Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

english.elpais.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 196 posts

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#11

Post by nkozyra »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #5
sassyonsunday wrote: post #2

I visited the Moog museum this summer with a friend while visiting Asheville, NC. I asked if they had any Wendy Carlos related memorabilia and they didn't seem to. I think may be there was a Switched on Bach vinyl up on a wall in the back.... It made me feel a little sad. I think living with gender dysphoria hurts people's self-esteem tremendously. She also lived in a time when April Ashley, who was the image of femi…

The final paragraph of the article is interesting though: > Her self-imposed seclusion is a cautionary tale for us today, something that she admitted in the 1979 People interview. “The public turned out to be amazingly tolerant or, if you wish, indifferent,” she said. “There had never been any need of this charade to have taken place. It had proven a monstrous waste of years of my life.” While that kind of tolerance/…

I have to imagine living in New York in the late 60s through 70s also contributed to the acceptance/indifference that might not be afforded to others at that time (or even today).

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#12

Post by wslh »

daneel_w wrote: post #9

Owed to my father's long interest in electronic music, I'm the thankful owner of several of the 1960s/1970s original print Walter Carlos-attributed vinyl records and a few of the 1980s Wendy Carlos-attributed ones. Switched-On Bach/Brandenburgs, Sonic Seasonings, The Well-Tempered Synthesizer etc. all played a large part in my discovery of electronic music as a child.

The first Bach I heard as a kid were those vinyl records. Never thought about them as electronic music, just after getting a little bit older I realized this was connected with computers. I was always impressed by the covers [1].

The interesting thing is that these vinyl records were at home and at my grandparents home who love classical music. The impact of Wendy Carlos evidently goes beyond electronics.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=wendy+carlos+electronic+bach...

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#13

Post by runjake »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #5
sassyonsunday wrote: post #2

I visited the Moog museum this summer with a friend while visiting Asheville, NC. I asked if they had any Wendy Carlos related memorabilia and they didn't seem to. I think may be there was a Switched on Bach vinyl up on a wall in the back.... It made me feel a little sad. I think living with gender dysphoria hurts people's self-esteem tremendously. She also lived in a time when April Ashley, who was the image of femi…

The final paragraph of the article is interesting though: > Her self-imposed seclusion is a cautionary tale for us today, something that she admitted in the 1979 People interview. “The public turned out to be amazingly tolerant or, if you wish, indifferent,” she said. “There had never been any need of this charade to have taken place. It had proven a monstrous waste of years of my life.” While that kind of tolerance/…

This reminds me of Henry Rollins' song, "Icon" from his Weight album. It's about the trappings of fame/being a rock star. I feel like he wrote it as a reminder to himself, just as much as he wrote it for others.

The lyrics[1] to the song are great, but one line in particular:

  There'll be another messiah right here next week
1. https://genius.com/Rollins-band-icon-lyrics

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#14

Post by sassyonsunday »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #5
sassyonsunday wrote: post #2

I visited the Moog museum this summer with a friend while visiting Asheville, NC. I asked if they had any Wendy Carlos related memorabilia and they didn't seem to. I think may be there was a Switched on Bach vinyl up on a wall in the back.... It made me feel a little sad. I think living with gender dysphoria hurts people's self-esteem tremendously. She also lived in a time when April Ashley, who was the image of femi…

The final paragraph of the article is interesting though: > Her self-imposed seclusion is a cautionary tale for us today, something that she admitted in the 1979 People interview. “The public turned out to be amazingly tolerant or, if you wish, indifferent,” she said. “There had never been any need of this charade to have taken place. It had proven a monstrous waste of years of my life.” While that kind of tolerance/…

> I actually wonder if things have gotten worse over the past few years.

They've gotten consistently worse since about 2015.

I started transitioning in 2009 when I was 18. I come from a very conservative environment and growing up I'd even tried to come out as gay a few times only to be "shot down" more or less but in college I used my own money and I found doctors to help me look how I wanted and I started dating men openly and as awful as it is to say, because I looked and acted the part people got over it pretty fast and begrudgingly accepted that I - at least - wasn't a man. My parents even got upset with me a long while ago when I insinuated that I was a part of the gay community because they said it was disrespectful to my then boyfriend who is now my husband (he had only dated cis girls before me and is straight to anyone who hasn't run a DNA test on me ha).

These days I can feel a change even from people who were kind to me before. All the coverage on conservative media outlets, the JK Rowling "trans women are a threat to women" and the Matt Walsh "trans women are mentally ill perverts" talking points have eroded goodwill so much that more religious and conservative members of my own family avoid me now as where they didn't before and I feel that I'm only able to have a good life because I'm in the fortunate position of being "passable" and attracted to men.

In 2012 when I came out to someone they'd usually just be curious about my experiences. Even conservative Christians and Republicans. In 2022 almost nobody is curious except about which surgeries you've had because they've already made their mind up about how they feel about you. For about 50% of the population that means you're a piece of scum who deserves ridicule and punishment (if it looks like you could still pass as male physically) or excommunication (if it looks like you're so feminine and far gone that you couldn't fit in as a man), for about 40% of the population that means indifference akin to what you'd get back in the good old days and for about 10% it means an outpouring of support and love in an attempt to make up for the 50% who are openly hostile.

