Martha Mockus Sounding Out Pauline Oliveros and Lesbian Musicality 2007

Sounding Out

“Sounding Out provides for the first time a queerly lesbian, carefully historicized analysis of music by a woman who was one of the most important, influential, and queerly lesbian composers of the 20th century. The book is beautifully written, its narrative captivating from start to finish.” —Suzanne G. Cusick, New York University “Martha Mockus offers imaginative insights into questions of identity, power, composition, and subject-formation in time and place. Playful, multi-vocal, and carefully theorized, Sounding Out walks an extremely provocative line between building upon the current insights of feminist theory and queer musicology and insisting upon a fresh look at a past set of musical questions that have become difficult (too ‘essentialist’) to talk about within those theoretical directions.” —Sherrie Tucker, University of Kansas “Sounding Out is powerfully original and has given me a place in the field where I am no longer an outsider in a man-made music world. Martha Mockus's insights provide previously unknown connections to my music, and she probes the feeling level in music that theorists often leave untouched. Her sensitive treatment of the material in this book affects me personally and brings out much that has been invisible or unavailable until now. May this book help all who read it to be open and free in their lives and music.” —Pauline Oliveros

Sounding Out theorizes the notion of “lesbian musicality” in the musical career of avantgarde composer, accordionist, and author Pauline Oliveros, whose radical innovations of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s have redefined the aesthetic and formal parameters of American experimental music. While other scholars have studied Oliveros as a disciple of John Cage and a contemporary of composers Terry Riley, Lou Harrison, Gordon Mumma, and Robert Ashley, Sounding Out resituates Pauline Oliveros in a gynecentric network of feminist activists, writers, artists and musicians. This book shows how the women in Oliveros’s life were central sources of creative energy and exchange during a crucial moment in feminist and queer cultural history. Crafting a dynamic relationship between feminism and musicmaking, this book offers a queerly original analysis of Oliveros’s work as a musical form of feminist activism and argues for the productive role of experimental music in lesbian feminist theory. Sounding Out combines key elements of feminist theories of lesbian sexuality with Oliveros’s major compositions, performances, critical essays, and interviews. It also includes previously unpublished correspondence between Oliveros and Edith Guttierez, Jill Johnston, Annea Lockwood, Kate Millett, and Jane Rule. Martha Mockus teaches in the Women’s Studies Program at Hamilton College where she holds the Jane Watson Irwin Chair, 2006–08. Her published work addresses musical performance as a form of feminist and queer critique.

Sounding Out Pauline Oliveros and Lesbian Musicality

Martha Mockus

First published 2008 by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2008 Taylor & Francis All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Every effort was made to locate the permission and copyright holders of archival materials quoted in this book. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Mockus, Martha. Sounding out : Pauline Oliveros and lesbian musicality / Martha Mockus. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ). ISBN 978–0–415–97375–5 (hardback) – ISBN 978–0–415–97376–2 (pbk.) – ISBN 978–0–203–93559–0 (ebook) 1. Oliveros, Pauline, 1932– 2. Lesbian musicians–United States–Biography. I. Title. ML410.O5834M63 2008 780.92--dc22 [B] 2007036761 ISBN 0-203-93559-4 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 10: 0–415–97375–9 (hbk) ISBN 10: 0–415–97376–7 (pbk) ISBN 10: 0–203–93559–4 (ebk) ISBN 13: 978–0-415–97375–5 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978–0-415–97376–2 (pbk) ISBN 13: 978–0-203–93559–0 (ebk)

Contents

Incantation

vii

1

Intonation

1

2

Amplification

17

3

Meditation

37

4

Respiration

89

5

Conversation

123

Notes Bibliography Index

173 188 199

Incantation

This book has benefited enormously from the time and energy of numerous individuals and I acknowledge them here with great pleasure and gratitude. All scholarly work relies heavily on the labor of librarians, and this book is no exception. I am grateful to the library staff at the Music Library and Special Collections at the University of California, San Diego, Special Collections at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Special Collections at the Houston Public Library, and the Interlibrary Loan at the University of California, Irvine. The Women’s Studies Program at Hamilton College has been wonderfully supportive of my work and I thank Vivyan Adair, Margaret Gentry, and Anne Lacsamana for their camaraderie and generosity. I also acknowledge the Jane Watson Irwin Fund at Hamilton for important material support and plush working conditions during the final stages of this book. My friends and allies at SUNY Stony Brook provided great moral support during the rough patches of writing this book. I thank Mary Jo Bona, Ritch Calvin, Angela Cotten, Lisa Diedrich, Bonnie Gordon, Victoria Hesford, Judy Lochhead, and Celia Marshik. At earlier stages of my work, the Beatrice Bain Research Group on Women and Gender at the University of California at Berkeley, under the directorship of Caren Kaplan and Evelyn Nakano Glenn, offered useful scholarly feedback and practical assistance. Pauline Oliveros has been extremely generous with her time and support. I thank her for allowing me to study her work very closely and for trusting me with many details of her personal life. With Pauline I felt nothing was off-limits and I am forever touched by her openness, integrity, and feminist principles. I was very fortunate to attend her Deep Listening Retreat in New Mexico for one week in June 1995. At this retreat I experienced for myself the practice of “deep listening” and encountered Pauline’s creative spirit in action. Her personal interaction with me strengthened and inspired my work. I also thank Pauline for granting me access to her archives in San Diego and New York, and for suggesting that I contact her mother, Edith Gutierrez, whose supreme hospitality, kindness, and generosity are debts I can never pay. In October 1997 Edith invited me to stay

viii Incantation with her for a week in her home in Houston so that I could study her sizable collection of correspondence and memorabilia before it was deposited in the Houston Public Library. During my research, Edith was a tireless source of energy and information, and few people can match her warmth of spirit and boundless sense of humor. Many of Pauline’s friends and colleagues shared their archival correspondence with me and I sincerely appreciate their support: Elinor Barron, Kay Gardner, Barbara Hammer, Jill Johnston, Annea Lockwood, Kate Millett, Linda Montano, and Susun Weed. At various points along the way, Ann Feldman, Gordon Mumma, and Katherine Setar shared their own work on Oliveros with me and offered friendly encouragement. I am especially grateful to Ruth Anderson, Judy Chicago, the Estate of Vivian Fine, Edith Gutierrez, Barbara Hammer, Jean Eichelberger Ivey, Jill Johnston, Annea Lockwood, Kate Millett, Pauline Oliveros, Jane Rule, and Susan Weed for granting me permission to publish their personal correspondence and other materials. A small portion of chapter 2 appeared as “spectral frequencies” in the Institute for Studies in American Music Newsletter 29, no. 1 (fall 1999): 5, 14. I thank Ellie Hisama and Ray Allen for permission to reprint this material. I also thank Sylvia Smith of Smith Publications for granting permission to reprint Pauline Oliveros’s Sonic Meditations in Appendix A. I am deeply grateful to many friends and colleagues who have helped me over the years in more ways than I can articulate. Heather Buchman, Susan Cook, David Morris, Nancy Newman, Jennifer Rycenga, and Chip Whitesell all have my sincere thanks. Lydia Hamessley has been an especially supportive friend since the beginning and it is she who first introduced me to Pauline Oliveros. I thank Ellie Hisama and Annie Janeiro Randall for their wisdom and for helping me manage some of the more difficult aspects of publishing a book. I am hugely indebted to a trio of goddesses: Suzanne Cusick, Sherrie Tucker, and Liz Wood who insisted I publish this work in book form. Suzanne and Sherrie composed the most insightful responses to the manuscript that an author could wish for and helped me listen with more care and sensitivity. Their enthusiastic personal and intellectual support sustained me throughout the entire process, and their indefatigable commitments to feminism inspire me always. Liz Wood was the first to suggest I write about Pauline Oliveros, and her energetic belief in this project took many forms as she shared her wonderfully queer imagination, intellectual generosity, divine friendship and hospitality on several occasions over a fifteen-year period. Liz’s magnificent scholarship, unparalleled in musicology and lesbian studies, makes my work possible in the first place. There is nothing like a large supportive family—full of intelligent and creative people—for a constantly renewable source of energy and refreshment. I thank my parents, Louise and Ed Mockus, for a lifetime of emotional and financial support, and all my brothers and sisters for their love and encouragement: Joe

Incantation ix Mockus and Linda Matson, Mary Mockus, Anne and Mark Cervantes, Sheila and Frank Kozina, Dorothy Mockus and Jim Lubin, John Mockus, Eileen Mockus and Eric Krantz. To Paula Merrigan, my lover and partner, I owe everything. She has been a miraculous source of encouragement in every way imaginable. Her material and emotional support for many years gave me the time and space to complete this book; her courage, integrity, and spirited imagination showed me it was possible. I dedicate this book to Paula, whose exquisite practice of love is always my deepest inspiration. MM, New York, February 2007

1 Intonation

I figured out a practical use for the overtone series. As you know tones consist of not one but many overtones. If you listen carefully you can hear them. The tone quality of any instrument depends on the prominence of these overtones. For instance, the sound of the flute, the octave overtone is most prominent but not the higher overtones. On the clarinet the octave but mainly the 12th is prominent and etc. The human voice though has the most complex overtone series. What I’ve been doing is simply this: I sing a tone—if I am using my voice properly I hear the overtones. If you want a weird sensation, try it. I can hear the octave, 12th and 2nd octave above the fundamental very easily. This enables me to sing wide intervals with great accuracy. I have transferred this to my horn playing and it has really helped my intonation. It’s really funny to listen this way because you hear all kinds of harmony going on when you play a single note passage. Pretty far out, huh? Pauline Oliveros1

Pauline Oliveros (b. 1932, Houston) stands as one of the most important and provocative figures in contemporary music. She studied composition and accordion at the University of Houston (1949–52), and earned her BA in music from San Francisco State College in 1957 where she studied composition with Robert Erickson. She remained in the Bay Area and from 1961–65 worked as co-director with composers Ramon Sender and Morton Subotnick of the San Francisco Tape Music Center. From 1966–67 she was director of the Center which moved to Oakland in 1966 and became the Mills Tape Music Center. In 1967 she moved to San Diego where she taught in the Department of Music at the University of California, San Diego; she earned tenure in 1976 and was appointed director of the Center for Music Experiment and Related Research. Oliveros resigned from the university in 1981 to pursue an independent career as composer, performer, and teacher. Since 1985 she has been the artistic director of the Pauline Oliveros Foundation Inc., which supports artists internationally in the creation and dissemination of new works in musical, literary, and performing arts. In 2005 its name changed to the Deep Listening Institute, Ltd.

2 Intonation Among her vast output, Oliveros’s compositions include works for chamber ensembles, chorus, numerous electronic tapes, pieces for herself as accordionist, works for dancers (including collaborative projects with Merce Cunningham, Elizabeth Harris, Deborah Hay, and Paula Josa-Jones), film scores; theatrical works (with Ione), and improvisational multi-media works for musicians, dancers, and actors. Oliveros is widely commissioned as a composer and collaborative performer (on accordion), and is highly regarded both nationally and internationally. She has won dozens of awards and prizes, and holds honorary doctorates from the University of Maryland and Mills College. Her musical career spans the formative decades before and during the gay liberation and “second wave” women’s movements. As a feminist and lesbian, both of these movements were important to Oliveros, and informed some of the foundations of her musical innovations that are still apparent in her work today.

tuning in This book selects important compositions by Oliveros from 1960 to 1985 and listens to them sounding out lesbian messages of creativity, community, love, and sexuality within Oliveros’s specific social and conceptual milieu. I am inspired by her observation, quoted on page 1, that “it’s funny to listen this way” precisely because it enables a closer engagement with the material and ideological conditions of Oliveros’s music. With each piece I seek to get inside the sounds— how they are produced and their guiding aesthetics—and articulate how I hear them within North American feminist and lesbian contexts of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Work in lesbian theory by Terry Castle, Audre Lorde, Sue-Ellen Case, and Teresa de Lauretis as well as lesbian fiction by Dorothy Allison, Jane Rule, and Monique Wittig provide the reverberant spaces within which my listening takes place. I hear Oliveros’s work as lesbian musicality—a musical enactment of mid- and late-century lesbian subjectivity, critique, and transformation on several levels. For Oliveros, music is not an object but a process engaging bodies, time, and space. She creates pieces committed to challenging sexism and classism in western classical music and democratizing music-making for women of all abilities. Music also functions as a sonic articulation of lesbian subjectivity for Oliveros (and her collaborators). As a theoretical project, her music exposes and transforms some of the structural underpinnings of how music is made, who makes it, why, and whose interests are served. Her lesbian musicality embodies many of the same principles of radical feminism operative in much feminist art, literature, film, and dance of the 1970s and 1980s interested in rethinking the fundamentals of form. However, at times her musical experiments sounded an awkward dissonance with other well-known feminist musicians of this period. Unlike “women’s music” of this era—often associated with radical and cultural

Intonation 3 feminism—Oliveros’s work does not make use of “folk” or vernacular musical styles. Rather, she not only asks musicians to think about what counts as “music” but also urges feminists to question what counts as feminist theory. Previous scholarship on Pauline Oliveros invests in a different series of overtones by locating her life and work as a disciple of John Cage and a lesser contemporary of composers Terry Riley, Lou Harrison, Gordon Mumma, and Robert Ashley. While she is often discussed in music histories of the twentieth century, she is positioned as the only woman working in experimental music. Furthermore, because most musicological narratives focus on the maledominated field of composition, too many scholarly accounts of Oliveros’s work perpetuate sexist and heterosexist assumptions, trivializing her commitment to feminism and her life as a lesbian. Sounding Out recontextualizes Oliveros’s music by placing her female colleagues, friends, and lovers at the center of her musicality. I argue that the women in Oliveros’s life were far more important sources of creative energy and exchange than her male colleagues. These women inspired and challenged Oliveros’s radical aesthetic innovations during a crucial moment in women’s history. Resituating Oliveros in a gynecentric network of feminist activists, writers, artists, and musicians critiques the masculinist musicological narrative that would confine her to the margins of twentiethcentury music, and deepens our knowledge of the second wave of the feminist movement, especially its internal discontinuities. One of the central aims of this book is to respond to Oliveros’s practice of listening carefully by conceptually restoring the overtones to those pitches that produce “all kinds of harmony going on” in all their queer complexity. Pretty far out, huh?

sounding out and sounding together One day during the early stages of my work, I was rereading Oliveros’s essay in Software for People entitled “Divisions Underground” which begins by naming 271 terms for a woman (Oliveros 1984, 98). As disturbing as this list is, I loved the dramatic effect of reciting it out loud (which takes me almost six minutes to do). I was most moved by the fact that the catalog ends with the term “dyke,” a word I find so wonderfully direct, percussive, dangerous, and even a bit glamorous. This strengthened my commitment to place lesbianism—as sexuality, musicality, politics, history, worldview—at the center of my work on Oliveros. Such a commitment meant listening to Oliveros’s own voice and tuning in to her selfunderstanding of her sexual identity in Houston in the 1940s and San Francisco in the 1950s: How did you know you were a lesbian? It came to me early in my childhood. In grade school I was interested in some of the other girls and would have certain fantasies about them. Yes, it happened very early.

4 Intonation Some people know when they’re 4, and some people don’t know until they’re 44. That’s right. For you it was grade school— Yes. At least. Your nickname was Buster—a very impressive nickname! [laughter] Yes, well I gave it to myself. I thought I’d like to have that name. What was the name of that movie star who played Flash Gordon? Buster Crabbe. I guess I wanted to be tough. Tough in that I could take care of myself. Who was your first lover? [big sigh] Oh—it was in Girl Scout Camp. [laughter] I can’t remember her name right now. I was Buster by then. In Girl Scout Camp they called me that. There was this girl I was attracted to, and we were sort of lovers at Camp. What age were you? I must have been 12 or 13. What kind of girls were you attracted to? Well, more feminine girls, I’d say. I was the “butchy” one, the tomboyish one. Well, with a name like Buster— —what can you say? It says it all, doesn’t it? [laughter] Did you have a group of lesbian friends in Houston? How did you find each other? I only began to find others in Junior High School. I met these women in school, so to speak. Actually it was probably through playing softball, because playing softball attracted women who were more interested in expressing themselves in that way. So the softball leagues were full of lesbians. They still are! Yes, I’m sure they are. I mean, I never felt that I belonged anywhere. I really didn’t—not until San Francisco days when I began to find a group of people who shared certain values and intellectual interests. Because I had lots on my mind and I couldn’t find that level of connection, and that’s probably [another reason] why I stopped playing softball really. There was a lot of unpleasant social interaction. Really? Yes, there really was, because there were lots of pettiness and hurtfulness that didn’t need to happen. I think I bailed out of that. Although I had been involved with lots of different women who were my age, you know, this was still High School, actually. I had a lot of girlfriends in that group, but then there was . . . You had some fun, but there was some tension— Tensions, yes. It just didn’t feel right. I did the best I could. I was a joker [giggle]. I joked a lot, but I never lost my sense of outsiderness. Yes, until San Francisco.

Intonation 5 I had wanted to go to San Francisco to try to catch up with Suzon Small. By the time I got to San Francisco she had left. So, I never did find her! [laughter] But I also felt San Francisco would be the place for me to pursue my music. I had hoped to connect with her, but she left there. I think that she was frightened, because I was still under 21. I left when I was 20, so she didn’t want to be caught with jail bait, so to speak. [laughter] So, I lost track of her and I have never been able to find her ever since. I would like to, because I would like to thank her. That was a very important connection for me in my life. I want to read you a quote from an essay by Dorothy Allison, who is one of my favorite writers. She says, “What was it like to be a lesbian before the women’s movement? It was to have the most dangerous addiction, risk the greatest loss, defy the most terrible consequences. The moon was not sufficient, and too many of us hated ourselves and feared our desire. But when we found each other, we made miracles—miracles of hope and defiance and love.”2 How do you feel about what she’s saying there? Well, I think this is very true, especially for women like Suzon, you know, who were in the work world. I wasn’t yet, I was still a teenager. You know, my father had modeled to me defiance of authority. That was one of his major themes, always defying authorities. Though, I was defiant, too, so I felt “defiant” as being myself. Even though you risked quite a lot on the streets of Houston, because there bigots everywhere and it could be very dangerous. But I developed an atmosphere around me of “don’t tread on me, don’t touch me” which works. It’s also an attitude of constant alert. I did run into rudeness here and there where a group of boys would decide you were queer and start throwing epithets at you. But I usually did what animals do—make yourself bigger, and [snorts] growl back. Although you have to be very very careful with that. Yes, you’ve got to know what you’re doing. You have to know exactly how to do it otherwise you can bring physical abuse upon you that you never want to have. So, I’m still very careful of that. Even today, you just don’t know what you’re going to be triggering, so you have to navigate very carefully. But I also don’t put myself in places that are dangerous, if possible, although you never know where you are going to be finding danger. So, I don’t think the danger has abated—not at all. Certainly the atmosphere that one carries is very important. The attitude, I think, is very important. And it’s very important not to draw fire when you don’t need it. So, relating back to that passage, when I was teenager there in Houston, I knew that I had to be careful in certain ways, but I also had that defiant streak which I still have. I learned it well. My immediate concern was not so much with the larger society or community as it was with my mother and my grandmother. How did you negotiate that? Well, I left. I left because it was too hard to cope with my feelings, and my inner needs, and to be concerned with how it was coming across to Edith and

6 Intonation Dudda, my grandmother. So, it seemed important to go away. And that was very hard, very hard. I remember we left, and Edith expressed a lot of upset at one point that The Robin was taking me away, which in a way is true. I mean, without that support I don’t know if I could have done it. I really don’t. Before we left, she had all of a sudden gotten angry and lashed out, which was one of her methods of coping. So we had left, with that, and The Robin convinced me to go back and work it out. When I came back, that’s when she was crying so inconsolably. Then, you know, she calmed herself and said “you should go.” I mean, it had been already decided. She had arranged this drive-away car for us— the whole thing. She had been very supportive, packing my things and so on. She knew it was important for me to do this, and maybe she and my grandmother thought that I would come back. But I had to get out of the pattern of the mother-daughter-stay-at-home-and-take-care in order to develop who I am. I know that it just couldn’t have been possible in the same way, had I stayed. I would have been squelched in certain ways because of this difficulty. I mean, she has certainly come way around to some different place on it, but some of the old stuff still resonates. And I have to change that in me, knowing that she has done incredible work on herself. Incredible. Just amazing—it’s really very beautiful. How did you make friends in San Francisco? How did you meet other lesbians or gay men? How did you identify yourselves to each other? Gee whiz, I’m not sure I know! [laughter] Well, there were my friends, Anne Ramsey and Mary Alice Kimball (Mak), who were more or less kind of mentors. We would go out to the Black Cat— The Black Cat! The Black Cat was a gay bar in San Francisco in what was the end of the Bohemian Era and the beginning of the Beat. Yes. We would go to the Black Cat and of course there was a lot of action among the gay men there. And there was a marvelous pianist there, Jimmy MacInnis, and he’d sit there, and he wore a derby [hat] and had a big cigar. He was a queen, you know. He’d sit there, playing the piano, and he’d play all this Continental repertoire, some Chopin, all this kind of stuff. He would play, and there would be all kinds of dead soldiers—mistakes, as he played—but we loved his playing because he was so musical. I remember that Terry Riley, for example, went to hear Jimmy MacInnis and loved him, too, for the same reason I did. It was high camp. Very high camp! And there was a singer named José Sarria. José would come on Sunday, and he and Jimmy would do an opera and José would sing all the roles. Oh wow. It was fabulous. [laughter] That’s incredible! You know, that’s a legendary bar. Oh yes. Really, it was amazing, just amazing to go there.

Intonation 7 I used to go down to North Beach and wander around on my own. When I was living in Visitacion Valley I would practice all day and then go out in the evening. But I never really—you know, that wasn’t my scene, either. Although I was taking it in, but it wasn’t for me. It wasn’t a way that I could do it. Then when I lived with Jennie Gates for whatever it was—a year, couple of years. I was going to school in San Francisco and then I met a woman in one of my classes, and got very attracted to her. Jennie and I were on the verge of breaking up, and did, and then I moved to my own place. I was involved with Madge Holland for a while; not for too long. She broke it off. You know, then things kept going from one to another, and as I say, there was this thing about you’re supposed to be in love. There was a lot of pressure to have that kind of relationship, whether you were gay or straight. It was part of the culture—the social pressure, all of the popular songs, all the movies which I had grown up on, all of the scenes around you. Except things weren’t working out quite right! [laughter] Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon had started up the Daughters of Bilitis in San Francisco at this time, and the lesbian newspaper, The Ladder. Were you aware of all that? I was aware of it, but I wasn’t of it. I looked into it, and noticed that I wasn’t belonging to that. It was another “outsider” thing for me. Really? Yes. Well, they have been criticized as being a fairly conservative group. They were, yes; it was very conservative. It wasn’t for me. During this time, San Francisco in the 1950s, what was your image or your understanding of lesbianism—lesbian culture and history? How were you putting this all together? Well, I have to keep going back to my “outsider” feeling. Here I am, my best friend at the time was The Robin, who eventually became a transsexual, but at the time was a woman passing as a man. There was Ruth Ungar, who had been a “straight lady” so to speak [laughter], and then there was Anne and Mak. They were readers—they read. They were who they were, they weren’t involved in any group either. They were very individual. So that was our milieu, that little group. I met a woman at that time who I was attracted to, but it didn’t come to much of anything. It was another flop, so to speak. I don’t remember how I met her, and I can’t remember her name either, at the moment, but she was important at the time because she was someone who appeared as an answer to a longing for there to be someone in my life. I thought there had to be somebody in my life, right? Even though I was ambivalent about it. Maybe you’ve picked that up already. I was really very independent, and needing to be independent, and at the same time longing to have companionship. You had this circle of friends, you’re all very creative and intellectually driven, and at the same time you know there’s a scene in North Beach and the Daughters of Bilitis, but you’re not very interested.

8 Intonation No, only as more or less a kind of observer, you know. I remember, I think maybe Anne and Mak took me to a lesbian bar at one point with the idea of maybe meeting someone there, and then I realized that this was not the place for me to meet anyone. [laughter] Nope. And different people would have different ideas about someone for me to meet, to quench this thirst, this longing—[laughter] Sometimes you can’t go looking for it. No, it just doesn’t work that way. Did you read Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness? Oh yes, when I was probably 15 or 16. What did you think about it? Well, . . . well. [laughter] What did it mean to you? It meant that I wasn’t alone in my particular orientation, so that was important. I think it was Suzon who introduced me to those books. Being a person of searching and seeking I found other things, and I read everything I could—Alfred Adler, for example, and different psychologists. I tried to find supportive literature, which there wasn’t much of at the time, but there were some things. I think I read Djuna Barnes then, too. In the late 1940s and ’50s I was looking for material that could give some credence to my life and would help to persuade Edith that it wasn’t some anomaly. That’s what I was looking for.

lesbian musicality As I continued my research, I was absolutely astonished to learn that no one had taken Oliveros seriously as a dyke. Why? Terry Castle offered me the best explanation: “When it comes to lesbians . . . many people have trouble seeing what’s in front of them. The lesbian remains a kind of ‘ghost effect’ in the cinema world of modern life: elusive, vaporous, difficult to spot—even when she is there, in plain view, mortal and magnificent, at the center of the screen” (Castle 1993, 2). Castle calls for a serious rethinking of lesbian existence in cultural life, asserting that the lesbian is not a recent invention, asexual, a gay man, or a nonsense (8–15). Rather, she sees in Edward Said’s notion of “the worldly individual [who] seeks to inhabit ‘the large, many-windowed house of culture as a whole’” a promising model for the embodied lesbian subject.3 Castle’s “worldly lesbian,” like Oliveros, has always been “fully, if invisibly, . . . integrated into the very fabric of cultural life,” and has never “let a sense of sexual alienation or ‘marginality’ stand in the way of her curiosity, self-education, or ambition” (17). While Oliveros is a self-proclaimed outsider, as composers often are, she was fully integrated into a lesbian feminist web of ideas and social networks as they took shape in the 1960s and 1970s. Oliveros’s lesbianism has been overlooked, mentioned but not discussed, and misunderstood.4 Her identification as a lesbian only occasionally comes up in

Intonation 9 interviews and other published material. Clearly, Oliveros carefully navigated the two main social protocols for queer people of her generation, outness (especially prized by the post-1969 gay liberation movement) and discretion. Yet, she was far from closeted. As Heidi Von Gunden, author of the leading reference work on Oliveros notes, Oliveros came out as early as 1971, and I quote Von Gunden’s passage (part of her chapter on the Sonic Meditations) in full: Music has been a strong element in revolutionary and resistance movements, and for a short time Oliveros associated her Sonic Meditations with feminism. It is in the Source publication of the first twelve meditations that she publically [sic] stated that she was a lesbian, but she soon abandoned the position of working solely with women and interpreted the term feminism in its broadest possible meaning, as demonstrated in her piece To Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe in Recognition of Their Desperation—.5 However, Von Gunden’s acknowledgment unwittingly conflates feminism with lesbianism, and the two are not the same thing. Von Gunden’s assessment ultimately sheds more light on the Sonic Meditations as a feminist composition, while the connection to Oliveros’s lesbianism remains vague and undefined. Of course, Von Gunden is not the only critic from whom lesbianism manages to evaporate. On the other hand, in his interview with Oliveros, Brian Duguid asks “whether her sex and sexuality affected the music she created” (Duguid 1998). She responded by claiming that being a lesbian has nothing to do with her ability as a composer, but being out is important if it gives others more courage. 6 Reducing lesbianism to its connection to an ability to compose well seems unnecessarily limiting, but I am encouraged by Oliveros’s dignified refusal of lesbianism as “apparitional.” My approach to conceptualizing the relationship between sexuality and composition explores how lesbian subjectivity functions for Oliveros as a productive source of energy, ideas, creativity, and possibility. Terry Castle allowed me to focus my viewfinder on Oliveros, the fully embodied lesbian subject, and Suzanne Cusick showed me how to listen to her music with lesbian ears—to be attentive to the lesbian musicality at work in Oliveros’s music and in my listening. Cusick suggests that most western art music practices, such as composition, performance, pedagogy, and analysis, encourage a “power-over” relationship with the music, and she argues for a serious reexamination of that paradigm. More specifically, she describes “a preference for musics which invite extremely heightened, sensual, cognitive attention, musics which invite and allow me to participate or not as I choose, musics with which I experience a continuous circulation of power even when I let the music be ‘on top’” (Cusick 1994, 76). Cusick’s argument resonates deeply with Oliveros’s musicality, and I soon realized that Oliveros, too, never “thinks straight” about music. First, her sense of listening always involves the whole body. In her essay,

10 Intonation “Some Sound Observations,” she describes the process of listening to a bulldozer and a jet plane outside her house: The bulldozer starts again, moving the air like an audible, crooked staircase before reaching its full power. As I lean on my wooden table, my arm receives sympathetic vibrations from the low frequencies of the bulldozer, but hearing seems to take place in my stomach. A jet passes over. Some of its sound moves through my jawbone and out the back of my neck. It is dragging the earth with it. (Oliveros 1984, 18) Second, her compositions that call for collaborative music-making (especially the Sonic Meditations) usually insist on “a continuous circulation of power” between listening and sounding—a give and take that requires an unusual sensitivity to the relationship between oneself and others. Oliveros makes this particularly clear in her comments to William Duckworth on her Tuning Meditation: “I explained the metaphor of tuning: how you tune first to your own imagination and then you tune to somebody else; then you go back and forth by tuning to yourself and tuning to someone else, so that the direction of attention is constantly changing from inside to outside” (Duckworth 1995, 175). And finally, although Oliveros’s critique of the equal-tempered system in western music relies on an imperialist metaphor of exploring territory, it also suggests, rather queerly, a critique of the limited “system” of normative heterosexuality: With any system, you always wonder about what you’re leaving out. . . . If you test the system to its limits you may find that there’s territory which you would like to explore. It’s important to not assume that the system is everything. If you assume that 88 keys on a piano tuned to equal temperament is the one system that contains all you would like to express, you can go with that. But if you find that you want something in between B and C, or if you want a consistent tone quality throughout an octave, then you should find a way to use the system as a tool for locating these new frontiers. (Doerschuk 1987, 62) Such non-straight thinking about music inspired me, in my own ongoing “lesbian relationship with music,” to think more deeply about how closely intertwined musicality and sexuality are in the work of Oliveros. Audre Lorde’s essay “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power” further enables this connection between musicality and sexuality. For Lorde, the erotic lies at the intersection of experience, feeling, knowledge, and power: “the erotic offers a well of replenishing and provocative force to the woman who does not fear its revelation, nor succumb to the belief that sensation is enough” (Lorde 1984, 54). Lorde continues:

Intonation 11 When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the lifeforce of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives. . . . The dichotomy between the spiritual and the political is also false, resulting from an incomplete attention to our erotic knowledge. For the bridge which connects them is formed by the erotic— the sensual—those physical, emotional, and psychic expressions of what is deepest and strongest and richest within each of us, being shared: the passions of love, in its deepest meanings. (Lorde 1984, 55, 56) The integration of feeling, energy, and power through music is central to Oliveros. Indeed, “the sensual nature of sound” is her primary ethos, one she has frequently expressed in print: As a musician, I am interested in the sensual nature of sound, its power of release and change. In my performances throughout the world, I try to transmit to the audience the way I experience sound both when I hear it and when I play it. I call this way of experiencing sound “deep listening.” Deep Listening is listening in every possible way to everything possible —this means one hears all sounds, no matter what one is doing. Such intense listening includes hearing the sounds of daily life, of nature and of one’s own thoughts, as well as musical sounds. Deep listening is my life practice. (Oliveros 1995, 19) Both Lorde and Oliveros clearly emphasize depth as a necessary component for experiencing and sharing the capacity for joy, whether, as Lorde says, “physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual” (Lorde 1984, 56). In many accounts of Oliveros’s decision to commit herself to making music, she identifies how her experience of intense pleasure becomes motivation and energy. When asked “What continues to move you to write music?” Oliveros answered, “I love sound. What can I say? It’s ecstasy. It’s ecstatic. That was the original thing that fired my mission. It was the ecstasy of hearing a piece of mine performed. When I heard it for the first time, it made me very high. I just wanted to have that experience again and again” (Pasler 1991, 14). The resonance with Lorde’s eros is even more apparent in William Duckworth’s interview with Oliveros in which she describes this as euphoria, an embodied consciousness functioning as a radiant source of energy: Oliveros:

That’s where the strength to stay with it [making music] comes from—from that pleasure, ecstasy, and euphoria.

12 Intonation Duckworth: Oliveros: Duckworth: Oliveros:

Do you still have similar feelings today? At a different level, yes; they’re there. What level are they now, more intellectual? Sometimes I would say that there’s an intellectual euphoria, but basically it’s a particular kind of mental state with its own body feelings, and mental space. It’s an altered state of consciousness. Duckworth: Is that where most of your pieces come from? Oliveros: Yes, they’re attuned to that. It’s a source for me. It’s like a life force. (Duckworth 1995, 164; see also Oliveros 1993, 376) While such an account might well explain the creative ethos of any number of musicians, Audre Lorde’s eros is distinctively woman-centered and lesbian. Throughout this book my analyses attend to a lesbian eros at work in Oliveros’s music, the different shapes it takes, and the feminist political claims that result. Her attachments to women as lovers, friends, collaborators, and colleagues are passionate sources of inspiration and sustenance. Loving women often formed the basis for creating new work. Oliveros’s lesbian musicality is also linked to her upbringing in the 1930s and 1940s and to certain economic shifts in the United States after World War II. Like many composers, Oliveros grew up in a musical family, although hers was female-run and working class. As a young girl, she studied violin, accordion, and French horn. Both her mother, Edith Gutierrez (b. 1914) and grandmother, Pauline V. Gribbin (1879–1973) were pianists who practiced and taught piano lessons at home. Oliveros consistently points out that musically this was a significant cue for her (Oliveros 2004, 1993; Oliveros and Maus 1994; Schloss 1993; Baker 2003; Feldman 1996). In addition, growing up with professional women musicians presented an important economic model. As Oliveros explains to Ann Feldman, she “grew up in a home with two women as the breadwinners and the housekeepers and homemakers. That was my mother and my grandmother. So it was a different perspective that I had” (Feldman 1996, 12). Not only did Oliveros see firsthand that a life in music was viable for herself, but also that two women could successfully sustain a musical household together. Indeed, my book shows that lesbian households were a fairly constant pattern for Oliveros. However, as she herself recalls, this musically stimulating and supportive home environment in Houston was the same space in which Oliveros experienced her difference as well. Wanting more from a musical life (in both the professional and domestic spheres) and needing to respect herself as a lesbian by rejecting traditional gender roles for women compelled Oliveros to move to San Francisco in 1952 and create her own life. While such a move was accompanied by inevitable spells of financial and emotional struggle, Gutierrez was enthusiastically supportive of Oliveros’s independence. The correspondence between

Intonation 13 mother and daughter during the 1950s overflows with lively exchanges about their musical lives and their intense interest in one another’s challenges, experiments, and successes. Furthermore, moving to San Francisco in the early 1950s to escape a stifling homophobia and pursue a life in music was not unusual. In fact, as John D’Emilio and Rosemary Hennessy explain, moving away from the family to large cities with lesbian and gay subcultures was a common experience for many queer young adults after World War II (D’Emilio 1983; Hennessy 2000).

resonant filters I began this introduction by quoting from and listening to a letter Oliveros wrote to her mother in 1959. Correspondence in both public and private archives functions as a kind of resonant filter, enabling me to listen to the range of social and erotic overtones informing her work. Oliveros has consciously preserved and documented her place in American musical life. The three public archives housing Oliveros’s materials are located at the University of California at San Diego, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, and the Houston Public Library. The San Diego archive contains scores, reviews, essay drafts, interviews, photos, and correspondence from 1967–81. Correspondence dating from 1952–92 comprises the bulk of the archive in New York. The Houston archive houses several hundred letters between Oliveros and Gutierrez (and other memorabilia) dating mostly from the 1950s and 1960s. Not only do these archives function as rich sources of dizzying information, but they also exemplify Oliveros’s own determination to remain in history as an undeniably real, creative, and formidable presence. She was critically aware of the fate of thousands of past women composers whose lives and music disappeared from history. Oliveros’s insistence on preserving her own texts —musical, political, and social—recalls the efforts of Dame Ethel Smyth (1858–1944), an English composer and outspoken lesbian feminist who was active in the British struggle for women’s suffrage (Wood 1995). In addition to composing over fifty works (including six operas and a Mass), Smyth wrote ten volumes of memoir and preserved vast collections of correspondence with Virginia Woolf, Emmeline Pankhurst, Vita Sackville-West, and many others. Like Oliveros, Smyth knew, some sixty years earlier, that the music world was oppressively male-dominated and fought tenaciously for her right to succeed as a woman composer, clearing a path for many other women after her. Studying the correspondence collection in the New York archive raised some intriguing issues for me. First, these were mostly letters to Oliveros that she had saved, and thus reflected what other people communicated to her over the decades. In a few instances Oliveros kept copies or drafts of letters she wrote to certain individuals, but this was the exception and not the rule. I saw that I was

14 Intonation studying a huge set of one-sided conversations in which Oliveros’s own voice was strangely absent. Without both sides present, how could I make useful sense out of what I was reading? I decided to contact several people whose letters I found the most interesting and: (1) ask if they had saved their correspondence from Oliveros, and (2) ask if they would share any or all of it with me. I wrote to Lin Barron, Kay Gardner, Edith Gutierrez, Barbara Hammer, Deborah Hay, Sorrel Hays, Ione, Jill Johnston, Annea Lockwood, Kate Millett, Linda Montano, Jeannie Pool, Jane Rule, and Susun Weed. My requests met with generous and abundant results. Barron, Gardner, Johnston, Lockwood, Montano, and Weed all shared their correspondence from Oliveros with me. Hammer, Hays, Millett, Pool, and Rule did not have letters to share, but kindly answered my questions about their relationships with and memories of Oliveros. Ione and Hay declined. Gutierrez invited me to her home in Houston to work with her collection of 315 letters, before they were deposited in the Houston Public Library. Clearly, it was the women in Oliveros’s life who interested me the most. The second issue to arise in the New York archive centered, quite simply, around gender. Oliveros maintained correspondence with many male friends and colleagues such as Robert Ashley, Bob Erickson, Al Huang, Gordon Mumma, Thomas Nee, Terry Riley, Loren Rush, Ramon Sender, Morton Subotnick, and Phil Winsor. These letters, however, are very business-like and describe musical projects, gigs, scores, travels, etc. The letters from the women were far more unbuttoned—full of passion, intensity, and struggle—and this is what inspired me to contact them individually. The problem of archived correspondence that is somehow incomplete still lingers. Letter-writing in the twentieth century, especially the second half, was permanently altered by the telephone. In general, people have written less frequently and less comprehensively ever since the telephone became a common household item. This was very apparent to me in the Oliveros archives. Oftentimes I felt I was not “studying correspondence” so much as I was reading someone’s mail at random. I realized that Oliveros and company engaged in letter-writing primarily when physical distances were great, visits required arrangements, love was in the air, difficult issues needed to be discussed (and letters were preferable to telephone conversations), or any combination of these. Nevertheless, in the chapters that follow, I put the letters to work in various ways that illuminate, expand, or deepen my analyses. In chapter 5 I ask Oliveros directly about some of the historical and epistemological gaps that archives inevitably contain.

sounding together again From 1997–2005 I conversed with Pauline Oliveros in both acoustic and electronic settings: in-person interviews, telephone calls, and e-mail correspondence.

Intonation 15 She “sang wide intervals” as I queried her about her personal relationships, professional endeavors, and musical philosophy. Most of the questions came to mind while working with her archives as well as with private collections of correspondence from Annea Lockwood, Lin Barron, and Jill Johnston. It struck me, while studying this material, that I was peering in on lives and relationships already set in motion, and I grew curious about how Oliveros came to know certain people in her life: friends, lovers, colleagues. Therefore, many of the questions I asked were about beginnings—how she met these people and formed connections with them, and to what extent she was still connected to them. I also asked about endings—how and why certain relationships fizzled out of Oliveros’s life. A parallel interest in beginnings motivated my questions about certain pieces, old and new, both well known and obscure. I also wanted to ask some questions about her thoughts on creativity—both alone and in collaboration —delayed sounds, echo, and deep listening. The chapters in this book follow the chronology of Oliveros’s career, but they do not necessarily need to be read in this order. While there are hundreds of compositions from which to choose, I have selected pieces that are readily available on commercial recordings or, in some cases, as scores. Moreover, throughout this book, I make use of repeated text, usually quotes from Oliveros, in different contexts to expose the variety of meanings these texts might acquire over time, similar to the changes that sounds acquire when heard again as echo. Oliveros often refers to the titles of her compositions as metaphors or meditations, open to multiple interpretations. While Oliveros’s titles are far more poetic, I adopt her practice in my one-word chapter titles which I intend as meditations. Chapter 2, “Amplification,” focuses on three pieces of electronic music, Time Perspectives (1960), Bye Bye Butterfly (1965), and I of IV (1966), and illustrates sounding out through the practice of improvising sounds in real time. Improvisation works both as a musical strategy that resists the constraints of a written score and as a lesbian way of life in the early 1960s. One of the defining features of Oliveros’s music is the use of echo and delayed sounds as structural elements. This chapter listens to the aesthetics of tape delay as feminist assertions of power and pleasure within the male-dominated space of the electronic music studio. Chapter 3, “Meditation,” traces Oliveros’s commitment to improvisation, this time in all-female contexts, in the Sonic Meditations (1971–74). I show the direct connections between the second wave of the feminist movement and Oliveros’s development of Sonic Meditation as a form of women’s musical liberation. Again, improvisation figures here as both a musical practice and a politically motivated lesbian resistance to the institution of heterosexuality. This chapter also records the feminist reception history of the Sonic Meditations, as it was primarily other women artists who were inspired by them. Here, sounding out

16 Intonation functions as a form of feminist community-building and shows how music itself contributes to feminist theory and action. Oliveros’s accordion pieces, Rose Mountain Slow Runner (1975), The Wanderer (1983), The Gentle, The Receptive, and A Love Song (all 1985) form the basis of chapter 4, “Respiration.” These pieces are a series of lesbian valentines, the most overt instantiation of sonic lesbianism. Breath rhythms, long tones, and the unique timbres of the accordion combine to create sonic constructions of eros based on the artistic aesthetics Oliveros shared with two of her lovers at the time, Linda Montano and Deborah Hay. Finally, “Conversation” is a polyphonic ensemble of voices gathered around my own interviews with Oliveros. While the analyses I present in this book focus on the selected work of one artist, I offer some new ways of explaining and sustaining the conceptual leap that lesbian musicality makes within feminist theory and activism. I also hope that this book will complicate the current scholarly dialog about the relationship between musicality and sexuality by showing that these two categories of experience are mutually constitutive in productive ways for Oliveros. By arguing that music can work as feminist theory, the claims I make about lesbian musicality underline the necessity of politically engaged music for anti-homophobic social change.

