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As I stood in the garden adjacent to Perry House the sounds held most of my attention and although many of them came from man-made instruments, it was the sounds that came from the leaves, wind and non-human life that were most memorable.  To illustrate my response to my environment I am providing the following video.  It captured how musical and harmonized the outside "natural" world sounded to me that afternoon.  If I could find a piece of music that had a few instances of man-made sounds such as people talking, cars driving by and airplanes overhead, I would add that.  Maybe I'll keep looking.

I'm only part way through the reading for "The New Jim Crow" but I really wish this had been the texts for one of my American history classes in high school (for some reason, we did 1 year of world history, 2 years of American, and the last year was government).   It's ironic that even though I was exposed to two years of US History, a lot of the flaws of Americas past were left out; slavery was talked about in a very distant, unemotional way and to refer to something like the Trail of Tears as genocide would have been outrageous.  I went to a very racially diverse high school (although we were greatly segregated by AP and honors tracking), but when slavery was discussed a lot of white people complained: "What does this have to do with us? I hate when people say I'm racist just because I'm white, it's not my fault my great great grandfather owned slaves" and so on.  If you accused anyone of saying something racist, they thought you were being overly sensitive.  For example, in New England/Massachusetts, brown ice cream sprinkles are refered to as "jimmies".  My brother told me that this refered back to the Jim Crow laws and given it's racist origin, it was not something I should say.  I remember telling some of my whtie friends about it and their reaction was something like "when are people going to GET OVER slavery?".  I would like to think that had we read a book the The New Jim Crow, my peers and I would have been much more aware of how the history of slavery and racism still impacts us today.

Musical Ecology:  Sonic Preference or Prejudice?

There is a chortle out the early morning window that draws me outside. Any creature laughing, or even approaching a giggle or a chortle, has my ear.  The robin with its eager uneven step, deliberate always, allows us to think it has a jovial disposition because of its call, its cocky head, its ruddy-breasted hope.

Against an ostinato of crickets, their thick insistence blanketing the morning, one crow sounds as angry as the robin is jovial, that is to say probably not at all.  Still its raucous dark persistence from that branch grates on my attuned ear.  My ear is well-tuned to a well-tempered scale not a crow’s ill-tempered screech of simplistic percussive rhythms.

The tuning system of the well-tempered scale, like all tuning systems, is a system that is arbitrarily devised based on the choices of a particular culture.  What sounds harmonious to my ear, the particular pattern of whole steps and half steps, the chromatic increments that sound pleasing are what I have been taught to find pleasing.  “You have to be carefully taught.”  (Of course that song from “South Pacific” is about being taught racism.)

            I have had a nursery rhyme in my head all day that I haven’t heard in years. I have discovered that having a song stuck in one’s head makes observation of nature very difficult. I have been trying to observe, but I keep being interrupted by the lyrics.

            Au clair de la lune, mon ami Pierrot
            Prete-moi ta plume pour ecrire un mot
            Ma chandelle est morte, je n’ai plus de feu
            Ouvre-moi ta porte, pour l’amour de Dieu

Language has been something we’ve been considering in all three classes, and so language has been in the back of my mind while doing most of the readings. I especially noticed language when I was considering the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy reading. I couldn’t stop thinking about the importance of the rhetoric we use to help shape ideas and formulate the way we see people. The language of the cognitive behavioral therapy paper really seemed like an important factor in how patients are treated; the underlying assumption is that all those who engage in deviant and antisocial behavior are mentally unsound and must be rehabilitated with particular methods to lead them toward a path of stability. I felt like the words chosen were so revealing: “dysfunctional” “anti-social” “irrational” “thinking error.” The last one especially struck me as interesting; it felt as though what was being discussed was not a human being but a computer or piece of machinery. I felt like there was an overwhelming sense of negativity that surrounded the words and implied something general and “true” about the offender’s internal dialogue and behavior. There was a sense that simply rehabilitating someone’s behavior would solve all of their problems in the “outside world” and I have trouble swallowing that. I think it does not speak to the depth of reasons behind criminal activity.

