. I might ask some of the same friends back, since we haven't even begun to see all that they are. I'm very, very lucky to know so many fascinating people (the men around here are pretty cool, too, you see, just not visible this March). You'll have to wait, though, to hear from them. Only eleven more months...
To help you while away those eleven months, here are the women you've met since 1 March, alphabeticised by first name. At the bottom of the list you'll find a couple of other links so that you can see how WHM has grown and changed in Australia over the last eleven years. If you explore those links, a few of the names in those earlier celebrations may be familiar to you.( Click here for the full list of wonderful women who have given guest posts. )
A quick overview and the main site for Australia's WHM.
The archives of Australia's WHM at the National Library.
What our online discussions used to be like.
Next year, I think I'll have a coffee in the exact spot outside the exact coffee shop Helen Leonard, Lulu Respall-Turner, Veronica Wensing and I sat, when the big decision was made to actually have a WHM for Australia. Basically, Helen said "I want to do this. I have a plan. I need you." If anyone would like to join me in this coffee, let me know just a bit closer to the time (for my memory is fallible - I can't even remember if Veronica was there at that precise meeting, or came later! I'll have to ask her.)