2 Amplification

Time Perspectives, Bye Bye Butterfly, and I of IV are three of Pauline Oliveros’s most important pieces from the 1960s, a decade in which a great deal of her work was composed with electronic media. Her love of sound technology, especially recording and mixing sounds, is connected to her mother, Edith Gutierrez, who gave Oliveros a Sears Roebuck wire recorder as a present in 1947, and a Silvertone magnetic tape recorder in 1953. These were extremely significant gifts for Oliveros and her sonic experiments with technology. All three pieces offer musical commentary on questions of lesbian life and musical creativity as Oliveros experienced them. Time Perspectives (1960) was Oliveros’s first tape piece and her first non-notated composition. She had been living in San Francisco with Laurel Johnson, a visual artist, enthusiastic improviser, and her lover since 1958. Oliveros used the Silvertone tape recorder on Time Perspectives, and the piece was premiered in San Francisco on December 18, 1961. The heady experience of intense labor and chaotic adventure are readily apparent in Oliveros’s letter to her mother a week later: Now I shall try to give you a birds eye view of one of the wildest weeks of my life: Ramon Sender (who is in the enclosed news photo) started building an electronic laboratory at the [San Francisco] Conservatory just 8 weeks ago, and scheduled the opening for Dec 18 with tape pieces by him, me, Terry Riley + Phil Winsor. Now just building the lab took considerable doing not to mention a maze of wiring running from the Auditorium down several halls and up into this mad little attic lab! About 10 days before the 18th there was enough equipment assembled to start work on the pieces. But the whole time we were working on the tapes other people were very busy testing the equipment and buzzing speakers etc. so that I never heard my piece until the day of the concert without much extraneous noise! This piece involved the making and synchronizing of 4 separate tapes which were played simultaneously. That is quite a little chore let me tell

18 Amplification you. While all the hullabaloo of building was going on Ramon and I were ensconced in a labyrinth of wires and miles of unreeled tape. Then to top it all off the newspaper people came to take photographs then on the day of the concert 3 different TV stations came for interviewing and filming. For the concert the auditorium was set up with 15 speakers. Ramon confiscated a practice keyboard (made in 1891) from the school and wired it so there was a switch for each speaker which enabled us to throw the sound all around the auditorium and even out in the hall. We closed the concert with a live improvisation which was very successful.1 Although Time Perspectives was well received at that concert in 1961, it has never been “performed” in full since. Oliveros worked with both the sound sources and the tape recorder as an improvised performance in real time. In her aptly titled essay “Tripping On Wires” she explains: From the beginning, my work in electronic music proceeded from a performance relationship with sounds and the characteristics of the workings of the tape recorder. For Time Perspectives I improvised long sections of the piece for each channel and avoided cutting and splicing as much as possible. I had improvised a rudimentary home electronic music studio and improvised the music. (Oliveros 2004, 4) One of her innovations with her tape recorder was altering the recording speed by hand. I made my piece at home using only the tape recorder at seven-and-a-half and three-and-three-quarters ips [inches per second] plus a special feature that allowed me to hand wind the tape in record mode so that I had manual variable speed. I discovered this feature through experimentation, as it was not a documented use of the machine. I was improvising with sounds and with the uses of the recorder. (Oliveros 2004, 3) As the title Time Perspectives suggests, the source sounds were speeded up or slowed down on the tape recorder to produce an impressive array of rhythms, timbres, and textures. I imagined how an improvised passage recorded at high speed would sound at low speed and vice versa. Thus my real-time improvisation added a new

Amplification 19 layer that involved projecting future modification and manipulation of the tape recorder as an instrument. Since I had no other electronic equipment I recorded through cardboard tubes for filters, put the microphone in the bathtub for reverberation and amplified small vibrating objects on an apple box with a contact microphone. (Oliveros 2004, 3; see also Baker 2003 and Duckworth 1995, 167) Time Perspectives runs almost twenty minutes in length and its overall sound is marked by a distinctly percussive character, gradually shifting timbres, and a buoyant sense of humor. Abrupt snapping and clicking sounds are offset by elongated whistles, hissing drones, and swirling wind. Bell-like metallic tones ring out either singly, or simultaneously like tinkling chimes. At times the texture is thick and active, but some sections are calm and quiet. Long pauses also function to let the piece breathe and change direction. Certain moments stand out for their highly representational sounds. At about 2′00″ we hear water being poured, and again at 4′45″. Sprinkled throughout the piece are single drops of water, speeded up and slowed down. (An interesting contrast results from the precise pitch and duration of individual drops and the rushing anonymity of a “waterfall.”) The presence of water conjures meanings for some of the other sounds: white noise or breathy whispers evoke the sound of steam and the popping snaps in the final two minutes suggest the evanescence of bubbles. Oliveros used the empty bathtub as a resonant space for music-making, but the sonic presence of water, bubbles, droplets, and steam add a playful sensuality to this piece. In addition, the sounds of a woman laughing at 7′20″ and two women laughing at 8′00″ further contribute to the music’s exuberant energy. This sonic signature of Oliveros and Johnson laughing together is one of the most memorable and provocative moments in the piece.

neither score nor script Oliveros’s emphasis on both multilevel improvisation and the homemade studio prompt a two-themed analysis of Time Perspectives. I am less concerned with detailing every sound source, and am more interested in the site of composition and how it connects to Oliveros’s departure from musical scores and life scripts. Improvising with both the tape recorder and the found sounds deepened Oliveros’s love for real-time performance and allowed her to clarify the temporal relationship between improvisation and composition. Thirty-five years later she summarized it in words: “I think of composition as a slowed-down improvisation, and improvisation as a speeded-up composition” (Duckworth 1995, 166). In the late 1950s and early 1960s, live improvisation in an art music context was quite unusual, even outré, and was Oliveros’s preferred solution to the creative limits of a written score. In Time Perspectives Oliveros abandoned the notated score in

20 Amplification favor of an intensely physical involvement with music-making, right down to hand-winding the tape as it recorded. At the time of the piece’s premiere, Oliveros tells Mildred Schroeder of the San Francisco Examiner “I’m playing my bathtub . . . That’s the sound of a soup ladle being bounced off the tub into the water, dropped a few octaves and distorted” (Schroeder 1961, 32). This article also mentions Laurel Johnson’s work as visual artist and percussionist, and she is referred to as Oliveros’s “roommate.” Furthermore, Time Perspectives was not entirely a solo act—including Johnson’s laughter in this piece inspires a more complex notion of improvisation, one that recognizes the shared space of musical innovation and lesbian domesticity, and the dynamic relationship between them. In this sense, Time Perspectives is Oliveros’s sonic portrait of her lesbian household, the improvised life of two lesbian artists in all its homespun quirkiness. Second, the home studio. In her interview with Ann Feldman, Oliveros criticizes the rough homemade quality of Time Perspectives: “By today’s standards [1996], it’s a mess technically, because there’s tape hiss and glitches here and there and so forth” (Feldman 1996, 10). However, I am drawn to precisely this technical “mess” because these sounds amplify the material conditions enabling Oliveros’s work. Time Perspectives was created at home in her San Francisco apartment because a proper electronic music studio simply was not available yet. (The San Francisco Tape Music Center began life as a working studio in 1961). It is the “at home” qualities of this piece that move me to connect the musical to the social—through the ethos of improvisation. Time Perspectives emerges from a lesbian domestic space c. 1960. For many urban lesbians of this era (and even today), the lesbian bar was the primary space for social life, community, and sexuality (Nestle 1987; Kennedy and Davis 1993), especially in San Francisco (Boyd 1997). Dominant discourses of the lesbian (and the prostitute) circulating in the 1950s were framed entirely within pathology, deviance, and crime (Penn 1994). However, Oliveros was not drawn to the bars or clubs and rarely socialized there. She did not follow the particularly lesbian social script of bar life, nor was she interested in lesbian groups such as the Daughters of Bilitis. It was home life with Johnson that nourished and supported her as a musician and composer. This also stands in marked contrast to the Cold War era’s script for heterosexual white middle-class married women whose experience of domestic life was often one of confinement and conformity (Friedan 1963; Meyerowitz 1994). For Oliveros, her lesbian home with Johnson was a space of boundless creativity and innovation. Thus, Time Perspectives is a sonic testimony to the initial joys of improvising—at home—with musical ideas and a lesbian life. Once inside the electronic music studio, however, Oliveros’s expertise with the machinery and its processes was hard-won. As the only woman who was part of the newly formed and male-dominated San Francisco Tape Music Center, Oliveros struggled to educate herself. She tells Ann Feldman the story of her early days at the SFTMC:

Amplification 21

Figure 1(a) Cover art by Laurel Johnson and (b) “Sonics” concert program. Courtesy of the Pauline Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library.

22 Amplification When we did finally have a studio, the time that I worked there would be usually from midnight to dawn, when nobody was there. I would draw pictures of whatever equipment was there, and then I would look up all thefunctions in whatever literature I could find so that I could learn what the lingo was and what the language meant. Because what would happen in the studio is that the guys would talk lingo which would leave you out, you know, out of the equation, if you didn’t know what it was. So I learned the lingo. And then I could ask questions, or I could intimidate people even [laughs] at times. But sometimes it was necessary to do that because of the prevailing attitudes toward women. And so I would do whatever I could to deflect that, so that I could be a part of what was happening. I mean there was still the fact that male-bonding happens. And if you aren’t a male, then there’s this invisible barrier, so that you’re left out of the conversation, or you’re left out of a group gathering, you know. And it’s mostly unconscious, really unconscious. (Feldman 1996, 14–15; see also Simoni 1998, 23 and Oliveros 2004, 54) As I immersed myself in Bye Bye Butterfly and I of IV, I saw that Oliveros’s tale of nocturnal self-education was only one of many feminist and queer stories to come to life around these pieces.

interference Lesbian Avengers believe in creative activism: loud, bold, sexy, silly, fierce, tasty and dramatic. Arrest optional. Think demonstrations are a good time and a great place to cruise women. . . . Lesbian Avengers believe confrontation fosters growth and strong bones. . . . Lesbian Avengers scheme and scream. Think actions must be local, regional, national, global, cosmic. “Dyke Manifesto,” Lesbian Avengers, 1993 Sometime during the mid 1930s I used to listen to my grandfather’s crystal radio over earphones. I loved the crackling static. The same grandfather used to try to teach me the Morse Code with telegraph keys. I wasn’t interested in the messages but I loved the dit da dit dit rhythms. . . . I also loved our wind-up Victrola, especially when the mechanism was running down with a record playing. I loved all the negative operant phenomena of systems.2 My father had a short-wave radio which I used to play with—I liked those whistles in the tunings, and also all the static and interference and what have you.3 Pauline Oliveros composed Bye Bye Butterfly in 1965 at the San Francisco Tape Music Center. The SFTMC had moved to 321 Divisadero in 1963 and was quite

Amplification 23 a hothouse for experimental creativity. “Here an old Victorian building, formerly a labor temple, with two large meeting halls and some other smaller rooms served as housing not only for the Tape Music Center but for Ann Halprin’s Dancer’s Workshop, The Canyon Cinema and a branch studio of Berkeley’s Pacifica Foundation, Listener Sponsored Radio Station KPFA.”4 The Tape Music Center put on programs about once a month and often collaborated with other artists who were connected with the building. Bye Bye Butterfly was performed in July 1968 (with I of IV and several other electronic pieces by Oliveros) at the Electric Circus in New York City’s East Village, in October 1970 at the University of Washington, and in March 1975 in Los Angeles.5 A twelve-year gap separates Bye Bye Butterfly’s composition from its commercial release in 1977 when it was included on the album New Music For Electronic And Recorded Media (1750 Arch Records, S-1765). Although not apparent in the title, all pieces on this album were composed by women: Laurie Anderson (“New York Social Life,” and “Time to Go [for Diego]”), Ruth Anderson (“Points”), Johanna M. Beyer (“Music of the Spheres”), Annea Lockwood (“World Rhythms”), Megan Roberts (“I Could Sit Here All Day”), and Laurie Spiegel (“Appalachian Grove”).6 All of the pieces were composed in the 1970s, except for those by Beyer (1938) and Oliveros. By 1977 Oliveros was a well-established composer and had many compositions from which to choose for her contribution to this album. She tells me that she submitted this piece because it was one of her shorter compositions.7 In addition, I am convinced that Bye Bye Butterfly’s presence on this collection of all-women’s music invites a feminist reading of the piece. I sense some feminist mischief when I pull out the record sleeve and look at photographs of these composers along with their biographical sketches and liner notes. The photo of Oliveros is a man with thick sideburns, a mustache, dressed in formal wear with a black bow tie. To the left of his eyes is the inscription “Best Wishes/ Pauline Oliveros/ December/ 1976” in Oliveros’s handwriting. The man is David Jones who was a graduate student at the University of California at San Diego in the mid-1970s, where Oliveros was professor of music and director of the Center for Music Experiment. (Jones is currently professor of music at U.C. Santa Cruz.) Oliveros tells the story: I had started this festival called “What’s Cooking?” and it was a weekend festival of performance art from four disciplines. I had chosen to do a piece which had me blindfolded and dumb for three days. Everybody showed up and here’s the director of the festival, you know, in this condition. So I asked David to be me, and he did all of the things that I would have done as the director of the festival—as me!8 Other people, including poet, composer, and performance artist Jackson Mac Low, were asked to “be Pauline” at different times and places in a kind of loosely

24 Amplification 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9# 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

constructed performance piece that Oliveros later termed “theater of substitution.”9 Oliveros decided that Jones’s photograph would also form part of this piece, and submitted it to Charles Amirkhanian for the liner notes of New Music For Electronic And Recorded Media. The effect is provocative and playful alongside the other, rather earnest pictures of Spiegel, Roberts, Lockwood, Ruth Anderson, and Laurie Anderson. While looking at her photo I ask myself, “What is Oliveros doing and what twist(s) in her composition can I expect to hear?” Bye Bye Butterfly is a two-channel tape piece that uses two oscillators, two line amplifiers in cascade, two tape recorders in a delay set-up, and a turntable with a recording of Giacomo Puccini’s opera, Madama Butterfly (1904). Butterfly’s entrance aria in Act I is played, and along with all of the electronic sounds, undergoes tape delay. Bye Bye Butterfly, an 8-minute piece, is a real-time improvised performance that enacts an eerie and forceful feminist critique of the opera. Bye Bye Butterfly begins with a pronounced click and a very high-pitched whistle tone on C#7 or D7 (pitch names are approximations only and follow the designations of international acoustic practice) that is sustained and altered by subtle shifts in timbre. An extremely faint, low hum is heard underneath. At 1′00″ the high-pitched whistle tone soars up and down, in quick glissandi, opening up a lower register. The tape delay creates the rhythmic motion of echo and an everthickening texture; even lower registers emerge at 2′25″. Sounds ricochet and travel toward the treble range, while the echoes clear out, leaving a single high tone somewhere between D7 and E
7. At 3′16″ a percussive rhythmic pattern enters: the echoing sound of the phonograph needle’s click on the record. The music from Butterfly’s entrance aria begins at 3′25″ and is played in its entirety.10 (This is rehearsal figures 37–42, pages 45–57, in the Schirmer piano-vocal score.) The electronic sounds continue with thunderous echoes. The highpitched tone moves around as electronic counterpoint to Butterfly and her girlfriends. Static and white noise join the texture at 4′48″. As the aria fades out, the electronic sounds reduce to a slower motion and settle momentarily on B
6. Mid-register pulsations (on G4) move up in pitch, and swirl higher and higher. The piece ends similarly to its beginning, with a sustained B
8. Bye Bye Butterfly absolutely frustrates a classical listening experience of the excerpt from Madama Butterfly as well as the opera as a whole. Oliveros’s electronic repetitions and distortions seem to amplify certain ideas in the opera while simultaneously interfering with them. In Bye Bye Butterfly, the narrative moment at which we hear the operatic music is Butterfly’s entry into the drama, her first aria: her girlfriends greet her on a hilltop above the ocean as she arrives and sings about “love’s call” to her. The girls delight in the flowers, sky, ocean breezes, and sunshine, and remind Butterfly to remember these treasures. Her entrance, though, is not a solo. The all-girl, homosocial scene is rendered musically: Butterfly is accompanied throughout by

Amplification 25 a three-part women’s chorus. They sing mostly ascending augmented triads in joyful dotted rhythms (“Quanto cielo! Quanto mar! Guarda, guarda quanti fior!”), and then, as the key settles onto G
major, a gliding countermelody that supports Butterfly’s soaring aria. The most naive, tender moment in the opera is surrounded, interrupted, and overpowered by Oliveros’s piercing whistle-like tones from the oscillators—a sonic alarm alerting me of Oliveros’s bold confrontation with Puccini’s opera. The echo effects of the tape delay suggest the spaciousness and rhythms of the sky, ocean, and wind. Indeed, the tape delay is the feature critics and reviewers of Bye Bye Butterfly have most often noticed. Heidi Von Gunden, in her analysis of the piece, writes, “The tape-delay technique and the frequency modulation produce wavelike gestures resembling sonic good-byes to Butterfly” (Von Gunden 1983, 57). However, the tape delays also suggest pulse, and the vibrations of blood. This is especially evident during the minute (or so) before the opera excerpt begins and the phonograph needle’s click reverberates—the sounds strongly resemble pulse, blood, heartbeat.11 Not only is Butterfly’s suicide evoked, but Oliveros seems to take the listener inside the vascular system, to listen from within the veins and arteries. A strange collection of comings and goings, greetings and farewells collide in Bye Bye Butterfly. The girlfriends welcome Butterfly who says both hello and good-bye to them; the diva as Butterfly greets the audience; Oliveros, as electronic diva, radically re-performs the aria in order to bid the opera farewell. The sounds of the amplified oscillators in Bye Bye Butterfly undoubtedly recall the whistles, pops, and crackling static of the radios Oliveros listened to as a child. Bye Bye Butterfly revels in those sounds heard in between the stations, and sonically interferes with Puccini’s opera. Furthermore, the ternary form of the piece mirrors the act of cruising the radio dial for compelling sounds. Playing with the radio becomes a compositional device. Oliveros constructs a listening experience of tuning in to the opera “station,” but not fully, and tuning out again to continue down the radio band. Her radio-phonic performance defamiliarizes Butterfly’s aria and makes it extremely difficult to return to the Puccini on its own terms. The radio also suggests wartime meanings, particularly the military importance of transpacific radio communication during World War II, which in turn echoes the military presence in Madama Butterfly through the character of Lieutenant Pinkerton. Madama Butterfly is undeniably one of the most well-known and frequently performed operas in the entire repertory. It belongs to a group of popular Orientalist operas such as Giuseppi Verdi’s Aida (1869), Leo Delibes’s Lakmé (1883), and Puccini’s Turandot (1926)—operas that depend on an imperialist relationship between the West and “the East.” In her rigorous critique of Madama Butterfly, Ping-hui Liao argues that Puccini’s opera embodies in both story and music the ideology of Western desire, dread, acquisition, and destruction of

26 Amplification the Eastern other (Liao 1990). Puccini’s incorporation of Japanese melodies, rhythms, and timbres are secondary, and must submit to the conventions of the western harmonic system. The transparence of Butterfly’s naïveté and submissiveness, as well as Pinkerton’s Yankee machismo, ostensibly expose Orientalist distortions of race and gender. Yet traditional opera house productions avoid serious engagement with the politics of this opera, and focus instead on beautifying Butterfly’s tragedy. Oliveros’s Bye Bye Butterfly, however, is a performance that sonically interferes with Puccini’s music, and thus calls attention to the opera’s distorted representations of gender and race. The title Oliveros chose for her composition recalls Bye Bye Birdie, a musical comedy popular on Broadway in the early 1960s and released as a film in 1963 by Columbia Pictures. Oliveros states that Bye Bye Butterfly was an intellectual pun on the title Bye Bye Birdie, but not intended as a reference to this musical (chapter 5). The story revolves around rock musician Conrad Birdie, an Elvis Presley look-alike, who is drafted into the U.S. Army. In addition to the presence of the U.S. military through the figure of a male protagonist, the one strange connection between Madama Butterfly and Bye Bye Birdie is the metaphor of “pinning” or “getting pinned” to signify heterosexual male ownership of a woman. In the love duet between Butterfly and Pinkerton (“Vogliatemi bene”) Butterfly sings, “They say that in other countries if a butterfly is caught by a man, she is transfixed with a pin, and fastened to a board.” Pinkerton replies, “There’s some truth in that. And do you know why? So that she won’t fly away. I have caught you, I hold you as you tremble. You are mine!”12 Similarly, in Bye Bye Birdie before Birdie arrives, Kim gets pinned by Hugo: he gives her a pin to wear on her blouse as a sign of her fidelity to him, and she sings “How Lovely to Be a Woman.” In 1977 Bye Bye Butterfly probably stood alone as a musical feminist critique of Puccini’s opera. However, in 1979 Catherine Clément published L’Opéra, ou la défaite des femmes, the first extended feminist reading of the major operatic repertory. She discusses Madama Butterfly in her chapter, “Dead Women,” which also involves Carmen and Tristan und Isolde. Clément meditates on the old Ricordi poster for Madama Butterfly and laments Butterfly’s innocence, betrayal, and death. She is disturbed by the “excruciating dialogue” between Butterfly and Pinkerton about pinning butterflies to a board so they won’t fly away (Clément 1988, 45). Unlike Oliveros, however, Clément deliberately focuses on the libretto and chooses not to engage the music directly (although she certainly hears it as she writes). Fourteen years after Clément, Wayne Koestenbaum in The Queen’s Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire also meditates on Butterfly, and like Oliveros selects the same musical moment from the opera (Koestenbaum 1993, 199–200). Koestenbaum identifies the tension between entrances and exits—musical, dramatic, political, and corporeal—and wants to prolong Butterfly’s entrance as long as he can. By listening queerly, he resists Puccini’s deadly tale of heterosexual destruction, and reclaims Butterfly as a

Amplification 27 powerful figure of coming out (I’m here, I’m queer, I’m alive), “the emissary of sex-and-gender ambiguity” (200). Koestenbaum’s listening project seeks to upset the narrative and leave the music alone, in all its seductive, problematic glory. Oliveros, however, interferes with the music. As a lesbian avenging composer, she confronts Puccini’s opera, and wreaks havoc with its seductive powers. To what end? Why crush Madama Butterfly? The Lesbian Avengers believe in “creative activism” that is “bold, . . . fierce, and . . . dramatic” among other things. Bye Bye Butterfly dramatically tampers with Madama Butterfly, but what follows in its wake? An answer, I think, lies in Monique Wittig’s The Lesbian Body, a series of lesbian corporeal doings and “un-doings” (yes, I’m also inspired by Clément)—a “bold, sexy, . . . tasty” form of creative activism that would do any leather-wearing Lesbian Avenger proud. At one point in her novel (at times very musical in choral and operatic ways) after the lesbian lovers have “been” other animals and elements, they participate in a celebratory ceremony of “vulvas lost and found” in which the “vulvas are represented by blue yellow green black violet red butterflies, their bodies are the clitorises, their wings are the labia, their fluttering represents the throbbing of the vulvas”. Like you m/y refound one m/y dearest the butterflies return from a long journey. The brown and yellow Camberwell beauties the beautiful violet and pink parnassians the modest grey-yellow alucites the snowy bombyxes the giant orange blue ultramarine yellow pink violet uranias the blue arguses the peacocks with their large ocelli the swallowtails splashed with black red blue the mauve orange violet green red admirals barely visible for a moment so rapid is their flight, the priestesses welcome them on the island shore. . . . The butterflies implored entreated not to make the fatal voyage across the sea return in clouds, they obscure the sun until dispersed over the gardens their separate colours become apparent. The priestesses wish them welcome and long life. The exhausted butterflies alight on the shoulders of the women present. Your arms are covered with them. Then m/y adored m/y most marvellous one I show you how to pick them up without spoiling their wings, I lick their bodies delicately to give them new strength. Five blue arguses poise on your spread fingers. The cries the laughter the songs make it difficult to hear you when you begin to sing in a very low voice. (Wittig 1986, 136) If Bye Bye Butterfly works to squash hetero-patriarchal stereotypes of women, then somewhere in the space between Oliveros’s electronic echoes Wittig reclaims and re-composes “the butterfly” as a beautiful symbol of lesbian sexuality. *** One year after Bye Bye Butterfly, Oliveros composed I of IV in July 1966 while working in the electronic music studio at the University of Toronto where she

28 Amplification was studying with Hugh LeCaine. Earlier that year Oliveros had sent a tape of her work to her mother, Edith Gutierrez, who treasured it, and wrote: “What a thrill to be able to listen to the tape anytime I want to! Wish I had them all. It’s almost like having you here!”13 Gutierrez was eager to understand Oliveros’s music and asked for more: Please try to send me more tapes and scores, anything at all. I want to be able to play them over and over for listening and try to absorb a feeling for this type of music, as I have never heard enough of it to get the message. It is still like a foreign language to me, but bugs me because I want to “speak” and “converse.” HELP! Well, must tear out and get busy. Goodby for now. xxxxxx Love, Mama14 That summer, Oliveros wrote to Gutierrez from Toronto, reminiscing about the recorder Gutierrez had given her nineteen years earlier: July 25, [19]66 Dear Mama, It seems that time has slipped by again and no letters going either way. I hope all is well. Currently I’m engaged in a rat’s nest of study which seems alternately hopeless and hopeful; it’s all concerned with electronics. Little did I know when you brought home the wire recorder from Sears Roebuck back in 1947 that I would ever be so involved with recording processes.15 Gutierrez was struck by the “alternately hopeless and hopeful” assessment Oliveros gave her work in the studio, and offered support: Aug. 1, 1966 Dearest Pauline: Received your letter dated July 25th, this morning, so am hastening to write before your address changes again. [. . .] The study of electronics must be very absorbing and no doubt requires a lot of concentrated thought. I am sure you will widen your musical horizons and find that composition will be affected by this new knowledge.16 This chapter is my letter to Edith Gutierrez. In it I want to explain to her— and to anyone else interested—through analysis and speculation how I have “absorbed a feeling” for Oliveros’s electronic music, and more specifically, what I think “the message” is in I of IV.

Amplification 29 As the title suggests, I of IV is the first of four tape pieces Oliveros created in the studio, and was released commercially on New Sounds in Electronic Music in 1966 on the Odyssey label. According to her liner notes on this album, Oliveros used “twelve sine-tone square-wave generators connected to an organ keyboard, two line amplifiers, mixer, Hammond spring-type reverb and two stereo tape recorders. . . . The combination tones produced by the eleven generators and the bias frequencies of the tape recorders were pulse modulated by the sub-audio generator.”17 This twenty-minute piece is a real-time performance (no splicing or editing) that features an approximate eight-second delay together with shorter cross-coupled delays that form large-scale echo effects as well as subtle changes in timbre and dynamics. Oliveros’s use of tape delay in I of IV is the primary means by which musical gestures and structures are created. The repeated sounds are simultaneously renewed and transformed as they interact with one another. This poses an interesting structural phenomenon. Conventionally, phrases and cadences mark beginnings and endings of musical ideas. (Even canons and fugues, built on the notion of repetition, for the most part reach decisive conclusions by way of cadence.) However, with tape delay the entrances of sounds are always clear, but the constant echo and decay make exits very unclear. Sounds linger almost indefinitely, even while distinct “sections” can be heard. In addition, extremely dense textures build up over time to form large sound masses where it is possible to hear individual sounds but the overall aural sensation is indeterminate and sumptuous.18 Combination tones, or resultant tones, are the sums and differences between frequencies. A combination tone is “produced by a nonlinear system (one that introduces distortion during transmission) when it is supplied with two tones having sufficient and similar intensities as well as a frequency difference that is itself an audible frequency.”19 They can be produced by mechanical instruments, electronically, and by the cochlea of the inner ear. When produced on instruments combination tones are usually very faint, but they can be amplified, as Oliveros did, when produced electronically. Oliveros’s long-time interest in combination tones originated with her work as an accordion player: When I was sixteen, my accordion teacher taught me to hear combination tones. The accordion is particularly able to produce them if you squeeze hard enough. From that time, I wished for a way to eliminate the fundamental tones so I could listen only to the combination tones. When I was thirty-two [in 1964], I began to set signal generators beyond the range of hearing and to make electronic music from amplified combination tones. I felt like a witch capturing sounds from a nether realm.20

30 Amplification In I of IV, the timbral effects of combination tones include overtones, inharmonic partials, and “noise.”21 At times, the distinction between pitch and timbre is significantly blurred. While listening to I of IV (many, many times) I am struck by the extraordinary range of timbres, rhythmic energies, and spatial effects. To listen to I of IV is to enjoy an incredible sonic landscape that’s difficult to chart. The piece begins with a nasal, drill-like drone on C#4 with occasional “metallic scrapes” above and below this drone. The reverberation and combination tones create a rotating effect, as if the sounds were turning in space or carving a figure eight. At about 1′20″ a distinct trombone-like tone enters on C#5; the sound stretches and bends slightly above and below this pitch to produce a smaller-scale, more focused sense of rotation while the other “accompanying” sounds expand in volume. A high-pitched whistle tone enters at 3′00″ and sweeps around the treble range while the lower register (from the beginning of the piece) fades out. The sweeps repeat (tape delay), and reverberation is especially apparent here, creating a cave-like soundscape. A descending minor third, C#5 to A#4, stands out of the texture, echoes, and re-emerges an octave lower, establishing a connection between the upper and lower registers. At about 8′00″, following a gradual decrescendo, a low percussive sound begins, like the needle clicks on a phonograph. They echo and the timbre of the clicks grow thicker, “fatter.” Higher tones play short pointillistic rhythms, a sonic interchange that implies ricochet. At this moment, a pair of contrasting spaces emerge as the lower register (“needle clicks”) evokes a large open space, while the upper register suggests a smaller intimate space. The next two and a half minutes feature an extremely thick collection of pulsating sounds comprised of clusters of tones (nearly impossible to ascribe pitches to). The timbres are “metallic” and higher pitched overtones, like whistles, are also apparent. But any distinction between pitch and timbre is completely blurred, the aural effect is both lush and unsettling. At 12′40″ a grand, sweeping melody takes charge. The timbre is a cross between a trombone and the siren from a fire engine, and recalls the earlier moment at 1′20″. The sonic shift is both abrupt and climactic. Extremely wide glissandos soar through high and low, reaching around and rolling over themselves. The “melody” dwells on a tone, and then swoops away. The canon-like repetition of the tape delay is so pronounced that this melody seems to “carve” itself into space. Like a sonic sculpture, these sounds are shapely and muscular. As one of the longest sections of the piece—approximately four minutes—a kind of luxuriousness emanates from the multiple repetitions and decays.22 A very low undulating pulse, or hum, is constant throughout the piece, and is especially audible toward the end. At about 16′00″, after the siren melody has evaporated, some very high-pitched twitters dart around above the purring hum. These “sound sprays” are rhythmically unpredictable, and they seem to move

Amplification 31 from one location to another like shooting stars, or fireworks. The piece subsides at 20′00″ with a return to the undulating rumble and a flourish of xylophonelike sounds, C#5 to B5, but shifts abruptly to metallic scrapes and sound sprays which gradually reduce to murmurs as the piece floats away.23 In addition to the luxurious sound shapes, I detect a playful sense of humor running through the piece. The sounds of identifiable machines of urban life, such as a drill, jackhammer, ringing telephone, alarm clock, automobile horns (from an early model Volkswagen, perhaps?), helicopter, the aforementioned fire-engine siren, and the radio whistles and phonograph needle (so prominent in Bye Bye Butterfly) are clearly audible. It’s hard to know if this is merely the result of my ears in 2005 listening to a piece from 1966, but the effect is humorous— as if Oliveros were playing timbral tricks on me. Many titles of her compositions contain puns and hidden jokes, and I of IV is no exception. The use of uppercase Roman numerals implies the harmonic relationship between tonic and subdominant in tonal music. But is this piece actually tonal? Heidi Von Gunden takes the title seriously and hears I of IV as a tonal piece built on the harmonic partials of B (Von Gunden 1984, 58–62). Katherine Setar (1997) questions this analysis, but hears isolated moments of tonality. Setar asked Oliveros outright if the piece was organized tonally. Oliveros’s response: “I of IV was composed/played in real time strictly ‘by ear.’ If you hear tonal, it is. If you hear other [wise], it is also. I heard—you hear.”24 As stated earlier, the combination tones in I of IV hark back to Oliveros’s work as an accordionist. I also hear the overall structure and energy of I of IV as an elongated accordion performance, characterized by long drones usually, but not always, in the lower register, and more rhythmically active gestures in the upper register. Large-scale crescendos, diminuendos, thickening and thinning of textures resemble the expansion and contraction typical of the accordion. Indeed, these musical characteristics become very apparent in Oliveros’s later works for accordion and tape delay in the 1970s and, after she switched to digital delay technology, the 1980s and 1990s. To my ears, Oliveros performed the electronic music studio in an accordion-like way, and several of Oliveros’s own comments about I of IV support my particular hearing. In a 1980 interview with Andrew Timar, Oliveros recalls the summer session in Toronto 1966: “It was a very wonderful summer, because the studio was marvelous. It was still a classical electronic music studio, and I had learned to play that system and part of it was using the delay techniques” (Timar 1980, 16). Similarly, she tells Daniel Cariaga in 1981, “When I was working in electronic music, the Buchla and Moog systems did not exist. In those days, I had to find a way to play the studio” (Cariaga 1981, 61). And her conversation with Cole Gagne in 1990: Q:

The electronic performances available on recordings, Bye Bye Butterfly and I Of IV, are both improvisations. Had you mapped out beforehand certain structural things you wanted to accomplish in them?

32 Amplification Oliveros: No, I didn’t do that. What I did was map out the instrument that I wanted to play these pieces. The design of how they would come into existence was what I mapped, but not the content at all. So it was a kind of performance architecture using tape machines and understanding certain operations in the circuitry which was non-linear. I actually delighted in the notion of a non-linear system for performance, where my reactions to the material would have to be instantaneous. I didn’t have time to think about it in rational terms, but had to act in the moment. Oliveros continues: Oliveros: I remember a review of I Of IV in some magazine, and some guy was talking about it in very positive terms, like you are, but then all of a sudden he said, “Well, it must not be any good, though, because it must have been just thrown together in real time.” That kind of attitude still prevails in an academic sense, that you have to construct these pieces very carefully. Well, I do construct them very carefully, but at a very different level. Q: The instrument is constructed carefully. Oliveros: That’s right, the instrument is constructed carefully, so that I can interact with it at a deep level.25 Finally, in their discussion of I of IV, Oliveros says to Barry Schrader, “In my studio work, I wanted to bypass editing, if I could, and work in a way that was similar to a performance. In this way, I could be close to what I was doing. . . . I think the piece is very sensual. As I was making I of IV, I was also listening to it. I was riding with it as it came out and I was enjoying it” (Schrader 1982, 186). What to make of a piece that amplifies normally inaudible tones (“sounds from a nether realm”), blurs distinctions between pitch and noise, molds echoes into sculpture, and “moves” like an accordion performance? Why does I of IV sound this way to me, and why is this piece so powerful, magical, redolent? To return to Gutierrez’s initial question from 1966, what is I of IV’s “message”? In thinking about these questions, I turned to those who have discussed this piece, and found a strange but informative collection of responses. In his review, Alfred Frankenstein, music critic for the San Francisco Chronicle in the 1960s, praises I of IV and refers to it as “a kind of electronic symphony.”26 Oliver Daniel dismisses I of IV outright: “It sounds like, and has all the charm of, an irritated vacuum cleaner overworked for twenty minutes.”27 Craig Palmer hears a “horizonless, hypnotic piece, a tone poem of slowly modulating sound colors whose sensual slowness totally seduces the listener to submission. It’s as fragile as a snowflake, but as intense as a blizzard, yet its nearest graphic equivalent might be the

Amplification 33 paintings of di Chirico—mysterious, brooding, and surreal” (Palmer 1970, 42). Myron Bennett compares I of IV to a sonic “mobile”: shapes formed by tone contours produce “reflections and changing, shifting perspectives” (Bennett 1972, 65). Thomas Holmes hears “a very complex soundscape” (Holmes 1985, 143). Only Heidi Von Gunden and Katherine Setar offer in-depth analyses of I of IV. Von Gunden hears the piece in sonata-allegro form, centered on a B tonality, and making a “statement about the nature of electricity” (Von Gunden 1983, 58–62). Setar’s analysis, by far the lengthiest and most technically detailed, concludes that Oliveros “created a work which neatly summarizes the entire audible listening spectrum within one work.”28 I am most intrigued by Setar’s admission that there is too much going on in I of IV to account for analytically. “At times there are more events than can be consciously attended to,” writes Setar, and “Oliveros has created an environment of multiple processes which overwhelm his [the listener’s] capacity for totally focused attention” (Setar 1997, 193, 236). About the climactic “scream melody” she says, “no matter how many times I listen to this passage, I tend to focus on the repeating elements; only through conscious effort am I able to overcome the compelling qualities of repetition. I believe this perception is so overwhelming because there is so much diversified material sounding at the same time, that the listener is overloaded with information” (211). Is there something unknowable about I of IV? Setar’s response invites me to explore a mode of listening that includes musical sound and social context, specifically a mid-century North American lesbian cultural context. When I listen to I of IV—dense, overwhelming, peculiar—I hear it sounding out connections between literary representations of lesbian sexuality and Oliveros’s queer ideas about sonic possibility. Inspired by Jacques Attali’s suggestion that music “prompts us to decipher a sound form of knowledge” (Attali 1985, 4), and deeply indebted to Elizabeth Wood’s notion of the music historian as sonographer (Wood 1995, 607), I listen to the lesbians.

spectral frequencies But I knew she was coming. I could hear her echoes peeling back off the moments, the way Aunt Raylene said she could always hear a spell coming on. Katy’s persistent. Some of my ghosts are so faded; they only come when I reach for them. This one reaches for me. Dorothy Allison29 In her discussion of II of IV (1966), the second in Oliveros’s series of tape pieces, Linda Dusman turns to Terry Castle’s notion of “the apparitional lesbian” as a way of locating the presence of the composer (of acousmatic music) during her absence as embodied performer.30 The compositional and sonic similarities

34 Amplification between I of IV and II of IV persuade me to consider Castle’s ideas more closely. Castle traces the vast and complex images of sexual love between women in literature since the eighteenth century to argue that however prohibited or occluded, lesbianism has functioned as a powerful motif in western culture. The lesbian as ghost, specter, phantom, apparition persists in writing by both men and women, lesbians and non-lesbians. Although the idea of the lesbian as ghost— without flesh and blood—is homophobic, “[o]ver the past three hundred years,” Castle suggests, “the metaphor has functioned as the necessary psychological means for objectifying—and ultimately embracing—that which otherwise could not be acknowledged” (Castle 1993, 60). Furthermore, the apparitional lesbian, the figure of homoerotic possibility, is often “‘brought back to life’—imbued with breadth, heft, and charisma—in the later twentieth-century lesbian imagination” (55). The late 1950s and early 1960s in particular saw a shift in lesbian fiction, such as Maureen Duffy’s The Microcosm (1966), in which “the apparitional lesbian is even more vividly realized” (Castle 1993, 54–5). Perhaps lesbians, both fictional and those working in the creative arts, were awakened and thrilled not only by visual apparitions but also by sonic ones. Oliveros was literally haunted by sonic images prior to composing with electronic media in general, and I of IV in particular. As a youngster, she found it difficult to sketch her musical ideas within the conventional system of western notation: “I was hearing sound qualities which only much later became accessible to me through electronic means” (LePage 1980, 167). About I of IV, she says, “In this work I proceeded to elaborate a strong mental sonic image.”31 She echoes this in “Cues,” her autobiographical essay from 1993: “I began to get involved in making tape music, and eventually I found that a lot of the sounds that I was hearing in imagination were available to me through electronic means” (Oliveros 1993, 376). In her telling interview with William Duckworth in 1995, Oliveros remembers at age sixteen hearing complicated sounds that were part symphonic, part abstract, and “some of it was sensation that I needed to realize as sound, but I didn’t know how to do it” (Duckworth 1995, 163).The interview continues, in full spectral glory: Duckworth: Did these early sounds intrude on whatever you were doing at the moment, or did you have to be in a certain frame of mind before they would come to you? Oliveros: I was always listening. The first time I heard them, it was like a hypnogogic state except that instead of having vivid visual images, I had vivid sound images. But there it was. Duckworth: Did it seem like an unusual experience to be having? Oliveros: It seemed euphoric. It was very ecstatic. The only thing that could match it was when I heard my first composition played in class at the university [in Houston]. It was a similar experience. “Wow! I don’t

Amplification 35 want to do anything else but make this music.” That’s where the strength to stay with it comes from—from that pleasure, ecstasy, and euphoria. (Duckworth 1995, 163–4) In 1963 she wrote in a letter to her friend and colleague Terry Riley, “I have been staring at a new piece half way done for KPFA Commission. Am going to play accordion in it.—But it’s hard to stay interested in putting them signals down on paper when all them visions keep floating around in and out of my head!”32 For Oliveros, making electronic music, especially I of IV, was to “vividly realize” her sonic apparitions and bring them to life with great “breadth, heft, and charisma.” In particular, the combination tones—normally beyond the range of audibility—are amplified, “brought back to life,” and heard as exciting new timbral ideas. So startling were these “sounds from a nether realm,” that Oliveros’s work in Toronto was sabotaged. “In one electronic studio I was accused of black art, and the director disconnected line amplifiers to discourage my practices, declaring that signal generators are of no use above or below the audio range because you can’t hear them.”33 Of course, Oliveros found plenty of “use” for sub- and super-audio generators, and thoroughly enjoyed the results in I of IV, especially the climactic “siren melody.” Oliveros gleefully describes this moment to Barry Schrader: “At one point in the piece there’s a rather climactic scream-like melody that sweeps through most of the audible range. When that thing started coming out, I didn’t expect it; it was incredible and very delightful. I was laughing and was amazed at that particular moment, and I still enjoy that part of the piece. I would hope other people might experience something like that when they listen to I of IV” (Schrader 1982, 186; see also Gagne 1993, 214). Oliveros’s laughter is an embodied response of “pleasure, ecstasy, and euphoria,” as though she were finally greeted by fully fleshed sounds that were ghosts before. This further illustrates that in Oliveros’s music the erotic is never very far away. As Castle reminds us, “the apparitional lesbian is even more vividly realized” in lesbian fiction after World War II, and especially in the late 1950s and 1960s when Oliveros turned in earnest to electronic media. Dorothy Allison’s story, “Demon Lover,” is a kind of homage to the “genre” of lesbian ghost stories. It features Katy, the sexy demon lover, who has died of a drug overdose, and visits her ex-lover (Allison herself) in apparitional form. Katy’s “pale skin gleams in the moonlight, reflecting every beam like a mirror of smoked glass while her teeth and nails shine phosphorescent” (Allison 1988, 111). She “reaches for” Allison, putting her in touch with the truths of her past (painful and glorious) and with her body—its desires, pleasures, fears. Katy’s powerful ability to thrill parallels the “incredible and very delightful” effect composing/ performing I of IV had on Oliveros. It was while reading “Demon Lover” aloud

36 Amplification around the fire at a lesbian and gay camping trip on Halloween that I first “absorbed a feeling” for I of IV, and sensed its erotic “message”—I of IV is Katy’s sonic counterpart. The notion of sound as something that “reaches for” its listener was shared by Oliveros’s friend and colleague, Annea Lockwood, who first wrote to Oliveros in 1970. Lockwood admired the “sound textures” Oliveros used in Sound Patterns for chorus and I of IV, and then described how sounds “reach for” her: Seems possible to me that however intensively we compose with them and process them, sounds process us much more deeply and so far I know so little of the changes which go on when a sound goes through me; how far could one get in tracing the effects set up in one’s body, by various sounds? It’s as if listening/hearing is a whole physical scene, like dancing, set up between your brain and body, and the sounds coming into it, with all sorts of transformations going on.34 To conclude my letter to Edith Gutierrez—and to anyone else interested— I invite her to listen to I of IV, let the sounds “process” her, and write to me about it.