I think more and more trans people are taking the Wendy Carlos approach these days because of this. Much of the community wants to avoid attention and get along with their lives. There's a growing trend of people "boy moding" or "man moding" which is where they take hormone replacement therapies but dress in drag to try to fit in as their gender assigned at birth in public the same way that Wendy did. As an amusing sidenote, many of these people begin "male failing" which is where the hormone replacement therapies make it impossible for them to pass as their gender assigned at birth and so they are read as being trans still but coming from the other direction.... It's so sad that it has to be this way.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#15

Post by Blackthorn »

daneel_w wrote: post #9

Owed to my father's long interest in electronic music, I'm the thankful owner of several of the 1960s/1970s original print Walter Carlos-attributed vinyl records and a few of the 1980s Wendy Carlos-attributed ones. Switched-On Bach/Brandenburgs, Sonic Seasonings, The Well-Tempered Synthesizer etc. all played a large part in my discovery of electronic music as a child.

Would you be willing to work with an archivist to make these public? (I'm not one, to be clear.) Carlos recordings seem impossible to find!

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#16

Post by anamexis »

Blackthorn wrote: post #15
daneel_w wrote: post #9

Owed to my father's long interest in electronic music, I'm the thankful owner of several of the 1960s/1970s original print Walter Carlos-attributed vinyl records and a few of the 1980s Wendy Carlos-attributed ones. Switched-On Bach/Brandenburgs, Sonic Seasonings, The Well-Tempered Synthesizer etc. all played a large part in my discovery of electronic music as a child.

Would you be willing to work with an archivist to make these public? (I'm not one, to be clear.) Carlos recordings seem impossible to find!

The Discogs marketplace seems to have plenty of them.

https://www.discogs.com/artist/16261-Wendy-Carlos

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#17

Post by Blackthorn »

anamexis wrote: post #16
Blackthorn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be willing to work with an archivist to make these public? (I'm not one, to be clear.) Carlos recordings seem impossible to find!

The Discogs marketplace seems to have plenty of them. https://www.discogs.com/artist/16261-Wendy-Carlos

Maybe I'm just today's lucky ten thousand then.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#18

Post by vr46 »

Poor Wendy. I was literally thinking of her yesterday when I pulled out my original Clockwork Orange record. I would love her to do a masterclass and be able to extract some of her knowledge for my own experiments in electronic music. The whole world has lost out here. It's not too late though, I hope we see something from her.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#19

Post by bane »

I grew up in a very religiously conservative household and was raised to not think "well" of trans people. Simultaneously one of my favorite soundtracks of all time was the music to the original 1982 Tron. I had never heard anything quite like it compositionally, or sonically. Sweeping orchestras blended in with synthetic beeps, and bold vistas. It fit the aesthetic of the movie perfectly and was such a daring film production I can't believe it was even made.

One day I looked up the soundtrack at the local record store and bought it..."Composer Wendy Carlos" huh, never heard of her and couldn't find anything really other than contributions to Clockwork Orange and Hooked on Bach and not much else. I moved on.

Later, when there was more Internet to be had, I decided to look up Wendy and was shocked to learn she was trans. It started me down a journey of reflection, challenging my upbringing, and reexamining many "truths" that I had been taught. Along that journey I learned about the tragedy of Alan Turing and other stories.

Wendy's music planted a seed that significantly transformed my inner life, much for the better. It helped me develop significantly in my thoughts on freedom, empathy, justice and the kind of future world I'd like to live in and leave behind.

In 1982 it took a lot of daring for a Disney exec to green light bringing her music to their audience. This was during an age of great an unjust moral panic on a variety of topics.

for reference: I remember my mother receiving a letter from her pastor outlining why "Back to the Future Part II" was the work of Satan and they should never allow it in their household. The central argument was a table that counted the number of time the seven dirty swear words were mentioned in the movie, challenged its rating, and attributed the low rating (PG I think) to a conspiracy by Satan worshipers to corrupt God's youth. This was 1989.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#20

Post by lezojeda »

sassyonsunday wrote: post #14
jrochkind1 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The final paragraph of the article is interesting though: > Her self-imposed seclusion is a cautionary tale for us today, something that she admitted in the 1979 People interview. “The public turned out to be amazingly tolerant or, if you wish, indifferent,” she said. “There had never been any need of this charade to have taken place. It had proven a monstrous waste of years of my life.” While that kind of tolerance/…

> I actually wonder if things have gotten worse over the past few years. They've gotten consistently worse since about 2015. I started transitioning in 2009 when I was 18. I come from a very conservative environment and growing up I'd even tried to come out as gay a few times only to be "shot down" more or less but in college I used my own money and I found doctors to help me look how I wanted and I started dating me…

Being trans myself, I start to feel that the tolereance upward trend I noticed while growing up has stopped and even coming down in some cases/niches. I started transitioning in 2020, live in a relatively tolerant country like Argentina but feel that it's not like 5-10 years ago. IMO it has to do with the global economic downturn and political polarization, I think there is a correlation between tolerance and wealthiness
Post reply on HN