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

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

#21

Post by jancsika »

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/…

> It was an oddity, but trans was perhaps not the cultural flashpoint like it is now.

That's a wonderful wish, but I don't think it holds up to the evidence.

Off the top of my head:

1. If you watch HBO's Lady and the Dale, you'll see that in the mid 1970s a local reporter was hounding the company not because he suspected fraud. (Apparently the entire company was fradulent.) Nope, he wanted to reveal that Carmichael was really a man who was dressed as a woman. (If someone told me that Eugene Levy's character from Splash was based on this reporter, I'd believe them. :)

That documentary had later commentary from the same reporter (in the 80s/90s, I think)-- still proud that he outed a trans person.

2. Check out Gloria Steinem's mid 70s musings on transgenderism. Her thoughts in a 1977 essay on the subject would be right at home today on the alt-right podcasting space, and there are probably also many HN'ers lurking here who agree whole-heartedly with her anti-trans surgery statements.

Unfortunately, I don't have access to the relevant article ATM, but I'm pretty sure this quote was written in the context of the same anti-trans-surgery chapter-- "If the shoe doesn't fit, must we change the foot?"

The point is-- we're talking about Gloria fucking Steinem! And her non-apology apology to the trans community didn't appear until 2014 or so[1].

The fact that Amazon sells trinkets with the "shoe doesn't fit" phrase tells me that there's probably a lot more anti-trans history that's been swept completely down the memory hole.

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

#22

Post by jrochkind1 »

jancsika wrote: post #21
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/…

> It was an oddity, but trans was perhaps not the cultural flashpoint like it is now. That's a wonderful wish, but I don't think it holds up to the evidence. Off the top of my head: 1. If you watch HBO's Lady and the Dale , you'll see that in the mid 1970s a local reporter was hounding the company not because he suspected fraud. (Apparently the entire company was fradulent.) Nope, he wanted to reveal that Carmichael…

That seems sensible too. What then do you make of Carlos' quote there from 1979? Maybe not even true for her as she was saying it? (why might she have said it then?) Or she somehow had very unusual experience? (for unclear reasons?) Other? Who knows, but you don't think it was an accurate or representative thing to say?

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

#23

Post by gertrui »

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…

No post body was provided.

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

#24

Post by lordfrito »

racl101 wrote: post #6

Still love the original theme from Tron. As much as the Tron (2010) movie's score had a "cool" factor it lacked the heart and soul of the original. If they ever do another one I'd like to see the original Carlos' Tron's leitmotif woven back into it.

Tron 2 soundtrack was such a huge disappointment from me, and I'm a die hard Daft Punk fan. Listened to it once, never went back to it.

The original Tron soundtrack is such a joy, totally underrated... Amazing how she blended electronics with orchestration... in my memory it feels like a purely electronic soundtrack but it's not at all. The artistic impulse would be to go full electronic with something like this, she went in the opposite direction, and gave the score a sense of humanity (humans in the computer world).

Carlos kept pushing the envelope on everything she did. Up there with Delia Derbyshire to me... total pioneer.

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

#25

Post by danidiaz »

Adult Swim's "Lords of Synth" comedy short contains a homage to Wendy Carlos in the form of a certain "Carla Wendos" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXgNo5Smino

There's also the documentary "Sisters with transistors" about women pioneers of electronic music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7r-3hlzpV7M

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

#26

Post by howinteresting »

jancsika wrote: post #21
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/…

> It was an oddity, but trans was perhaps not the cultural flashpoint like it is now. That's a wonderful wish, but I don't think it holds up to the evidence. Off the top of my head: 1. If you watch HBO's Lady and the Dale , you'll see that in the mid 1970s a local reporter was hounding the company not because he suspected fraud. (Apparently the entire company was fradulent.) Nope, he wanted to reveal that Carmichael…

I'm trans myself, and my general belief is that Steinem's position is far more defensible if we didn't have our personal lived experiences with gender dysphoria, or the evidence for things like regret rates for gender-affirming surgeries being very low. Second-wave feminism on trans issues was largely incorrect and harmful, but that is mostly a contingent fact rather than a necessary one.

This is as opposed to second-wave feminism on, for example, sex work issues, which is necessarily bad because it is more interested in moralizing than in caring about freedom or materiality.

Of course, anyone spreading the same propaganda now will not be part of the global struggle against fascism, as Judith Butler put it.

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

#27

Post by Waterluvian »

bane wrote: post #19

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 p…

Thanks for sharing. I think for some, that could have been a very uncomfortable story to share, but it's just so important that stories like this are spoken out loud. We all have capacity for such growth.

Regarding the BTTF 2 is a work of Satan anecdote: it's so convenient that any time the actions of any authority are at odds with how a group expects/wants things to work, instead of challenging their own priors ("why did the majority steer so far from our beliefs?"), they just declare it a conspiracy by Satan. This is exactly what we see in politics these days as well.

It's exceedingly difficult for one to completely up-end their foundation of understanding, culture, and being. It's easier to do absolutely ridiculous things like declare a contrary outcome as a conspiracy by Satan or the Deep State or whatnot. I think that overcoming that ontological inertia speaks volumes to your individual strength as a person, and the power Carlos' brilliant work.

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

#28

Post by sassyonsunday »

gertrui wrote: post #23
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…

Quoted post unavailable.

edit

In retrospect this was sort of mean of you to say:

> It doesn't help either when males who opt-in to this beauty standard

Do you go around telling girls they have to try to look less pleasing to men and more pleasing to your own sensibilities? Aren't you just taking the place of the "male gaze" at that point and replacing it with your own gaze and your own demands to be satisfied? I like looking a certain way. I also like when it gets me attention from men. I have the same motivations as the majority of heterosexual women and I'm trying to live a fulfilling life. You don't need to make it all about you.

end of edit

I only felt the need to point it out to drive home the point that there is/was no winning move as a trans person. I feel the need to do this because I've met many people in my life who've tried to tell me things like that it 's obvious that I was "born to be a woman" so I shouldn't worry about transphobia because they think transphobia is only directed at people who look masculine but wear feminine clothes or sex pests who change their pronouns to try to seem less creepy. It's led me to believe that this might be a common position among people who are anti-trans. They think: "these bathroom policies will only hurt the bad ones who don't pass, the passable ones will be fine" as a way of soothing their conscience.

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

#29

Post by glhaynes »

at_a_remove wrote: post #3

I have this two CD compilation of Carlos' work on The Shining , probably a bootleg but how else could I get it? It's quite interesting and I think Kubrick ought to have used more of it.

Didn’t know this existed! Thanks, off to look for it.

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

#30

Post by indigodaddy »

racl101 wrote: post #6

Still love the original theme from Tron. As much as the Tron (2010) movie's score had a "cool" factor it lacked the heart and soul of the original. If they ever do another one I'd like to see the original Carlos' Tron's leitmotif woven back into it.

Didn’t realize she did the soundtrack to Tron. Amazing music in that film.
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