3 Meditation

The Sonic Meditations (1971) are by far the most widely known and frequently “performed” works by Pauline Oliveros. These guided improvisatory pieces stand alone in her creative output as they have been reprinted and written about more often than any of her other compositions. Over thirty years since their emergence, they still challenge the conventional distinctions among composer, performer, and listener within western art music. Furthermore, they beckon me to consider the powerful nexus of feminist ideas and lesbian artistic communities that formed in the early 1970s wave of the women’s liberation movement.

Buster oils her mitt Play is the greatest research tool that the human race has. Pauline Oliveros1 As a young woman in Houston, Texas, c. 1946–49, Oliveros was a champion softball player. She played pitcher, and her self-given butch nickname was Buster. While working with the Oliveros Archive at U.C. San Diego, I was astounded to come across many Houston newspaper clippings chronicling Buster’s amazing softball achievements (a good thirty years before Title IX).2 These yellowed clippings had been lovingly preserved over so many decades that I felt compelled to think about softball and music together: the relationship between sportswomanship and musicianship, as well as notions of play, teamwork, and competition. Softball and pitching seemed perfectly in character with what I had long sensed about Oliveros as a butch lesbian unafraid to be in charge, the leader of the pack. Although I don’t play softball myself and have never been more than an adoring femme who cheered my girlfriend from the stands, I respect softball as a vital institution for thousands of North American lesbians. Indeed, the softball field rivals only the lesbian bar as the major space of lesbian culture, community, comfort, and cruising. Buster as pitcher, and Oliveros as composer, suggest intriguing questions: How might an athletic relationship to one’s lesbian

38 Meditation body resonate with a musical relationship to that body? Its sounds? Its connections to other lesbians? Its conflicts with mainstream feminism and with music in a university environment? While thinking about these questions and certain that I have not answered them, I see and hear Buster and Oliveros queering a different pitch—on the softball field and in the world of music. In keeping with the spirit of sport, I play with softball as a strategy for organizing my story, a series of innings, about the Sonic Meditations. Like a good softball game, the Sonic Meditations are “team” pieces that come alive best in groups, with each person in tune with her teammates and playing in top form.

not a glass of water . . . In her essays, “On Sonic Meditation” and “Software for People,” Pauline Oliveros describes the musical experiences and acoustic investigations that set the stage for her work in sonic meditation (Oliveros 1984, 138–57, 177–90). In the late 1950s in San Francisco, she teamed up with composers Loren Rush and Terry Riley to improvise music, record, and critique the results. She writes, “We all felt that our hearing was expanded by the simple process of: 1) throwing ourselves into spontaneous music making, 2) getting immediate feedback in the form of recording, and 3) discussing the process and results” (Oliveros 1984, 182). Oliveros remained devoted to developing a heightened awareness of all sounds, and recalls a particular moment that inspired her commitment. [In 1958] I simply put a microphone in my window and recorded the sound environment until the tape ran off the reel. When I replayed the tape, I realized that although I had been listening carefully while I recorded, I had not heard all the sounds that were on the tape. I discovered for the first time how selectively I listened, and that the microphone discriminated much differently than I did. From that moment, I determined that I must expand my awareness of the entire sound field. I gave myself the seemingly impossible task of listening to everything all the time. Through this exercise I began to hear the sound environment as a grand composition. The rhythms and relationships that occurred began to enter my work consciously. To this day, I continue to remind myself of the task of listening to everything all the time when I find that I have not been doing it, because in not doing it, I am causing gaps in the grand composition. (Oliveros 1984, 182) Oliveros further pursued her passion for intensive integrated listening, and in the mid-1960s her work included visual, kinetic, and dramatic elements as well. “These elements then began to be interchangeable for me. A sonic rhythm could be continued or played against a visual or kinetic rhythm” (182). Moreover, she recalls:

Meditation 39 I charged myself to be aware of everything all the time: sound, sight, movement, all that the range of the sensory system can tune to. . . . I became more and more interested in listening to sounds rather than in manipulating sounds. I discovered that interesting changes occurred in long sounds if they were present long enough. Not only that, I could feel my physiology responding in ways that I liked. I began to be calmer in the midst of the terrible effects of violence in the world. I somehow realized that I was crossing into new territory. I started to work with breath rhythms and long tones. It occurred to me that this was meditation. (Oliveros 1984, 184) By “meditation,” Oliveros is not referring to religious practices; rather, meditation is used “in a secular sense to mean steady attention and steady awareness for continuous or cyclic periods of time.”3 More specifically, in a sonic context, listening involves the dynamic of global awareness and focal attention, symbolized visually by a circle with a dot in the center (figure 2).

Figure 2 Mandala.

Oliveros uses this mandala to illustrate the relationship between awareness (the circle), which is diffuse and non-linear, and attention (the dot), which is focused and linear. In addition, “each is centered in relation to the other. Awareness can expand, without losing center or its balanced relationship with attention, and simultaneously become more inclusive. Attention can be focused as fine as possible in any direction, and can probe all aspects of awareness without losing its balanced relationship to awareness.”4 While this dynamic would seem basic to good musicianship, regardless of instrument or genre, the Sonic Meditations both depend on an understanding of attention and awareness and offer concrete situations in which to improve aural perception. I have quoted Oliveros at length to emphasize her insistence on listening as the primary activity that simultaneously informs the process of sounding. In 1969, while teaching at U.C. San Diego, Oliveros was profoundly disturbed by the increasing social unrest in American society and the “terrible effects of violence in the world” (Oliveros 1984, 184). Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated, the U.S. was at war in Vietnam, anti-war demonstrations and the free speech movement were met with increased government surveillance, and at her own institution, a student burned himself to death in a

40 Meditation campus plaza in protest (Roth 1977; Cleigh 1979; Pasler 1991; Ratliff 1979). During this time, as a way of responding to the turmoil, Oliveros sought personal and musical refuge. She studied T’ai Chi Chuan, and found that the combination of breath rhythms with very slow body movements inflected her solo improvisations on accordion and voice. “By 1970,” she writes, some other women had joined me to form the 씸 Ensemble, an improvisation group, both vocal and instrumental, devoted to unchanging tonal centers with emphasis on changing partials. After a long period of working together, a profound change occurred: rather than manipulating our voices or instruments in a goal-oriented way in order to produce certain effects, we began to allow changes to occur involuntarily, or without conscious effort, while sustaining a sound voluntarily.5 Oliveros and the 씸 Ensemble worked together regularly for two years on the Sonic Meditations, meeting once a week for several hours, like softball practice, and gradually refining and expanding the collection of pieces. Oliveros’s teammates were mostly women graduate students at U.C. San Diego. She explains, “I kind of thought it would be good to have a women’s group for a time, so that some of the women who had been less visible around the university community would have a chance to do some playing and get together and examine some of the issues that were coming up [in relation to the women’s movement]” (Anderson 1981, 13.) In 1970 the members were Oliveros, Bonnie Mara Barnett (vocalist and graduate student), Lin Barron (cellist, graduate student, and Oliveros’s partner 1970–74), Joan George (clarinetist), Lynn Lonidier (poet, filmmaker, multi-media artist, ex-partners with Oliveros [1966–70]), Zina Louie (pianist and graduate student), Patricia Strange (violinist and graduate student), Betty Wong (composer), and her sister Shirley Wong (pianist).6 From time to time there were slight changes in membership: Betty and Shirley Wong left San Diego in the Fall of 1971, and in 1972 Pam Sawyer and Ellen Van Fleet joined the group.7 In the 씸 Ensemble, like most women’s softball teams, there was a mix of lesbians and straight women. Oliveros, Barron, Lonidier, and Betty Wong were lesbians; Oliveros tells me that the presence of both Barron and Lonidier in the group was “uneasy at times.”8 They met at Oliveros’s home, usually on a weekday evening. Oliveros composed a meditation for each session (Gagne 1993, 220). As “pitcher,” she planned a basic structure of four or five activities for each meeting and wrote them down for the group to read when they arrived. Written outlines helped minimize extraneous chatting during the meetings; non-verbal forms of communication were extremely important to Oliveros during the sonic meditation meetings. Gatherings often began with some form of massage or bodily relaxation exercises (referred to as “kinetic awareness” and “hangout”) and moved into the

Meditation 41 practice of two or three Sonic Meditations. For example, the meeting for November 23, 1971 followed a typical plan: Go immediately to the mirror. Observe yourself. Then read further instructions. 1. Kinetic awareness with hangout New partner Make each audible breath progressively more audible 2. Sit in circle. Visualize your name as you sign it. Go very slowly letter by letter mentally hearing the sound of your name very slowly also. Do this with eyes closed then with eyes open. 3. At sound of gong begin Bowl Gong Meditation. When you no longer can maintain the mental image of the gong pitch activate the gong again. Repeat until it is no longer necessary. 4. Walk once around the room as slowly as possible. 5. White Noise – Sit za zen. Hold rock(s) for Removing the Demon. Explore the shape, texture, weight, feel, etc. of the rock. Put the rock(s) behind you. Visualize it.9 Item 2 is an early version of Sonic Meditation XXV, “Your Name: The Signature Meditation,” and Item 5 refers to Sonic Meditation VI, “Sonic Rorschach,” and VII, “Removing the Demon or Getting Your Rocks Off.” (For the “scores” of these and several other Sonic Meditations please refer to Appendix A at the end of this chapter.) A year later, the 씸 Ensemble meetings retained a similar structure with an added feature: Oliveros often designated individual women to lead the group in specific activities. Here is the meeting for November 14, 1972: “Much talk means much exhaustion.” 1. Kinetic awareness. Lin please lead us through verbally beginning at 8:00 pm. 2. On a non-verbal atmosphere and its purpose for this group. Clarification of current project. 3. Joan – Interpersonal imagery. Describe your (each person) images only. Resist descriptions of the process or any other extraneous verbalization. The purpose here is to make the imagery available. Socializing and etc. clouds the issue. 4. Bonnie – Zina’s Circle.10 As early as 1971 Oliveros had maintained an interest in “a non-verbal atmosphere,” and for six weeks in the Fall of 1971 she charged the 씸 Ensemble with the task of remaining non-verbal during their meetings. The women were asked to keep a diary of their “feelings, reactions, successes, failures, observations,

42 Meditation + and –” which would be shared at a special session.11 On December 7, 1971 Oliveros hosted a “marathon session” of sonic meditation (including potluck dinner and slumber party) at which the non-verbal contract officially ended. The commitment to a non-verbal atmosphere literally cleared conversation out of the sonic space and allowed for a more intense engagement with the sonic meditations. This brought a renewed awareness to the effects of listening and sounding on one’s body. For Oliveros these effects were mostly pleasurable. In her diary she wrote, Teach Yourself to Fly. Got to wonderful resonant place. Could feel sternum vibrating. My breaths got very long. Timbre changes very exquisite. Many interesting aural sensations. My resonant tone centered and many configurations of other voices streaming around it. Felt very relaxed after completion. Could be much longer. Wished for more intensity from everyone else.12 Though she often wanted more time for each meditation, pleasurable sensations continued for Oliveros: Removing the Demon—That first rock was delicious. The intensity has really risen. I become more and more aware of each individual pulse. The infinity of forms. My Rock hits caused a high ring in my right ear I think. Not sure it wasn’t an echo. . . . White noise. It’s become so short!!! Tonight I really tripped out. It certainly is beyond marijuana. Such intricate filigree of brain sensation. I lost track of red circle exercise but began to see it faintly in living technicolor. Then a few colored dots, then whump. End of tape— the dirty lousy cheating machine!13 And a week later she wrote, “Teach Yourself to Fly had marvelous sonorities tonight. I had many sensations of other persons vibrating my vocal cords. I think the group is truly tuning.”14

batter up Oliveros’s Sonic Meditations, twenty-five in all, were originally conceived and transmitted orally; in 1974 they were published in full and dedicated to the 씸 Ensemble and Amelia Earhart. They are intended for everyone who wishes to participate, regardless of musical training or background, provided they are willing to commit to the conditions described in each meditation.15 If a group can work on the meditations at regular intervals over a sustained period of time, so much the better. As one might suspect, the Sonic Meditations are not musical scores in the usual sense. Even the 1971 publication in Source of the first twelve meditations presents

Meditation 43 an unusal visual format: the text for each meditation, handwritten by Oliveros, is superimposed upon full-page photographs of the 씸 Ensemble, presumably in the process of meditating. Like game plans, they are concise prose instructions that create guided improvisatory situations. The meditations involve actually making sounds, actively imagining sounds, listening to present sounds, and remembering sounds (Oliveros, “Introduction II”). Meditations V (“Native”), XVIII (“Re Cognition”) XIX, XX (“Your Voice”), XXI, XXII, and XXIV are strictly listening exercises, and do not require active sound-making whatsoever. In the remaining Meditations, instruments and other sound-objects are optional, but the primary sounds are vocal and respiratory. As one might also suspect, the sounds of these meditations have very little to do with the more familiar sonorities of melody, motif, chords, harmonic progressions, or rhythmic patterns that are present to some degree in most forms of western music, written or improvised. Instead, as in Meditations I (“Teach Yourself to Fly”), II, III (“Pacific Tell and Telepathic Improvisation”), VIII (“Environmental Dialogue”), IX (“The Greeting”), X, XII (“One Word”), XIII (“Energy Changes”), XIV (“Tumbling Song”), XV (“Zina’s Circle”), XVI, and XXIII (“Pure Noise”), the resulting sounds are rich timbral shapes ranging widely in pitch, and shifting gradually with each meditator’s breath cycle. Depending on the size of the group, the texture, or thickness, of the sound is wonderfully diverse and colorful. The spatial and temporal qualities of sound are foregrounded. Although vocal sounds predominate, they are wordless (except for XII), allowing for unlimited combinations of vowels and consonants, as well as the entire gamut of unusual percussive sounds (e.g., buzzing, clicking, slurping, chattering the teeth—to name only a small sample). The undulating sonic shapes are further enhanced by ever-changing levels in volume and pace, often evoking wave-like rhythmic motions. I have found that many of the Sonic Meditations invite an extremely heightened, sensuous, and erotic experience of listening and sounding. In fact, reading about these pieces should be supplemented by participating in them directly, and sharing verbally, as a group, each person’s responses to the experience. The Sonic Meditations challenge many of the established conventions of western art music on several levels. First, the invitation to “untrained” musicians to take part upsets the traditional separation between “expert” and “amateur” in western music. Oliveros herself claims that these pieces are “deeply political in that [they] challenge certain premises in the musical establishment, that [they] open the way for people to participate who aren’t musicians. That’s pretty political, pretty subversive!” (Smith and Smith 1995, 209). Typically, the highly trained performer has spent many years studying her instrument(s), and is capable of amazing feats of virtuosity and interpretive imagination.16 However, this training is not required whatsoever for participation in Oliveros’s Sonic Meditations; all members of the group are equally valuable and necessary. Furthermore, the sounds that are made will not meet normative expectations of virtuosity, and this is a desired effect.

44 Meditation Second, the term “meditation” replaces the term “performance” and its goaloriented conventions of learning and rehearsing music to be played, eventually, in a concert. For example, Meditation XVII, “Ear Ly” introduces an ironic underscoring of this phenomenon: 1. Enhance or paraphrase the auditory environment so perfectly that a listener cannot distinguish between the real sounds of the environment and the performed sounds. 2. Become performers by not performing. Third, there is no “audience” in the traditional sense; all people present in a given meditation are participating. In this sense, the discreet functions of composer, performer, and listener—if those categories are even relevant here— are dissolved entirely. Marcia Tanner remarks, “Just as Oliveros seeks to banish distinctions and level hierarchies among sounds, she works toward the same goals with people. Her compositions are meant to blur the stereotyped roles of performer and audience, to bring them into new relationships to themselves, each other, and conceivably to something beyond themselves” (Tanner 1979, 7). All participants are both creative and responsive, sounding and listening. Fourth, listening to music as a primarily intellectual behavior (or an emotional escape) is cast aside in favor of active, fully embodied aural perception. Listening physically occupies a central position, as most of the Sonic Meditations begin with an observation of one’s own breath cycle. Indeed, it is the bodily experience of meditating that matters most: “Music is a welcome by-product of this activity.”17 Finally, the Sonic Meditations radically depart from the tradition of making music in designated spaces (such as concert halls, churches, auditoriums, classrooms, etc.) which architecturally separate performers from audience. The Sonic Meditations can occur in virtually any kind of physical space in which the participants can relax and meditate productively, and some can take place outdoors (Meditations II, III, IV, V, VII, and VIII specifically call for an outside space). As Heidi Von Gunden points out, “Long segments of time and environmental settings replace the Western concept of where and when music should be performed” (Von Gunden 1983, 106). The multiple levels of accessibility of the Sonic Meditations, however, do not guarantee their ease. Oliveros and her critics have commented on the difficulty of some of these pieces. “I’m trying to enter into a collaboration with people. In the meditations, the instruments are simple, but the process is not. It’s as difficult as playing a virtuoso piece, but yet it has a simplicity, an immediacy, so you can begin” (Cleigh 1979, 226). Ron Drummond notes that many of the Sonic Meditations—particularly “Telepathic Improvisation”—“are as difficult to perform for a virtuoso musician as for a person with no musical training at all” (Drummond 1985–86, 21). The Sonic Meditations offer much to challenge experienced

Meditation 45 musicians as well. Tom Johnson, composer and former music critic for the Village Voice, recalls his experience with “Teach Yourself To Fly” one evening in the early 1970s at the Merce Cunningham Studio: “I gained some useful nonverbal insights that night, but one shouldn’t expect much to happen without an appropriate atmosphere and an experienced leader. I don’t think you can really ‘teach yourself,’ despite the title” (Johnson 1976, 94). The Sonic Meditations also taught Oliveros “to compose at a different level. Instead of composing the content, I was composing the outside form and giving people tools to participate in the creative process. And that felt good to me, and it also sharpened my own tools” (Gagne 1993, 221). Some folks, however, object to the Sonic Meditations, regardless of their accessibility or the challenges posed. In 1978 Oliveros noted that some people tell her “they really enjoyed themselves and learned something new. Others leave before it’s over. They can’t relate to it. . . . We are all trained not to be open, and it is difficult to overcome this” (Hillerman 1978, 6). She echoed this observation a year later before doing a program at Stanford University. “A few people will leave a program. . . . People have to make their own choices” (Ratliff 1979, D8). Indeed, sixteen years later Oliveros had more to say about the “choice” to not participate in her conversation with William Duckworth: “I don’t like to do this work with a captive audience. I like it to be a free experience with everyone taking part if they want to. If I feel that the people are captive, I try to give them a way out, a choice” (Duckworth 1995, 173). By doing away with most of the conventional practices of western art music and its attendant ideologies, the Sonic Meditations allow for a subversion of those norms, many of which have historically limited women’s participation in public modes of music-making.18 Moreover, these pieces can function as sonic feminism, a musical form of feminist activism. In Von Gunden’s explication of the Sonic Meditations, she acknowledges the relationship between these pieces and Oliveros’s interest in the emerging second wave of the feminist movement.19 Oliveros herself described this relationship in a small informational pamphlet on the 씸 Ensemble that was produced (but not officially published) in 1971. Photographs and short biographies of the members of the 씸 Ensemble accompany a statement of purpose that speaks to the endeavor of self-directed women making music together. Oliveros writes: The 씸 Ensemble has been working regularly on disciplined states of meditation and ideas for expanding the possibilities of sonic meditation. The group is purposely all female in order to maintain a common, stable vibration within itself and to explore the potentials of concentrated female creative activity, something which has never been fully explored or realized. The group sonic meditations provide a path for constant rediscovery of each person’s potentials in herself and in her instrument.20

46 Meditation In her 1972 interview in Goodbye to All That, a San Diego feminist newspaper, Oliveros echoes this intention: “There is a stable female vibration in the ensemble which the members want to preserve,” and sonic meditation is particularly beneficial for “women who have been grounded for so long” (Betti 1972, 5). In her conversation with Ann Feldman, Oliveros elaborates on women’s invisibility in music. I was aware, very painfully aware that many women were left out of musicmaking. And I was on a faculty which was all male, and many of the wives of the faculty were musicians, but they were simply not included in professional activity. The same was true of some of the wives of graduate students. So in any case, I formed this group of women, feeling that it was necessary to have a forum of some kind where women could express their music, or themselves, together; to build some kind of an understanding of who they were in relationship to this field.21 She explains to Geoff Smith and Nicola Walker Smith, in simpler terms: “What was important to me was encouraging women to express themselves creatively, because they are not generally supported by the culture to do this” (Smith and Smith 1995, 207). The Sonic Meditations, of course, are linked historically to other well-known contexts of women making music together: Hildegard von Bingen and her convent, the young women of the Ospedali, various folk music traditions, and all-female bands, orchestras, and choirs to name only a few.22 However, these musical practices were either contained by the Church or did not necessarily depart from the conventions of western art music, such as playing from written music or following a conductor. Clearly, the Sonic Meditations as a primarily women-only practice in the early 1970s articulated a feminist understanding of women’s subordination within the realm of music-making, and offered a deeply politicized opportunity for women to explore their minds and bodies in sound.23 In 1973 Oliveros was contacted by none other than Kate Millett, artist, prominent feminist and author of Sexual Politics, who organized a women’s music festival in Sacramento, May 1973. Oliveros’s response to Millett’s invitation is worth quoting in full because she connects her feminist critique of western art music to her work with the Sonic Meditations. 16 April 1973 Dear Sister Kate: Thank you for your letter and for the apparent intention of bringing “feminist musicians” together for a festival. No doubt this could be a fruitful occasion and one which I could see myself involved in. However, I must take you to task for the stance of your letter. Why must you apologize and take

Meditation 47 a submissive position vis a vis Music? Hasn’t that position of submissiveness become unattractive in any situation, especially for a woman who is a leader of your stature in the movement? It is unattractive and immobilizing for any woman! Music has been a male dominated field in Western culture, not only in popular music but in the larger art forms, as you well know. What is woman’s music? or feminist woman’s music? Is it enough to borrow sexist forms and impose feminist words? Is that a double message? Hasn’t that occurred with revolutionaries before? Borrowing fascist tunes and replacing the words with socialist messages? What does music do to one’s consciousness? Does it become women’s music when a Symphony orchestra has all female instrumentalists, a female conductor playing a score written by a female based on musical ideas out of a music tradition developed by men? I am concerned with the power of sound! and what it can do to the body and the mind. I am not sure at all that it is “SAFE” to borrow forms which continue a sexist message such as rock, rhythm and blues, sonatas, symphonies, etc. Maybe we have to search around and find something else. Maybe we have to give up what we know and love in order to come to a tone[sic] understanding of the meaning or effect of “MUSIC” on us feminists. From what I gather through your apology which clouds the issue, you are thinking of popular forms (which I have known and loved, too) but not of other less immediate forms of music. I have trouble then knowing if I would fit into your festival. Certainly I would not come if there was no understanding of what I do and I had to encounter false expectations and baggage. Fundamentally my position is this: Sound is everybody’s material. Women’s music is inside women. The time has come to draw it out and see what it is. It might not take the forms that are all neatly trimmed up and available, guaranteed to trigger specific emotions. So – I have been involved in what I call SONIC MEDITATION. I have worked with a group of women over the last 3 years, exploring sounds which we make in altered states of consciousness which are brought on by the sounds. We have gone various places from time to time giving workshops and sharing what we do. Anybody can do the things we do provided they are willing to commit themselves to the instructions (without apologies!) Perhaps what is emerging is a kind of women’s music. At least I am a woman, exploring sound with other women without regard for established forms. I am also working with auditory fantasy – a series of questions which trigger sound “images” in the minds of the participants with feedback and discussion at the end of the trip. Finally all persons who are present in one of our sessions are active participants. In other words there is no audience. I am also calling into question that whole symptom of active performer, passive audience as a perfectly sexist expression.

48 Meditation So there it is. If you think my radical views have any place in your Festival of Feminist Music I would gladly make myself available, with or without honoraria and care[sic] fare. I think my calendar would allow it. Yours in sisterhood, Pauline Oliveros24 In her essay, “The Uncovering of Ontology in Music: Speculative and Conceptual Feminist Music,” Jennifer Rycenga lists the following concerns that feminism and music might share: non-dualism, non-hierarchic structure, acknowledging the importance of material reality, listening and giving attention to the voices of women, dialogic nature, and respect for the agency and limitations of others (Rycenga 1994, 44–5). She hears these concerns in the specific “poetic evocations of music written by radical feminists” such as Audre Lorde, Nawal el-Saadawi, Sally Gearhart, Toni Morrison, Monique Wittig, and Joanna Russ (Rycenga, 29–36). Their “imagined moments of music” are a literary and political parallel to the work of Pauline Oliveros (36–46). Rycenga argues that in “the Sonic Meditations, Oliveros observes all of these [five principles] by rethinking the function, purposes, power, and physical realities of music” (45). And she continues: “The fact that feminist writers were almost simultaneously imagining the same revelatory role for music that Oliveros was concretely working out is a remarkable coincidence” (45). If we return to the historical circumstances of the late 1960s and early 1970s, an even closer connection between Oliveros’s Sonic Meditations and the feminist movement can be drawn. By the close of 1967, radical feminists in the United States met, organized, and politically asserted their critique of male supremacy. Informed largely by the Black freedom and anti-war movements, the “second wave” of the feminist movement fought to eradicate the sexist structures of society manifested in law, economics, education, organized religion, medicine, science, the media, sexuality, marriage, child rearing, and the details of everyday life. As Alice Echols argues in her book, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967–75, divergent theories of sexism and women’s oppression developed throughout the movement, and by 1975, radical feminism had been supplanted by cultural feminism and liberal feminism.25 Even so, for a woman such as Pauline Oliveros who was working virtually alone in a male-dominated field, the increasing critical mass of the women’s movement in the late 1960s offered an exciting context in which she could conceptualize her work, and advocate on behalf of the position of women in the music professions. Oliveros’s own relationship to the larger women’s movement is decidedly ambivalent, though. First, the treatment of lesbians in the movement was often hostile and overtly homophobic; for Oliveros, as a lesbian, this would have presented a major obstacle.26 Second, it is important to remember that the public interface between feminism and music in the late 1960s and early 1970s

Meditation 49 consisted almost entirely of “women’s music,” a primarily folk music genre performed in cafés and women’s music festivals, popularized mainly by Meg Christian, Holly Near, Cris Williamson, and Alix Dobkin.27 Musically, as she explains in her letter to Kate Millett, quoted above, Oliveros’s work had nothing in common with “women’s music.” In a conversation with Moira Roth, Oliveros describes the unfriendly distance between her work and the “women’s music” network: Curiously enough, however, in the field of what is now called “women’s music” I am rather unknown. Recently, my assistant, Lauren Pratt, went to Boston and sold seventy-five albums of my work. The big record stores were very amenable to having my work. However, she went to a women’s collective and they wouldn’t deal with her. They didn’t know who I was and they said, “Well, it will have to be a collective decision” and that was the end of that. This is pretty par for the course in terms of certain experiences that I’ve had concerning “women’s music,” a club that I don’t really belong to. (Oliveros in Roth 1988, 149–50) The relationship between radical feminist activism and “women’s music” left an unfortunate gap into which women from the musical/artistic avant-garde often fell. However, I sense a crucial link between the early 1970s feminist practice of “consciousness-raising groups” and some of the organizational principles in the Sonic Meditations. Consciousness-raising (c-r) functioned to expose and discuss women’s personal experiences in political terms; to understand that women’s personal problems were connected to larger sexist structures of domination, and forming an analysis was necessary to dismantle those structures. 28 Ideally, c-r groups were non-hierarchical spaces in which women could critique and reimagine their relationship to themselves and to the world around them. In her essay, “Public Silence, Private Terror,” lesbian writer, activist and sex radical Dorothy Allison lovingly recalls the transformative power of c-r: The strength of the group had been the strength of consciousness-raising itself, that frank revelation of the common personal experience and the lies that are uncovered when we show ourselves as vulnerable and human creatures, both needy and hopeful. We had worked at turning our fears and experiences into a source of insight rather than confusion. That we could feel any measure of safety while being so vulnerable had been a constant source of energy and power. Every forbidden thought that was spoken enriched us. Every terrible desire that we shared suddenly assumed human dimension, and our meetings had been full of warmth and laughter. (Allison 1994, 109)

50 Meditation Of course, c-r meetings were just as likely to encounter interpersonal competition, judgment, and other tensions. Nevertheless, like the Sonic Meditations, c-r depended on consensual listening for its success; silence, too, was acceptable, and took on new meaning. Jennifer Rycenga’s aforementioned list of the shared concerns of music and feminism resonates with the aims of consciousness-raising: non-dualism, nonhierarchic structure, acknowledging the importance of material reality, listening and giving attention to the voices of women, dialogic nature, and respect for the agency and limitations of others. Oliveros’s Sonic Meditations are a form of feminist sonic consciousness-raising, offering participants provocative opportunities to question dominant notions of music, talent, sound, ability, and musical authority. For instance, Sonic Meditations XX (“Your Voice”), XXI, and XXII are explicitly structured as questions to the participants. “Your Voice” invites a powerful self-reflection on the sound, meanings, and history of one’s voice. Think of the sound of your own voice. What is its fundamental pitch? What is its range? What is its quality? What does it express no matter what you might be verbalizing or singing? What was the original sound of your voice before you learned to sound the way you sound now? The final question, in particular, enables a specific critique of standardized vocal training and ways of speaking that are taught in the academic setting. Similarly, No. XXII functions to galvanize, and even politicize, one’s relationship to sound(s): Think of some familiar sound. Listen to it mentally. Try to find a metaphor for this sound. What are the real and imaginary possible contexts for this sound? How many ways does or could this sound affect you? or how do you feel about it? What is its effect upon you? How can this sound be described? As a group meditation, sit in a circle. Find a sound common to all, then ask the above questions one by one. Allow plenty of time between each question. When all of the questions have been asked, the group shares their answers. Variations: Try the same meditation with 1. an imaginary sound 2. a live sound 3. a remembered sound The focus on “effects” and the attention to the past, the present, and the imagined future closely mirror the guiding principles of feminist consciousness-raising.29 Temporally, both the Sonic Meditations and feminist c-r depend upon a curious,

Meditation 51 unspoken agreement about the ending of a particular session, and most of the time, members reach a non-verbal consensus. With the Sonic Meditations, this seems to be built into the form of the pieces: each one begins with the observation of the breath cycle, while the exact length of time and moment of closure are unspecified. Finally, in both the Sonic Meditations and c-r, power is meant to be shared equally among the members of the group. Of course, in both cases, individuals can (and do) manipulate or dominate other members, but one’s own personal commitment to negotiate harmoniously the relationship between oneself and the group—which can be difficult—will promote the particular task at hand. Indeed, the feminist project of building communities of women that are based on mutual respect and consensual listening and are designed to eliminate socially prescribed roles for women was simultaneously worked out in c-r groups and sounded out in the Sonic Meditations.30 Consciousness-raising and the Sonic Meditations were not always taken so seriously—at least not by Oliveros. In a playful letter to Jill Johnston, Oliveros outlined the travel plans she and Lin Barron had for the summer of 1973 which included the wish to “meet women along the way and share what we can.” “How about,” Oliveros continued, “a Lesbian Summer Camp for a few daze about mid August on our way back? Get our Conshuntzes razed and do a bit of Meddletation. Anyway, we want some time with you!”31

queen of diamonds Oliveros often shared the Sonic Meditations with other communities of women, sometimes on her own and other times with the 씸 Ensemble. The “performance” history of the Sonic Meditations 1971–81 is well-documented (though incomplete) in the Oliveros Archive at U.C. San Diego. (For a sizeable list of these engagements please refer to Appendix B at the end of this chapter.) Occasionally Oliveros was asked by university music departments to present the Sonic Meditations, but the vast majority of invitations came from women’s groups in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Usually such women’s groups were connected to universities or women’s art collectives. Though the number of these engagements prevents me from discussing each one in detail, I have selected some of the more interesting ones which establish important links between the Sonic Meditations and the international feminist community. On April 30, 1971 Oliveros presented the Sonic Meditations at San Diego State College as part of the Women’s Festival of the Arts, sponsored by the Center for Women’s Studies & Services (CWSS). This was a two-week festival that featured women’s work in art, poetry, dance, and costume sculpture, and benefited the Emergency Support Fund for women ex-prisoners entering San Diego State College through the CWSS Recruitment and Tutorial Program.32 In October

52 Meditation 1972, the connection to women prisoners became more direct. Oliveros and the 씸 Ensemble were invited by Jeanne Gallick of Santa Cruz to lead a series of sonic meditation workshops at the California Institution for Women (CIW), the state prison for women in Frontera, southern California. Gallick had done some teaching there herself (a class on women in society) and had first encountered Oliveros and the 씸 Ensemble in June 1972 when they gave a weekend workshop at the University of California, Santa Cruz.33 Gallick wrote, “At present we do have permission from the prison authorities at CIW to give these workshops. . . . We hope to take full advantage of this opening in what has been an extremely closed off and forgotten place in our society. We would be so very pleased and thankful if you could inaugurate our weekend workshops. I can’t express what it would mean to the incarcerated women.”34 Oliveros shared this invitation with her teammates in the 씸 Ensemble and they agreed to commit.35 However, prison security allowed for only two members of the 씸 Ensemble to go to CIW, a condition to which Oliveros objected; a compromise was worked out and Oliveros, Lin Barron, and Joan George attended.36 After the workshop, Oliveros wrote to Ms. Anderson, Program Administrator at the CIW: We felt that our experience there was invaluable for us in helping us in understanding the problems that the women [prisoners] face. Their response was such that we would like to come back and work out some kind of regular program, not only to help the women but to help ourselves. [. . .] Women in prison really have an extraordinary opportunity to explore various forms of Meditation and the resultant benefits, such as greater self awareness and the relation of inappropriate tensions both mental and physical.37 Oliveros wished to start an ongoing series at the prison in late January 1973, but this never materialized.38 In one of my interviews with her, twenty-five years later, she still remembered how powerful this event was: I was very moved by the women and their stories and their difficulties, and they seemed so receptive to everything. We mostly listened to their stories. They needed to talk. They needed to tell their stories, for one thing. I don’t remember really whether I actually did any of my Meditations with them or not. I do remember listening to the stories—they were very very important for them to tell. So it was more of a listening meditation for me, I think, at that time. I haven’t had the opportunity to do that again. The opportunity hasn’t presented itself, nor have I pursued it, but it was quite powerful. Would you consider doing something like that again? Oh absolutely. Yes, of course.39

Meditation 53 In May 1975 Oliveros traveled to Grand Forks, North Dakota, and led a workshop for the Festival of Womanhood, sponsored by the Grand Forks Women’s Research & Development Center. Her work there was quite a catalyst for the feminist community. Yolanda McAllister wrote to Oliveros on behalf of the Women’s Center at the University of North Dakota and thanked her for a stimulating experience that helped the women’s community there—hungry for contact with feminist women beyond the midwest—grow in its understanding of the feminist movement.40 This was not Oliveros’s first visit to Grand Forks. In March 1973 she traveled to the University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, and led Sonic Meditations as part of their Women in the Arts Festival. She also participated in a panel entitled “Problems Facing Women Artists” which debated women’s oppression in the arts (Swensen 1973, 10). In late November 1980 the Frau und Musik festival was held in Bonn and Cologne. This was a large-scale festival funded by the Kulturamt of the City of Bonn, and attended by many women musicians, scholars, and composers from all over the world (including Ruth Anderson, Annea Lockwood, Doris Hays, and Freia Hoffmann).41 Oliveros participated and held three separate sessions of Sonic Meditations on the afternoons of November 21, 22, and 23.42 Oliveros’s workshops were favorably reviewed in both the United States and Germany (Spahlinger-Ditzig 1981; Hays 1981). In addition, the program book for this festival is unusually helpful in its detailed presentation of the schedule of the Sonic Meditations. Two of the three sessions involved guided relaxation, sonic meditation, and discussion.43 Thus, Oliveros used a shortened format very similar to the ones she devised at the original sonic meditation meetings in her home with the 씸 Ensemble. Her sense that attention to one’s body (guided relaxation, formerly “kinetic awareness and hangout”) is a necessary component of listening and sounding remained central, even ten years after her initial work with the Sonic Meditations. Only four months later, Frau und Musik was followed by the First National Congress on Women in Music, held on March 26–29, 1981 at New York University’s Department of Music and Music Education. Again, Oliveros led a session of Sonic Meditations in Washington Square Church. Nona Yarden “reviewed” her experience of this event in the form of a meditation which charts her move from apprehension to joyful participation. (WHO? ME? whatamI doinghere? ME SING? can’t sing. never could sing.) ((calm down)) [. . .]

54 Meditation my voice lifted up out of me by that swelling welling willing sound [. . .]

filling space

I will remember those voices welling up unconducted untrained untrying just uttering themselves fully filling the herespace this wide wealth of sound from nowhere and never to sound again the same44 Yarden’s unusual account of this experience alternates between her internal “voice” of doubtful tension and her external observations of listening and sounding with the group. The Sonic Meditations also touched the lesbian and gay community. As early as 1971 the Metropolitan Community Church (a gay-friendly church) in San Diego invited Oliveros and the 씸 Ensemble to share the Sonic Meditations with the congregation.45 And in the mid-1980s Oliveros led 6,000 women in the “Tuning Meditation” at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, an annual summer womenonly event and considered one of the lesbian community’s most illustrious institutions. “That’s the largest group that I’ve ever dealt with at one time,” she tells Cole Gagne. “It was amazing. . . . There was just waves of sound. This was outdoors and 6,000 women . . .!” (Gagne, 220).

advance the runner In addition to these connections with women in the context of institutions (universities, prisons, festivals, etc.), Oliveros’s connections with individual lesbian artists—her peers, and sometimes her friends—produced the most interesting and intimate “readings” of the Sonic Meditations. Composers Kay Gardner and Annea Lockwood, author Jane Rule, and filmmaker Barbara Hammer all played catcher as Buster pitched: each engaged the Sonic Meditations in different ways and found them extremely valuable in their own work. Kay Gardner (1941–2002) was a classically trained flautist, conductor, and composer whose music crosses over between “women’s music” and classical music. In brief, Gardner co-founded the New England Women’s Symphony, and made several recordings of her own compositions. Gardner was an out lesbian and feminist, and very active in the “women’s music” scene: she wrote articles regularly for Hotwire: Journal of Women’s Music and Culture, and worked in a variety of capacities in the newly established feminist recording industry. She was closely

Meditation 55 connected with Women’s Music Network and the Women’s Wax Works, both based in New York City.46 In the Spring of 1974, Gardner made contact with Oliveros by letter, and eventually organized a women-only Sonic Meditations event in New York City. April 16, 1974 Dear Kay, [. . .] I expect to be in New York around May 20 for 2 or 3 days. I would be very pleased to meet with you then. Also if there is a place, loft, available where I could give an evening of Sonic Meditation, which is my current work, for some interested women, I would be happy to do it. (Informal—no fee—to get acquainted.) [. . .] Yours, Pauline47 April 30, 1974 Dear Pauline, Thanks for your letter and 씸 Ensemble brochure. It’s too bad the ensemble is no longer together. [. . .] We’d love to have you give an evening of Sonic Meditation. A student of mine has donated her loft for the evening. You mentioned “some interested women” . . . how many would that be? There are quite a few women I’d like to invite, and if the only limit would be the loft’s limit, Women’s Music Network would like to send out invitations to everyone on our New York mailing list. If you’d rather a more intimate thing, let me know. I tend to think big. [. . .] I look forward to meeting you. Sincerely, Kay48 May 8, 1974 Dear Kay, Thank you for your letter. I think that Tuesday May 21 will be best for evening of Sonic Meditation. I don’t care how many people you invite, but I would prefer that it be just word of mouth. I would like to avoid any “promotional” atmosphere, and just stay simple and informal. If there are 6 or more instrumentalists available we could try my telepathic improvisation during the evening. It’s best with sustaining instruments.