While approaching my site to make my observations, I realized it was difficult to at first recognize the exact tree I had in my memory. I wanted to sit under a particular cherry blossom tree, but in finding it, I had to locate it by looking at the surroundings, and remembering which tree others were sitting under, what view I had of the fence, etc. This time, of course, it was not in full bloom with floating cherry blossoms, so I had to use other methods to recognize it. On my way down to the tree, I had taken off my shoes because it was easier to descend the hill that way, and when I finally sat down, it felt more comfortable to keep them off. I wanted to make sure I was using as many senses as possible, and so I wanted to touch my surroundings with both my feet and my hands.What was very apparent to me was the amount of animal sounds I could finally pay attention to and hear. There was some thudding from the tennis courts to my right and some light conversation from the window behind me as well, but for once, the major sounds I heard were of insects. There was a squirrel jumping from from post to post on the fence in front of me, and since I was sitting still, it came closer. I noticed the pond was looking very full today, probably because of the rain, and it had so much greenery within it's waters, small growths were covering the top of the water, clover-like. The marshes were partially in the shade, partially in the sun, as was most of the pond.

Things I wrote down while I was observing:

-Lawn mower is so loud

-Girl went past on a scooter

-Everyone is walking so fast at this time in the morning, including Max who is afraid she will be late to class

-Seeing Max reminds me of where the wild things are

-This spot makes me reminiscent

-Why would I pick a spot so noisy, so full of distractions

-I guess I like the distractions and welcome them

-All the landscaping is so clearly defined

-Uncomfortable in the sense that your back will always be vulnerable to something, to being watched. I wish that I could be all seeing.

- I keep picking at fragments of conversation. I’m feeling rather voyeuristic; I am both interested in the talk that is happening as people walk by and at the same time I feel like an intruder.

-Turning to look at Thomas and my view is obscured by trees.

-Should I be trying to observe in Rheomode?

-Stop trying to analyze

Reflections about my space (which I also made while sitting there):

"More African American Adults are under correctional control today-- in prison or jail, or on probation parole --than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began" (180).

I'm definitely feeling a lot of things reading The New Jim Crow. The War on Drugs seems like such a rhetorical farse to keep black American's enslaved. When I was living in North Carolina, I went to this Anarchist conference, and in a lecture on harm reduction, we were told that there are more prescriptions for high potency painkillers (such as oxycodone or percocet) than there are number of people living in the state. So -- the drug usage has changed -- in a way that allows white middle class people to avoid being seen as drug users.

The "Prisoner's of a Hardlife" comic mentioned the sentencing distinction between Crack and Cocaine as reflecting class and racial oppression. Who do we think of when we hear the terms drug-user or addict? I imagine there are hundreds "high functioning" and legally sanctioned drug addicts and users who work on wallstreet or as Ibankers, who just fill their prescriptions of morphine and thus are considered upstanding, contributing members of society. Obviously the system is targeting certain people. 

Screeching along its tracks, the R100 is visible looking from the rooftop, chugging along as it carries passengers, burdened by their weight. The clouds are whispy and the air is cool. Air, moving along underneath them, carries the condensing dust and water particles in the same direction that the train races. Tops of smoke towers, peaking out above trees along the horizon, hinting at the factories to which they connect, foreground the sun as it sets to the west and begins to bleed the sky. Philadelphia sunsets are beautiful. Before coming to the city, there had never been another sunset on par with those particular to the Philadelphia area. Maybe LA is just too smoggy. The smoke is constantly clogging the sky, invading and changing the chemical composition of the clouds, turning sunsets bleak black-grey. The temperature grows colder. Galloping starts, it's the cat racing across the roof --THUD-- pouncing on a flittering bug. Is it a stick bug? A praying mantis? Should it be saved? Are they not endangered? Off pops its wings. Chewing disappears its thorax. Swallowing. It's done. Ethical crisis averted.

Here is the facebook I made for the YASP Panel next week. RSVP, add me, and invite your friends!

https://www.facebook.com/events/351048734981604/