56 Meditation I’ll save the afternoon of [May] 22 for meeting with W[omen’s] M[usic] N[etwork]. [. . .] Yours, Pauline Oliveros49 Clearly, Oliveros was not interested in fame or money with this event, and simply wanted to bring “interested women” together through music. As it turned out, Oliveros became ill and was unable to attend. Unfortunately the event did not go well, as Gardner explains several months later after having spent the summer on the road. Nevertheless, she was quite moved by it: Dear Pauline, I’m beginning to see the light! I’m beginning to be me. Thank you for your sonic meditations. I have just read them for the first time . . . skimmed them when you were here before but didn’t really understand them. The evening we did them here was not particularly good, though I didn’t say so at the time. The women were very uptight and those who were observing were not very cooperative. It was shaky but, personally, it was wonderful for me. I looked out the window or closed my eyes and communicated with the traffic sounds (a man-made ocean) and the distant ship horns. The women who came brought amplified instruments came in at staggered times during the evening, so no one knew quite what was happening. I was glad that you, feeling bad, hadn’t come. [. . .] And so now, back home again amidst NYC chaos, I take out your sonic meditations again, read them nod yes, yes, yes. I know how to fly, how to transform that inner space to outerspace to space. And I want women to fly! Strong, I feel. I feel strong. [. . .] Enough words. Thanks again for you. Love, Kay Gardner 9–12–7450 Beyond the Sonic Meditations, Gardner and Oliveros held similar convictions about music. They both believed in music’s “power” to transform and heal; they were also uncomfortable with the notion of music as entertainment and were deeply concerned with the relationship between music and social change.51 Gardner and Oliveros both committed themselves to feminist critiques

Meditation 57 of western music and contemplated questions of a “woman’s” music—what is its sound, history, concepts? (However, Oliveros would not have agreed with the more essentialist frame that Gardner brought to these questions. 52) They remained friendly colleagues, and in 1990 Oliveros supported Gardner’s work and wrote the Introduction to her book Sounding the Inner Landscape: Music as Medicine.53

bring her home In May 1970 Annea Lockwood (b. 1939) wrote to Oliveros, expressing a well-informed interest in her music and writings (especially “Some Sound Observations” which had been published in Source 3 [1968]), and wishing to connect more closely with Oliveros. Lockwood, a native of New Zealand, was living in Essex, England, at the time and working as a composer. In 1973 she moved to the United States, taught at Hunter College, and from 1985 until 2001 she was Professor of Music at Vassar College. The correspondence between Lockwood and Oliveros 1970–77 is an invaluable record of shared ideas about music, creativity, the body, and feminism during an extremely productive decade of feminist activism in many spheres—social, political, cultural, artistic. Lockwood and Oliveros treasured each other’s ideas, exchanged scores and tapes, supported one another’s work, and became good friends. Their initial “conversations” dwelled on the Sonic Meditations in which Lockwood was keenly interested. Even in her first letter to Oliveros, Lockwood’s attentiveness to listening closely parallels Oliveros’s experiences: 9th. May 1970 Dear Pauline Oliveros, I’ve just returned from Sweden (where the Fylkingen Organisation was running its Text-Sound Festival) and find a great, news letter from Allen Strange, in which he suggests that I write you and make contact. [. . .] Thought my hearing was probably very primitive and needed sharpening up so I stopped building sounds altogether and started just listening. Now, more and more I seem happy just to listen—not really wanting to modulate them in any way, not at all to use them as ‘materials’—content just to listen. Does that seem very passive to you? Seems possible to me that however intensively we compose with them and process them, sounds process us much more deeply and so far I know so little of the changes which go on when a sound goes through me; how far could one get in tracing the effects set up in one’s body, by various sounds? It’s as if listening/hearing is a whole physical scene, like dancing, set up between your brain and body, and the sounds coming into it, with all sorts

58 Meditation of transformations going on. ‘Some Sound Observations[’] is about this also, isn’t it?54 Oliveros, weary after recovering from an illness, replied with enthusiasm and humor. Nov 4, 1970 Dear Anna, So glad to have your letter and music on my return to Calif. in Mid October. Was ill for a time and just now catching up on correspondence. Your work is lovely and I’m all the more convinced that meeting you would be very interesting as I think we are dealing with some similar problems. Time span – occult phenomena – ritual – theater. Will certainly promote a performance soon of one or both of your pieces. Maybe Allen [Strange] and I can do a Lockwood Festival. When things calm down a bit here I’ll write you again and send some tapes and scores. I am having trouble concentrating as I am so far behind on correspondence and business. I’ll be interested in whatever you are willing to send me. Watch out for telepathic pitches. I send them out once in a while. Very best, Pauline O.55 On January 16, 1971 at U.C. San Diego, Oliveros helped mount a performance of Lockwood’s Shone in a concert titled “Sweet Alice” which featured works by women composers: Lockwood, Ruth Crawford, Dolores Goble, Betty Wong, and Lin Barron.56 (Wong and Barron were members of the 씸 Ensemble.) In the following letter from Oliveros, this program is humorously referred to as “our female chauvinist concert.” Jan. 18, 1971 Dear Anna— Good to have your letter. Our female chauvinist concert was well attended and received. I think your Shone went very well and was quite beautiful. [. . .] It’s great to have a pen pal! Good to know another woman involved in the sonic existence and not academia. We recorded Shone. When I get around to dub, will send you tape. Will send new chorus piece soon Meditation on the Points of the Compass. Love, Pauline57

Meditation 59 On May 13, 1971 Oliveros sent Lockwood “scores” of five Sonic Meditations (“Teach Yourself To Fly,” “Environmental Dialogue,” “Native,” “Removing the Demon,” and “Telepathic Improvisation”), and Lockwood soon began practicing them with a group in Essex and was eager to share the results with Oliveros. Later that month, Lockwood’s group in Essex and Oliveros’s group in Joshua Tree did some of the Sonic Meditations on the same weekend (May 21–22, 1971). Oliveros and Lockwood were interested in any significance of the fact that both groups were mixed gender. Lockwood’s beautifully articulate observations and questions stand alone as the most sophisticated contemporary analyses of the Sonic Meditations. June 11th. 1971 Dear Pauline and Lin, Here’s the medicine bundle, tapes, photos of two of the meditations, and a lot of loving gratitude from us all for everything which happened to us during the meditations. [. . .] On that day, the 22nd [of May], fourteen people came out for meditations in Epping Forest. It rained often all day through, and being low ground the forest is a real old english bog under rain, so we stayed here, which is a most peaceful place, doing some of the meditations inside the house, and some in gaps between rain, in fields and woods nearby. We started at what we calculated would be dawn in California (2 p.m. here), opening with a Greeting Meditation for people still arriving, and moving into Teach Yourself to Fly. I have very strong physical changes with that one—little localised paralyses, and great serenity. Others found this too—do you find it a really strong body-meditation? Stronger, for me than the Sufic Allah chant, which is also focused on breathing, but seems to be from a different approach, and to a different end? That starts as a rhythmic pattern on “Allah”—gradually shifts emphasis onto the “—lah—,” which becomes breathier and heavier until one’s chest is subjected to great weight-feelings, the words gone and it’s a pumping of the whole body. Then it speeds up. Very direct though, like taking a drug perhaps, rather than thinking one’s way into a state of trance or meditation. (Do you distinguish between these—feel that a meditation, deep and prolonged, is a trance?) I find Teach Yourself to Fly beautiful in that it allows the environment to gradually drift in on long time spans. [. . .] All of us were very, there’s no word for it,—serenity, good e[n]ergies, physically well and mentally, a powerful calm, after the weekend. After working like this for a while, are you finding as a group [the 씸 Ensemble],

60 Meditation that sound transmission becomes more intense and continuous amongst you? [. . .] Love, Anna Lockwood’s own work as a composer interested in fully embodied listening is very apparent here, as is her obvious experience with meditation. She was also intrigued by the gender dynamics of a given group, how that affects sonic meditation, and why an all-women’s group might be desired. September 6th. [1971] Dear Pauline and Lin, [. . .] Yes, seems to me that female energy, pooled, has a great lucidity and directness, humour and mutual knowledge. It willingly concentrates for long periods. And because I’ve never worked exclusively with women for any long period I’d really like to know what it produces. For instance, do you find that the concrete group processes which you develop from working and thinking together, the meditations, for instance, have quite different forms from those you’d develope[d] with a mixed group? Do you think you’re able to push techniques for psychic awareness through further than you might with a mixed group? Must be true—the centuries of manoeuvers between women and men are there, present, in everyone and spring into play as soon as we meet. [. . .] We too had a problem with 3 people not being truly involved—but they went off alone and the rest of us were able to focus undistracted. We found that this focussing improved, of course, as Saturday wore on.58 In response to her questions, Oliveros writes: Part of the problem at Joshua Tree was the mixed group. Mixed sexes plus some “friends” who came along. But the struggle for identity is so strong between males + females that games begin immediately. I don’t know how to turn that kind of energy to advantage for the meditations. The 씸 Ensemble did not have the same problems. Yes the form is different. I can only identify the difference though as an identity struggle which is clearly manifest in the sound when the group is mixed.59 Although the views on gender expressed here by Oliveros and Lockwood are overgeneralized, their struggle to understand gender as a fundamental category

Meditation 61 of analysis was in tune with much feminist thinking in the early 1970s, and to bring their observations into the realm of music-making was very ambitious indeed. Oliveros, inspired by her recent reading of Jungian psychology, shared more of her thoughts on gender asymmetry with Lockwood: “The intellectual subjugation of women is not confined to New Zealand upbringing! But it is largely non-conscious and transpersonal even though it seems personal. My interest remains in making positive images of woman in action (one’s actions are visible for thousands of miles—Susuki) with a developed masculine (conscious) side. Thus 씸 Ensemble.”60 The friendship between Lockwood and Oliveros deepened, and in late 1971 Oliveros was eager for Lockwood to visit San Diego and participate in the Sonic Meditations with the 씸 Ensemble. “Lin and I are looking forward very much to your prospective visit in Dec. [W]e will celebrate and carry on outrageously. . . . You are welcome to stay with us in Dec. If your visit is timed right we will have the ensemble together for a session while you are here.”61 I am not certain if this particular visit came to pass, but Oliveros and Lockwood first met one another in person some time in 1971 on radio station KPFA in Berkeley with Charles Amirkhanian, producer of new music.62 In 1973 Lockwood was hired to direct the electronic music studio at Hunter College for one year while Ruth Anderson, its director, took a sabbatical. (Lockwood stayed on in the United States after that point.) Oliveros was overjoyed with this news and on May 16, 1973 wrote: “Many people are looking forward to your stay in New York. I know that lots will happen for you there! It’s comforting to know that my true sister is going to be so much more accessible!”63 The ideas Oliveros and Lockwood exchanged about listening and sounding undoubtedly supported Oliveros’s work with the Sonic Meditations, but they also nourished Lockwood’s own work. In 1973 she composed “Morning Meditation” and “Water Meditations”: Morning Meditation As you wake up open yourself to every sound about you. Lying there without moving, before you get up, hear everything, let every sound enter you and move on. Follow it until you can no longer feel it. When you feel it is time, stretch well. Water Meditations 1. Go to a river at a place where the water is breaking gently on rocks, logs, and so on. Stay there all day from sunrise to night. Search out every layer of the sounds the water is making until the river is flowing through your body.

62 Meditation 2. Another day choose a place where the river cascades through falls, a weir, a gorge, and the sounds approach white noise. Stay there all day. Let the sounds change you and follow these changes.64 These “pieces” differ from most of Oliveros’s Sonic Meditations in several ways. First, though Lockwood’s pieces could be done with other people, they are meant for individual meditation. Second, they do not specify making sound; rather, they request an intense engagement with listening. Third, the “Water Meditations” call for a full day—an unusually long time span. The similarities between the meditations by Oliveros and Lockwood are more interesting. For both composers, their meditations are primarily concerned with the transformative effects of sound(s) on the body, particularly environmental sounds (as opposed to conventional “musical” sounds from instruments or voices), and do not require formal musical training. Lockwood is especially interested in letting sounds “enter,” “move through,” “flow through,” and “change” the meditator. However, the actual ways “change” manifest are left wide open, fully dependent on the meditator’s own experience. The difficulty lies in the challenge to “follow” the changes, noting their effects on the “listening body” over a passage of time. Oliveros and Lockwood continued to exchange ideas about feminism, too, and in 1975 Lockwood shared her latest views, new and revised: Jan 18 [1975] Dear, very dear Pauline, [. . .] In the midst of a turmoil of my strong feeling over feminism—finally. I’ve picked up an earlier piece, which you + I discussed I remember, way back in ’72 ‘Women’s Voices.’ And quickly am in incredulity about our position, everything suddenly very aware + intense in feeling. Reading + reading, Abbot + Love, Brownmiller, Firestone, Millett (have you read ‘Flying’? such a good feeling being able at last to read a book about love between women which comes from an open lesbian life), + more. Begun taping older women again—talking with women friends, with lesbian friend. Talking of doing a perf. of “WORLD RHYTHMS” for a women’s audience only—+ of a concert of music by gay women composers for the Gay Women’s Alliance. (If we do, and do works by women not at the concert, may we do a work of yours?)—about to join a gay group of, probably, gay women, many of whom will have been in the women’s movt. for many years. There are all manner of study groups forming in NYC now—one on Feminist Ethics, one on Matriarchy (each member calls herself a matriarchist), one which has formed a, not a court, but a place where women’s disputes can be brought out + mediated, as a replacement for male justice—

Meditation 63 [. . .] Delighted to hear about your sabbatical—did that come about, or return so soon because of the summer Chairwomanship? It would be very good to see you in the summer + we well understand the tentativeness of that possibility— Do you feel happy with WOMEN’S WORK? much love, close hugs, Anna65 Lockwood’s former “position,” apparently shared by Oliveros, is not entirely clear from this and other letters in the Oliveros Archives (New York and San Diego). However, her excitement about reading Sidney Abbott and Barbara Love, Shulamith Firestone, Susan Brownmiller, and Kate Millett indicates she was certainly a dedicated student of feminist theory and analysis. Her interest in making connections with the lesbian community through her music, especially her piece World Rhythms, was both generous and brave for a woman composer with a university position. In 1975 Lockwood edited with Alison Knowles Women’s Work, a collection of scores, mostly prose, by sixteen women artists, including the editors.66 Oliveros submitted Link (a large-scale outdoor “theater” piece, which was later renamed Bonn Feier in 1977) as Sonic Meditation XXVI for this collection. In 1973, Lockwood teamed up with Ruth Anderson and together they developed twenty-seven Hearing Studies which closely resemble the Sonic Meditations.67 As the title suggests, the Hearing Studies are instructions for individual listening in specific contexts (at home, outside, etc.) to specific sounds (environmental, mechanical, vocal, musical); a few involve making sound. They are mainly pedagogical and participants are asked to keep a notebook and record their reactions and experiences. Each “Hearing Study” includes an “aim”—a brief explanation of what the study is designed to demonstrate (e.g., thresholds of audibility, sound memory, modes of attention, air and bone conduction, Doppler effect, masking, etc.). For example, “Hearing Study #9” works as follows: Listen to two people who are about equidistant from you reading aloud. Aim: To demonstrate selective attention, (the ‘cocktail party’ phenomenon). To discover what parameter of sound draws your attention to one or another of the speakers, or what content of the reading draws your attention, or if there are a number of factors involved, and a number of decisions you make in your “selective attention.” “Hearing Study #12” is a variant of Oliveros’s Sonic Meditation XXV, “Your Name: The Signature Meditation.” First the Oliveros:

64 Meditation 1. Dwell on your name. Write it down as slowly as possible. 2. Visualize your name as you sign it mentally. a. with eyes closed b. with eyes open 3. Visualize your name in different kinds of writing, script and printing. a. vary the sizes from microscopic to gigantic b. vary the colors and backgrounds c. vary the dimensions from 2 to 3 4. Visualize or actually sign your name backwards, forwards, upside down, inside out. a. with the right hand b. with the left hand c. with both hands simultaneously mirroring each other And here is the Lockwood–Anderson variant: Your name: 1/Say it in every possible way. 2/Write it in every possible way. 3/Say it the ways you wrote it, using your writing as a “score.” (1 and 2 may be reversed) Aim: To find the musical elements potential in your name – melodies, rhythms, textures, contrasting dynamics, tempi, re-juxtapositions of segments, syllables, phonemes, changing structures, variety within a given. To discover more fully how you feel about your name, its relationship to your self, and by this exploration of sound to create a very personal relationship to sound; to expand one sense and one activity with another. Oliveros’s “Signature Meditation” is primarily visual and kinetic, and does not mention sound or listening, though these inevitably form part of the meditation. (I have found that the sounds of pen on paper result in marvelous sonic details to listen to carefully.) Indeed, the Lockwood–Anderson variant picks up where Oliveros leaves off, and introduces sounding out and listening to one’s name in musical ways. The reverberations of the Sonic Meditations and the Hearing Studies moved in both directions, to and from Oliveros who used the Hearing Studies in one of her courses at U.C. San Diego, Spring 1981.68 Lockwood and Anderson enjoyed stepping up to the pitcher’s mound themselves, pitching their own sonic ideas and adjusting the rules of the game as they saw fit. The Sonic Meditations and the Hearing Studies share a user-friendly quality that allows participants plenty of time to move at their own pace and work with their

Meditation 65 own level of sonic awareness in a delightfully exploratory mode. This feminist do-it-yourself ethos (so important in the 1970s), particularly the use of a workbook in the Hearing Studies, reminds me of Tee Corinne’s Cunt Coloring Book of 1975, the first lesbian picture book designed for women’s self-education. This book has been reprinted at least six times and since 1988 has included translations into French, Spanish, and Dutch. In her Foreword, Corinne writes that coloring is a way “to revision and reclaim this portion of our bodies from which we have been estranged.”69 Art, sonic and visual, designed in a personal, instructional mode that takes seriously women’s access to their minds, bodies, and creative impulses strikes me as a characteristically feminist phenomenon that took hold in the 1970s. Furthermore, to free associate for a moment in between innings, the project shared by Oliveros and Lockwood of creating new forms in which to radically rethink the long-treasured traditions of music-making (and their history of exclusion) resonated deeply with the work of several lesbian literary and creative artists in the 1970s who also worked outside the mainstream. Very briefly, Bertha Harris and Monique Wittig both sought to create new literary forms that would, among other things, bring lesbian subjectivity and sexuality to life in complex, previously unimagined ways. Harris’s Lover (1976) and Wittig’s The Lesbian Body (1973) are still two of the most revolutionary and adventurous lesbian novels of that decade. Similarly, lesbian filmmaker Barbara Hammer was critical of classical cinematic narrative and passionately concerned with constructing lesbian cinema.70 Her films from the 1970s (Dyketactics, Multiple Orgasm, Double Strength, Women I Love, and Superdyke—all extremely low budget) are powerful examples of lesbian images of lesbianism, a previously blank screen. Honey Lee Cottrell, Morgan Gwenwald, and Tee Corinne were the fabulous inventors of lesbian erotic photography in the 1970s. Self-conscious lesbian photography that took lesbian sexuality as its subject was absolutely absent before the work of these women. Their challenge was to create images of lesbian eroticism, long dominated by male photographers such as David Hamilton, from a lesbian perspective and for a lesbian audience. I can’t resist quoting Susie Bright, lesbian culture critic, who claims, “Lesbian photography defies the double standard; and although it revels in notions of masculinity and queerness, it reaches out for a woman’s touch and pleasure. It’s very dicey to start laying down rules about what lesbian erotica is or isn’t, but it would be fair to say that there is a lesbian state of grace, and that these photographs live in that world.”71 All of these splendid artists bring lesbian and feminist questions to their work at structural and aesthetic levels. No one in the 1970s brought such integrity to the politics and “the arts” of lesbian sexuality as did these women.

66 Meditation

drag bunt Oliveros and her Sonic Meditations also touched lesbian artists working outside music. Since the mid-1960s Oliveros has enjoyed a long and supportive friendship with author Jane Rule. Rule is probably most famous for her oftreprinted novel Desert of the Heart (1964) upon which Donna Deitch’s film Desert Hearts (1985) was based. Widely read in the lesbian community, Rule is also the author of at least seven novels, three collections of short stories, and a volume of lesbian literary criticism. Oliveros and Rule did not see each other very often: occasionally Oliveros visited Rule and her lover Helen Sonthoff at their home in Vancouver, British Columbia, and sometimes in the winter months Rule and Sonthoff visited Oliveros at the desert in Borrego Springs, southern California. In the early 1970s Rule and Sonthoff moved to Galiano Island, British Columbia, where Rule still lives. Sonthoff died in 2000. Rule describes herself as “a politically involved lesbian”72 and in an undated letter from the 1970s to Oliveros, just after one of her visits to Vancouver, she relates an interesting story: Went to a women’s lib meeting at which a bright, defensive graduate student was giving a paper on a study of Lesbian life styles, during which she claimed secrecy was the one essential. I brooded through it, feeling shaking youngsters around me, and then had to speak, quietly, of those of us who couldn’t and wouldn’t be invisible and why. I think there was point in it, though I know it probably alarmed more than it reassured. “You don’t have to claim it,” someone said to me later. “People write about murderers and aren’t necessarily murderers.” So I talked about the difference between required and desired roles, about the candid beauty of subjectivity. But I retreat again to the only public world I’m comfortable in—work. [. . .] Well, and send you love, too, which I also keep for you, an endless and still centered event. Jane73 In September 1997 I wrote to Rule and asked if she had kept any letters from Oliveros. She hadn’t, but she shared with me several of her memories of visits with Oliveros. I include some of them here because they illuminate the core of their friendship, as artists and lesbians, in a far more articulate fashion than I could possibly muster. What I do remember is the talk even now with some vividness. Though our fields were very different and I knew very little about her kind of music, we shared a problem of teaching our audiences how to listen to us, and some of

Meditation 67 what we explained to each other was certainly very useful to me. Often what she said was very simple, like her response to someone who said he liked a piece she’s written but it was too long. “Why?” she replied, “Did you have a bus to catch?” Then we went on to discuss how to deal with the extraneous needs and expectations of a listener, whether personal or cultural, which get in the way of addressing the work at hand. I remember listening to her talk about how to deal with time in music once it is divorced from the breath or heart beat.74 I asked Rule if she and Oliveros had ever talked to each other about being lesbians and feminists, and this is what she recalled: We met before the feminist movement was underway, before anyone talked openly about homosexuality. We didn’t really correspond. [. . .] We connected as artists, and, though we knew very little of each other’s fields, we could talk about our work and more obliquely about the difficulties of being lesbian artists. Pauline told me about how isolated she felt the year she spent at Mills [1966–67] (where I had gone to college), how she was never invited to other faculty members’ houses for dinner. She finally gave ‘a concert’ at which, if I recall it properly, she dressed in a tux, went on stage and stretched out on top of a grand piano where she lay until the audience gradually drifted away. I was furious at the college for behaving so badly. We haven’t been in touch for years. Helen is now 81, and I at 66 have arthritis severely enough that I travel very little; so our world has grown much smaller than it used to be. But Pauline is a rich memory for me even though the times we spent together were brief and our friendship never very close in conventional ways.75 The most interesting memories Rule shared with me were those that explained how Oliveros’s work as musician and composer affected Rule, both in her daily life and in her work as a writer. I remember listening with her to the sounds about us. Helen and I often harmonized with the ferry whistles that sound often in the pass beyond our house. Pauline told us we were doing sonic meditation. Crossing on the ferry to the island, she began listening to the vibrations of a plastic cup on the arm of her chair as they changed with the changing rhythms of the ship’s engine. She recorded the flushing of our toilet in our Vancouver house one evening with John Cage. The most obvious evidence of the influence she’s had on my work is the chapter in Contract with the World called “Roxanne Recording” in which some of how she taught me to listen is included.76

68 Meditation Rule published Contract with the World in 1980, and her novel revolves around six artists—three women and three men, queer and straight—living and struggling in Vancouver in the 1970s. Roxanne, an ex-convict and life-long lesbian who grew up in foster homes, does not refer to herself as a composer; instead, “‘I document sound,’ she says, if pressed to say so.”77 She is lovers with Alma Trasco, a writer, who has recently split up with her husband, Mike (a sculptor), and lives with Alma and her two sons Tony and Victor. Roxanne’s relationship to sound definitely bears Oliveros’s imprint, and I quote the opening paragraph of “Roxanne Recording” in full: Roxanne was making a sound map of the house. What other people might have fixed, a dripping tap or squeaking hinge, she listened to. What other people blanked out—the refrigerator or furnace going on, a plane passing overhead—she heard. She was interested in the difference in tone between eggshells and chicken bones in the garbage disposal. She compared the refilling times of the two toilets. She recorded the boys’ feet up and down the stairs, in and out of the house, and she asked them to spend one rainy afternoon doing nothing but sitting down over and over again on different pieces of living-room furniture. (Rule 1980, 181) Roxanne soon decides that a sound map of Alma’s house is too small, and so is their neighborhood. Her big project is to create a sound map of the city of Vancouver, a gigantic tape piece (ten tapes, twenty speakers) of sounds she has recorded all over the city. She constructs this piece by drawing a huge map of Vancouver on the dining room wall of the house. At first she intended only to make notes, a word or two to remind her of the sound she had recorded or wanted to record, but because the wall was first an issue and then a curiosity, Roxanne began to see the map as a thing in itself as well as a score for work to be done. She cut pictures out of magazines, everything from air-conditioning units to national flags. Directions were color-coded, green to indicate what did happen on that particular corner, red to indicate what might happen, and gold to suggest what should happen. “Are you trying to make it look the way it’s going to sound?” Tony asked. “Not exactly,” Roxanne said. “I’m just trying to see what it sounds like.” (192) Her friends help secure space in a local art gallery, and comprise the bulk of the audience at the performance. Roxanne’s sound map, over an hour long, is reviewed by the local newspaper’s music critic who, along with her friends, fails to comprehend the piece. “Roxanne realized that no one had a clue to how to

Meditation 69 listen or what to say. Only Alma was confident enough to say, ‘I don’t pretend to understand it, but I find it fascinating.’ Roxanne said, ‘I don’t think there’s anything to understand’” (227). Roxanne’s peculiar interest in listening to the music of environmental sound, both domestic and urban, and her apparent disregard for music bound to conventional instruments, genres, and settings mirrors part of Oliveros’s own musicality. Furthermore, Roxanne’s sound map of Vancouver resonates with Lockwood’s A Sound Map of the Hudson River, a piece she “composed” over a period of several months in 1982 by recording the sounds of this river in various locations, seasons, and at different times of the day.78 In her liner notes, Lockwood writes, “Since 1970 I have recorded rivers in many countries, not to document them, but rather for the special state of mind and body which the sounds of moving water create when one listens intently to the complex mesh of rhythms and pitches.”79 I hear Rule, Roxanne, and Lockwood sounding out their own “contracts with the world” as lesbian artists, both real and fictional.

rounding the corner Even after the heady days of the 1970s, Oliveros’s Sonic Meditations continued to reach other lesbian artists. Filmmaker Barbara Hammer, mentioned earlier, and Oliveros met in the early 1980s, and their professional paths crossed again on a flight to the 1986 Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. Hammer tells me it poured rain at the festival, and she videotaped a session of Sonic Meditations “under a thunderstormed tent.”80 Hammer admired Oliveros’s work and in 1988 she made a film, Bent Time, which used Oliveros’s accordion piece Rattlesnake Mountain in the sound track. Hammer was drawn to the Sonic Meditations and worked with them in her film and video classes at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, California College of Arts and Crafts, and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.81 While teaching at Evergreen State College, she wrote to Oliveros and shared her playful response: 1/13/88 Sound Meditation #1 for Pauline Oliveros The fluorescent lights make this school a factory The constant driven hum The breath of the occupant, me me in the factory of school This experience of awareness through attention Brings in the space, throws down the walls The throat clear of a colleague in her office A student cough

70 Meditation my swallow The door slam in the hallway A chatter distant between two people somewhere Yet, here, the drone, the hum, the ever present fluorescent lights I’ll turn them off. There. Oh no——— It was the air conditioner and I don’t have access to the controls. Love, Barbara82 Hammer’s attentiveness to the sounds of her environment, her body, and other bodies seems hampered by the “drone” of the air conditioner, mistaken for the lights. The mischievous open-endedness of her poem suggests the meditation took on a (perhaps unknown) life of its own, affecting other people in that particular building.

good sportswomanship Oliveros pitched her feminist convictions in more fields than one. In addition to the Sonic Meditations, her activist work took written form: essays and letters. In 1970 she threw a real hummer in her widely acclaimed article for the New York Times entitled “And Don’t Call Them ‘Lady’ Composers” which attacked the music establishment for its sexist practices and its willful dismissal of women’s participation and achievement (Oliveros 1970). Her ground-breaking essay is remarkable for its insistence on gender as a social construction (rather than a biological determination) that has historically privileged men’s presence in music and trivialized that of women. She argues that “Men do not have to commit sexual suicide in order to encourage their sisters in music. . . . Certainly the greatest problems of society will never be solved until an egalitarian atmosphere utilizing the total creative energies exists among all men and women” (30). Oliveros’s article drew quite a bit of attention, especially in the Northeast and New England. It was reprinted in the Toronto Globe and Mail as “Women composers, too, play second fiddle to men.”83 Edwin Safford of the Providence Journal objected to Oliveros’s “Women’s Libby” argument that sexism in music is part of a larger social and historical problem, and in his response complained: “Why does she follow the separatist line by calling for establishment of libraries devoted exclusively to women’s music? And why, oh why, does she repeatedly refer to ‘women composers,’ as if that were a less deplorable label than ‘lady composers?’”84 Four months after the publication of Oliveros’s article, Jill Johnston, dance critic for the Village Voice and friend of Oliveros, mentioned the article in one of her columns that recounted her visit to Leucadia (Oliveros’s

Meditation 71 home) and her admiration of Oliveros’s work. “Many male composers think of her as the only female in their field. She wrote an article in the New York Times this summer on the subject which should be an encouragement to the other activewomen [in music]” (Johnston 1971, 33). Johnston’s prediction was correct, and at least three composers wrote to Oliveros directly. Jean Eichelberger Ivey, a composer teaching at Peabody Conservatory, replied the moment she read the article: Sept. 13, 1970 Bravo, Pauline! That was a great article of yours in today’s N.Y. Times. It got me so stirred up I wrote a letter to the editor myself, adding my two cents worth. I’m sending it along so you can see it, in case it never gets printed, or gets garbled when it does. I was tempted also to go into the question of why so few women composers get grants, but I decided to confine myself to one main issue—the college teaching bit. Actually I’m feeling somewhat encouraged about the prospects of women composers lately. With all the emphasis on women’s lib. etc., we may be on the verge of a time of reverse prejudice. Just as, at the moment, there is quite a demand for black scholars by universities who want them on their faculties if only to show how broad-minded they are, I think we may come to a similar situation with women. That will be the day! I notice a woman won the Prix de Rome in Composition for the first time last year. (I should think the donors would be ashamed to admit it.) Hard to believe it was because no other suitably qualified woman ever applied. Much more likely the times have changed enough so that the donors thought it was about time to get around to one. [...] All the best things. Keep up the good fight! Jean85 Composer Vivian Fine also offered her praise: Sept 23/70 Dear Pauline, Just a word to tell you I thought your article in the Sunday Times was very fine. In these days when ‘Women’s Lib’ is so often the object of derision, I found the non-combative and informed tone of your writing just what is needed. With warm regards, Sincerely, Vivian Fine86

72 Meditation And Julia Smith, “chairman” of American Women Composers, was even more effusively grateful and felt that Oliveros had made a splendid impression for all women composers. In particular, Smith identified Oliveros’s mention of the Directory of Women Composers and the list of recordings by women composers (as of 1970) as having a productive ripple effect on the larger collective of women composers, musicians, and students.87 The article continued to reverberate many years after it was written. In 1974 Nancy Van de Vate, President of the Southeastern Composers’ League, wrote to Oliveros: “I do hope you are not offended by the liberal use so many of us have made of your article and hope it will continue to have a ripple effect. It is, of course, immensely helpful when a woman who has an established reputation, as you have, complains.”88 In 1975 Elinor Kefalis, then a graduate student at San Diego State University working on American women composers, interviewed Oliveros for High Fidelity/Musical America and asked her to expand on some of the arguments in “‘Lady’ Composers” (Kefalis 1975, 24–5). Finally, decades after its publication several more interviewers found the article compelling enough to ask Oliveros about its background and implications (Maus and Oliveros 1994; Masaoka 2002; Baker 2003). “And Don’t Call Them ‘Lady’ Composers” was reprinted in Oliveros’s anthology, Software for People, along with three other essays from the mid-1970s that raise feminist questions about various musical issues of the day. “Divisions Underground” and “Rags and Patches” are adventurous pieces of writing—at times whimsical, searching, analytical, and challenging—that combine storytelling, journal entries, philosophical explorations, conversations with musicians, concert “reviews,” and letters to and from various women in music (Oliveros 1984, 95–111, 112–29). “The Contribution of Women as Composers” formed part of a grant proposal that Oliveros submitted to the Ford Foundation for its Faculty Fellowships for Research on Women In Society (132–7). Although the proposal was not funded, her essay offers a useful examination of the peculiar intersection between gender roles and modes of creativity (analytical and intuitive) in the realm of composition. “Rags and Patches” was initially written for Numus West, a journal in which Oliveros had published four other articles: “Three Themes,” “Five Scenes,” “Many Strands,” and “Divisions Underground.” However, “Rags and Patches” was rejected on the grounds that it was too lengthy, and in Software for People Oliveros suspects that it was “perhaps too outrageous for the direction Numus West wished to represent” (67). In other words, its feminism was “too outrageous,” and in July 1974 Oliveros briefly considered publishing it in Paid My Dues: A Quarterly Journal of Women in Music based in Milwaukee. On July 22, 1974 she replied to an editor’s request to contribute:

Meditation 73 Dear Lucy— I certainly have heard of Paid My Dues and you will find that I am a subscriber. The magazine seems to be very good and I would like to contribute, perhaps on a regular basis if you are interested. I am looking around for a replacement for Numus West which is the magazine that I have contributed to the last 2 years. My last article was not printed probably because it was too radically feminist. I could try to introduce various women composers especially those who are trying to express a feminist viewpoint. It would be good to know of the women who are composing right now, how they are supported, how they are being recognized and so forth. Also the function of professionalism, its effect on women [i]n music is worth an investigation, and an exploration of alternatives—collective supportive activity, how to get women together, musically—effectively.89 Publishing in Paid My Dues never came to pass, but Oliveros obviously wished to speak more directly to a feminist readership. Later, in 1978, Oliveros, along with three other women composers, published an autobiographical portrait of her compositional background in Paid My Dues.90

triple play In addition to published articles, Oliveros made her feminist views on women in music extremely clear in some of her letters from the early and mid1970s. Three stand out for their clarity and force. The first was a response to feminist musicologist Judith Rosen who wrote to Oliveros in 1971 and apparently shared some ideas in her current work and posed some questions.91 Oliveros replied with the story of Sappho at the center of her vast critique of western culture: Dec. 20, 1971 Dear Ms. Rosen, Thank you so much for your interesting letter and article. Naturally I am very pleased to hear of your work and project. I would be delighted to have you visit me here in Leucadia and I will contribute in any way which is helpful to your project. My newest thesis about the creative silence of women is very well represented by the following: Sappho was considered by Greek Poets, Scholars, Historians and Critics to be one of the greatest among Poets and Poetesses of Greek Civilization. Since Music and Poetry (especially Lyric) were

74 Meditation inseparable, Sappho, a Lyric Poet is the archetype of women composers as well as Poets. Her output was estimated at some 12,000 verses. All but 600 were destroyed by the early christians as immoral (never mind Plato + Socrates et al.) The remaining work was burned by order of Pope Gregory in 1071. The existing work comes from fragments mentioned in the work of others (often testifying to their greatness) and from the papyrus wrappings in Egyptian tombs. The destruction of her work is the epitom[e] of our problem, sister. Take a look at Corinthians in the bible. “The woman shall remain silent in the church.” How much of Western music has come to us through the church where half of humanity is to remain silent? How many Kings and Queens of the European Courts were devout Christians? How much of Western music has come to us from the courts? Where would we be without the Epistle of St. Paul? I should be very interested for any supporting information? By the way, although a lot of my work uses electronic means, it is not at all exclusive. Much of my recent work is radically vocal. See the current issue of Source Magazine for an introduction to the work of Anna Lockwood, a composer who lives in England, formerly a New Zealander. I think an extensive examination of early societies (pre-christian) will yield some information regarding women and the creation of music also of oriental culture. As far as I am concerned there is no mystery about the lack of women in the arts. The problem is now one of recovery. How many women passed as men? i.e. Beethoven was a Lesbian! Mozart was a Black Irish Washerwoman! Chaminade was a truck driver! Brahms was a penny Harlot. Who knows? St. Paul was certainly no friend. His travels took him to Mitylene (birthplace of Sappho). I think perhaps the reign of terror is concluding; that the true voices of silence are ready to speak. Who knows maybe Eve is blowing in our ears. [. . .] With good wishes, Pauline Oliveros92 Oliveros was equally at home with addressing feminist matters more personal. In 1972 Gerhard Samuels of the Los Angeles Philharmonic had contacted her about sending a score for their women composers program. Oliveros would have none of it—for economic reasons: March 13, 1972 [. . .] Dear Gary,

Meditation 75 After much consideration I have decided not to send my orchestra pieces for possible inclusion in the Los Angeles Philharmonic Women Composers Program. At the moment I am the subject of unprecedented popularity as I receive at least one request a day for my music since there are so many women’s festivals occurring. For this I am grateful, nevertheless I could go broke on postage alone. If the manager of the L.A. Philharmonic is interested in my music then let him find the money to offer me a decent commission. Fame is becoming too expensive for me to support. Furthermore I have no wish to be an exploited token. This message is not meant to reflect on you Gary. (Unless of course it does!) I suggest that the L.A. Philharmonic could better cope with the works of Ruth Crawford (Lou Harrison could help locate her orchestra master work (not mistress work)), Fannie Charles Dillon (See U.C.LA Library) [This one is long overdue!] or Priaulx Rainier. These women were (Rainier is still alive) fine composers and I for one would be delighted to hear from them. Another thorn in my side is that most of my work is unpublished. Thank you again for considering me as you have in the past. Sincerely, Pauline Oliveros93 In 1979 David Ewen wrote to Oliveros, wishing to include her in his American Composers: A Biographical Dictionary. Apparently, the questionnaire he sent to his subjects reflected a male bias to which Oliveros objected: I must chide the questionnaire a little. Perhaps it has only been sent to men before. First, after “Mother’s Maiden Name” comes “(and occupation if any)” not so after “Father’s Name and Occupation.” Perhaps this a small point to men, but not to women. For instance, my own mother not only has occupied her life with raising two children and homemaking, which definitely is an occupation, but she also has taught piano and played professionally, in order to support the family, all of my life. Currently, she continues her career, does all the housekeeping and manages all of the financial affairs. My stepfather who is a musician, still teaching at 83, is incapable of coping with such matters because he was trained first and foremost to be a musician. My real father left the family to shift for itself when I was nine years old. He is in the boat business and is a builder. My brother is in the charterboat business with his own small boat. The other question is “Your Marital Status” which is obviously aimed only at men. I am not married. I think that most of the other questions are covered in the material that is enclosed. I will be happy to co-operate with you in any way that I can. I hope that your future biographies of composers

76 Meditation will include more and more women, as well as men. I am very pleased to have your attention. Sincerely yours, Pauline Oliveros Director CME94 Oliveros’s feminism was practically boundless and, as these letters show, clearly informed her understanding of historical women composers in western music, her sense of herself as a composer, and the gender dynamics of her family background.

Beethoven was a lesbian I mentioned earlier that Oliveros “came out” as a lesbian upon publication of the first twelve Sonic Meditations in Source, and I want to lift that moment up from my footnotes into the body of my text. In 1971 Oliveros had met a lesbian couple in Oceanside, California (north of San Diego) who challenged her to come out in her profession.95 As a way of introducing the Sonic Meditations in Source, she offers a brief autobiographical statement: “Pauline Oliveros is a two legged human being, a female, lesbian, musician, composer among other things which contribute to her identity. She is herself and lives with her partner Lin Barron in Leucadia, California along with assorted poultry, dogs, cats, rabbits and tropical hermit crabs.”96 Although Oliveros’s identification as a lesbian rarely surfaced in published interviews and articles, she was far from closeted. In fact, coming out was important to her, and coming out in print was consistently associated with the Sonic Meditations. Several years after Source, versions of Oliveros’s two “lesbian sentences” were reprinted in conjunction with three different occasions in which she presented the Sonic Meditations. The first occurred in 1974 in the program notes for a performance of her choral piece, Sound Patterns, with the Vancouver New Music Society.97 Then, in October 1977 Oliveros visited the Women Artists Group of the Northwest (WAG), based in Seattle. In their newsletter WAG paraphrased Oliveros’s lesbian sentences in their announcement of her visit.98 Two years later, Oliveros appeared at the Music Gallery in Toronto, and in her feature-length review Deena Rasky wrote of Oliveros: “She also considers herself a healer, a writer of proverbs, a lesbian, a feminist and a two-legged human being.”99 Rasky published her article in Broadside, a feminist newspaper in Toronto. Of course, the period between 1970 and 1979 is full of fun and unusual commitments to coming out. In November 1971 Oliveros came out on television in San Diego. One admiring viewer, Bruce Condra, wrote to Oliveros and

Meditation 77

Figure 3 Composeress Pauline Oliveros poses in her garden. Postcard Theater. Aenjai Graphics, NYC. Photograph by Alison Knowles. Courtesy of Pauline Oliveros.

praised her for taking a courageous stand on television, and offered her his services as typist on behalf of women’s and gay liberation.100 Around 1974 Alison Knowles printed a set of postcards in cahoots with Oliveros entitled “Beethoven Was A Lesbian” (see Figure 3). The postcard features Oliveros with long tousled hair, glasses, and a slight frown as she sits in her garden reading Charles Williams’s All Hallows’ Eve. Up above her left shoulder is a large papier mâché bust of Beethoven whose stern facial expression matches Oliveros’s. The back of the postcard reads “Composeress Pauline Oliveros poses in her garden,” and at the bottom, “Postcard Theater.” Oliveros sent them to various friends and colleagues, such as Jill Johnston and Kay Gardner, and Johnston once mentioned that Bertha Harris had occasion to “look longingly” at the postcard.101 Oliveros tells me, “I don’t remember how that inspiration struck me, but I thought it was really terrifically funny. Beethoven was a lesbian—let’s twist this thing around! If we’re out of the camp, then let’s turn it around. I mean, who’s going to prove that he wasn’t? . . . You know, if we don’t have any ‘great women composers’ let’s make sure they weren’t passing as men.”102 This was a view she articulated in her letter of December 20, 1971 to Judith Rosen (quoted in full in the previous section), and repeated with queer humor in her article “Many Strands” as an excerpt from her Sound Journal, February 10, 1973: “My affair with Beethoven continues. First I see him in drag on the cover of the February issue of Hi Fidelity magazine. Hmph! The editors

78 Meditation are off as usual; everyone knows by know that he was really a Lesbian” (Oliveros 1984, 90). Why Beethoven? Several of Oliveros’s pieces play with Beethoven as a symbol (Pieces of Eight, Double Basses at Twenty Paces, and Bonn Feier, formerly Link, which won the “Beethoven Prize” in Bonn, 1977). Oliveros tells Moira Roth, “I am truly fond of the music of Beethoven.” She continues: PO: I was asked to do the Bonn Feier for the 150th anniversary of Beethoven in Bonn. And also, at that time, I was asked to write a statement, as were many other composers, about my relationship to Beethoven and my attitude to Beethoven. I wrote that as a little girl I was fascinated by a picture of Beethoven that hung on the wall in my grandmother’s piano studio; the wild hair and the frown. I would look at that very often in my childhood. Beethoven was the composer that I studied the most. I did some analytical work on the Eroica Symphony and various other Beethoven pieces. Then, of course, John Cage was against Beethoven, or perhaps the attitude that Beethoven admirers represented. MR: And you felt that Beethoven needed a little defending. PO: Oh, yes. In fact, I remember the first time that I ever talked with John Cage, I talked to him a long time about how much I loved Beethoven. (Roth 1977, 47) I wonder if she told Cage that Beethoven was a lesbian? If so, I wonder how he responded? For Oliveros, one of the most important elements in coming out was her friendship with Jill Johnston, dance critic for the Village Voice and author of Lesbian Nation in 1973; imprinted on her stationery was “Jill Johnston / lesbian at large.” In January 1971 Johnston visited Oliveros in Leucadia and wrote about the incredible Oliveros–Barron lesbian wedding that had transpired the previous summer on July 4, 1970 (Johnston 1971, 33–4). Included in her article is a photograph of Oliveros and Barron clad in white togas and sipping a ceremonial drink. Later that year Oliveros wrote to Johnston: “The quality of life for Lin and I has improved steadily since your visit. Two things I am grateful for: Bringing us all the way out via your column and the reading on campus here and your encouraging me to dress the way I liked. It has made a lot of difference to me.”103 Johnston’s book, Lesbian Nation, was read widely throughout the lesbian community, and Oliveros was no exception. She wrote, “Thank you for Lesbian Nation. I’m reading slowly and savoring. Elinor has read it cover to cover and is all action.”104 Beyond coming out, Oliveros considered bringing lesbian experience and her musical ideas into closer alignment, and in 1974 she was eager to collaborate

Meditation 79 with Johnston on a lesbian ceremonial opera, Journey of the Daughters. “I do want to tell you about a project,” she wrote. I have decided to make my ceremonial opera a collective effort. I am calling for rituals from Lesbian women. Anyone who wants to may contribute a ritual, dream or fantasy about the Journey of the Daughter which will then be joyfully received and assembled by yours truly into a time or times of ceremonial celebration. I see the celebrations taking place in a natural outof-doors setting with only the contributors present. . . . The opera will take on a collective form and hopefully begin to serve some of our needs as a model of expressions of what actions are now necessary for our health and harmonious relationships. [. . .] I use the term opera to mean simply a work. Whether it is sung, spoken, danced, accompanied, unaccompanied is immaterial. What is important is how the collective energy is mobilized into something meaningful to us. By Lesbian Women I mean those of us who have established a woman identified reality and take charge of ourselves or are trying. [. . .] Actually I am not that interested in composers and musicians. I’m more interested in listening than in being listened to. Eve’s droppings. It’s a time of reversals. As composer I am the audience, as performer I am the critic, as critic I am the maker. I don’t want to lay a trip or an egg. I want to take one or eat it. I am the flying daughter who hears what she oughter.105 Unfortunately, this opera never worked out, largely because Oliveros and Johnston encountered some personal friction in their friendship (see chapter 4), and Oliveros abandoned the project. However, in this letter Oliveros also shared her take on Beethoven with Johnston: “Lin says ‘isn’t Lesbian Women redundant?’ I dunno. I think Lester [Ingber] is a Lesbian and certainly Beethoven was.”106 In any case, Oliveros’s musical ideas—here given a delightfully queer spin—are largely drawn from those set out in the Sonic Meditations. *** The Sonic Meditations continue to reverberate throughout Oliveros’s compositional output. Many of her pieces from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s draw from the musical and structural principles of sonic meditation. Sonic meditation, as a philosophy and practice of music-making, is echoed in Oliveros’s notion of “Deep Listening”—in fact, these terms are virtually synonymous. In 1988 she formed the Deep Listening Band, with Stuart Dempster (trombone) and Panaiotis (voice), which improvises in unusually resonant natural spaces, such as cisterns and underground caves. These acoustic spaces themselves are “performers” with whom the deeply listening players improvise.107 Since 1990, Oliveros has led

80 Meditation Deep Listening Retreats for one week each summer in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, New Mexico, where participants can immerse themselves in the practice of deep listening, meditation, T’ai Chi, and sonic collaboration. At her home base in Kingston, New York, Oliveros shares her work in deep listening with the community there, and leads a weekly Deep Listening Chorus for anyone interested, regardless of musical background. Oliveros still maintains ties to the “women in music” movement, and gave the keynote address, a Sonic Meditation based on humming, at the third conference on Feminist Theory and Music in Riverside, California, June 1995. And in Spring 1998, Composer’s Recordings Inc. (CRI) released a compact disc entitled Lesbian American Composers, the first such collection of compositions to assemble the work of lesbians. (This anthology follows a two-CD compilation, Gay American Composers [1996] and Gay American Composers, Volume 2 [1997].108) Oliveros’s Poem of Change is included on this CD, along with compositions by Ruth Anderson, Eve Beglarian, Annea Lockwood, Linda Montano, and others. Oliveros continues to address feminist issues in her writings. Most importantly, improvising with women musicians is as valuable as ever to Oliveros and lovingly apparent in her essay “Harmonic Anatomy: Women in Improvisation” (Oliveros 2004). Although I still will not grab a softball mitt and join them on the field, I cheer these women from the stands, and hope for even more music, more players.

APPENDIX A Selected Sonic Meditations from Pauline Oliveros, Sonic Meditations (Baltimore: Smith Publications, 1974) and Deep Listening Pieces (Kingston: Deep Listening Publications, 1990).

—V— Native Take a walk at night. Walk so silently that the bottoms of your feet become ears.

—VI— Sonic Rorschach With a white or random noise generator, flood a darkened room with white noise for thirty minutes or much longer. The band width of the white noise should be as broad as the limits of the audio range. A pre-recorded tape or a mechanical source such as an air compressor may be substituted for the generator, if necessary or desired. All participants should be comfortably seated or lying down

Meditation 81 for the duration of the meditation. Half way through, introduce one brilliant flash of light or one loud, short pulse. The high intensity flash source could be a photo lamp flash or one pulse of a strobe light. If a sound pulse is substituted for the light flash, it must necessarily be of higher amplitude than the white noise. Variations: a) Find a natural source of white noise such as a waterfall or the ocean and go there for this meditation. b) If the white noise generator is flat, equalize until the source is apparently flat for the human ear. c) Do this meditation with a different band width represented in subsequent meditations such as one octave at 5k to 10khz.

—VII— Removing the Demon or Getting Your Rocks Off Sit in a circle with persons facing in and out alternately. If the number in the group is odd, seat the left over person in the center. Each person except the center person has a pair of resonant rocks. Begin the meditation by establishing mentally a tempo as slow as possible. Each person begins independently to strike the rocks together full force maintaining the imagined tempo. When enough energy is present, shout a pre-meditated word. Once selected, the word remains the same. The shout is free of the established tempo, and may occur one or more times during the meditation. The center person is without rocks and selects a word, phrase or sentence to say or intone repeatedly either silently or audibly for the duration of the meditation. Variations: a) Persons without rocks may surround the circle and follow the same instructions as the center person, independently. b) Persons may repeat mentally, or actually, one body movement as slowly as possible. One body movement may be simple or very complicated as long as it is continuous and can be repeated exactly as a cycle. Kinetic participants could include the shout or the repeated word, phrase or sentence. c) Do this meditation in an outdoor environment. Move slowly away from the circle. Move anywhere in the environment but keep in audible contact with at least one other person. Gradually return to the beginning circle.

—VIII— Environmental Dialogue Each person find a place to be, either near to or distant from the others, either indoors or out-of-doors. Begin the meditation by observing your own breathing. As you become aware of sounds from the environment, gradually begin to

82 Meditation reinforce the pitch of the sound source. Reinforce either vocally, mentally or with an instrument. If you lose touch with the source, wait quietly for another. Reinforce means to strengthen or sustain. If the pitch of the sound source is out of your range, then reinforce it mentally.

—IX— The Greeting Informed persons should begin the greeting at least half-an-hour or more before a scheduled meeting or program. After you are seated and comfortable, allow a tone to come to mind. Keep returning your attention to this same tone. Every time a person or persons enter this space, greet them by singing the tone, as you were greeted when you entered this space. Continue this meditation until all are present.

—XI— Bowl Gong Sit in a circle with a Japanese bowl gong in the center. One person, when ready to begin, hands the striker to someone else in the circle. That person strikes the gong. Each person maintains the pitch mentally for as long as possible. If the image is lost, then the person who has lost it, hands the striker to someone else in the circle. This person again activates the gong in order to renew the mental pitch image. Continue as long as possible.

—XII— One Word Choose a word. Listen to it mentally. Slowly and gradually begin to voice this word by allowing each tiny part of it to sound extremely prolonged. Repeat for a long time. Variations: 1. As above, but increase the speed of each repetition as imperceptibly as possible. Continue beyond the normal pronunciation of the word until the repetitions are as fast as possible. Continue. 2. As variation one but when the top speed has been reached and maintained reverse the process by slowing down again as imperceptibly as possible until the original utterance returns.

Meditation 83

—XIII— Energy Changes (For Elaine Summers’ movement meditation, Energy Changes) Listen to the environment as a drone. Establish contact mentally with all of the continuous external sounds and include all of your own continuous internal sounds, such as blood pressure, heart beat and nervous system. When you feel prepared, or when you are triggered by a random or intermittent sound from the external or internal environment, make any sound you like in one breath, or a cycle of like sounds. When a sound or a cycle of sounds is completed reestablish mental connection with the drone, which you first established before making another sound or cycle of like sounds.

—XIV— Tumbling Song Make any vocal sound, but always go downward in pitch from the initial attack. The initial attack may begin at any pitch level. Go downward in a glissando or in discrete steps continuously. Go any distance in range, at any speed, dynamic or quality, but the breath determines the maximum time length of any downward gesture.

—XV— Zina’s Circle Stand together in a circle, with eyes closed facing the center. One person is designated, the transmitter. After observing the breathing cycle, individually, gradually join hands. Then slowly move back so that all arms are stretched out and the size of the circle increased. Next stretch the arms toward center and move in slowly. Finally move back to the normal sized circle, with hands still joined, standing so that arms are relaxed at sides. Return attention to breathing. When the time seems right, the transmitter starts a pulse that travels around the circle, by using the right hand to squeeze the left hand of the person next to her. The squeeze should be quickly and sharply made, to resemble a light jolt of electricity. The squeeze must be passed from left hand to right hand and on to the next person as quickly as possible. The action should become so quick that it happens as a reflex, before the person has time to consciously direct the squeeze. Simultaneously with the squeeze, each person must shout hah. The shout must come up from the center of the body (somewhere a little below the navel) before passing through the throat. There must be complete abdominal support for the voice. When the first cycle is complete, the transmitter waits for

84 Meditation a long time to begin the next cycle. When the reaction time around the circle has become extremely short, the transmitter makes the cycle begin closer and closer together until a new transmission coincides with the end of a cycle, then continue trying to speed up the reaction time. If attention and awareness are maintained, the circle depending on its size, should be shouting almost simultaneously. Variations: 1. Reverse the direction of the pulse using the left hand to transmit and the right hand to receive. 2. Reverse the direction of each cycle. 3. Each person chooses which direction to send the pulse. The transmitter continues to control the beginning and ending of a cycle.

—XVI— Begin simultaneously with the others. Sing any pitch. The maximum length of the pitch is determined by the breath. Listen to the group. Locate the center of the group sound spectrum. Sing your pitch again and make a tiny adjustment upward or downward, but tuning toward the center of the sound spectrum. Continue to tune slowly, in tiny increments toward the center of the spectrum. Each time sing a long tone with a complete breath until the whole group is singing the same pitch. Continue to drone on that central pitch for about the same length of time it took to reach the unison. Then begin adjusting or tuning away from the center pitch as the original beginning pitch was. Variation: Follow the same instructions but return to the original beginning pitch.

—XVIII— Re Cognition Listen to a sound until you no longer recognize it.

—XIX Lie flat on your back or sit comfortably. Open your eyes widely, then let your eyelids close extremely slowly. Become aware of how your eyelids are closing. When your eyelids are closed, turn your eyes slowly from left to right, around, up and down. Let your eyes rest comfortably in their sockets. Try to be aware of the muscles behind the eyes and of the distance from these muscles to the back of the head. Cover your eyes with your palms and shut out all the light. Become aware of all the sounds in the environment. When you think you have

Meditation 85 established contact with all the sounds in the external environment, very gradually, introduce your fingers into your ears or cover them with your palms. Try to shut out all external sound. Listen carefully to the internal sounds of your own body working. After a long time gradually open your ears and include the sounds of the external environment.

—XXI— What constitutes your musical universe?

—XXII— Think of some familiar sound. Listen to it mentally. Try to find a metaphor for this sound. What are the real and imaginary possible contexts for this sound? How many ways does or could this sound affect you? or how do you feel about it? What is its effect upon you? How can this sound be described? As a group meditation, sit in a circle. Find a sound common to all, then ask the above questions one by one. Allow plenty of time between each question. When all of the questions have been asked, the group shares their answers. Variations: Try the same meditation with 1. an imaginary sound 2. a live sound 3. a remembered sound

—XXIII—Pure Noise Sing the purest tone possible, that is, with the fewest partials, in a comfortable register. Gradually change the quality of this tone to include more and more partials until it approaches or becomes a noise band. Continue as long as possible, going from pure tone to noise band with each breath. Variation: Reverse the above process.

—XXIV— Focus your attention on an external source of constant sound. Imagine alternate sounds while remaining aware of the external source.

86 Meditation

—XXV— Your Name The Signature Meditation 1. Dwell on your name. Write it down as slowly as possible. 2. Visualize your name as you sign it mentally. a. with eyes closed b. with eyes open 3. Visualize your name in different kinds of writing, script and printing. a. vary the sizes from microscopic to gigantic b. vary the colors and backgrounds c. vary the dimensions from 2 to 3 4. Visualize or actually sign your name backwards, forwards, upside down, inside out. a. with the right hand b. with the left hand c. with both hands simultaneously mirroring each other

The Tuning Meditation Using any vowel sound, sing a tone that you hear in your imagination. After contributing your tone, listen for someone else’s tone and tune to its pitch as exactly as possible. Continue by alternating between singing a tone of your own and tuning to the tone of another voice. Introduce new tones at will and tune to as many different voices as are present. Sing warmly. APPENDIX B Selected “Performances” of the Sonic Meditations, 1970–1981, 1986 1970: “Noon Meditation,” Expo ‘70, Japan. March 2, 1971: “Noon Meditation,” Salk Institute, La Jolla, at the invitation of Shelly Hendler. Members of 씸 Ensemble: Bonnie Mara Barnett, Lin Barron, Joan George, Pauline Oliveros, Christine Voigt, Betty Wong, Shirley Wong. March 1971: Sonic Meditations II and IV, Wesleyan University, at the invitation of Alvin Lucier. April 30, 1971: Women’s Festival of the Arts, Center for Women’s Studies & Services, San Diego State College. October 1971: “In Sonic Meditations” (lecture), Douglas College, Rutgers, NJ, at the invitation of Geoffrey Hendricks.

Meditation 87 October 27, 1971: Metropolitan Community Church, San Diego. February 19, 1972: “Perceptions of woman: festival of arts,” University of Oregon, Eugene. June 3–4, 1972: History of Consciousness, University of California, Santa Cruz. October 1972: California Institute for Women (prison), Frontera, CA. March 12, 1973: Women in the Arts Festival, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks. February 22, 1974: Oberlin College. October 1974: Metamusik Festival, Berlin. March 23–27, 1975: Conference on Performance Art, Los Angeles Woman’s Building. April 1975: Los Angeles Woman’s Building. May 1975: Stephens College, Columbia, Missouri. May 1975: Women’s Studies, Penn State, at the invitation of Joanne Feldman. June 1975: State University at Bellingham, Washington. October 23, 1975: with Linda Montano, Northern Illinois University. February 1976: workshop, Woman’s Space, Los Angeles. October 6–9, 1977: Women Artists Group of the Northwest (WAG), Seattle. July 28–30, 1978: Women in Classical Music Workshop, Immaculate Heart College, Los Angeles. October 21–22, 1978: College of Santa Fe, “Exploration in Music Series.” February 3, 1979: “Greeting Meditation,” “One Word,” and “+ Sound” with members of the Graduate Experimental Performance Seminar, University of California, San Diego. February 21, 1979: “The Greeting,” “Removing the Demon or Getting Your Rocks Off,” “Bowl Gong,” and “Zina’s Circle,” Bucknell University. April 8, 1979: Western Front Lodge, Vancouver, British Columbia. June 8, 1979: New York City, The Kitchen, “New Music, New York” Festival. November 1979: Music Gallery, Toronto. November 17, 1979: “An Evening of Sonic Meditations,” presented by The Avant Garden, a benefit for the Woman’s Building, San Francisco. November 20, 1979: “An Evening of Sonic Meditations,” Music Department, Stanford University. April 19, 1980: with Linda Montano and Meridel Le Sueur, Woodland Patterns, Milwaukee. April 21–23, 1980: Bowdoin College. May 3, 1980: Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT. May 17–19, 1980: Samaya Foundation, New York City. May 30–31, 1980: The Kitchen, New York City. October 21, 1980: Texas Tech University, Lubbock. October 23, 1980: PIE, Dallas. November 20–23, 1980: Bonn and Cologne, Frau und Musik Festival.

88 Meditation March 26–29, 1981: New York University, First National Congress on Women in Music. August 1986: Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival.

4 Respiration

expansion and contraction The accordion occupies an odd, marginalized position in American musical culture. Perhaps more than any other instrument the accordion always sounds its connections to ethnicity, on the one hand, and schlocky kitsch on the other. Since the mid-1950s, the image of the accordion in popular culture has been dominated, even stereotyped, by Lawrence Welk and Myron Floren, whose work managed to combine folk tunes, popular songs, and transcriptions of European classical music. In more recent years, it is still in the peculiar corners of commercial popular music that one encounters the accordion. Weird Al Yankovic, for instance, builds on the Welk stereotype and lampoons Top 40 hits by rewriting the lyrics and accompanying himself on solo accordion, the ultimate musical insult. The Knack’s “My Sherona,” Michael Jackson’s “Beat It,” and Madonna’s “Into the Groove” became “My Bologna,” “Eat It,” and “Into the Nude,” all of which received considerable radio airplay in the 1980s. Nirvana’s melancholy ballad “Jesus Don’t Want Me For a Sunbeam” uses accordion as primary accompaniment, utterly without spoof, bestowing the instrument with an unusual dignity. The accordion as a sometime country & western instrument has been utilized with great gusto by k.d. lang and the reclines on her album Angel With A Lariat (1987). lang and co-composer Ben Mink faintly recall the accordion’s link to European cabaret on lang’s Ingenue (1992), her song cycle of unrequited lesbian love. The final track on this CD is “Constant Craving,” the Grammy Award-winning single that features a prominent musical “hook” on the accordion. Pauline Oliveros began studying the accordion when she was 9 years old, and it has remained her primary instrument as a performer. In the realm of experimental music, her closest contemporaries on the accordion are William Schimmel and Guy Klucevsek; needless to say, Oliveros is one of the few women working with the accordion in new music. While her own work has moved the accordion toward a very different location on the cultural–musical grid, she professes a keen awareness of the stereotypes and ethnic histories associated with

90 Respiration this instrument. As a teenager in 1948 she remembers a highly charged incident in which she played German music in a polka band at a Polish dance hall. “Pretty soon people were standing around the hall with their arms folded. Finally they started screaming and cursing and stomping, threatening, telling us we had to pack up and leave. Which we did: we got out of there fast, we didn’t even get our money. . . . That was a real marker for me, in understanding that what you do, even in music, has consequences” (Tanner 1979, 7). In western art music, the accordion has achieved only minor status as a solo instrument, and it is not even a member of the traditional symphony orchestra.1 Throughout her career Oliveros often acknowledges her experiences of the accordion’s working-class associations, outcast status, stereotypical images, and its disfavor in the general public.2 In performance practice, many instruments are held in a certain position in relation to the body; others, like the piano or trap set, remain in place while the musician sits at them to play. The accordion interests me because it is worn on the body, almost like a big garment; it is second only to the voice as an incredibly embodied instrument. Like the voice and other wind instruments, it needs to “breathe” to make sound. In her interview with Oliveros, Ann Feldman remarks “[The accordion] seems to be an instrument that has a lot to do with breath and the body, because it’s on your body, and it breathes.” Oliveros replies: “And it’s huggable, you can hug it. . . . but it’s also kind of a protection, a little bit of armor that’s protecting your heart” (Feldman 1996, 4). Katherine Setar observes, while playing the accordion, that “the sound waves traveled through my upper torso, allowing me to easily experience the sound, not only through my ears, but throughout my body” and posits that this sensation probably appealed to Oliveros as accordionist (Setar 1997, 414). In several other essays and interviews Oliveros refers to the accordion as an amplification of her breath, and I will address this phenomenon later. But first, what else besides breath does the accordion “amplify”? E. Annie Proulx’s novel, Accordion Crimes (1996), is actually a collection of eight short stories tied together by an accordion which functions as the main character in each story. Accordion Crimes is a powerful, complex critique of ethnic history in the United States as “told” by a green button accordion made with great care in the late nineteenth century by a peasant farmer in Sicily and haphazardly passes through the hands of German immigrants in Iowa, MexicanAmericans in Texas, Franco-Canadians in Maine, African-Creoles in Louisiana, Poles in Chicago, Scots-Irish ranchers in Montana, and present-day Norwegians in Minnesota. The accordion is a polyphonic emblem of cultural authenticity and the struggle for ethnic identity—lost, erased, reformed, and remembered. But in this novel it is also a living organism, often compared to parts of the body, and crudely sexualized by those who play it. Except for one woman virtuoso accordionist who runs away from home, it is only Proulx’s men who play the

Respiration 91

Figure 4 Pauline Oliveros at 16. Photo by Corwin Smith. Courtesy of Pauline Oliveros.

accordion, and they play with possessive, competitive machismo. Gripping and devastating, the stories in Proulx’s Accordion Crimes stand in complete contrast to those created by Oliveros who wrests the instrument away from its maledominated past—in her hands the accordion is subverted and queered. Tucked in the folds of her accordion lie a very different set of stories: intimate, erotic stories of lesbian passion. *** In April 1975, Oliveros created Rose Mountain Slow Runner for accordion and voice. This piece marks an extremely important historical moment in Oliveros’s

92 Respiration musical output, simply because it was her first accordion work since 1970 when she composed Music for T’ai Chi (for accordion, two cellos, and three voices), and her first work as solo accordionist since her Accordion from 1966 (for amplified accordion with tape-delay system).3 Generally speaking, Rose Mountain Slow Runner is characterized by unusually long tones both played on the accordion and sung by Oliveros. Of course, this combination was not new for her. Her interest in and work with synchronizing breath and accordion tones began in the late 1960s. She tells colleague and friend Moira Roth that her interest in long tones, listening to the environment, and expansive breathing coincided with the widespread social and political turmoil of the late 1960s. The Free Speech Movement, student protests (including one student who immolated himself at U.C. San Diego), the Vietnam War, the assassinations of both the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, Jr. were “very upsetting” to Oliveros. “I felt the temper of the times. I felt the tremendous fear and—what can I say—the opposite of calm. Everybody was in an uproar and I began to feel a tremendous need to find a way to calm myself. The pressures were too great. The social events were simply mirrors of what was inside. I began to retreat. I didn’t want to play concerts.”4 Playing long tones on her accordion and singing with them was, in a sense, Oliveros’s personal response to this unrest, her musical answer. However, her work with breath, meditation, and sound moved away from the personal to the communal in the formation of the 씸 Ensemble and later the Sonic Meditations (see chapter 3). In fact, most of Oliveros’s pieces from 1970–74 are for groups of musicians (trained and untrained), varied instruments and voices, and involve theatrical, meditative and/or ritual elements.5 What happened to the accordion? How and why did it re-emerge in 1975 as Oliveros’s major compositional and performance medium? She undoubtedly continued to play the accordion privately and deepened her practice of sonic meditation. But another cycle of turmoil erupted in her life, and this time it was just as political, yet far more personally devastating. In January of 1974, Pauline Oliveros and Lin Barron, lovers since 1970, separated. Barron was a graduate student at U.C. San Diego (where Oliveros was professor of music and director of the Center for Music Experiment) and in 1972 completed her MA in composition. The separation was painfully difficult for Oliveros. The issues and struggles that concerned her are well documented in many of her letters from that time to Barron, as well as correspondence with friends Jill Johnston and Annea Lockwood to whom she turned for comfort and advice. In the following excerpt from a letter to Johnston (who had visited Oliveros and Barron in December 1973), Oliveros is desperately concerned with what might be termed “lesbian invisibility”—the oppressive distance between society at large and lesbians; the reality that most, if not all, of lesbian life remains entirely unheard and unseen by the rest of the world.

Respiration 93 Jan 29, 1974 Dear Jill, Your presence here is missed but also present. [. . .] Jill! I continue to cut down trees, spindly trees growing unnoticed till now in the garden. The top is like the surface of the ocean and it has risen considerably since living here. It accompanies the hot and cold grief of separation from Lin. As you say only love breaks the heart or the art. But we are only on vacation I keep telling myself as all my broken memories keep trotting themselves out of the museum of veils. We are applying traction to the relationship according to Lin. Relationship. A system of balances imbalances. Tigers against tigers against elephants against elephants against grasshoppers and moles? and it gets heavier and heavier. The Lesbian relationship is one of tight solidarity, tight like a noose, I have noose for youse, we are bonded by lack of family and lack of community. How is marriage expressed? death? birth? Taxes? or any major event? Quietly and privately? out of sight buried in the relationshit?[sic] How can we have private life if we have no public life? We need a community or communities a nation a universe for reflective expressions of our needs. A way to relieve the total demand for tight bonded intimate solidarity a burden on the two too many so the light can filter through. [. . .] Is endurance a necessary factor? Posterity? Today is today not tomorrow or yesterday. What could make for a creative relationship? Creative economics, love making, householding, healing? Must we use the established vocabulary and its endless round of combinations or invent our own or both? HELP! Love, Pauline6 During the Spring of 1974 Oliveros discussed her ideas with Johnston about a Weekend Lesbian Workout, a private gathering for some of their lesbian friends on the east coast to explore the interpersonal dynamics of lesbian relationships. “How about,” asked Oliveros, “an exploration of a model lesbian relationship? With a close examination of SECURITY, ECONOMICS, SEX, POWER, SPIRIT and whatever else belongs to a relationship.”7 A week later, she continued, “Lin and I are going to start writing descriptive statements of our relationship (nonevaluative) as an exercise toward the workshop and to help ourselves. Perhaps you have some suggestions to further the cause?”8 The Weekend Lesbian Workout was set for May 26–27, 1974, but I am not certain if it actually took place. However, Oliveros clearly wanted to address the issues of her failing relationship with Lin in a communal setting to counteract her isolation and loneliness. That summer Oliveros was scheduled to teach a summer school course at York University, attend the Metamusik Festival in Berlin, and present a brand new

94 Respiration piece in Buffalo (in October) commissioned by the Center for Creative and Performing Arts. She wondered if Barron would join her in Toronto or Buffalo, but understood Barron’s need to make her own decision. Barron ultimately decided to go to India where she stayed from August through December. Oliveros wrote her regularly with news updates about work and friends as well as her feelings of sadness, regret, loneliness, and the wish to repair their relationship. To complicate matters further, Oliveros felt attacked and betrayed by Johnston who had told her earlier in the year that Barron was in love with someone else, Geeta Mayor, the woman with whom Barron was staying in India. On October 12, 1974, Oliveros wrote to Barron: I am glad that you feel like hearing news of home for it gives me a little more confidence to write to you. I was afraid to write much of anything—not knowing what would interest you. [. . .] I feel sorry that I have such a distorted feeling about her [Geeta] when I have not even met her. But I have to say that Jill’s phone call to me in Buffalo when she told me of your “relationship” with “GRETA” (Geeta) was the heaviest thing I have ever experienced in my entire life. I have never experienced such emotional pain as that. And it was Jill who transmitted the trigger. However the decay of that nasty pulse has almost subsided. Naturally, though, I experienced some very tough demons (jealousy, hatred, envy etc) in the disguise of a woman I have never met. Even though you took great pains to “explain,” the fact that I had experienced the emotional/bodily reaction in the name of ‘Geeta’ could not be so easily removed. I fought with it very hard, telling myself how unreasonable it was endlessly—nevertheless the feeling remained and I found it difficult to feel any “openess” toward this phantom Geeta much less address letters to you “c/o Geeta Mayor.” That phantom Geeta came to my home while I was away and “stole” my loved one.9 Tensions between Johnston and Oliveros continued in November 1974, and Oliveros vented to Barron: I had a letter from Jill yesterday. I think it was an attempt on her part to mend the fence. However it was full of accusations, analysis, ideology and confusion, all telling me how I think, feel and act. I wrote back saying, “if your letter is friendly why do you tell me how I think, feel and act? Why don’t you ask me how I think, feel and act? You might get to know me rather than your version or others’ versions of me. That is the basis for friendship.” I refuse to allow her to drag me back into the past, or have any more control.10

Respiration 95 After Oliveros’s anger subsided, she wrote: My experience of considering and feeling our relationship as over has left marks and some healing still must take place as my emotional state of the last two weeks indicates. There is still sorting out, + clarification to do. I still feel hot anger when I receive a letter from Jill. I’m going to take Patricia’s suggestion and return her letters unopened until I am able to cope again. [. . .] One of my needs is to be strong—emotionally, physically etc. “Like a rock.” “Solid.” I was happy to know you want to come home—with all my heart and soul I want you to come home—but I need you to realize that I might have to lean on you. I’m vulnerable in some places. I think my worst fear is that you will not be able to accept my vulnerability. Clearly my anger at Jill is that she exposed my vulnerability. That would have been all right, but the motivation was incorrect and it was highly distorted. However right she may be in her analysis her motivation is wrong and destructive. Until I heal I will not be able to cope with her and what she represents to me at this point. [. . .] New day—I feel much better! The discovery that I hate to admit any weakness seems to be returning my strength. Also the dawning realization that you do want to come home.11 On that same day, November 24, 1974, Annea Lockwood wrote to Oliveros, praising her most recent work, Crow, which had premiered in Buffalo a month earlier. At that event, Oliveros must have told Lockwood about her separation from Barron. Lockwood wrote with characteristic compassion and encouragement: Sad, sad about yourself and Lin. Buffalo must have been the hardest time— I hope so—hope your return to home + all the awareness of shared ventures + life is not painfully poignant. It will be, I suppose—but you look in yourself strong + well knit together + sure able to cope with returning. At the party you looked so young, younger than I’ve ever seen you—as if all your senses were completely energised. Felt glad, watching you. Peace. Much love, Anna12 After Barron returned from India (probably in December 1974), their relationship continued to suffer. Oliveros and Johnston eventually repaired their friendship, but by Spring of 1975 Barron and Oliveros had broken up. Barron moved out of Oliveros’s house in Leucadia and went to live in Berkeley.

96 Respiration I imagine Oliveros turned to the accordion once more as a way to heal and renew herself. Her meditative work with the accordion deepened, and she chose to focus on breath rhythms and long tones as the musical structures for Rose Mountain Slow Runner. She also had a new love in her life. On March 22, 1975 Oliveros met performance artist Linda Montano at the Los Angeles Woman’s Building where Montano was in the midst of her performance piece Three Day Blindfold/How to Become a Guru. Their fortuitous meeting within performance dramatically changed each of their lives in ways neither of them forget. Both Oliveros and Montano have told this story in print, and I present these extraordinary texts in full. First Montano, who tells the story twice in her book Art in Everyday Life, once as formal documentor of her work and again in extended conversation with Moira Roth. ART

For three days I lived blindfolded in a gallery at the Woman’s Building. Pauline Oliveros became my guide and didn’t speak during the event. LIFE I loved camping out probably because I always wanted to go to summer camp as a child and couldn’t. So I often camped in galleries, sometimes living there for some time. In this event I blindfolded myself because I didn’t want to react visually or socially and thought that I could alter my perceptions and therefore drop habituation and judgment. It was exhilarating and I was fearless . . . beyond society, acting intuitively. Pauline Oliveros became my guide for that time and we moved without guilt for those three days. I keep repeating similar experiments in other ways in order to become familiar with expanded body feelings. This piece was a vacation. It changed my life.13 [. . .] LM: I had been studying yoga for about five years, and I had always been affected by my relationship to authority in the teacher and the guru. The only way I could do that was to get rid of my eyes because I reacted to whatever I saw. So I blindfolded myself for three days. I had done that a couple of times before, but in private. In Los Angeles I lived and slept in one of the rooms in the building, eating there and moving around. Shortly after the beginning of the piece, I met Pauline who became my guide. MR: And Pauline coincidentally had decided to come to that weekend conference and not talk?

Respiration 97 LM: MR: LM:

Well, when she met me, she did. And so we moved around like the Tom Marioni handcuff piece, but this time— This time with someone you hadn’t known before. And with sensory deprivation. In a sense that piece really was the beginning of a big change in attitude: a switch from vision to sound, from seeing to hearing.14

Here is Oliveros’s version of the story, which she shared with me in my interview with her: When I met Linda, she was blindfolded. She was going to be blindfolded in this gallery for three days. She was asking for a guide to help her around the Woman’s Building. So I decided I would go to the gallery and investigate this. I went and slipped in. She was sitting up in her sleeping bag, talking to somebody, so didn’t hear me. That person left and I was just sitting there in the gallery. She’s just there. I made some sound. She heard it, came over, and started talking to me. I never said a word. I would say “mm” or something like that. We went on the whole day. I had decided to be her guide, but I decided also that since she was blind I would be dumb. So the whole day went on, and around 5:00 p.m. that evening she said, “Far out! You’re not talking!” [laughter] I just giggled and laughed. We went on and on, and got really involved! [laughter] The next day, or so, I was supposed to give a workshop, but of course I was not talking. My workshop came up and there were all these women, so I got them all in a circle without saying a word. Then I started making animal sounds, and I just turned it over to them. Everybody started making animal sounds and the energy took off, and it never stopped! Finally there was Linda down on the floor, screaming at somebody, and I looked down and her blindfold had started to come off. By this time, she was so curious she couldn’t stand it any more. She took her blinders off and that was the end of her piece, and we looked at each other for the very first time. It was very powerful.15 Oliveros and Montano “moved without guilt” and “got really involved!” They became lovers, partners, artistic collaborators. At that time, Montano was living in San Francisco and had been married to photographer Mitchell Payne since 1971. She separated from Payne, moved into Oliveros’s home in September 1976, and by April 1977 her divorce was final (Montano and Blumenthal 1984, 2–25). With Rose Mountain Slow Runner Oliveros was ready to strap on the accordion, take center stage, and perform lesbian desire and seduction.

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alterations The only commercially available recording of Rose Mountain Slow Runner is Robert Ashley’s Music With Roots in the Aether, his “Opera for Television” from 1976 in which he interviewed seven composers (himself included) and videotaped various of their compositions. The composers are Ashley, David Behrman, Philip Glass, Alvin Lucier, Gordon Mumma, Terry Riley, and Oliveros who is, not surprisingly, the only woman in this “opera.” Oliveros’s segment is on Tape 5, first the interview, then her performance of Rose Mountain Slow Runner, a piece she dedicated to Linda Montano. Because of this production format, the viewer must encounter the interview and the music together: they are inseparable, and each functions as a rich site of reference and meaning for the other. Therefore, I take the two performances together and delight in their queer connections. Oliveros’s interview segment is entitled Unnatural Acts Between Consenting Adults, which might be termed a “performative conversation” but is actually an absolutely astounding lesbian drag comedy show done in collaboration with Carol Vencius, a lesbian actress and friend of Oliveros, and Linda Montano. In fact, so many lesbian stories emanate from Unnatural Acts it is difficult to know where to begin. Even the title is wonderfully suggestive—while clear from the outset who the “consenting adults” are, it raises playful questions of what constitutes “acts” that are “natural” or “unnatural,” who determines them, and on what terms. The interview begins as if it were a perfectly conventional interview, yet immediate clues cleverly indicate otherwise. The first shot is a long close-up of an enormous bouquet of flowers (gladioli, pansies, carnations) sitting atop an antique wooden cabinet with drawers. Later we see Ashley and Oliveros seated (Ashley on the left of the cabinet, Oliveros on the right) in yellow 1970s style chairs, and an empty wooden stool sits between them. Oliveros looks her sturdy butch self in jeans, sandals, a short-sleeved camp shirt, and a black fisherman’s cap. Ashley, however, appears “dressed up” in a sport jacket, black trousers, bright blue socks, black and white spectator shoes, black sunglasses, and sips a can of Budweiser beer. For his first question he asks “What is the musical idea behind or to Rose Mountain Slow Runner?”, recalling the “mountain of flowers” in the opening shot, and warns us that this will not be, in fact, a typical conversation between composers about music. Double and triple entendres run throughout the dialog on so many levels that they cease to function as general humor and instead form the foundation of the interview—a series of overlapping critiques of normative gender, sexuality, and compositional techniques. Early on in the conversation, Oliveros describes her shift in sonic awareness and its impact on her compositional work: There are two things for me. One is the move into this meditative sort of work and the idea of changing my own consciousness as I work. The other

Respiration 99 was the theatrical development where I began to work with materials other than just sound, it was a kind of way of disorientation—disorientation of roles: disorientation of the audience’s role with the music [and] a drawing of attention away from simply sounding, a drawing of attention into the situation and the boundaries of the situation. However, this statement also sets the stage for the “disorientation of gender” soon underway in the situation of the interview. About ten minutes into the interview as Ashley and Oliveros talk about the problem of recording and live presence, Carol Vencius appears as the Masked Woman dressed in white trousers, white tennis shoes, green shirt, blue mask with white trim which covers her eyes and nose, and a red scarf tied around her head. She sits on the previously unoccupied stool, presents a box of press-on nails to Oliveros, and says “Excuse me, ma’am, will these be all right?” Oliveros replies politely, “You know very well that it doesn’t matter to me.” Vencius applies the false fingernails first to Oliveros’s right hand, then her left, and paints them bright red. While having her nails done Oliveros says, “I’m not particularly worried in preserving my work. I’m interesting in doing it. I’m interested in the event that we’re involved in. How it can change me, or how I can learn about myself.” She looks at Ashley with a calm and inquisitive expression, but Ashley says nothing. Vencius asks her if the nails are hurting, and Oliveros quips, “No. It’s not hurting—at least not physically.” Oliveros and Ashley continue talking, and both are completely unfazed by what’s going on: a butch lesbian who plays accordion gets a totally femme manicure. With Vencius working on her right hand, Oliveros talks about her interest in her approach to music, the process she goes through in order to make a musical work, her interest in ambiguity, and working on herself “in which the results would be positive.” Ashley replies, “I definitely feel that, and I thought you must feel it too, because you give the appearance of welcoming change.” Oliveros responds, “Yes, I welcome change although I find it very painful. But we agree to do these things.” Both she and Ashley laugh heartily together, and from this moment forward they both cagily acknowledge the slowly emerging lesbian gender transformation. After finishing with Oliveros’s fingernails, Vencius starts to work on her toenails, and asks, “Like the color?” Oliveros quickly replies, “I hate it,” and Ashley chuckles. They continue: Vencius: It’s one of our most popular. I think when it’s complete you’ll appreciate it. Oliveros: Of course, the last time you did it I wore the toenail polish for two weeks. Ashley: Just to let it wear off? Oliveros: Yeah. I thought it would look good in my karate class.

100 Respiration Vencius: A little touch of flash. [camera pans over to Ashley] Oliveros: Really flashy on the snap kicks. Ashley: It’s like being kicked by a Christmas tree. A very long pause ensues as the camera focuses on Ashley watching the toenail work. Vencius finishes this task, and begins to fit a tight hairnet onto Oliveros’s head in preparation for a wig. As Vencius adjusts the net, tucking in stray hairs, the dialog between Ashley and Oliveros completely stops. All focus is on the makeover. Vencius retrieves some make-up from the cabinet drawers and instructs Oliveros to close her eyes while she applies foundation to her face. Ashley is offscreen for a few minutes, and acknowledges the drag show in his own way when he returns dressed in an entirely different outfit: a bright floral jacket, bell bottoms, white ankle boots, and a dog sits curled up on the floor to his left. 16 Ashley performs an act of solidarity with Oliveros, but his “change” is far less radical and does not become the focus of the events. Oliveros restores the conversation which becomes increasingly self-conscious, and the satire nearly veers out of control. Oliveros: Do you have any more questions for me, Bob? Ashley: I was wondering, if you could identify a source of what you are feeling and sort of explain why everybody always does that? It seems like as long as we’ve known about ourselves we have always been involved in whatever that thing is that’s happening, and there must be a reason for that, you know what I mean? Oliveros: You’re talking about the character that’s developing? Ashley: Yeah. [Pause.] No, I didn’t mean to refer to that even. What I was asking you was if you could describe your feelings now. [He leans over toward her and his tummy grumbles.] Oliveros: Right now? My feelings right now? Ashley: Because they would be so universal, you know? Oliveros: [Absolutely deadpan.] Well, no, my feelings right now—when I asked you the question I was in need of a stimulus, and I felt that I needed something to help me to continue to talk. Ashley: Do you understand a little bit what I mean? [He falters a bit.] Oliveros: No, I think you have to explain it to me. Ashley: If there’s some way you could have a videotape of the daily life of the Aztecs, you name it, any culture, the videotape would always show the same thing, wouldn’t it? It would show people changing themselves in some way. I was wondering if you could identify, explain that feeling—why do we do that? Oliveros: Why do we make those changes? Why do we do the changes? [She gestures with her hands and big fingernails.] Well, my immediate

Respiration 101 response is to learn more, to learn something, to move and to feel the movement. Pain, feelings, change, movement—are they talking about compositional practice or Oliveros’s makeover?—or both? Parallel worlds almost collide. After Vencius completes the make-up, she puts a blonde wig on Oliveros’s head and styles it with a hairbrush into wavy curls that frame her face. Oliveros continues, relaxed and aloof, as if this were a completely ordinary event. She and Vencius stand up; her back is to the camera for a moment while Vencius puts a white bra on her. Her conversational manner remains serious and earnest: “Gradually I became more and more interested in the process of listening, and listening so as I was a part almost. And there came a time when I was no longer improvising but I was attending to a task. And I call it meditation, because I was dwelling.” As she speaks, Vencius slips a full-length leopard dress over her head, and helps her get her arms through the long sleeves, reminding Oliveros to be careful with her fingernails. She then assists Oliveros in stepping out of her trousers, adds a black beaded necklace, clip-on earrings, and several large rings to Oliveros’s costume. Ashley maintains the interviewer mode, and Oliveros responds, sincere and sly. Ashley: Have you felt in yourself [Vencius places a gold wedding band on Oliveros’s left ring finger; Oliveros glances at her collection of rings.]. . . Can you see in yourself something that’s historical, something that’s been with you a long time, some overwhelming force that’s within you? [Vencius brushes the wig again.] We’re taught that those forces exist; that people might have lived their whole life struggling against economic problems, you know? A despotic situation or something like that. We have heroes who have spent their whole life working with that idea [Vencius applies lipstick to Oliveros’s mouth, poised like fish lips.] and I was wondering if there is an idea like that in your life. [Pause as Vencius finishes lipstick.] Vencius: OK, together. [Oliveros rubs her lips together.] Open. [Vencius applies more lipstick.] Oliveros: Yes, I think so. It showed up in my work as a dualism. [Vencius takes a cloth and cleans around Oliveros’s mouth.] Very often the theater pieces that I’ve done would be quite bizarre, in many bizarre and say comical aspects or mixed feelings in the theatrics. And then a change into some kind of say purely musical activity. [Vencius adjusts the back and top of the wig.] Somehow the pull of the theatrics would set up a kind of disorientation, and then it would be again a crossing point, and then the music that occurs in some of my pieces. [Oliveros gestures with her hands.] Ashley: Within that one piece there are both things. Yeah I know.

102 Respiration Oliveros: Right, both things, yes. And within myself, there’s the environmental pull—you mentioned struggle—the kind of feelings about myself, say, the way I want to be, as opposed to the way the social environment intends for me to be. [Vencius moves behind Oliveros’s chair, cleaning up.] That kind of pulling. I think that has been a sort of overwhelming force, and trying to keep myself centered, to meet that. Oliveros, in full girl drag, continues speaking while petting the dog, and refers to her work with electronic music as a mode of improvisation. At this moment, the laughter is too much to conceal and Ashley confirms that the tasks of interview and drag have been achieved. Oliveros: I found ways of setting up very unstable electronic situations to work with in the studio [laughs] which would give me again [The dog returns to her; she pets it.] this condition of having to understand as I went along. Not understand, but to do. [She nods and breaks into a broad grin. Both she and Ashley start laughing. The dog looks directly at the camera.] Ashley: I understand. [laughs] Oliveros: You understand? Ashley: Just now. Just this second. [The dogs runs out, and jumps on Ashley’s lap; he pets it. Oliveros laughs heartily.] Oliveros: Have you gotten the message? Ashley: I just got it. Oliveros: You got the message. [Their voices fade.] Ashley: Thanks for answering my question. Should we stop? [Oliveros shrugs and gestures, as if to say “Sure, why not?”] Throughout the interview runs the stunning counterpoint between Oliveros’s spoken narrative of artistic change—in compositional style, approach, listening, etc.—and her collaborative performance of gender change, from “natural” butch lesbian to “unnatural” dolled-up femme. Furthermore, it is extremely different from drag as performed by gay men because we see the process of transformation, step by step, in utterly riveting detail. The process is the focus; when Oliveros’s change is complete, the performance-interview is over. Ashley must be credited here for his part in preserving the overall slow tempo during the interview. His numerous pauses and false starts allow us to remain closely attentive to both the conversation and the drag makeover, and the ways in which they simultaneously resonate with one another. The drag show is not the only lesbian story in Unnatural Acts Between Consenting Adults. To the right of the interview scene where Ashley and Oliveros sit are a fireplace and a grand piano with the lid propped open. Inside the piano lies Linda

Respiration 103 Montano, as Huckleberry Linda, stretched out on her back on blue sofa cushions, her head at the keyboard end of the instrument. About five minutes into the interview, as Ashley and Oliveros chat about anxiety in music, the camera pans right to reveal Montano lying inside the piano, dressed in white, a longstem rose at her right side and a scarf of blue, green, and yellow stripes underneath her. A few thick ropes are draped across the piano. Montano slowly moves her arms around, caressing the inside of the lid. Another Budweiser can sits on the piano ledge near her head. The camera returns to Ashley and Oliveros who talk about the Sonic Meditations. After another five minutes or so, we return to Montano for a longer shot: this time her head is draped with ropes and some large flowers (possibly hydrangeas or rhododendrons). Her right hand grasps the stick of the piano in a calm, meditative manner. At this point Ashley asks Oliveros, “Why did you choose the name Rose Mountain Slow Runner?” and the camera moves back to Oliveros who says, “Rose Mountain Slow Runner. That’s a long story,” and laughs. She continues: Oliveros: The song is non-verbal. There are no words. Also that’s very important as far as this particular work is concerned. Because somehow, words are too specific, but sounds are more direct, again. Simply sounds which don’t have the associations that words would set up. If I’m successful in my task of giving up intention, whatever emotional states I might be experiencing will come through in those sounds. The song may change during the course of the song as something may arise, or it may change from time to time. The song came as a result of various experiences that I needed to work with. It was a way of channeling feeling and channeling it directly. Rose Mountain is the name of a friend, and Slow Runner is me. [Oliveros and Ashley both laugh.] But that’s only one part of it. Rose Mountain is of course, a beautiful image. Slow runner is ambiguous, because there are runner roses. Ashley: Oh yeah. Oliveros: Yes. [nods] So the image then can build, and it depends on your own reaction to it. The title itself is a meditation then. But the image for me is a mountain which is a spiral of roses; slowly spiraling roses. [Long pause.] Oliveros adds, “When I was a teenager I had a red corduroy hat, and on the hatband it said, ‘I’m slow, but sure.’” This statement and the sequence of shots (first Montano, then Oliveros) initiate the lesbian meaning of the title Rose Mountain Slow Runner. “Rose Mountain” is Linda Montano. When she was a nun with the Maryknoll Sisters from 1960 to 1962, her name was Sister Rose Augustine. Even after leaving the convent she kept the name Rose, as well as variations Rosie and Rosita.17

104 Respiration In the third shot of Montano she reaches for the beer can and holds it. The striped scarf is gone and flowers are strewn over her whole body. During this shot Oliveros talks about presence in live performance, and in keeping with this uncanny sense of visual timing, this is the same moment when Carol Vencius appears. Once Vencius starts her work, there are only two more images of Montano. Her pose shifts slightly with each shot—bent legs with flowers underneath her knees, for example—but she is always on her back. The overall effect of Montano’s participation is not only terribly absurd but also quite instructive, as we glean the lesbian message in the title of Oliveros’s piece. A third lesbian story involving Oliveros, Vencius, and Montano hovers in the background as a precedent for Unnatural Acts Between Consenting Adults. In my interview with Oliveros, I asked her about Carol Vencius, the Masked Woman, and she said this was tied in to how she met Montano (at the Woman’s Building in Los Angeles). After that fateful event, Montano returned to San Francisco: [Linda and I] were in touch, and all of that, but she was having a show in Marin. Mitch was there, and others were there. Minnette Lehmann who was a friend also of Linda’s and my friend, and Carol Vencius, and all this. I was staying with them—not with Minnette, but with Carol and Esther. I decided I wanted to go to the show, but I didn’t want to be recognized. So, Carol fixed me up. I went as a color coordinated Marin housewife. Everything was perfect: nails—the whole bit—a wig, everything. I went to Linda’s show. I went in and my heart started pounding, because I didn’t want to be recognized. The idea was that I was going to go in, see the show, and leave, and then tell Linda about it.18 You were doing a piece of your own. Yes, that was my piece. This is how I became a performance artist, right? I was a doing a number on a performance artist! So, I got in, and I was smoking a cigarette, and everything that I don’t do. People—and this is really something, this is a hip crowd—here I am, an alien. People would look at me and then cut away. I began to feel really isolated. I thought, “Mm-hmm, here’s this hip bunch of people and what’s happening? What are they doing to this person?” I was just about to leave, I was on my way out, and Minette started looking at me. Minette’s a photographer. She suddenly said, “That looks like . . . Pauline. It is Pauline!” She let out this yelp, and I’m trying to get out! God! And Linda just goes crazy—she screams, runs up and starts ripping at me! It was just out of sight. My little scheme backfired, because I didn’t want to upstage her show. But, I did! [laughter] So anyway, that was the first time, and it was after that Ashley was going to do his interview. I said to him, “I don’t want to just do an interview. I want to do this.” And of course, he got into it. That was the piece. After that, he did all of his interviews with some theater component, you know? So, that’s that story. One little footnote to that story is that that interview took place in the Student Union at Mills College.19

Respiration 105 In a sense, Oliveros and Montano traded places in Unnatural Acts, continuing their flirtatious “tradition” of performing in one another’s pieces. Oliveros’s interview and performance form the main event, supplemented by Montano, “disguised” (predetermined yet out of place) as Huckleberry Linda, who offers her playful, non-verbal commentary. Nevertheless, Huckleberry Linda certainly asks us to ponder the provocative image of a woman lying inside a musical instrument, while her lover discusses desire, intention, disorientation, change, and meditation. What is the relationship between Montano’s performance and Oliveros’s piece, Rose Mountain Slow Runner? What does this twenty-minute piece sound like? What are its sonic shapes and ideas? My experience of this piece is based on the videotape recording, so as I listened to the music I also watched Oliveros perform it. Therefore, my account inevitably combines the aural and the visual.

duration Oliveros is seated with her accordion in front of the fireplace, the large bouquet of flowers at the back of her. She is barefoot and dressed in a matching shirt and pants made of pastel rainbow fabric. Two white portable partition walls extend along the length of the room, one on each side, angled and folded like a counterpart to the black bellows of the accordion. Rose Mountain Slow Runner begins with one long tone on the accordion, possibly A
4, that stretches and lengthens (pitch names follow the designations of international acoustic practice). The single pitch sets up a kind of “tonic,” and like drones in general functions as a sonic focal point for timbre, rhythm, and volume. Other tones added one at a time at intervals of fourths, fifths, and seconds slowly spiral around the initial pitch. The pitches and intervals, particularly a flatted seventh degree, loosely suggest the mixolydian mode. Articulation is always legato. The rhythmic energy arises out of long breaths as the accordion slowly expands and contracts. The movement of the bellows create subtle gradations in volume. My attention is drawn to the changes in timbre which gradually shift from thin and nasal, like a harmonica, to a thick pipe organ sound. Oliveros’s voice joins the texture in long tones that blend with the accordion. She sings various scale pitches that belong to this quasimixolydian mode. Wordless, she sings vowel sounds such as “oh,” “eh,” “oo,” and “ee” for the entire length of each breath. She takes a deliberate swallow in between each breath. Her vocal quality is direct, “untrained” and remains in the tenor range. In fact, the piece in general stays in the lower range—only the lower half of the accordion keyboard is used. Like the other musical parameters in this piece, the changes in pitch and vowel sound are very gradual. A powerful synchronicity between breathing singer and the breathing accordion, itself a kind of ribcage, moves the sounds into a giant chord of nearly all the notes in the scale about midway through the piece.

106 Respiration Oliveros’s performance is incredibly intimate, graceful, and intense. She tilts her head from side to side, as if to bring her ears closer to the accordion. Oliveros seems totally absorbed in what she is doing and never makes eye contact with the camera. Her eyes are closed except for the occasional glance down at her accordion. The camera, however, is fascinated with her, moving in a circular pattern and focusing in on different angles of the accordion. At one point a closeup shot of the bellows looks like a thick black curtain or a grand staircase. Another quite beautiful shot dwells on her right hand slowly caressing the keys. To the best of my knowledge, only two critics have reviewed Rose Mountain Slow Runner. Norbert Osterreich discusses Music With Roots in the Aether as a whole, and in his insightful comments on Oliveros he notices how breath connects accordion and voice.20 He also notices Oliveros’s “relentless authority, in bound and growing sheaves, bound with an erotic steadfastness, her voice a raucous echo in the badlands of meditation” (Osterreich 1977, 217). Daniel Cariaga, music critic for the Los Angeles Times, also reviewed Unnatural Acts Between Consenting Adults and Oliveros’s performance of Rose Mountain Slow Runner as part of his article on Oliveros’s departure from U.C. San Diego in 1981. He remarks, “On the screen, a plain, thickset woman in her late 40s delivers a heartfelt communication about . . . what? ‘Words are too specific,’ the composer has said.”21 I, too, sense the “erotic steadfastness” and “heartfelt communication” of Rose Mountain Slow Runner. I hear it as a musical valentine to Linda Montano: a public, deeply lesbian declaration of love, renewal, artistic and spiritual connection with Montano. My listening is inspired by Elizabeth Meese’s chapter “Gertrude Stein and Me: A Revolution in the Letter,” in which she reads Gertrude Stein’s Ida, Tender Buttons, and Lifting Belly as lesbian valentines to Alice B. Toklas.22 To Meese, Stein’s revolutionary “language of love,” her “lexical erotics,” construct Toklas “as the site of composition.” Oliveros’s musical language of love in Rose Mountain Slow Runner revolves around breath on embodied, erotic, musical, and metaphorical levels. Breath is typically regarded as the domain of singers and wind players. In fact, a great deal of critical work on lesbian musicality is about singers and singing, especially opera, and breath is under-theorized.23 While playing her accordion, an instrument that must breathe in order to sound, Oliveros reminds us that breath doesn’t “belong” only to singers and wind players, and prompts me to think about breath in different ways. Musical breath is commonly thought of vertically, as a column of air traveling and sounding from one location to another. But the physiological geometry of respiration also includes the horizontal: the ribcage expands sideways to make space for the column of air and thus changes the shape of the body. (This horizontal expansion is easily felt by placing the hands alongside the ribcage and inhaling.) The accordion epitomizes the horizontal dimension of breath. Oliveros has often said that the accordion is the amplification of her lung and that her music is about

Respiration 107 24

breathing. With Rose Mountain Slow Runner I think of musical breath as sonic caress—a flow of air that begins deep within the body, vibrates inside the instrument (accordion and voice box both), caresses it and moves on, and leaves the surface tingling.25 I am reminded of the first image of Montano lying inside the grand piano, no doubt meditating and breathing deeply, and that moment when she caresses the inside of the lid to produce, for me, a stunning visual analog to Oliveros’s music-making, her sonic respiration. The slow, elongated breath rhythms of Oliveros’s “Slow Runner,” construct in sound what she loves and finds attractive about Montano, whose own work as a performance artist was consistently concerned with activities that spanned unusually long periods of time.26 Many of Montano’s performance pieces last several days. For example, Three Day Blindfold/How to Become a Guru and Listening To My Heart . . . A Congenital Murmur each lasted three days; Drum Event . . . A Trance Formation (1976) was six hours a day for six days; and Learning to Talk (1977) lasted five days.27 Meditation—dwelling on an idea, an image, a sound, an activity with heightened awareness and attention for extended periods of time—was an essential component in the creative work of both Oliveros and Montano. They connected with each other as artists in ways Oliveros had not experienced before. Linda represented the first person who came along who understood what I was doing. She understood the meditation and spiritual aspect of the work that I was doing, and gave me incredible emotional support at the time that I really needed it, because I had come out of this period—the relationship with Lin Barron which was very hard—there was not a real understanding on the part of maybe Lin and others of really what I was doing.”28 Furthermore, meditation as a mode of transformation was also extremely important to both Oliveros and Montano. Montano, especially, was passionately concerned with the ways in which her pieces could change her: physically, psychologically, spiritually. She tells Moira Roth in their interview from 1978: This [Dead Chicken—Live Angel] and all my other pieces were done to change my own energy, because in doing the pieces I was always changed, transformed and somewhat energized by the work. I knew that in order to change myself, I had to take long periods of time, and I was doing that publicly. I liked the permission I gave myself to be in very public, durated situations. I could feel the chemical changes which were happening—I didn’t know this at the time but I know this now—the biological relaxing was affecting me because I was letting go of muscles and attitudes, and that energy of letting go was affecting whoever saw the piece. I didn’t know while I was doing them, but they were probably visual meditations.29

108 Respiration Oliveros was also drawn to the notion of change in musical performance and its affect on herself and her audience. She says to Ashley in their interview, “I welcome change although I find it very painful. . . . Why do we do the changes? Well, my immediate response is to learn more, to learn something, to move and feel the movement.” For Oliveros, however, as a composer, change (changing pitch, changing sounds, etc.) is inevitably tied up with artistic intention and desire. In western art music, the composer’s intentions in a given piece are sacred and call for absolute obedience and fidelity from the performer(s). This practice is reinforced by the hierarchy of composer–performer–listener (especially in the canon-building realms of pedagogy and recitals), and is rarely, if ever, questioned within western musical discourse.30 With Rose Mountain Slow Runner Oliveros actively attempts to challenge musical intention—on a micro-level—to resist the desire to change a sound, to allow something else (whatever that might be: the performance space, the presence of other people, etc.) to play a role in shaping the sounds. In her program note she writes, “In this song my task is to listen to long sounds from my accordion, to join them with my voice blending as perfectly as possible, continuing each sound until the desire to change it subsides. Very often I hear ways for the sounds to change mentally, but I give up those mental changes and wait until the sound seems to change on its own. This produces in me a sense of openness and awareness.”31 Playing long sounds encouraged her to listen to what sounds do, which she found more interesting than what she might do to the sounds. Her project of confronting intention/desire, always the composer’s prerogative, as constructed by western musical traditions of composing—playing with and against desire—in the form of a musical valentine, strikes me as very lesbian indeed. I hear the long tones, filled with gorgeous timbral details, as Oliveros’s way of connecting with Montano, “giving it up” to her on the accordion. With “Rose” as her subject, I imagine her inhaling the fragrance of roses as she plays and sings long sounds, simple elements that transform the mundane to the glorious, whose magic results from a lesbian alchemy— acknowledging aesthetics, loving Linda. I also hear the musical eroticism of a butch-femme dynamic in Rose Mountain Slow Runner. First, the title itself names both women, and the piece is about both women. Thus, according to Sue-Ellen Case’s theorization of butch-femme aesthetics, they “inhabit the subject position together” and represent a coupled, rather than split, subject (Case 1989, 283). Second, the sound of Oliveros’s singing voice exemplifies a kind of “butch vocality.” Case, who thankfully puts her ideas to work on musical questions and lesbian sexuality, defines vocality as “vocal production embedded in cultural practices, beyond what is more narrowly understood as ‘singing’” (Case 1998, 8).32 She outlines the features of a “butch white trash throat” which is “trained by yelling” and supported by “spread, triangulated, strong legs and square shoulders” (9). Case continues, “Manual labor,

Respiration 109

Figure 5 Pauline Oliveros plays accordion outdoors. Photograph by Becky Cohen. Courtesy of Pauline Oliveros.

with its rural wide distances, or its raucous urban machinery has produced a loud vocality for human interactions as well as a voice that matches the effort in the arm, the back under the weight, or the shoulder to the wheel” (9). I’m not sure that I would term Oliveros’s class background as “white trash” but it was certainly working class, rural and Texan, and many aspects of Case’s description pertain to Oliveros’s voice. While not loud, her vocal sound is untrained (in the classical tradition), unadorned, direct, without vibrato, and most comfortable in the low range. Seated with knees apart, the strong feet and legs form a triangle to support both lungs and accordion. Several other critics throughout Oliveros’s career have commented on her size, posture, and haircut, and I offer a telling sample. Osterreich sees her as “a large and serious and graceful woman,” while Cariaga describes her as “self-possessed tomboy without artifice” and “a plain,

110 Respiration

Figure 6 Photograph of Pauline Oliveros by Gisela Gamper©.

thickset woman.”33 Craig Palmer, writing in 1970, remarks that “[h]er profile is squawlike” and her face reveals “[n]o cosmetic remodeling.”34 Lon Tuck expands on this and declares, “Then there is her stage presence, for which she is probably most widely known. With both feet, literally, bare—and with her short, graying bob and her stocky figure—Oliveros somewhat resembles a benign, weathered earth mother.”35 That these features characterize a particularly lesbian image is completely overlooked. To me, she presents her butch musical body to the

Respiration 111 world, and with each elongated breath in Rose Mountain Slow Runner, Oliveros sings and plays a butch strength in a performance–meditation–valentine for and about her femme lover. Oliveros continued to perform Rose Mountain Slow Runner as guest in residence at Northern Illinois University (October 23, 1975) and at the Experimental Inter-Media Foundation in New York City (June 1976); in 1975 performances were broadcast all year on National Public Radio.36 In 1977 the piece changed in several important ways, and in May 1977 Oliveros gave it a new title, Horse Sings From Cloud. This new title was inspired by a dream Oliveros had: “A horse was supposed to sing from the clouds. I was wondering how the horse would get there, when some birds flew down with a blanket in their beaks and took the horse to the clouds to sing.”37 She first performed it on May 28, 1977 at Radio Diffusion in Paris, where Linda Montano and Edith Gutierrez, Oliveros’s mother, were also present.38 Gutierrez wrote an account of this performance in her Trip Diary which includes many detailed observations of the pitch content and the relationship between voice and accordion, as well as the overarching meditative quality of the music. As she listens to the subtle changes and shifts in the music, she writes: “It is a prism of sound, now reminding me of something gliding majestically through space, smoothly gliding, changing color, sleek and shining, luminous, translucent. The piece is one of continuous sound, a meditation, and one wonders what is in her thoughts as she makes these sounds.”39 Conceptually, the piece retains the meditational “task” of playing long tones on the accordion, blending voice, and changing the sounds only when the desire to change them subsides. However, it can also include other musicians as well as the audience who are invited to “sing along” with the sustained tones if they feel moved to do so.40 Oliveros’s recorded Horse Sings From Cloud twice, first in 1982 as soloist on Accordion and Voice, and again in 1983 on her album The Wanderer, playing bandoneon in an ensemble version with three women, Linda Montano (concertina), Heloise Gold (harmonium), and Julia Haines (accordion). In 1982, after seven years together, Montano and Oliveros ended their relationship. However, they remained friends and continued to support each other professionally. In the Fall of 1982, Oliveros began an artistic collaboration with Deborah Hay, dancer and choreographer in Austin, and they became lovers. Their work culminated in Tasting the Blaze, a “three-hour multi-media intimate spectacle” done in collaboration with artist Tina Girouard in 1985. The catalog produced for this event contains a brief autobiographical essay by Hay entitled “Dancing Breath” in which she explains how, one day many years ago, she was “given” the name Dancing Breath. I was alone and heard “dancing breath” spoken one time. My movement practice then was to listen, perform, and let go of everything I perceived for one uninterrupted hour every day. Within this context there was no time to

112 Respiration question the clear deep quality of the voice which spoke “dancing breath.” Within this same context, I had to let go of it. But as these actions were occurring, I recognized that the name I heard was mine, and that it was bestowed as a gift. A few years later I learned that in Japanese, the calligraphy for “dancing breath” translates “to stop the mouth, to use the body.”41 On the page, sitting next to this essay, is Oliveros’s poem Horse Sings From Cloud written January 8, 1984 in Austin, and the first line reads “To dancing breath.” The phrase “Listen/ Dancing Breath/ Listen” reappears like a refrain in between the four main sections. This poem, clearly meant for Hay, is reprinted on the record jacket of The Wanderer. Horse Sings From Cloud as a musical work about breath, sound, change, and desire shifted from a personal lesbian valentine to a more communal piece that continued to reverberate with lesbian erotic energy. In 1978, Oliveros changed the title a second time to The Pathways of the Grandmothers, in honor of her maternal grandmother Pauline V. Gribbin (1879–1973). This version was never recorded commercially, but archival and published accounts of this piece seem to indicate that she performed it solo (accordion and voice) and invited the audience to sing with her. In a program note from her performance February 1, 1978 at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago) she writes “I have been performing this meditation for 3 years. It began under the title Rose Mountain Slow Runner, changed to Horse Sings From Cloud and to the present title The Pathways of the Grandmothers. I consider each title to be a meditation also.”42 On November 30, 1977 she performed it for the first time in an art gallery at the Center for Social Services in San Diego.43 This performance was reviewed by C. W. Child, pseudonym of Kay Gardner, an out lesbian musician, composer, writer, pioneer in the “women’s music” movement of the 1970s, and colleague of Oliveros. She published her review in Paid My Dues, a feminist journal of women and music that reported on women’s work in a wide variety of musical styles and venues.44 Gardner is struck by the opening musical gesture in which Oliveros quietly fills and empties the accordion bellows without playing any notes. She also finds her own breathing affected by the music as the piece progresses. Gardner’s review suggests that although Oliveros’s new title signals a move away from the erotic, the piece certainly maintained its focus on breath and bodily awareness, and it remained connected to a feminist community of listeners.45

pulse The early 1980s brought several changes, both professional and personal, to Oliveros. In Spring 1981 Oliveros announced her resignation from U.C. San Diego, and that summer moved across the country to Mount Tremper in the Catskills where she worked independently as composer, performer, and consultant. Montano moved with her; however, as already mentioned, in 1982

Respiration 113 their relationship disintegrated. In the Fall of 1982, Oliveros acquired a new accordion, and composed a new work, The Wanderer, for accordion band. During this time she also teamed up with Deborah Hay in Austin where they began a new collaborative venture and a new romance. They worked together for about three and half years, but never lived together during their relationship. In early October 1982 Hay wrote to Oliveros, ecstatic about their future.46 Oliveros shared her excitement about Hay, the new instrument, and her latest composition-in-progress in a letter to Hay written from her home on Mount Tremper on October 20, 1982: You on my mind. (My mind likes it!) I feel you with me much of the time. So present so palpable that it seems impossible that we aren’t together. I breathe deep and love my good fortune to be loving you. Even though I say being in love is disruptive and disorderly, and I thought I had it so together, you know the good book [I Ching] says that when all is in order watch out for disorder. So disorder me my love. [. . .] Deborah—I Am Crazy about you—HELP!! Can we handle it with a few hours here and there? I know that the time and distance is good. It allows for working out our relationships without the urgency of those big feelings. And time to just be with what happened. But it does make me crazy. [. . .] I am being blessed with a new accordion. One that will give me some new possibilities. I hope I like it. I have played the one I have since 1966. This counts a lot because somehow the vibrations do accumulate. Takes time to break in a new instrument. Tuesday I go over to Springfield, MA to hear an accordion band. I hope they will be able to play my piece January 27. That is if the piece manifests with all the notes I have to write down on pieces of paper. At least that is the way I think I have to do it. I ain’t done that for some time. But I think it will be fun. As for A SECRET RELATIONSHIP: What’s secret? (Especially if everybody knows.) Secret from whom or what? Well I didn’t tell anyone but my mother and Linda! Well, I’ll play it on my accordion. And I won’t tell anyone what’s informing the piece. [. . .] So Deborah may our resonance continue pleasurably and may the vibrations be safely contained. I love you no doubt. Your spirit shines.47 The piece Oliveros refers to here is The Wanderer which was premiered and recorded live at the Marymount Manhattan Theater in New York City on January

114 Respiration 27, 1983 by the Springfield Accordion Orchestra conducted by Sam Falcetti and featured Oliveros as accordion soloist. While beginning a new relationship (with a woman in Texas, no less) Oliveros seems to have revisited old musical affections for the sound of large accordion bands at the rodeo in Houston. In the liner notes for The Wanderer, Oliveros says: It was around 1943, 1944. Accordion was an extremely popular instrument back then, as popular as guitar got to be during the late sixties and through the seventies. I was about eleven years old, a student at the Musical Center in Houston, Texas. One of the Center’s activities was to bring an orchestra of one hundred accordions to the rodeo every year. It was held in a huge space, the Houston Coliseum, just packed with people and livestock. We played The Marines’ Hymn. The important thing for me was the sound of all those accordions all together, reverberating in that big space. One hundred accordions! It made such an impression on me. That’s what first triggered my desire to write a piece for accordion orchestra.48 The return to this particular sonic experience was accompanied by a return to conventional music notation for The Wanderer—“all the notes I have to write down on pieces of paper”—a practice Oliveros had not used since the early 1960s. Writing out the score and parts was a practical solution to the “problem” of composing for such a large ensemble. The Springfield Accordion Orchestra consisted of 22 accordionists and 5 percussionists. Moreover, since the average age of the musicians in this group was only 16, these young players may not have been well-schooled in Oliveros’s style of improvisation, therefore a “composed” piece was more appropriate. To me, The Wanderer sounds out a musical valentine to Deborah Hay. Oliveros’s own admission that she would “play” her relationship with Hay on her accordion informs my listening along with the musical structures and details in the piece. The Wanderer musically constructs what Oliveros loves and admires about Hay, and the shared creative aesthetics that drew them to one another. The title refers to hexagram 56 of the I Ching—a book both Oliveros and Hay often consulted in their work and life—on which most of the piece’s compositional elements are based.49 Hexagrams in the I Ching are comprised of six parallel lines in varied combinations of broken (yin) or solid (yang) lines, read vertically from the bottom up. Each hexagram consists of two trigrams, upper and lower, of three lines each, as shown in the hexagram for “The Wanderer.”50 Oliveros derived the scale for The Wanderer by reading the lines of the hexagram: a half-step for each yin line, and a whole step for each yang line. This produced the scale D D# E F# G# A B. Since B functions as a strong “tonic,”

Respiration 115 ____________________ ________ ________ ____________________ ____________________ ________ ________ ________ ________

above LI

The Clinging, Fire

below KÊN Keeping Still, Mountain

I hear the scale as B D D# E F# G# A—a very bluesy combination of mixolydian and dorian, without a second scale degree. (Incidentally, the liner notes on the album list the scale pitches as B C# D D# E F# G#, which incorrectly includes a C# and omits the A.) Formally, The Wanderer moves in two main sections subtitled “Song” (8′25″) and “Dance” (10′35″). “Song” is a slow, languorous exploration of the accordions’ timbres and ranges through long tones and chords which support the elaborate melodic lines played by Oliveros, as soloist. “Dance” brings on the percussion in an exuberant up-tempo celebration of polyrhythms and relies on the meter 3/4 + 3/8 for its maze of overlapping rhythmic patterns. The coupled triple meters in this section also change into other metric configurations such as 9/8, 6/8 + 3/8, 3/4 + 12/8, all of which clearly relate to the importance of the numbers 3, 6, and 9 in the I Ching. Thematically, the two sections also correspond to the two trigrams. For instance, many of the musical features of “Song” suggest “Keeping Still, Mountain.” The piece begins with the sounds of several accordions playing together, sustaining wonderfully thick chords that suggest the weight and heft of a mountain. The vertical dimension is evoked by drones that slowly alternate between very low and very high ranges. The resonant spaciousness of the Houston Coliseum is both remembered here and transformed into the spaciousness of mountains. Indeed, the gradual crescendos, extremely legato lines, long phrases, and slow stately tempo all create a mountainous grandeur. Likewise, I hear “Dance” as “The Clinging, Fire.” This section begins with an abrupt change in texture, ignited by a single crash on the cymbal and bass drum, while the high hat swiftly taps out the 9 eighth-notes within 3/4 + 3/8. Triangle, wood blocks, and tambourine mark out separate and distinct rhythmic patterns, setting up several different downbeats in relation to one another. The jubilant polyrhythmic energy is further enhanced by the accordions which play their repeated and changing collection of patterns in short, accented notes. This is particularly evident at the beginning in the bass accordions’ ascending scale pattern. Breath rhythms give way to those of a pounding heart and dancing feet. “Dance” sounds out the licking flames and complex polyrhythms of a burning fire. For me, listening to the ideas and images of the I Ching in The Wanderer is to hear the erotic connection between Oliveros and Hay.51

116 Respiration Oliveros was certainly no stranger to dance. Since 1964 she had composed pieces for dance and had worked closely with dancer-choreographers Elizabeth Harris, Ann Halprin, Merce Cunningham, and Al Huang.52 But Hay’s own view of and engagement with the body, including an unusual focus on breath, were particularly attractive to Oliveros. In her book, Reading Dancing, Susan Foster explains Hay’s approach to dance which closely resembles Oliveros’s ideas about sound. Her choreography is informed by her willingness to see the world as motion, to see that movement is everywhere—in the tree branches shifting, the cars rolling by, people pausing at a street corner, a newspaper blowing down the sidewalk, a bird landing on the telephone wire. The fluctuations, the pulsations, the ebb and flow of this universal movement partake of some universal order, creating an empyreal rapport. Dancing is the activity of being present in and consciously aware of one’s own movement as part of this flux. (Foster 1986, 6–7) Foster points out Hay’s inclusion of breath in her Circle Dances, instructions for movement for people not trained in dance, which also recall Oliveros’s Sonic Meditations. Foster, quoting Hay, writes, “The dancer is asked to ‘Breathe into a gentle arch like a supple bow’ or ‘Standing, relaxed, together, turn your head from facing right to facing left shoulder, breathe the movement into existence, imagine a great force of water coming out of both ears irrigating land on either side of you.”53 Furthermore, Hay often worked with the notion of “cellular consciousness”: I dance by directing my consciousness to the movement of every cell in my body simultaneously so that I can feel all parts of me from the inside, from the very inside out moving. I dance by feeling the movement of space simultaneously all over my body so that it is like bringing my sensitivity to the very edges of my being from my head to my toe so that I can feel the movement of the air around me.54 Hay’s practice of “cellular consciousness” involves a mindful attention to breathing. Foster writes: During this careful process of bodily renewal, a focus on breathing is crucial. By breathing consciously and fully, one can detect tense or dull areas of the body and bring them to life. Breathing also connects the body and the space around it, the dancer’s specific movements and the pattern of all surrounding movement. With sufficient practice at cellular consciousness, the body

Respiration 117 becomes quiet, alert, and relaxed, capable of moving with alacrity and fullness. (Foster 1986, 11) Hay’s “cellular consciousness” clearly resonated with Oliveros’s practice of “sonic meditation,” (and what she later termed “deep listening”). Hay and Oliveros shared a fundamental interest in the relationship between the body—the moving body, the sounding body—and the environment, and both women enjoyed working collaboratively with large groups of people who were not necessarily trained in dance or music. Like Rose Mountain Slow Runner, The Wanderer as a musical valentine is “about” both Oliveros and Hay, and sounds out a lesbian erotic exchange. The first section, “Song” features Oliveros as accordion soloist, and its slow breath rhythms are more typical of Oliveros’s work on the accordion. Though she doesn’t “sing,” she claims center stage by playing the melody, usually four- or five-note phrases that gradually expand into handsome, virtuosic passages filled with trills and ornaments. Her solo is marked by a distinct melodic motif comprised of the pitches A-G#-B-F#. “Dance” is a sonic portrait of Hay, exploring every possible cross-rhythm and delighting in the never-ending passion of pulsing, rhythmic energy. “Song” and “Dance” join and cavort near the end of the piece when the melodic motif (A-G#-B-F#) returns to structurally connect the first and second sections, sealing the musical valentine with a kiss.55

con-sensual play During the Fall of 1982 Oliveros and Hay collaborated on The Well, a major work that premiered in Austin in January 1983, and was performed again in July 1983 in Philadelphia, following a 6-day residency at the Yellow Springs Institute. They continued to collaborate and perform together, however by early 1984 their personal relationship ran into problems. Their relationship was never monogamous, and yet this became increasingly troublesome to Oliveros who felt Hay had withdrawn from her. Accepting Hay’s refusal was painful and difficult for Oliveros whose feelings for Hay remained passionate yet frustrated. In June 1984 Hay and Oliveros exchanged letters about the fragile state of their relationship, knowing they were committed to begin work on Tasting the Blaze in September. On June 12, 1984, Oliveros wrote to Hay from Mount Tremper, doubtful that they could fully recover their relationship: I love you, see you, hear you, feel you. I love your clarity and poetry. I also love your touch and my cells and soul have danced in your presence as with no other. Yes I love myself and I am comfortable in my body. I would like to share it with you without fear.

118 Respiration It’s green and beautiful here. I go to the river every day that I can. I think of you melted into the rocks with the water flowing through and around you. And I wish that we could be together again growing expanding in our art and life. Love, Pauline56 A week later Oliveros wrote again, this time far more broken-hearted: The tug at my heart reminds me of the deep feelings that we have shared with each other and how I mourn the loss of that sharing. [. . .] Since I do not fit your definitions and limits I feel that I should step aside and wish you well in your search for those who can and do share with you in all levels. Hopefully someday when I am more grounded again with fewer obstacles to face in my daily life it might be possible to again share with you in the limiting partial way that you seem to want. At present such prospects are just too painful for me at least on the personal level. So I look forward to our creative work together and hope that I can manage it impersonally. with love, Pauline57 Since the Spring of 1983, possibly earlier, Oliveros was also involved with Susun Weed, a professional herbalist, teacher, and author based in Woodstock. Weed and Oliveros maintained an “open relationship” which lasted on and off through the end of 1985. Weed knew about Oliveros’s complicated feelings for Hay and offered her support. In a letter from January 6, 1984 Weed wrote: “i am concerned that you are hurt and feel alone, no shoulder to cry on, no one to understand your pain, your loss. i sense that you believed that i would find it hard to care for you in your sadness/anger at deborah’s rejection. [. . .] (but perhaps your work w/her allows you to express your love and desire for her).”58 While Oliveros’s personal relationship with Hay was tense and thorny from 1984 through 1985, her music from this period conveys great passion and devotion to Hay. I want to turn to three pieces, The Gentle, The Receptive, and A Love Song that were recorded on Oliveros’s two-record set The Well and The Gentle (1985). This album grew out of The Well and Midnight Well Water, two closely related multimovement works co-created and performed by Oliveros and Hay. The Well consisted of three movements, “The Well,” “Preponderance of the Great” and “The Gentle.” Midnight Well Water expanded on The Well by adding a new first movement “The Receptive” while retaining the original three sections. On the album, The Well and The Gentle are recorded by Oliveros on accordion with nine

Respiration 119 core members of Relâche, the Ensemble for Contemporary Music, based in Philadelphia (voice, flute, clarinet, saxophones, piano, accordion, cello, and percussion). Oliveros also recorded solo versions on accordion and voice of The Gentle, The Receptive, and a newer piece A Love Song. I hear this trio of solo pieces as intimate “love songs” for Hay that arose from the creative and erotic context for The Well and Midnight Well Water. The scene of two women working on a collaborative project entitled The Well conjures up for me another well— Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness. While Oliveros and Hay took their inspiration and imagery directly from “The Well” in the I Ching (hexagram 48), the lesbian parallel between these two metaphors of “the well” is striking. The Gentle, The Receptive, and A Love Song were recorded in an underground reservoir in Cologne that had been temporarily emptied for repairs.59 Although Oliveros had maintained an active interest in the acoustic qualities of space since the 1960s, this was the first commercial recording she made in an unusual acoustic environment (and would later become a hallmark of her work, especially with the Deep Listening Band who often recorded in caves and cisterns). The underground reservoir offered highly resonant acoustics, and Oliveros uses the reverberation to structure the sounds of each piece in distinct ways. As mentioned earlier, both Oliveros and Hay regarded space as a sensuous, central concern in their respective art forms. Hay, who prefers theaters-in-the-round and nonproscenium spaces, says, “I dance by feeling the movement of space simultaneously all over my body so that it is like bringing my sensitivity to the very edges of my being from my head to my toe so that I can feel the movement of the air around me.”60 Oliveros has long regarded performance space as an active partner in her music-making, and it was her work with long tones that honed her thinking about the relationship between sounds and spaces. In her program note for Rose Mountain Slow Runner she writes, “As I do this meditation in different places, the nature of the performance space contributes to the quality of the sounds that occur. The many changes within a long sound come from the echoes, or feed back from the walls of the space. In this way the space seems to sing with me.”61 Her performance of The Gentle uses the reverberant space of the reservoir primarily as a rhythmic element. The piece begins on a single tone, F#4, played in the rhythmic pattern shown in figure 7, suggesting two measures in 4/4. The lively tempo moves at approximately quarter-note=144. The F# repeats this pattern three times, and then B5 is added. Gradually, E4, A5, D4, and G4 join in, one pitch at a time. E3 in the bass enters, establishing E as tonal center in an aeolian scale (though this piece, The Receptive and A Love Song are not tonal).62 Thick clusters result, and pairs of pitches—major and minor seconds—step out of the texture in rhythmic exchanges with one another. The basic rhythmic pattern and shortened segments of it remain fairly constant throughout the 15minute piece. An occasional low E1 plays a fragment of the pattern: eighth-note plus quarter-note. And toward the middle of the piece long drones on B5 and

120 Respiration

Figure 7 Rhythmic pattern for The Gentle (1985).

C5 are sustained while surrounding pitches articulate the rhythmic pattern. The reverberation of the reservoir produces the effect of an even faster tempo, or a more complex rhythmic pattern marked by subdivided beats. Thus, the basic rhythmic pattern, comprised of quarter- and eighth-notes, soon begins to sound like groups of sixteenth- and eighth-notes in an endless dancing groove. The angular, geometric sound of this piece is enhanced by the complete absence of melody. Instead of interacting melodically, the pitches form timbral impressions, suggesting, at various moments, the fast tonguing patterns often heard on clarinets and saxophones. To my ears, the boundless dance-like energy of The Gentle clearly connects with Oliveros’s passion for Hay as a dancer. I hear Oliveros playing with space and “playing” Hay. The Gentle is also a musical “reading” of hexagram 57 from the I Ching, “The Gentle—The Penetrating, Wind.” Part of the text for “The Gentle” in the I Ching reads, “In nature, it is the wind that disperses the gathered clouds, leaving the sky clear and serene,” and “The penetrating quality of the wind depends upon its ceaselessness. This is what makes it so powerful; time is its instrument.”63 I sense the exuberant, cyclic rhythms as a sonic evocation of wind. This is not “wind” that whistles and blows, but wind that fundamentally alters the rhythmic flow of air pressure. The I Ching was extremely important to Hay and Oliveros who often consulted it for spiritual and artistic guidance. It is not surprising that all the movements for The Well and Midnight Well Water were drawn from the I Ching. (“The Well,” “The Gentle,” “The Preponderance of the Great,” and “The Receptive” correspond to hexagrams 48, 57, 28, and 2 respectively). Oliveros and Hay found the elemental imagery of the I Ching—earth, mountain, wind, water, lake, fire, thunder—enormously appealing as artists whose larger preoccupations with space, environment, fundamentals of movement and sound are clearly evident in their work. Both The Gentle and The Receptive as musical valentines lovingly portray in sound the interest Oliveros and Hay shared in the I Ching. The Receptive is a 16-minute piece for accordion and voice; its title refers to hexagram 2, “The Receptive, Earth,” an unusual hexagram made entirely of broken (yin) lines. The image of the earth is easily suggested by Oliveros’s choice of the underground drained reservoir as her performance space.64 Within this earthly chamber, Oliveros shapes the echoes into a sensuous study in textures. The Receptive uses a dorian scale on E, though sometimes the sixth degree is flatted. It begins in the upper range of the accordion with a cluster of notes, C5,

Respiration 121 E5, F#5, G5, A5, B5, played with a shimmering tremolo. Again, the timbre recalls the quick tonguing sounds of flute, oboe, clarinet, and soprano saxophone. The echoes intensify the fluttering, trilling tones to create an active, pulsating texture. Added beats, harmonics, and even a hint of white noise result from the clusters built of neighboring tones which shift their pitch content by adding and dropping different tones. A larger sense of rhythm or tempo is less apparent than the rich reverberation of tremolo which remains constant for the great majority of the piece. At about 1′30″ sustained legato tones sound on E4, D4, F#4, and back to E4, forming the lower “voice” in the two-part texture. These lower pitches are not trilled, always smooth. At 2′15″ Oliveros’s voice enters on E4 for the duration of one breath, and of course the echo lengthens the sound even more. She moves to B4, and a descending phrase on E4 D4 C#4 B4. She sings no words, mostly “mm,” “ah-oh,” and “mm-oh.” At about mid-way through she sings an impressive low E3, and then undulates from E3 to D3. Her voice functions as part of the lower legato texture (never moving higher than F#4), and the accordion supports her pitches in unisons which introduces a kind of “double echo” process. The lower notes on the accordion are echoed by the reservoir and by Oliveros’s voice. Her vocal quality matches the accordion’s timbre so closely, at times it is difficult to hear when she begins a new sound. The contrast between the pulsing treble-range and the slower-moving drones in the bass form a compelling tension that subsides only at the end of the piece when her voice, on B4, repeatedly calls out to the walls of the space, joined by the echoes. I hear Oliveros’s “butch vocality” in the low vocal range she uses in The Receptive, especially the deep tones on E3 and D3. The sound, as in Rose Mountain Slow Runner, is sturdy and unadorned; the reverberation enhances its depth and power. I also sense a butch-femme dynamic in the Oliveros/Hay collaboration. Several critics make surface-level observations, but overlook the erotic charge of the butch-femme attraction between Oliveros and Hay. In her review of Midnight Well Water Nancy Vreeland terms their collaboration “oddball” and describes Oliveros as “shortish, stocky, with cropped gray hair” while Hay, in contrast, is “lush and bountiful, with a kind of timeless exoticism” (Vreeland 1984, 49). Valerie Scher, in her review of The Well, finds them “a study in contrasts”: “Hay, a muscular woman whose dancer’s body was tanned to a dark caramel, wore black harem pants, red barrettes in her thick, dark hair and a gray sweatshirt adorned with a bright silk scarf. Oliveros was as amiable as Hay was intense, as burly as she was lean. With her close-cropped, graying hair, benign smile and a Southwestern twang, she suggested a Texas buddha who had long ago found enlightenment” (Scher 1983, 8-D). The article continues, in an amusing disavowal-acknowledgment: “Yet, as Oliveros explained, the differences don’t matter when it comes to working together. ‘I feel a strong resonance with Deborah, and I think she feels the same way about me,’ she said. ‘We have a lot

122 Respiration in common.’” In both The Receptive and A Love Song Oliveros presents her butch musical body to the world, and to Hay—to receive, love, and dance with. A Love Song, only 4′45″ in length, is the most intimate of the three pieces, as the title suggests—a title not drawn from the I Ching. It features Oliveros’s voice front and center, and is “about” the voice in a reverberant space. Approximately sixteen long “breaths” shape the length of the piece. Expansive breath rhythms move the sounds around the space, with a distinct pause between each exhalation and the next inhalation on both accordion and voice. Echo, as a compositional element, is used to explore volume and phrase. As each “breath phrase” expands and contracts, like a dancer’s arch, so does it crescendo and diminuendo in very pronounced fashion. The echo supports each crescendo, “thickening” and amplifying the sound; likewise, the natural decay of echo exaggerates each diminuendo. The accordion plays full chords throughout, with an occasional short trill or ornament at the beginning of a chord, sounding very different from the note-bynote additive texture of Rose Mountain Slow Runner, Horse Sings From Cloud, and other pieces. The echoes and decisive shifts in volume “carve” sculptural shapes in sound that seem to slowly rotate in space, very reminiscent of the sonic sculptures in I of IV, which also used echo, constructed electronically, as a compositional device. A Love Song begins with the accordion on a short trill on A4 and B4, followed by a low E2, which soon establishes itself as a “tonal” center. The pitches suggest a dorian or aeolian scale on E with no sixth degree: E F# G A B D. Chords are not triadic, but are mainly collections of fifths sounded together: E-B, A-E, D-A. Oliveros’s voice enters in the third “breath phrase” on B4, reinforcing the fifth formed by E and B. She sings “oh,” sometimes modified by “uh,” and occasionally bends the pitches microtonally. She begins on B4, moves up to E4, and glides her way down to a low E3. Her voice, loosely singing the “melody” to the accordion’s “accompaniment,” conveys a certain contentment to just breathe and sound. In this “love song” I hear Oliveros loving the sensual play of breath, sound, and space in her musical valentine to Deborah Hay.

5 Conversation

This chapter records and plays back a performance co-composed by Oliveros, her friends, lovers, family, colleagues, and me. Most of this polyphonic event draws from two in-person interviews with Oliveros, performed in real time: one in 1997 at the home of Jann Pasler in Solana Beach, California, and the other in 2005 at Oliveros’s home in Kingston, New York. Letters from her friends, lovers, and colleagues, as well as some letters from Oliveros to these individuals, form the epistolary interludes of this spoken word piece. Different fonts indicate who is “speaking”—me, Oliveros, the letter-writers. I thank all the participants here and especially Oliveros for two unforgettable journeys in the art of conversation. *** Let’s start with the 1940s in Houston. Your father left your family when you were 9 years old: What happened? Well, as I recall, my father left to join the Coast Guard because it was after Pearl Harbor and he joined the Coast Guard rather than be drafted into the Army, because he was a man of the water, so to speak. So that’s what happened— he went off for that purpose. How did that affect you? Well, I think that both me and my brother, John, missed him greatly. I know that we had lots of dialog or play, you know, about him. I remember that he sent a color photo of himself in his Coast Guard outfit with the Coast Guard cap and the picture was framed in a steering wheel from a boat. And my brother and I used to fight over who could have possession of this, since there was only one. He would take it and then I would cry, and then he’d give it to me and then he’d go cry. That was the interplay between us. So we had a lot of feeling about it, and that was the way we were expressing it—that kind of pseudo-competition. How often did you see your father after that point? We didn’t see him. There was one trip which is very vivid in my memory. We got on the train in Houston and traveled with my mother to New Orleans. There my mother and father met for a kind of rendezvous which, unfortunately, I think

124 Conversation was the discussion of their divorce. I remember they sent us off to a movie, and I took my little brother, and we went. The movie was The Bridge at San Luis Rey which was a very dramatic movie. During that movie my brother got very restless, and he wanted to go back to the hotel. I even remember the name of the hotel, the Hotel Monte de Leon. I remember many things about that trip, just because it was so important: I had never been on a train going to New Orleans before. My brother must have been about 4 or 5 years old, and I was 9 or 10. Maybe later, it’s a little bit uncertain exactly when that trip took place. It was about 1943 perhaps. So, my brother got very restless in the movie and we went back to the hotel, and interrupted whatever was going on between them, I don’t know. I remember we went to the Louisiana State Museum, and it was very very impressive to me as a child to see whatever was in there. And just the atmosphere of New Orleans. The other thing that is very vivid in my mind was the train trip itself, because the train was full of GIs. They were all hanging out and doing things and singing. The song of the time was “Mairzy Doats and Dozy Doats” (and liddle lamzy divey). [laughter] Eventually, one of the things that I had wanted most was a horse, and my mother managed to get a horse for my brother and me. The first horse was a big old draft horse, and he was seventeen hands high, and very docile and gentle. His name was Jesse and we rode him all around. Then later, I don’t know how much later, she got us a Paint Mare and we called her Maresy—Mairzy Doats. I think it was because of the vividness of that impression of being on the train in World War II, going to New Orleans. So, you asked me how often did we see my father—we saw him that once, and then when there was the VJ Day. There was a phone call for me to come home from school, and there he was. He had returned from the Coast Guard, but they hadn’t told us that they were divorced. So he came to see us, and then I was wondering, you know, why wasn’t he going to stay? Why didn’t he express affection toward my mother? But he left. It was after that she told me, and it was fairly devastating news for me, and it was very very hard for my little brother. I urged my mother to tell him, because I felt he should know, and I felt kind of cheated that I hadn’t known. He cried inconsolably, and said “You mean he’s not my Daddy anymore?” Is your father still alive? Are you in touch with him? He died in 1999. We were not in touch very often. My relationship with him was not all that easy. *** You were quite the softball player as a teenager and young woman in Houston. Oh yes, this is true. You mostly played pitcher. What did you like about softball? I liked the teamwork. I felt it was wonderful game where everybody had to work together to make something happen.

Conversation 125 What did you like about playing pitcher? Well, it was an important role—to be able to pitch that ball. It was a workhorse role, so to speak. Did you continue to play softball after you moved to San Francisco? No. What happened to that part of your life? When I was about 17 there was an accident that happened that probably affected me deeply. I was pitching and my friend Betty Duncan was catching. Betty refused to wear a mask. I was kind of at the height of my pitching abilities, and I was throwing pretty mean curve balls and fast balls. They were pretty amazing, and people were just striking out all over the place. But one of them caught her in the mouth and knocked out some teeth. Oh dear. From that moment, I couldn’t—it felt really bad that that had happened. It wasn’t really my fault in the sense that she had not protected herself as she should have, but that’s what happened. So that was bad for me. From that point on, I simply was not into it so much anymore. Also, I had begun to really concentrate on my music, and I had started that in college so I wasn’t having the same kind of time for that activity [softball]. Suzon Small wrote you some wonderful letters in the early 1950s about her impressions of San Francisco: living in a racially mixed environment, listening to good low down music and meeting mature lesbians.1 Yes, this is true. It was very early, I mean, very early on. I think she served in the Navy, during World War II. So she was older than I. I don’t remember [by] how many years. Actually, see, I think this friendship with The Robin, as I said, was very very important. And it was important because there was intellectual stimulation that came from that relationship. It opened up a lot of worlds for me, as had the relationship with Suzon Small. She was the gate, the doorway to NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People], and introduced me to An American Dilemma—that book that had been published just at that time.2 I had already been very disturbed by racism, and it was very disturbing because my father was a racist, and my grandmother also. My father couldn’t have a conversation for more than 5 minutes without bringing it up. That’s difficult. Yes, it is very difficult. Well, I mean, you know, I grew up with it. But, my consciousness was raised, and it was raised before anybody raised it for me. I always felt there was something wrong with it [racism]. This didn’t make any sense to me. Was Houston segregated? Yes, it was definitely segregated by Jim Crow laws. I was affected deeply. I was awakened to the injustice by the time I was about 14 or 15. I started teaching and

126 Conversation one of my students was African American. I had him come to the house for his first lesson. My grandmother was shocked as she held very racist views. As a consequence I went to his house to give him his lesson. I became involved in the NAACP by the time I was 17. Mostly I was just a member. I argued against racism. I went to play horn in the orchestra at Texas Southern University, a black college in Houston. When I left in 1952 for San Francisco I was very happy to have Jim Crow left behind me. So that was an important issue, and Suzon showed me that there was a movement, and she was part of it. She was white? She was white, yes, but she was involved in some consciousness of equality and working toward that. So that was my first glimmer of that, which was very important to me. I was about 16. Also, she was the first person I really felt something, a deep stirring for. Really deep. It was that connection and that compassion. Then The Robin brought more to that. So those two people were very influential in my consciousness of social movement, and social consciousness. Tell me more about The Robin.3 My brother had struck up a friendship with The Robin who was working at the Dairy Queen. I had noticed this person on the street, walking along with somebody, and wondered what this woman was doing all dressed like a man. I perceived it instantaneously. Eventually, my brother brought The Robin home, and there was a room for rent in our house. So, The Robin took a room in our house. It was my mother who referred to him as “The Robin.” One of the things we did playfully with everybody was to have an animal or bird as their identity. And these people would exhibit the characteristics of these critters and creatures and birds and things, so we had a lot of fun with this kind of playfulness. So there was The Robin, and it turned out that he was very interested in music, had been a trumpet player—a really virtuosic trumpeter interested in jazz. The Robin introduced me to [the music of] Billie Holiday and Pearl Bailey and all of these wonderful jazz singers. The Robin and I went to one of Billie’s last concerts at the Black Hawk in San Francisco in the 1950s. That was quite amazing. She wasn’t in very good shape, but the Robin managed to get to see her in her dressing room. He was star-struck with Billie Holiday, and went up to her and said, “Miss Holiday!” and she just turned away from him. But later on that same evening, he managed to see her, talk with her, and express his love for her which went very well. It was a very important moment. The Robin was a painter, and he was into abstract art—very intense, lots of color! So I got an education in terms of painting, going around to see various shows in Houston. Houston had a lot of art, it still does—there’s a lot of art going on there.

Conversation 127 How old were you during this friendship? This started when I was about 17. The Robin was also into literature, he read a lot. The funny part of all this was that I had this “bead” on The Robin that he wasn’t really a man, he was a woman. He spent a lot of time trying to change my perspective in various subtle ways. I don’t know if I can even think of what they were, but there was this subtext going on. I never directly confronted him, but I knew. He knew that I knew and was trying to cover up—so that was a play that was going on. [laughter] Was The Robin older than you? Maybe by a couple of years—Robin was 19 and I was 17. Now, the very crux of this is that we became good friends and hung out together a lot in those years while I was going to the University of Houston. I had started composing, and at 19 I actually managed to write some pieces. So, The Robin was around in these times. Somewhere in there, probably a year or so before I left for San Francisco, The Robin and I drove across the country to San Francisco together and lived in the same place for a while. But before that, he fell in love with my mother! I was kind of thunderstruck at that. I can’t remember exactly how to get back to this. There was a point, a time came when The Robin confessed his gender to me. There had been enough trust built up that he felt he could do that. Because he was passing as a man, and working as a man. I made him tremendously furious because I said I knew it all along. [laughter] So, that took a while to heal. But, it worked out. It was after he revealed his gender identity to me that the business with my mother started. I can’t remember if it was before or after. I think it must have been after, because when I was 17 my mother confronted me about my sexual orientation and was very upset about it, as I could well imagine with all the pressures of her generation. So, this was a very difficult time for me, and then to have The Robin come along and fall in love with my mother. And they went out on some dates! [laughter] But meanwhile, isn’t your mother involved with Pat Gutierrez? 4 Yes, yes I think so! Well, she had quite a life! [laughter] And The Robin was very critical of Pat. And there were some reasons to be, actually. In any case, what a pair, huh? There came a point when The Robin’s gender would be revealed, but not at that stage. By that time, I had planned to leave and go to San Francisco. So I don’t know—this is kind of the rough outline of all of that. In those early years in San Francisco, The Robin and I shared an apartment. We started out sharing it with Mary Alice Kimball [Mak] and Anne Ramsey, both of whom are dead now. I saw Mary Alice just before she died of cancer— both of them. Very sad. They were amazing, wonderful characters—beautiful! I remember that Anne Ramsey showed up in The Robin’s front yard one day [in Houston]. She was hitchhiking across the country from the South to go to San Francisco. I don’t know what the connection was, I can’t remember, but we met her. She was a connection, so when we got to San Francisco we called her. She

128 Conversation was living with Mary Alice then. They were such characters. You know, they were very important in those first years in San Francisco. So, they had an apartment on Ashbury, where we lived. They moved to another place, and we kept that apartment for a time. You and The Robin. Yes, right. Then, The Robin spotted this young woman at the bus stop every morning, getting ready to go to work. That person was Ruth Ungar, and we called her Ruth-U. One day I struck up a conversation with her, and then got it so that she and The Robin could go out. [laughter] In other words, I picked her up for The Robin! [more laughter] She lived nearby, and it was very funny. So then started a long series of things with Ruth and The Robin. They eventually got together, and lived together. Ruth is still on the scene. She works at Mills [College.] I’m still in touch with her. Was she an artist as well? She was a singer. Yes, we spent a lot time together, going to musical events in San Francisco. [We had] dinners with Anne and Mak. Anne was a very wonderful cook, but every time we were invited to dinner it was advisable to eat beforehand, because dinner would never be ready before midnight! [laughter] It was a very strange thing: you’d come over and there they’d be—you’d be invited for seven o’clock—you’d come in, and they would be sitting there . . . reading . . . and smoking, you know. [laughter] And that would go on for hours. “Oh, maybe we’ll fix dinner.” It was really a riot, and that was just the modus operandi. Very funny. Anyway, that was the beginnings in San Francisco with them. I moved out of the Ashbury apartment, and found an apartment near where Anne and Mak had one. Then I moved to their place; I had a room in their apartment. This was still in the first year, 1952. Then Edith and John came to San Francisco that next summer in 1953 and I drove back to Houston with them for a visit. I was just talking to Edith about that, because Ione and I were at Big Sur, at Esalen, last week, and we [Edith and I] had driven from San Francisco all the way down the coast to San Diego and then back to Houston. Beautiful. It was a lovely, beautiful trip. July 10, 1952 Dear Pauline: One month ago, June 10, since you left. Thought I’d better write you a few lines on your “first anniversary.” Received your card yesterday and am waiting for the letter. Had begun to worry, thinking you might be ill. Glad to hear all is O.K. Much love, Mama

Conversation 129 July 13, 1952 [. . .] I know you are having an experience you will never forget, one that will prove broadening, strengthening—a soul nourishment. [. . .] I do miss you, but I am not unhappy that you are gone. My faith and confidence in you would be false if I were. There is much sustenance to be derived from the thought that you are searching for what is right for you. You will find it, for you have started in time. With all my love, Mama5 Dec. 8 [1954] Dearest Mama, Yippee! Only 10 days more and I’ll be on the way. Jennie [Gates] and I are driving (Please don’t worry!) and we will leave early in the morning on the 18th. We are trying to plan so we’ll be in Houston on the 20th. Jennie is from Houston too (Guess I forgot to tell you). She will stay a few days with her folks and then stay with us if there is room. We will be driving her car which is a 52 Dodge. [. . .] Love Po’ Lover6 Jan. 10 [1956] Hello, again, Honey, It seems like a year since I wrote that letter yesterday (was it yesterday?) [. . .] MAK called me tonight. She and Ann invited me to come to their house to dinner while you’re away. Unfortunately I had to refuse on account of the [school] work but it was darned nice of them to think of me, huh?! [. . .] Write to me. (Or I won’t play ball witcha!) Love you Jennie7 Jan. 19 [1956] Thurs. Dearest Jennie, Hope by now you have received my second letter. You should know you are lucky to hear from me at all the way I am about letter writing. [. . .] Well my darling little gal I hope this letter is satisfactory and that you will relax when you tear into your finals [exams]. I’ll be home soon and I love you and I’ll play ball and get it for you wholesale [. . .] All my love Pauline8

130 Conversation Who was Jennie Gates? [giggles] Jennie was from Houston. She had been part of that softball gang. She came to San Francisco. She called me, I think, as a few of those people did. So, we got together. Much to my surprise we got together, you know, as lovers. I had finally managed to get myself an apartment alone. I had wanted to have my own place, and fix it up exactly how I wanted it. [laughter] I had this 2-room apartment in Visitacion Valley in San Francisco; I had it for, I don’t know how many months. I was big on practicing my accordion in those days, and practiced sometimes 8 hours a day. I had started to go to San Francisco State College then, this was about 1953 or 1954. And then Jennie showed up in my life, and she moved in with me. And everything went haywire, and changed! [laughter] I had managed to get everything exactly as I wanted it, in place, you know. But the I Ching says, when there’s order there’ll be disorder. Yes, that’s right! So, disorder started—aagh! I mean, this is how I’m remembering it. Because the relationship was not very considered. In those days, there was the idea that you had to fall in love. It had to be very romantic, and nothing else mattered. There was no contract, and there was no real consideration about what this meant. What did you share and all of that—it was just about “being in love.” Very romantic. Oh yes. So she was from Houston, and here was somebody somewhat familiar, and I’m there and here’s someone from Houston. You’re certainly feeling the pull between San Francisco and Houston. Yes, right. And as I said, this was one of the most difficult things I’ve had to do. When I did leave, it took me six months to adjust to that rift from having left and a whole new mode of living and existing. I had very physical symptoms from leaving which probably have never been properly processed—I’m pretty sure. I probably need some work on that. Any case, so there was Jennie and we formed this liaison. It was soon obvious that we had to find a different place to live, so I lost this kind of independent set-up that I had. Your own nest. My own thing, and I think I, you know, carried that for a long time. Anyway, we moved to another apartment, and then we moved again. We had to move for some reason from the Stanyan Street place to a place on Congo—Bosworth and Congo which is a wonderful area of San Francisco, or it was, anyhow. It was kind of like being in the country in the middle of the big city. But, Jennie was very difficult for me. It became obvious she really didn’t understand the music that I was writing. She was very invested in folk music, and Odetta. I saw Odetta’s debut in San Francisco. Is that right?

Conversation 131 Yes. I can’t remember if Jennie was with me or not, I’m not sure, but I do remember that very vividly. What was that like? Seeing her debut? Well, it was very powerful, and there was a lot of humility in her presentation—I remember that—but a lot of power in her singing, so it was very amazing to see that. Feb. 25, 1957 Dear Pauline, You really sounded enthusiastic in your last letter, and I’m glad—glad! I discern a profound significance in this letter of yours! I detect a freedom of spirit—a barrier withdrawn, a tension ended, a situation eased, a baring of the soul, an acceptance of love, an absence of doubt, an end of pain, a surge of self-confidence—many things along this line. After all, your long fight is bound to have made you strong in many ways, and your visit home surely must have broken many little useless ties that were unraveled to the breaking point and, likewise must have woven a beautiful, new, shining band, too. Many times I have the maddest desire to come clucking, to your side! What an old hen I am.—But I am proud of you, more than words can say, and I believe in you and what you are doing. We are very close, and will be, always.—So write away, with a singing heart (and don’t let your keen intellect take precedence over it, ever). For without love, a composition is like a still-born babe, perfectly formed, but dead. —Love and xxxxxx Mama9

How did the McCarthy era affect your social life, your place in the world? Oh boy. Well, of course, I became aware of Pacifica Radio, KPFA very early on. I must have been listening to that very shortly after I got to San Francisco. So I heard all of the McCarthy hearings on KPFA, and all of the student uprisings, everything. I was listening in, because it was very well covered by that station. I think KPFA was a major force in the development of my career because of its advocacy of new music, the number of times I was on it, and the fact that my teacher, Robert Erickson, was one of the music directors, friends of his were also friends of mine who had been successors to him, the fact that Charles Amirkhanian was there for twenty years and was a champion not only of me but of many, many women and all kinds of music. He had the broadest taste of any of the music directors that I can recall. But that station really was very very important. It still is, even though it has changed recently—quite a bit. But everything has; nothing is as it used to be. In the ’60s, did you read any of the lesbian pulp novels—Ann Bannon and Beebo Brinker? [giggles] No, not in the ’60s. By then I wasn’t interested at all in that stuff, so

132 Conversation I just never came across it. I was very into in my music and learning about what I was doing then, and just the cultural issues. But I wasn’t thinking in those terms then at that point, I don’t think. I had made a place for myself, so to speak. Actually, a lot of my friends were men. The San Francisco Tape Music Center— Morton [Subotnick], Ramon [Sender], Terry [Riley], Loren [Rush], and all those people. They were very longtime friends. We were supporting one another and the work we were doing. What was lesbian and gay San Francisco like in the 1960s? I mean, by this time it has a reputation as a place where you can go and re-create yourself— Well, it wasn’t so easy in the ’60s, not in the early ’60s anyway. It was not a time of openness, but it was being blown open! And that happened, of course, and by the mid-’60s the things were churning around. On the one hand there was this big psychedelic uproar, and on the other hand, women were still in a subservient position. It wasn’t how it is now; it was only moving in that direction maybe. So it was still a very heterosexual orientation, I would say. Maybe it was less that way in San Francisco than in other places; maybe there was more openness toward oddness and weirdness and this and that. I mean, certainly in the Black Cat and North Beach you could find more flamboyant forms of presentation, but the city itself, [I don’t know]. When I arrived there in the 1950s this was the Eisenhower years. The ’50s were really the dark ages in terms of all of that, so it took the ’60s to start an opening. The ’70s saw a lot of retrenchment but also a lot of very thoughtful and orchestrated activism to bring things to where they are now. Did lesbians and gay men occupy separate social spheres? I think so, pretty much, although I had— You were still kind of an outsider. You hadn’t “come home” yet. I hadn’t, not really, not yet. Although maybe—I mean, I would hope so. I guess I’ve spent a lot of my life jumping out of people’s bags that they’ve tried to put me in. I’ve even contemplated getting out of the composer bag. Like, wait a minute—what is a composer? What does it mean to say you’re a composer? What does it mean to say you’re a lesbian? Because these things are so neat, these labels— Yes, they don’t mean one certain thing— They don’t mean a thing—I mean, it doesn’t deal with the issues of one’s life. And that’s my objection, and that’s why I’ve sidestepped it so many times. That’s one reason. The other reason is probably the feeling of betrayal of my mother— you know, that that was a great disappointment in her life. Although I don’t think she’s disappointed in me. Not at all. But these are parts of why you don’t do certain things maybe. I have always found it difficult to be labeled as a member of something. There’s some streak in me that just wants to be who I am, and not who somebody else says I am—what somebody else says that I am, by a label. So, I am resistant to it. That’s probably why I haven’t “come home” so to speak,

Conversation 133 although I am very concerned about freedom, and freedom of choice—always— and have fought for it, for anyone. And will continue to, labels or no labels. That’s very important to me. When did you meet John Cage? In 1964. I organized with David Tudor a festival at the San Francisco Tape Music Center in 1964. It was called the Tudor Fest. David was the curator of the music, and I had written a piece for David and me to play called Duo For Accordion and Bandoneon With Possible Mynah Bird Obligato, Seesaw Version. [laughter] Oh yes, with Ahmed [a pet mynah bird that belonged to Laurel Johnson, Pauline’s partner at that time]. Right—you know this. That was one of the pieces we were going to put in the festival, and David selected music of John Cage, Alvin Lucier, and Toshi Ichianagi. Those were the composers represented in this festival. There were three days of programs which were then repeated, so it was a six-day festival. It so happened that John Cage was coming through San Francisco at that time. He came and there was an entourage of John Cage and Toshi Ichianagi and Toru Takemitsu and Kuniharu Akiyama. So they all came and were at the festival, which was really wonderful. I remember Toru took pictures of this piece, the seesaw piece, and that piece has been brought up to me many many times— there were only two performances of it in 1964 at that festival. It’s amazing how it keeps coming back. Anyway, John came and was very pleased that we did Atlas Eclipticalis with Winter Music, and it hadn’t been but a few months before that the New York Philharmonic pulled their adolescent stunt of trying to sabotage that piece. So we did it, and he was very happy with our performance of it. What about Lou Harrison? Lou Harrison I really didn’t know until much later. Was there any kind of acknowledgment with these men that they were gay, too? No. No, in fact, I never heard any reference to it in terms of John and Merce [Cunningham]. Lou, of course, is very outfront and open about it, and always was. Let’s see, I remember that David Tudor fixed a really wonderful Indian dinner. Indian cooking was something he was very involved in at the time I met him in 1963. This must have been around 1965 or so. He often stayed at the home of Maro Ajemian when he came to the Bay Area. She lived in Berkeley and had a really wonderful house up in the hills. She died some years back now. She and her sister, Anahid, a violinist, they played. Maro was the one who recorded John’s prepared piano pieces. Yes, she played his music then. Any case, David stayed there, and made this incredible Indian dinner. Lou was there, and Robert Duncan, and my teacher, Bob Erickson, and his wife, and several others. I remember Lou being there, chopping vegetables. It was one of those dinners that got ready around midnight. [laughter] David was another one of these— But you were well rehearsed in this sort of thing—

134 Conversation Yes, I was very well rehearsed and waiting hours for dinner! David hadn’t cooked for so many at once, so he had quadrupled the spices, or something, and it turned out that every single dish was blazing hot! I remember Bob Erickson wandered into the kitchen and said, “Just give me a peanut butter sandwich.” [laughter] Oh, it was hilarious, really hilarious. Just one of those nights! [no later than 1973] The Fork RR1 Galiano, B.C. Dear Pauline and Elinor: [. . .] Had dinner and an evening with Jill Johnston when she was here and very much enjoyed her. She feels to me [. . .] detached from public image [. . .] solidly based in the craft of her work, more able to keep a private center. I really don’t like what too much public living does to anyone. [. . .] It was lovely for us to see both of you this summer. I wish it could be made an annual event, though the prospect of bicycling so far is a bit daunting. A loving and productive season to you both. Jane General Delivery Borrego Springs, Ca February 13, 1978 Dear Pauline and Rosie: Thanks for proverbs, announcement, note. It looks as though this year we’ll just have to send friendly messages back and forth over the snowy mountains. This coming wee’end I will be closeted with Donna Deitch who is struggling over a film script of The Desert of the Heart with the hope that she can raise the money to make a movie, all very pipe dreamy, it seems to me but interesting. I’m looking forward to meeting her. [. . .] Love from us both, Jane10

Did you read Jane Rule’s novel Desert of the Heart (1964)? I think I knew Jane Rule and met her several times before I ever got to that book, and I don’t know if I have ever really read it. I met Jane in Vancouver. As a matter of fact, it was the first time that I saw the [Merce] Cunningham Company. I stayed there, with Jane and Helen [Sonthoff], in their house, and that’s when I met her. It was probably around 1964.

Conversation 135 I corresponded a bit with Jane. She didn’t keep any of the letters you wrote to her, but I asked her a few questions and she wrote me back. She had an interesting story: “We connected as artists, and, though we knew very little of each other’s fields, we could talk about our work and more obliquely about the difficulties of being lesbian artists. Pauline told me about how isolated she felt the year she spent at Mills (where I had gone to college), how she was never invited to other faculty members’ houses for dinner. She finally gave ‘a concert’ at which, if I recall it properly, she dressed in a tux, went on stage and stretched out on top of a grand piano where she lay until the audience gradually drifted away. I was furious at the college for behaving so badly.”11 [laughter] Yes, well I think I did feel very isolated in that year that I was there. The performance she mentioned happened much later—it wasn’t in that year. I don’t think I had a tux on, though that’s a nice idea! I remember David Behrman was the director of the Center for Contemporary Music that year, whenever it was, some time in the ’70s. I was invited to come and do something at Mills from time to time through those years until I taught a semester in 1986. In the year that I was at Mills, 1966–67, it was not conscious. People were not awake. Mills today is an amazing place, just wonderful. I’ve just completed another semester of teaching there [Fall 1997], and as far as I’m concerned, it was the best teaching I’ve done in my life, in fifty years of teaching. I really was happy with the results, and I feel Mills is a very important place right now for women. I’ve put in some elbow grease in terms of kicking around here about Mills taking a leadership role in changing how music curriculum is laid out, and I’m encouraging them to beef up their undergraduate curriculum and really teach women how to compose, improvise, perform— —and learn how to work tape recorders? Yes, yes! Especially that, yes, because one of the unfortunate things is that since I was there that year, ’66–’67, the Center for Contemporary Music, which is the name Robert Ashley changed it to (from the Tape Music Center), the only woman who has been really involved in CCM as a leader is Maggi Payne. She is co-director at present with Chris Brown. But CCM has been a boys’ club ever since I left, and in my graduate level composition seminar in 1997 there were eleven men and two women. For me this is inexcusable and it means that the administration and the department really have to go out and recruit graduate women into this program, and stop letting men have the majority position there. Technology for women is extremely important and this is the one place they ought to be getting it. And there are some really brilliant women coming out of there [Mills], and they’re doing very very well technically, but there need to be more. It’s a wonderful place for a woman to grow compositionally in her own way, I think. And the faculty is really very good, excellent, but I’m the only woman to be in the Darius Milhaud Chair, and frankly I think what they need to do is institute a Ruth Crawford Chair. I’d like to see that happen, and I’ve already pushed that idea forward. Not that they should eliminate the Milhaud Chair—

136 Conversation that’s not what I mean—but they need to balance it. The symbol is just too opposite of what is needed for women, you know? So I’m very hot on the idea of them correcting that. Well, good for you! Well, anyway, back to Jane—Jane was very important for me because she was someone I could talk to at a level that really meant something to me at that time. And I did feel very constricted in my role there at Mills in that year because I didn’t know what anybody was thinking. So it was very uncomfortable. I mean first of all, here I am, an avant-garde composer and there’s all kinds of traditional music going on around me and I can’t perceive, or, I can’t dialogue with anyone about who I am and what I’m doing—really. The career issue, or the aesthetic and artistic issues were very important to me, as well as my orientation. But sexual orientation was something that it seemed you must hide. Certainly all the people at Mills were in the closet. They’re not anymore—it’s a great joy and relief to know you can speak freely and be who you are without that feeling of who’s looking and what are they going to do when they find out. Who was Laurel Johnson? She was a woman I lived with for a few years, maybe it was about four years, from about 1958–61—I’m not sure of the years. Laurel was quite a character. How so? She had a lot of humor and we shared that, very nicely I think. I’m not sure I can pull out an example of that. She also was very principled. She did some drawing, and some paintings. Do you remember how you met her? You know, I’m not exactly sure at the moment how she arrived on the scene. But I think it might have been through The Robin some way or other, I’m not sure. That would take some digging back. Was she a musician? She wasn’t a trained musician. She played recorder a bit and she engaged a lot in improvisation. It was 1957 or so that Terry and Loren and I started improvising, and when I was living with Laurel I had my tape recorder and would record stuff. I started teaching “Musicianship Through Improvisation” and I had a little improvisation class going, and she was involved in it. So she got into it, and she joined us in our first ventures when Ramon and I started working together. In 1960 we started a new music series called Sonics at the Conservatory and Laurel was involved in that. Is she still around? I don’t know. I’m not in touch with her now. It’s been a long time. What was Laurel’s involvement in making Time Perspectives? She was a sound source at times. Some of the sounds on Time Perspectives are actually her. The laughter?

Conversation 137 Yes. Hers and mine. What did you talk about together as you were making that piece? Hmm, that’s an interesting one. I don’t remember talking, I just remember doing. We didn’t discuss it so much; there was improvisation involved. I was making that piece just using my Sears Roebuck tape recorder and hand-winding the tape to get variable speed and using the two speeds: speed up and slow down. Amplifying small objects on a box or against the wall or in the bathtub. What were some of those small objects? Curb scrapers for automobiles. I had a pair of steel bowls that were taken off of soup ladles and they were very resonant. I used them in all kinds of ways: I rubbed them, I hit them, I bowed them, any way I could get sound out of them. So that was a principal sound source. Cardboard tubes of different lengths —some of the voices through the tubes were Laurel. I would improvise long sections and then put them together. That piece was made pretty much in the kitchen area of the Hoffman Street place. I mean it wasn’t that big. That was my studio! I just love that you made it in your house! That was the place. I was used to making music in my house. Sure, most of us are. You just continued experimenting there— —without any studio effects of any kind. I was making it up, because I didn’t own any equipment except the tape recorder and the microphone, which might have been the mic that came with the tape recorder for all I know! That was your first non-notated piece? Yes. Was it ever performed again, after that Sonics concert in 1961? I don’t recall it being played again. I will be releasing a box set of all my electronic music from the ’60s that hasn’t been released before on Important Music. IM is also releasing my Accordion and Voice and The Wanderer on CD in April 2007. Those were formerly on vinyl, released originally by Lovely Music Ltd. Why did you and Laurel split up? What happened? I got involved with Elizabeth Harris, the dancer. [laughter] All of the guys at the Tape Music Center were supportive of your relationship with Laurel. Yes. It was never stated, you see, but this is how it was. I never talked to them about it. I never talked directly about what it was, but there was simply an acceptance of who I was and whoever I was with. It was like “don’t ask, don’t tell” or something like that, I don’t know. [laughter] It sounds a lot like that. Although it’s not like that now. [laughter] Aug 10, 1961 Dearest Mama, Your letter was very welcome.

138 Conversation [. . .] Some time next May or June will be the Production of San Francisco’s Burning. I think I finally hit on a fantastic way to set it. I’m going to use electronic music for the mystical parts and mechanical instruments for the Barbary Coast, which will include a player piano, organ grinder’s box, music box, etc. I don’t think you have seen the Musee Mechanique at Sutro’s but it has a big collection of Mechanical Marvels of the times 1890–1920. [. . .] All these mechanical instruments will be in the orchestra pit (Ha Ha) and Jess Collins who is doing the sets will design some automaton figures to go with the instruments. I think it’s going to be hilarious. Love Pauline xxxxxxxxxxx12

Tell me about working with Helen Adam on San Francisco’s Burning. There’s a book called Women of the Beat Generation and Helen Adam is in there as a precursor. Yes, she was so amazing. She was Scottish, and she was very aquiline and quite skittish. Very Scottish! I guess I met Helen through Robert Duncan in about 1958, or so. That was shortly after I had started composing the songs of his, with his poetry. He was very fond of Helen, and her sister. Helen introduced me to the Tarot cards, and taught me how to read Tarot cards. Is that right? Yes, she read Tarot. She was very interested in all this kind of stuff, and of course it certainly was not as mainstream as it is now. All this stuff was very esoteric. The first time I heard Helen read I was really bowled over, because her poems were so rhythmic. The way she did them was extraordinary, the rhythms were just absolutely extraordinary. I was very interested in her, and so many people were! She had this dark humor, very gritty kind of stuff. Eventually, she was writing this musical, San Francisco’s Burning, and in those days you could still go down to Sutro’s which had been these baths, and they had all of these wonderful mechanical musical instruments from the turn of the century: orchestrions, player pianos, and player-this and player-that. I had imagined doing San Francisco’s Burning with a pit full of these instruments—that’s what I had really wanted to do. But I really couldn’t bring that about. I didn’t have the connections or the wherewithal to learn how to punch player piano rolls or anything. I didn’t know anything about it. Conlon Nancarrow was completely under the surface in those days. Anyway, that’s what I had wanted to do with that text, but it never happened. I had tape recordings of Helen and her sister singing and reciting all of San Francisco’s Burning. I think it’s in my archive at UCSD. I hope so, because it was pretty amazing just to hear it. I was going to take the shape of all the melodies Helen expressed to use as material, but it just never happened. The project was a little too big for me at the time, in terms of resources.

Conversation 139 It must have been very exciting, though. It was. But I loved hearing them, and you know, Helen and I would go off for walks sometimes in Marin County and all around, and she was like a mentor. Yes, I really loved her work. You were friendly with Robert Duncan and Jess Collins. What were they like? Oh, they were wonderful mentors, because again, here were a couple of guys who were deeply steeped in the esoteric arts. Jess was an amazing painter and Robert was the bard—kind of the star of the poetry scene, and very deep into all kinds of things. And he was very appreciative of my work. Both of them were. They just enveloped me into their fold and I would go over—I was kind of mute at the time because I didn’t know how to talk about certain things—and I was impressed with their knowledge and art. I mean, their house was just jammed full of objets and art and this, that, and the other. They’d invite me over for dinner and talk to me, show me things, introduce me to people. I’d go, and I could never figure out why they seemed to like me so much, because I didn’t feel that I could contribute. But Robert was very moved by the songs [I composed], and he really wanted to work with me, but I never did anything more than those two songs that I did with him. I saw him and Jess off and on—I would go by and visit. But Robert died, and I haven’t seen Jess [he died in 2004]. I would love to see him and somehow I can’t seem to get there. Jess was always very retiring, you know? Robert was always out there doing stuff, and Jess was always running off to go home from somewhere, although he was always very loving and compassionate and forthcoming with me whenever I visited. I liked him very much. Somehow I haven’t been back to see him for a long time. It happens sometimes. Were you with Laurel at this time? Yes. They would invite her as well. Helen Adam also made the film Daydream of Darkness and you did the music for it. Did I do the music for that? It’s listed in your catalog. Yes, I guess I must have. [laughter] Very strange, but I can’t remember. Somebody was asking me about that last year—Daydream of Darkness—and it rings a bell. It may have been a tape piece. It probably was. I’m curious about the time gap between when you composed Bye Bye Butterfly and its commercial release on New Music for Electronic and Recorded Media in 1977. Surely at that time you had lots of pieces to choose from. I did have lots of pieces, and do you know that there have been more CDs released? Bye Bye Butterfly has been released twice, once on CRI [Composer’s Recordings Inc.] and also on Paradigm label from London which has I of IV, Big Mother Is Watching You which has never been released, and Bye Bye Butterfly. The other one, the label is Pogus from New York, has Beautiful Soop, which has never been released, and Alien Bog, of which only an excerpt had been released before. So there’s five pieces from that period that are now available.

140 Conversation Around 1977 Charles Amirkhanian was doing a compilation, and Bye Bye Butterfly was one of the shorter pieces that I had, because, you know, I was always doing longer things. So, I think I sent him that. I mean, that’s how that came about. And the photograph? That’s David Jones. Actually that’s Pauline Oliveros, you know, [laughter] because he agreed to be me! Oh yes, as part of your Theater of Substitution. David Jones is now the chair of the music department at U.C. Santa Cruz. I just visited him, stayed over night, and talked to his class [November 1997]. He teaches a class in twentieth-century performance practice and does my Sonic Meditations every year. And he gets the students to compose sonic meditations. So I was there with them and we did all their meditations. It was really fun! David was a graduate student at U.C. San Diego, and I was the director of the Center for Music Experiment. I had started this festival called “What’s Cooking?” and it was a weekend festival of performance art from four disciplines. I had chosen to do a piece which had me blindfolded and dumb for three days. Everybody showed up and here’s the director of the festival, you know, in this condition. So I asked David to be me, and he did all of the things that I would have done as director of the festival—as me! [laughter] And his photo was taken? Yes. And then we used that photograph of him to send for the record jacket. I thought it would be awfully funny, you know? What’s even funnier is Jody Dalton, at CRI, who is a gay man, was shocked when this photo showed up “of me,” and he wanted to know what was wrong with this. He didn’t get it! [laughter] I had to convince him! I said, “Jody, this is my piece!” You had two pieces for the price of one going in that record. Yes, exactly. Well, I was always an opportunist! [laughter] The sense of humor is in there—kicking—even though some people don’t get it. It’s very funny. Very clever! Does the title Bye Bye Butterfly refer at all to the musical Bye Bye Birdie? Just as a pun. My mind works that way. Were you familiar with that musical? Well I knew about it, but I never was one to go to musicals. Bye Bye Butterfly was more of an intellectual pun than a real relationship or reference to Bye Bye Birdie. In your interview with Barry Shrader you talk about I of IV and how it’s a real-time performance, how you enjoyed riding with the sounds as they came out, and at one point toward the end a howling vocal-like thing happened that made you laugh. You were dying laughing. Why? Of delight! Delight that this thing had appeared, had presented itself. It was fabulous! Katherine Setar, in her dissertation, talks about it as “the screamer,” because it is kind of like a scream. A siren—I think it’s like a siren. It was so

Conversation 141 beautiful. I mean, I always felt like a channel, you know? These things would come through. I was a vehicle for which this kind of music manifested itself. That’s why, when you and I say “composer,” I say, “huh?” Yes, all right, if I weren’t there it wouldn’t have happened, but it comes as a channeling—this particular music did. First of all, my composing activity was really setting up the system so that I could do this, allow this music to come through in real time. It’s a different perspective on what’s happening there. So, here comes this “screamer,” and I’m delighted and I’m laughing—it was a wonderful experience, an amazing experience! Laughter’s good! Of course—it’s a relief and a release. To have that expression for something that is so joyful in its manifestation. Also, it was that day that I had solved the studio. This was in Toronto. I had tried to set this up maybe the day before and it wasn’t working too well. And that day, not only did it work, it worked . . . beaucoup! What inspired you to come out in Source in 1971? Well, the women’s movement had surfaced. I was sort of feeling all of that. After all, I had survived for a long time in relative isolation, holding many attitudes and professing many ideas that were embodied in the women’s movement. The best image I can give is that here is the fish swimming along. The school of fish is going one way, and the single fish is going the other way. All of sudden, all these fish turn around and are swimming with me. It was very amazing, you know? It did so happen that in that time I had met some lesbian women, a couple actually, who lived in Oceanside. There was a kind of attempt at organization, and there was actually, I think, a request from them for me to do that. Or, a challenge. To come out within your profession. Yes. So I did. I did it before that on the TV, I think, in San Diego. Then I published my Sonic Meditations in Source, and I just put that in my autobiography. Yes, it’s in there as part of a list of all the other things you are as well. Did anyone react to that at the time? Who knows? Maybe. Did you get any feedback? No, I didn’t get any feedback—you know, they were chicken! [laughter] It was still “don’t ask, don’t tell” or, “I didn’t see that.” No, I don’t remember any feedback. Wow, you just threw it out there and— Like a stone hitting the water and no ripples. It just sinks directly to the bottom. Do you remember much about this TV program in November 1971—TV8 Telepulse— was that just you, or what? No, Lin Barron was with me. I spoke. I don’t think she said anything, but she might have. I don’t remember too much about it. I remember that I revealed my

142 Conversation orientation, and my relationship with Lin. It was just matter of fact, straightforward. They may have asked me a question or two, but that was about it. In your electronic essay “A Former UCSD Professor Speaks Up” (1995) you talk about your life at U.C. San Diego, and you say: “Social functions were uncomfortable in a decidedly heterosexual community. Everyone on the faculty recognized that my partner was a woman and acted decently but beyond that inner circle awkward situations could arise.” Can you elaborate on that or give a couple of examples? Hmm—well, I guess in terms of social functions: going somewhere and wondering whether I could invite my partner to go with me or not. It was never terribly clear. That was awkward, very awkward. Things were still so unspoken. What about the support systems you had, and your friendship with Annea Lockwood and Ruth Anderson? I met Ruth Anderson probably in the ’60s some time, and she was just going to take her position at Hunter College. I met her, and I met May Swenson also. Ruth and May were very good friends. I remember listening to May’s poetry and music things that she did. I don’t know if you have ever heard any of those, but they are very interesting. She was just very ebullient and creative, and I liked that. I liked the things she was doing very much. I just had met Ruth, I can’t remember how at the moment, and she was interested in talking to me because she was going to set up an electronic music studio, and I was one of the people who she could talk to. So, I advised her at the time about what to get and how to go about it. And she did indeed do that, and set up a studio there, and taught there until she retired. How I met Annea, I’m not quite sure—maybe I received a letter from her. Yes, she wrote to you. That’s how it happened. She was in England and had been in Source magazine with her Glass Works and all that. So then we started this correspondence. She was coming to the States, to Berkeley, I think, and maybe we met for the first time on Radio KPFA with Charles Amirkhanian—I’m not sure. That sort of strikes the memory somewhat. Ruth called me and said she was going on sabbatical and would I take her position while she was gone. I said, “I can’t do that, but how about Annea Lockwood? I think you’ll like her.” [laughter] Somehow, Annea went to see Ruth and sure enough she did take that position, and that’s how they met. And of course, later they got together. Anyway, their friendship has continued over the years. Although we don’t see each other very often, I see them once in a while, and Annea was not that far away at Vassar. Can you tell me more about the local feminist movement in southern California? There are these women in Oceanside, you were interviewed in Goodbye To All That, a feminist paper— I was? Yes. I mean, were there pride marches?

Conversation 143 No, I don’t think so. Not then. No, not at that time. There was the beginning of gatherings—the lesbian group in Oceanside. Did they have a name? Yes, they did, but I can’t remember what it was at the moment. What I think was significant is that the Woman’s Building got started in Los Angeles. This is already 1975, 1976 I think, and I was invited to come and do something there. That’s when I met Linda Montano—that meeting is very funny. Very funny story. Maybe you already know it? Yes. Anyway, Judy Chicago and Suzanne Lacy and all these people in the visual arts and performance art were really making waves. Then I met Linda Montano, and we started making waves, so to speak! [laughter] That was such a wonderful time—still is a wonderful time. So you were more connected to those women than to any political or social groups. Right. Linda represented the first person who came along who understood what I was doing. She understood the meditation and spiritual aspect of the work that I was doing, and gave me incredible emotional support at the time that I really needed it, because I had come out of this period—the relationship with Lin Barron which was very hard—there was not a real understanding on the part of maybe Lin and others of really what I was doing. I mean it was too alien. Even though she was in the 씸 Ensemble? She was in it, but she was a graduate student at UCSD, and I feel that was an error on my part. Do you? Yes, I really do—one that many professors make, because it’s a very symbiotic relationship. Oh, it’s very exciting. Very! Of course it is. And it was very exciting in that respect, you know? But in retrospect I see it as very unfortunate. Especially for me, because that relationship was very hurtful to me. Lin Barron shut down; she had finished her graduate work and it was time for her to leave. She was conflicted because she was with me, and she was in my shadow. So it was very hard. It was hard for her and hard for me. Those are the kinds of things you don’t take into account in the heat of emotion and feeling. In a letter that you wrote to Jill Johnston in 1974 you were at a pretty low point in your life. You were separated from Lin and you were talking about relationships, and this is what you wrote: “RELATIONSHIP. A system of balances. Tigers against tigers elephants against elephants and it gets heavier and heavier. The Lesbian relationship is one of tight solidarity, bonded by lack of family and lack of community. How is marriage expressed? death? birth? or any major event? Quietly and privately out of sight buried

144 Conversation in the relationshit [sic]. Well we need a community a nation a universe for reflective expressions of our needs. A way to relieve the total solidarity burden on the two to marry so the light can come through. Is endurance a necessary factor? I write for today not tomorrow. What could make for a creative relationship? Creative economics, lovemaking, householding, healing? HELP! Love, Pauline.”13 My God, I wrote that? You wrote that! What do think about the current scene for lesbian community, relationships, politics, whatever, and where do you see yourself and Ione in that? In other words, is it different for you today than it was in the 1970s? Well, I think probably . . . it’s amazing. I had forgotten what you read to me that I wrote. I have no recollection of it. [laughter] But I’m pleased with it, and I think it applies equally today as it did then. You think so? Oh yes. It doesn’t happen somehow over night. Ione and I operate in a similar “don’t ask, don’t tell” way although it’s a much more open time, especially for younger generations who have grown up in a different atmosphere. You don’t just sort of overnight shed the armor of the past. I haven’t had the kind of time I would like to have for the contemplation of that. I think that it’s coming. I think it’s happening. I look around and see the openness of the younger generation and it’s amazing to me. There’s no hang-ups about talking openly about who they are, what their orientation is— —and insisting on it. Yes, really!—which is not exactly what I did. I simply went about being myself, but I wasn’t confrontational with it. I didn’t push it in words, I simply behaved as who I was. I wasn’t hiding who I was, but I wasn’t saying “you have to listen to me say who I am.” So that’s the “don’t tell” part. What strikes me, in looking at your life and the many interviews you’ve done is that this is such a consistent absence, over and over again. And it’s very loud, this stubborn silence. Other folks are not talking about it either. The “don’t ask” is totally there. No, they’re not. But I think probably what that is is that I’m not bringing it up. They don’t have to bring it up because I don’t. You see what I mean? It reflects back and forth. I am as responsible as anyone else for that, so there is some step that I need to take to make it OK for people to talk freely and openly with me—probably. Perhaps it could have happened earlier. It’s more like John Cage and Merce Cunningham. That part of their life is not spoken about. They didn’t speak about it. But it was obvious it was there. I think that’s probably true of Ione and me, too. We don’t operate with that as our focus. We simply operate. How did you and Ione meet? We met in New York. We met at a gathering at Elaine Summers’s loft, a group called Sounds Out of Silent Spaces with Phil Corner and Julie Winter. They were

Conversation 145 having a party. I was there and Ione was there and we met. Then very shortly after that we met on the steps of the building where we both lived, on Leonard Street. We went to a concert together I guess, and then we just started seeing each other and that’s how it happened. This was 1985? Yes, ’85 or ’86. We keep spacing out on when it was. [laughter] Lots of artistic couples work together on creative projects. You and Ione have collaborated on several major projects like Njinga, The Lunar Opera, Io and Her. She is an important part of running the Deep Listening Institute, and she teaches with you on the Deep Listening Retreats. You work together in many different areas—creative/performance things, administration, and pedagogy. Clearly, you work extremely well together! Why is that? What is it that you are doing right? Hmm. Well, it’s respect. Respect is a key issue, and we respect one another. Ione is enormously supportive of me, and her support is really wonderful. The balance of power is really important. We support one another very definitely, so it’s a real even partnership. That really works well. And you got together a little bit later in life. Yes, we’ve both lived through a few things [laughter]. It’s a completely different ballgame. I think we’re both very happy, and you know, in 2005 we eloped! It’s very interesting that we both felt it very deeply. It meant something special. We felt different after our ceremony. Can you describe that? What does being married to Ione mean? It’s corroboration! And the response of friends was very strong. Everybody seemed to be so delighted that we had done that, and that meant a lot too. You feel the support of your community. Gay and straight. Yes—everybody. So that was nice. It still is. We’re still feeling it. That was just in January so it hasn’t been so long. After eighteen years! [laughter] So this relationship is obviously a stable one. Tell me about your wedding in Montréal. We had been looking at various possibilities like domestic partnership. What inspired us was our friends Paula Josa-Jones and Pam White. About a year ago they had a church wedding in Massachusetts, at the Congregational Church in Martha’s Vineyard. The church was absolutely jammed full. The pastor had worked on the congregation for quite a while to get them to the point where he could do this. It was very funny, when he got to the part of the ceremony where he said “by the power invested in me by the commonwealth of Massachusetts . . .” everybody just went wild cheering! What language was used? Wife? Spouse? In Canada, the justice of the peace said, “do you take Ione to be your wife?” and “Ione, do you take Pauline to be your wife?” It was gendered that way. Ione set the whole thing up on the Internet. It was very easy. All we needed

146 Conversation were a couple of witnesses. I asked my former student, Doug, who is at McGill, and his partner Stacy. They were witnesses along with Malcolm Goldstein who is a very old friend. We didn’t make a big deal out of it. In other words, we did elope. We went up there, did the ceremony, and afterwards we went to lunch at the Farmer’s Market with Stacy and Doug and Malcolm. Then we drove home, feeling really nice. Very nice! Then a couple of weeks later I was called to jury duty and I had to answer an oral questionnaire in front of the courtroom: my name, where I live in the county, and was I married. I said yes! “What does your spouse do?” I said my spouse is an author and psychotherapist. They just used the word “spouse”? Yes. Not husband. Then, “Do you have children?” Yes. I mentioned I have 3 stepsons, 8 grandchildren, 2 who are granddaughters, ages 5 and 7. That was the key question because the defendant was accused of molesting his own daughter. So I was deselected as a juror probably because of mentioning that, meaning I would have some emotional bias, and possibly because my spouse is a psychotherapist. But I wouldn’t have said any of it had I not had that ceremony a couple of weeks before, because it wouldn’t have been true. So it’s written into the court record as my true statement. And you feel that. I also feel that yes, I have these stepsons and grandchildren. They’re part of the family. They feel that, too. What does same sex marriage in general mean to you? There’s debate about it within progressive circles where some argue that it’s assimilation, joining the system and joining the mainstream while others argue that it’s revising what marriage is and rewriting marriage in some way. What is your position? I’ve always wanted my connection to a partner to be recognized, to have the stability of connection. I think I would be more along the line of revisionist, revising what it can be. Certainly being artists involved in all of the tremendous connection and partnership of creating work together and all of that. Also, taking care of the family. There are certain things I think are important, like we are not going to be recognized in a hospital and how you’re partner is cared for when something happens to you in this particular society. It simply feels that we have something now that we didn’t have before the ceremony that is of value to our lives and to our well-being with one another. Of course I grew up in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s. Gosh almighty I would never have imagined that this would be possible, never. Here it is, and I’m just kind of startled still, that it’s possible! [laughter] I remember when I was at UCSD and it was the beginning of the quest to have Women’s Studies recognized, and the chancellor of UCSD was kind of making a mockery of Women’s Studies. So Women’s Studies was one thing, but Queer Studies—no. And now all over the place there are gay and lesbian events on campus. I mean I was flabbergasted, coming from the era that I came from. It

Conversation 147 still is very amazing to me. Also the attitudes of young people who just take it for granted. I think, wow! That’s very very interesting—their choices are more open, a wider range of choices of who and how they want to be. To me, it is very important that people can have choice about how to express themselves, as long as it isn’t endangering someone else. How do you feel about the term “queer”? [laughter] I can remember a very unpleasant incident when I was at San Francisco State. There was a professor who was spouting off in class one day, and I can’t remember the sentence even, but he was sneering about queers. He said this in the classroom. It was so deadly. Also, “queer” was used as an epithet in those days, so there was a very unpleasant atmosphere around that. Outside of that, the word is very funny and fun, especially when it’s used in banter among gay people. Maybe a little bit like “nigger” used in that way. It’s playful. It’s defuses the epithet and pejorative usage of it by dominant culture and dominant values. What about “we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it”? [laughter] I think it’s great! I’m all for it! [no later than 1973] linpaulinelinpauline lin, pauline pauline, line pauline lin i recd yr brocolli, i wish i was meditating too. [. . .] hope yr dyke things tres tres is working out to all satisfaction better. it’s very hard all over. here the street dykes threaten to destroy our conference (nov. 18) feminist/lesbian political dialogue we’re calling it, before its even started. the recurrent phrase is class/privilege class/privilege class/privilege etc. they say all movements are ruined by this sort of wonderful turning in around itself of its own elements i read the ching it says nombre one the creative hidden dragon do not act wait so many instructions as the world goes on pauline could you send me another one of your beethoven wasalesbian postcards or two possibly i want to put up one on our stickthingsup wall and the one you sent is pasted in a record book when you sent it do you have any more any more anymore more any more [. . .] book going into galleys we’re sending copies to raquel welch and clare booth luce and eunice shriver & such . . . .. love, jill [no later than 1973] dear pauline, youre coming with gigs!, i told bertha harris, who looks longingly at beethoven is a lesbian who teaches womans studies program at richmond on staten island maybe she can pick up gig, also up here amherst but if all fails alack you have some [. . .]

148 Conversation my book in galleys thank you for more beethovens [. . .] love to lin love, jill [april 1974] pauline, i heard via alison via ruth or/and anna that i’m one of the “enemies” on yer[sic] list who wanted to “separate” you & L.—when people want to stay together, nobody can split them, not even god dess. why not take responsibility for yr own relationship(s)? was that all there was to our friendship?—the question of your relationship to another person??— pace vobiscuits . . . Jill Nov. 6, ’74 [. . .] I would ask, how’re we gonna have any sort of “amazonnation” if we don’t develop some sort of codes to cope with heavy sexual bonding, being as how most of us are hardly so sexually liberated that we can bond without the fear of losing such a dearly beloved object which creates the attendant wellknown emotions of jealousy possessiveness guilt etc. aside from all this there’s the competitiveness between women in general and between you & me in particular. [. . .] its too bad i think, between you & me, cause we have a lot in common, as artists, heavy women, etc., and i still feel very close to you like that. ive always affirmed you & your powers & your work to anyone i ever saw talked to, both privately + publicly. i’ve written about you, to you, publicly privately, printed your photo in my book, all like this, and i guess it puzzles + hurts me that you can’t accept my friendship across the boards, and also accept that there’s a real struggle and behind the struggle is ultimately the highest exchange of powers & mutual reinforcement love, jill14

I had mentioned Jill Johnston earlier—tell me about your friendship with her. Well, Jill was great fun, and pain, because it was during that very painful time of my failing relationship with Lin. Jill had showed up on my doorstep in Leucadia, and introduced herself. She was traveling all around and writing her outrageous columns for the Village Voice. She just appeared on your doorstep? She appeared on my doorstep, with her van. And she stayed, I don’t know, for weeks. [laughter] We had this long discourse going, and I loved it. She was a real companion in discourse at a level that was rare, and fun.

Conversation 149 She got a real kick out of your “Beethoven Was a Lesbian” postcards! Oh yes. It was that time in the ’70s. I had this photograph of me sitting in my garden. Looking very stern. Yes, reading Charles Williams’s All Hallows’ Eve. I don’t remember how that inspiration struck me, but I thought it was really terrifically funny. Beethoven was a lesbian: let’s twist this thing around! If we’re out of the camp, then let’s turn it around. I mean, who’s going to prove that he wasn’t? [laughter] With my background—The Robin, and the whole thing. There’s a precedent; it’s normal. Yes, really. You know, if we don’t have any “great women composers” let’s make sure they weren’t passing as men. That was my thought. You were also having fun with Beethoven in Pieces of Eight. Not only that, but in other pieces as well. It was a theme of mine to make fun of that and use him as an icon, a symbol. Did Jill work with you on Journey of the Daughters? No, she didn’t really. I thought it would be interesting to collaborate with her, but Jill was slippery as an eel. If it wasn’t her idea, it wasn’t coming to anything. Our relationship was uneasy for a while, with kind of double-edged sword. She could turn in various directions. I had a lot of humor and would banter with her, and sometimes she took it the wrong way. She was pushing me hard about Lin, that relationship. She was also very involved with multiple partners, and I was not. That was not my idea of a relationship at the time, or now, either. This was the big sexual freedom venture. So, that was hurtful to me at the time, painful. That was the uneasy part. Did you eventually work through that disagreement? Yes, oh sure. Every once in a while I see Jill. I haven’t seen her for a while, but she’ll turn up once in a while. I’ve had it in my mind to go and see her, which I may do, but I’ve been busy traveling. There are lots of people in my life I haven’t seen, not because I don’t want to, but it just hasn’t worked out. But I always enjoy seeing Jill and talking with her, because it always goes to that place of ideas and it’s very interesting—always. So, what happened to Journey of the Daughters? Nothing ever happened to it. It just didn’t happen. Maybe it’s an idea that will come back again, I don’t know. In your letter to Jill that I quoted, there’s a point where you mention that you thought Lester Ingber was also a lesbian! [laughter] That was just . . . fun. Just poking fun. Making a little trouble. Making trouble. I was a trouble-maker. I still am. Any time there’s a way to twist something like that, when it gets too heavy, [I] take that role in turning things around. It was fun.

150 Conversation You started to talk about your relationship with Linda. Can you say more about which pieces you did that she left her mark on, or what you meant to each other? Well, as I said, she was the first person who I felt really understood the spiritual development in my work. She came from a religious background, very Catholic, and was very involved with Dr. Ramurti S. Mishra, a Hindu priest and her guru. She was bringing some organized religion and her background was kind of confirming some of the things that I was doing. I was already interested in Buddhism, and by 1977 both of us were initiated by Kalu Rinpoche into Tibetan Buddhism. So all that time with Linda was connecting with a lot of these spiritual practices. [It was] a learning time. But also she was a performance artist. There was a very very difficult event, which was the death of her husband. That was very powerful, and very difficult because, you know, the guilt of her having left him and coming to be with me, but her need to mourn his death, which meant my putting a lot of feeling aside. But then she created an extremely important piece, Mitchell’s Death, which is recognized as a very significant piece of performance art. So she’s quite recognized as a leader in that genre. We did a lot of different collaborations of course, so I was seen as a performance artist as well as a composer through [most of] the ’70s. Although I had been doing theater stuff from early on. I think our relationship was involved with the development of that genre [performance art], too. I would sometimes be involved in one of her pieces, and she would sometimes be involved in mine, [but] both of us were very independent of one other, also. Who was Lynn Lonidier? Lynn was a poet, and her brother, Fred, teaches in visual arts at UCSD. He’s a photographer and a Marxist, and a draft resister during the Vietnam War. They were from Seattle, and their mother was of Swedish heritage and their father was Louisiana-French, so that’s where “Lonidier” came from. Lynn and I lived together for four years before Lin Barron came on the scene. She came down to Leucadia with me. We were together that year I was at Mills. We lived in Oakland. Then she came with me when I started teaching at UCSD. Our relationship lasted about four years. And we did some collaborations, too. In 1996, Lynn took her own life. Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that. Yes, that was very sad. I don’t know that I have fully processed it, either, yet. So I’m anxious to see Fred and kind of complete something. But there is an archive. She took film, 8mm film of things that we did. She went to Tokyo with me, to the World’s Fair, and did a film of me in Japan. So those things may or may not be extant, I’m not sure. It would be good to find them, if they are, so I want to talk to Fred and see what happened. I hope that her materials were given to the poetry center at San Francisco State. She knew Robert and Jess. We went to San Francisco State, and she was a

Conversation 151 violinist in the orchestra there, and I met her then—way back. [After our break-up] I saw her from time to time in San Francisco, because she lived in San Francisco and taught. She worked in audio-visual in the schools. She had developed some light show work and worked with projectors and film and things, as well as writing. I just talked to Tom Nee yesterday and he said he had come across one of her books, The Female Freeway. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that, but it’s something you might like to have a look at. She was doing some very interesting writing through that time, the middle of the ’60s and ’70s. Lots of stuff. How did your relationship end? Lin Barron. [laughter] It’s very clear to me looking back— —these things happen— They happen. Those emotions come up and you don’t know how to cope with them. I think maybe I have some handle on it now. It’s also a matter of ethics, having a strong ethical sense. I would never do that at this point. But ethics is something we have to really work hard at—very hard. When you were at UCSD did you overlap with Angela Davis? I never met her. It could have been that she was still there in 1967, Herbert Marcuse and Angela Davis. That was really a very dynamic time, I’m sure, but I didn’t meet her or Marcuse. I would love to meet her. Actually, I would love to accompany her. I would really love to do that. I’ve heard her talk and thought, oh it would be fun to play with her—whatever she wanted to say or read, I would love to interact musically. Her voice is so melodious. That’s what I mean, it’s wonderful—very musical! Sacramento State Univ General Education April 26 Sacramento [1973] Dear Pauline Oliveros Dear sisters into music It’s gonna happen. The word is out and going like wildfire. Seattle women are coming. L.A. is coming up with lots of acts. The Bay area know about it and are trucking up to Sacramento. Women from the Salt Lake Women’s Center called yesterday and some of them are coming all the way just to hear it. We’re still broke. But it seems not to be deterring us a hell of a lot. I played Portia Faces Life to a college committee here and we got $350. Which is not very much help when you spread it over all the groups we got coming. But a lovely thing happened yesterday – I opened a letter from a Seattle singer named Joanna Cazden and out fell her mother’s contribution – a check for

152 Conversation $400. This is the sort of kiss on the forehead that keeps an amateur “entrepreneur” like me alive and smiling through a day of long distance. [. . .] We’re waiting for you . . . peering out our windows to watch the tribe of new music women come up all the roads to Sacramento. To celebrate. With love, Kate15

Kate Millett was an organizer for a Women’s Music Festival in 1973 at Sacramento State University. Did you go to that? No. I remember receiving an invitation, and I think I was holding out because there was no honorarium attached to it. It was like, “just show up,” and it felt unprofessional to me at the time. Did you have any other doings with her? No, well, a little bit in terms of Jackson Mac Low showing up as me at that [concert in New York City.] I think my nose was a little out of joint. I got the invitation and felt that there was this women’s music thing developing, and there was no recognition of me. Here I had been carrying this ball all alone for so many years, and all of a sudden there’s women’s music and the women’s movement. But I wasn’t part of it, so to speak. Another “outsider” thing. Although I was invited. I guess I felt there was a lack of respect for who I was and what I had done. This is what I felt. I didn’t feel like one of the gang. So you sent Jackson along—like, “let him do it.” [laughter] Right. Can you tell me about doing Sonic Meditations in the women’s prison in Corona, October 1972. What was that like and how did that happen? Well, there was a woman, Jackie Christeve, who called me and wanted me to come to the prison with this particular expedition, and so I went. I was very moved by the women and their stories and their difficulties, and they seemed so receptive to everything. We mostly listened to their stories. They needed to talk. They needed to tell their stories, for one thing. I don’t remember really whether I actually did any of my Meditations with them or not. I do remember listening to the stories—they were very very important for them to tell. So it was more of a listening meditation for me, I think, at that time. I haven’t had the opportunity to do that again. The opportunity hasn’t presented itself, nor have I pursued it, but it was quite powerful. Would you consider doing something like that again? Oh absolutely. Yes, of course. September 6th. [1971] Dear Pauline and Lin, Feels like a summer’s hibernation is over and advance waves of other

Conversation 153 people’s activities and thoughts are beginning to come in – in particular Stan Lunetta saying recently in a phone conversation that the 씸 Ensemble is putting out a lot of good energies, together with Lin’s comments on your ground clearing work in Leucadia. Makes me want very much to simply take a leap over to Leucadia and be there – physical space is still so solid! [. . .] Pauline, the postcards are so beautiful. Thank you. Did you know I’d been putting together a tape ‘Tiger Balm’, just before we did the meditations? You can imagine how it was to get the card in which you say you’d seen me with a tiger! And I’m very glad you like the glass sounds. Each of them would be much longer if I’d made the record recently. Did you do the performance with Al Huang? I’d like to hear about it. Much love and peace to you both— Anna16

Can you talk about your correspondence with Annea Lockwood in the early ’70s? She was quite interested in the Sonic Meditations. Yes, that correspondence was very stimulating for me because she wrote so intelligently and was expressing interest in a parallel line of activity. It was exciting, because no other woman had written or spoken to me in this way so it was a very important meeting with a colleague. How did you meet Kay Gardner? Kay approached me, and was interested in my Sonic Meditations and asked me to come do them with a group of hers in New York. I was feeling somewhat nervous about it, because I didn’t know exactly who Kay Gardner was, and although I was presenting Sonic Meditations in different contexts I was still feeling the newness of them and the unfamiliarity that people had—people simply were not familiar with the concepts that I was presenting at the time. It turned out that I had a bad case of the flu and couldn’t go to meet Kay’s group. So I never did do that. I met with her, and talked with her, and told her about what I was doing and how I was doing it, and so on, but I just couldn’t go to the group, being sick that particular time. Did you stay in touch with her? Yes, over the years. Ione and I went up and stayed in the Bed & Breakfast that she and her partner ran in Stonington, and it was nice. We enjoyed that. I saw her at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, the one time I was invited to go there. [laughter] Off and on, we’d been in touch. I wrote an introduction to her book, Sounding the Inner Landscape. It’s a nice book, very nice. What happened to your Theatre Piece Book? I guess I just never did finish it! It’s one of those back-burner projects that has never been completed. The idea was to put all the theatre pieces in a collection,

154 Conversation and I haven’t done that. My book, The Roots of the Moment, is waiting now. It’s all complete, the publisher has everything except the money to publish it. Oh no. Yes, so that’s sitting there without support. He was going to publish and then he ran out of money, I guess, so there it sits. It’s complete: it’s designed, there’s a CD that’s all produced, everything is ready to go. It just needs an infusion of capital. Who’s the publisher? It’s a small press called Drogue Press, and Tom Bynum is the name of the publisher. I’m going to call him when I get back, and get finished with this particular phase and see what we can do to move it out, because I would think there could be enough pre-publication sales to get the money together to publish. But I don’t know if he would operate that way. You know, it’s a one-man operation. [This was finally published Fall 1998.] [postcard, postmarked 3 May 1977] Dear Pauline— It was terrific to see you. I hope you are a great success in Germany. I am looking forward to working with you on the record + am very pleased you felt positively about doing it. Shall we wait to resume the meditations with the Project people till you start working with me in late summer? Everyone is asking as they got so much out of it. All my love to you + Rosie—Judy [October 1977] Dear Pauline— I am, of course, thrilled + pleased that you have decided to work with me on the record. Yes, of course, I still want to do it. I called Coletta Reid of Diana Press + she will discuss plans with Olivia Records. December would be good for me or it could be March—it depends upon Olivia Records, I guess as they will have to set a date + we’ll have to get a contract and all that. Let us firmly shake hands on working together—a goddess-given collaboration, I have no doubt. Let us be in touch soon. Have you had a chance to read the manuscript or give any thought to how we should proceed. As I mentioned, the first + last sections strike me as the most promising. What do you think? I was sorry to hear about Rosie’s ex-husband. I’m sorry about the studio, but understand and am grateful for your generosity so far. I can’t come the 19th as I’m swamped. But, all my best— Judy17

You mentioned Judy Chicago earlier. Around 1977 she was going to collaborate with you on a record. She wanted to collaborate with me, and I went to see her. She was working

Conversation 155 on The Dinner Party. She wanted me to participate, but I felt a lot of resistance because there was no business. It was like coming into the Club of Judy Chicago as a volunteer, and I didn’t think I could volunteer my time for her benefit, and that’s what it felt like. It didn’t feel like community, it felt like . . . something else. Sorry about that. I needed some business talk, because after all I am a professional, and there are causes to which I give my time. In fact, I give a lot of time. But there are certain places where you feel “wait a minute—this is not a volunteer situation.” How did you meet Doris (Sorrel) Hays? I met Doris through Linda. Linda and Doris were in graduate school at Madison, Wisconsin, at the same time. So, Linda introduced me to her. She’s Sorrel now. Yes, Sorrel. I was very impressed with her performances. She played some Cowell pieces for me. She’s really an incredible interpreter of Cowell. In your conversation with Fred Maus in 1994 you said you were aware of the feminist writings of Gloria Steinem, Rita Mae Brown, Adrienne Rich, and Susan Sontag. Were there other feminists that you read?18 Well, those are the ones that stand out. What did you learn from them, or how did they help you formulate your own ideas? I think probably I found confirmation in their writings, and support for ideas that I had put forth most of my life. It was very good to see them articulated in these different ways. In your interview with Miya Masaoka you identified Valerie Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto as one of three milestones in your artistic development (along with Robert Erickson as your composition teacher, and Yoko Ono’s Fluxus piece). Can you say more about what the SCUM Manifesto meant to you? Well Valerie Solanas was a street kid, a street feminist. The structure of community was detailed in that manifesto. It was soon after reading that when I wrote To Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe in Recognition of their Desperation—. What I articulated out of SCUM Manifesto was the deep structure of the piece: everybody had the same part. There were rules about how to be part of that musical community in the piece so that each person could express themselves individually within the limitations of the material they had which they selected for themselves, in terms of the pitches, and the way they used the pitches within the three parts of the piece. If anyone became dominant, then the rest of the group would come up and absorb that dominance back into the texture of the piece. So that was me expressing at the deep structure what the SCUM Manifesto meant. From there, you know, I went on to do Sonic Meditations and many other pieces, but it was really out of that understanding of both community and the individual —which was in her manifesto—that became the principle, or the philosophy, of the music that I began to write. That’s why I say it was very important. She had something to say, and she said it forcefully, of course.

156 Conversation I also saw her play, Up Your Ass, in San Francisco. It was produced for the first time in San Francisco in 2000. George Coates, the producer, found the play in a display case in the Warhol Museum. He managed to wangle a copy of it and then he produced it. I saw it and it was wonderful. Very cheeky, street stuff. I keep my ear out for Valerie Solanas stuff and there it was. I felt it was a great thing to see her play, even though it was long after I had done my piece. [laughter] [some time in 1975] This summer, finally, I picked up some Jung. Don’t know why now and not before. Remembering very clearly your saying that if I was to understand your work, I’d need to read and understand Jung. Well, I think I turn to something, in terms of reading/learning, when I am ready for it and, moreover, need it. So I’m working on that, now. Making quick and joyful identifications with his responses to fire, stones, trees, water – and working on his concepts or archetypes, and the nature and functioning of the unconscious. Oh, it’s good to write you – been wanting to. Lots to say. Please come be with us here – it is so tranquil + to be ringed with mountains is magnificent—much, very much love, Anna19

What attracted you to Carl Jung? Well, Memories, Dreams, and Reflections was the writing of his that I liked so much. I liked in that particular book his exposition of sensation, thinking, feeling, and intuition as a kind of axes. Intuition and sensation on one axis, and feeling and thinking on another. And the concept of intuition being more unconscious when one was sensing very consciously and intuiting would be going on at a sub-level. And the same with thinking and feeling. If you were in a thinking mode, the feeling mode is more unconscious, and vice versa. So this was a very interesting map that I appropriated for use and understanding relationships. If a person were in a feeling mode, then it wasn’t too helpful to talk at them in a thinking mode, for example. Or, if someone was in a feeling mode you could slip into a feeling mode, too, so that then your conversation was more equanimous. And the same for thinking. And then you could also begin to understand where misunderstanding began. So I found that very valuable, I thought that was a very helpful thing. I wasn’t so interested in his number of volumes on symbolism—that didn’t interest me so much. But this did, this particular mapping, so that’s what I took from him. Do you still work with that? Yes, I made it my own, and that’s where it originated for me. I made it my own, and mapped a lot of other things that way, using it, including a music map which has to do with melody, rhythm, harmony and timbre—axial relationships, which is very interesting—for me.

Conversation 157 Is this mapped out in your book The Roots of the Moment? No, but I’ve got it—it’s in a notebook—actually from the ’70s, 1973, probably. I build on it: it’s very important in my understanding of music of the world. When were you first introduced to Asian religious ideas, meditation, T’ai Chi? Well, the first was meeting Al Chung Liang Huang and taking some T’ai Chi lessons with him in Rancho Santa Fe Kairos about 1968 or ’69. So that was the first formal introduction to a discipline such as T’ai Chi. I didn’t go far with it, I didn’t learn the complete form or anything, but I took the understanding of synchronizing breath with movement and translated it to playing the accordion. I played a lot for Al’s classes, and he liked moving with that music, doing T’ai Chi with the music that I played. So there was a lot of collaboration for a few years with him, and I learned a lot. How did you get interested Basho? Basho—I probably ran across it, and was excited because there was so much reference to sound in these Haiku. Did it teach you anything in particular? Teaching, I don’t know. It was sensibility. The sensitivity to sound. It was more, again, a confirmation of my own sensitivity to sound. So it was lovely to find writing that expressed that. You have a piece called Participle Dangling in Honor of Gertrude Stein. Can you tell me about it? Yes. This was the summer of 1966 at the University of Toronto. I studied that summer with Hugh LeCaine. He had invented a loop machine, a tape machine with a single capstan running twenty loops. [laughter] So, you could make all these loops with different links and put them on this tape machine and play them. So, my participle was but is it music? And so I cut that up so that one loop was just “but,” another one was “is it,” and another one was “music.” So that was the participle and it was looping around in all these permutations of “but is it music?”: “but, but, but, is it, is it, is it, music, music, music, but is it music?” You know, it just continued until it degenerated into a lot of noise. That was the piece. The Gertrude Stein connection becomes very evident— With all the repetitions, yes. It seems that many of your pieces from the 1970s are group pieces: Bonn Feier, Lullaby for Daisy Pauline, Phantom Fathom, Crow Two, and of course the Sonic Meditations. Why was it so important for you to construct these group pieces? Well, for one thing, I was teaching a course called “The Nature of Music” [at UCSD] which was for the general student. Maybe you would have 150 students in there. The premise of that course was to introduce these students to music-making, composing, improvising, instrument-making, etc. So these pieces were a way to involve them in sound-making. That was part of the idea. The challenge for me as a composer was to make some work that could be done by untrained people, as well as [by] trained people. But I was also very interested in

158 Conversation consciousness and attention, and I had started my study of Karate with Lester Ingber, who was also very interested in attention and was doing a lot of research—he was a theoretical physicist in this area. So those interests meshed for me. Studying Karate was a very useful discipline for me since my interest was in focus and global perceptivity, so I translated a lot of what I learned to my music, and also to these group pieces. I was becoming aware of how to direct attention. Rather than compose notes I was getting to compose this at a different level. So that continues, you know. You’re composing a situation, or a process. A process, yes. The video you did with Robert Ashley, Unnatural Acts Between Consenting Adults. I have to tell you that when I saw that it changed my life! I couldn’t believe all of the things going on. It was amazing! Your transformation, and the very strange conversation that Bob is trying to have with you. It just blew me away. So, I’m curious—who was Carol Vencius, the Masked Woman, who turned you into a drag queen? Carol was an actress. She’s no longer living. She had cancer, and had it at the time. She was a partner of a friend of mine, Esther Silver. Carol was very funny —she had a great sense of humor. Amazing. This is all tied into how I first met Linda Montano in the Woman’s Building in 1975. She went back to San Francisco. We were in touch, and all of that, but she was having a show in Marin. Mitch was there, and others were there. Minette Lehmann who was a friend also of Linda’s and my friend, and Carol Vencius, and all this. I was staying with them— not with Minette, but with Carol and Esther. I decided I wanted to go to the show, but I didn’t want to be recognized. So, Carol fixed me up. I went as a color coordinated Marin housewife. Everything was perfect: nails—the whole bit—a wig, everything. I went to Linda’s show. I went in and my heart started pounding, because I didn’t want to be recognized. The idea was that I was going to go in, see the show, and leave, and then tell Linda about it. You were doing a piece of your own. Yes, that was my piece. This is how I became a performance artist, right? I was a doing a number on a performance artist! So, I got in, and I was smoking a cigarette, and everything that I don’t do. People—and this is really something, this is a hip crowd—here I am, an alien. People would look at me and then cut away. I began to feel really isolated. I thought, “Mm-hmm, here’s this hip bunch of people and what’s happening? What are they doing to this person?” I was just about to leave, I was on my way out, and Minette started looking at me. Minette’s a photographer. She suddenly said, “That looks like . . . Pauline. It is Pauline!” She let out this yelp, and I’m trying to get out! God! And Linda just goes crazy—she screams, runs up and starts ripping at me! It was just out of sight. My little scheme backfired, because I didn’t want to upstage her show. But, I did! [laughter] So anyway, that was the first time, and it was after that Ashley was going to do his interview. I said to him, “I don’t want to just do an interview. I want to do

Conversation 159 this.” And of course, he got into it. That was the piece. After that, he did all of his interviews with some theater component, you know? So, that’s that story. One little footnote to that story is that that interview took place in the Student Union at Mills College. After the interview, when you do your performance of Rose Mountain Slow Runner you’re wearing a matching shirt and pants made of pastel rainbow fabric, which seemed a little in and out of character for you. Where did that come from? I bought it right here in Solana Beach! A rainbow suit? Yes. They were big in those days. I wonder whatever happened to that. Maybe I still have it, I’m not sure. I probably could get into it now, because I’ve lost all this weight. [laughter] Tell me about Esther Silver. In the NYPL Archive her letters to you date from 1964 all the way up to the mid-1980s. How did you meet her? What was your friendship like? I first met her sister Miriam Johnson. In about 1953 or ’54 I went on unemployment. I had worked as a mail clerk for nine months for the Pacific Public Service Company. I quit that job thinking I could get music jobs going enough to support myself. Miriam was the “officer” I reported to at the unemployment office. I would talk to her and she was very open and accepting, and eventually we met for lunch and I became friends with her. She was interesting to talk to and sympathetic to my being an artist. Every once in a while I would meet up with Miriam and get my “hit.” Eventually she wanted to introduce me to her sister, Esther, who had three kids. I was teaching private lessons, and I taught her youngest daughter, Katy. I got to be quite friendly with Esther and her family, so we just became friends. Esther came to different events and concerts that I was playing. In our discussions that ranged over many subjects we had friendly arguments. She had studied philosophy at U.C. Berkeley, but she never completed her degree. She would argue with me about things. She was particularly down on randomness. I’d tell her there isn’t any such thing. I got her to improvise at the piano. She was ridiculing the idea of improvisation and sat down at the piano one day and just went at the piano with elbow clusters and this and that. It was so funny because she was doing a dance at the piano but she didn’t know that’s what she was doing. Her movements made the music sound very organized but she thought she was being random. So I was laughing! That argument went on for years. It was fun. It was good training for me because it helped me clarify a lot of things. I knew she was wrong and I was right! [laughter] She helped you get there. Oh yes! She was very helpful in that respect. I’m not in touch with her now. I haven’t been in touch with her for a few years, maybe since about 1996 or so. Esther and Miriam both were very influential to my thought in those early years in San Francisco.

160 Conversation Why did you and Linda Montano break up? What happened? Those dancers! [laughter] Another dancer. I started working with Deborah Hay. She contacted me, wanted to collaborate with me, and brought me to Austin, Texas, in 1982. Breaking with Linda in that way was a very tortured thing! How did you meet Deborah Hay? Aagh! Deborah Hay, oh God! Well, Deborah contacted me, and I think it was David Antin who had suggested to her that she get in contact with me. She was looking for music, and I guess she had gotten a Guggenheim and wanted to work on a new piece. We met: I was in Houston and I think she came down and we talked. Then she invited me to come to Austin, so I went there and met her company. Heloise Gold was there— Is that how you met Heloise? No, Heloise I had met in New York much earlier, because she had been in a group that practiced Sonic Meditations for a while. She and her friend who had organized that came to meet me in New York one time. But she also danced with Deborah Hay. Yes. She’s a very good dancer. What drew you to collaborate with Deborah? Well, it seemed like an interesting thing to do. She is a postmodern dancer, and had been a part of the Judson Theatre—it seemed interesting to do. As we worked I got very interested in her work, and it was a very deep and interesting collaboration. What did you learn from her artistically? Mmm. She was really very organized, and I felt a good match with her, because she was very interested in attention, and body attention was certainly her discipline. She was amazing, you know, in her understanding of the body and how to move it. I mean, there were things she did that were incredible. Like what? Well, the fluidity and the ability to characterize many different facets in very brief times. She could go from some incredible move-image to complete and utter relaxation. She’s a master, she really is, very amazing. She did important work with very large groups of people who were untrained, so that was a parallel to Sonic Meditations. She was doing Movement Meditations: getting people who had no real training in dance to do remarkable things. The last work that we did together was called Tasting the Blaze, and that was a very large work. Regrettably, that was it—it hasn’t been done since. There were two performances of it at the Opry House in Austin. It was a work that involved sixty performers! For the music I had a Gagaku ensemble, five accordion players, and a quartet. Plus, I was at the mixing board doing all this processing of this ensemble. Then there were 30 dancers, I think, and 20 performance artists. Tina Girouard was the artist. So, it was a major work, and a beautiful work, and it

Conversation 161 really deserved to have a longer life. But it was the result of one of those largegroup workshops that Deborah was doing. When you resigned from UCSD in 1981, both you and Linda moved to the mountain together? Yes. We’re still very good friends and I see her quite often. October 1, 1983 Dear Pauline, Just a note to say it was so calming for me to hear you say in the midst of your packing “I wonder what the universe wants next for me”. I kept returning to that and feeling it within whenever I would start a panic around my own moving. And, it would be an honor to work with you some way “if the universe wants us to”. My quote. I am eager to return to my film which lies in a bag in an uptown apartment waiting for me to settle. And, that looks promising soon. Hope your movements and turns come to a working/resting place for you as well. I do look to hear from you when you come into the City. Blessings, Barbara20

How did you meet Barbara Hammer? Barbara, well . . . that’s a little fuzzy. I met her maybe at the Woman’s Building in Los Angeles, maybe in New York. Didn’t see her that much. It’s a little fuzzy in my memory. She told me you did some music for one of her films, Bent Time (1988). I wonder what that was. It rings a bell, but I can’t remember exactly that I had done it. I haven’t seen it, I don’t think. I think I remember receiving a letter from her that she wanted to use some music of mine for it, but I didn’t specifically make it for the film. That’s the way that went. [I learned later from Hammer that the piece was Rattlesnake Mountain.] She also videotaped some Sonic Meditations at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival when you were there. Ohhhh—she did that. Well that was several thousand women. What was that like? There was this huge mass of women. There were 7,500 women. I guess I did a special Sonic Meditations workshop which was for a few people, but I did lead one moment with this big crowd on the meadow. [laughter] I don’t know if she videotaped that. If she videotaped it, I haven’t seen it, so I don’t know what the result of that was.

162 Conversation goat lady loves the old accordian woman without restriction [Susun Weed] 18 may 83 21 may 83 i’m sitting at my desk, answering mail that i collected from my box yesterday and wishing you were close enough to touch. above the door to my left, mahakala fixes me with a fierce grin and my heart is full and easy and i know that you are near enough to touch every moment. ‘twas wonderful to read (and read and read) your note and I enjoyed the “coincidence” of mailing a goat-lady to you and moments later finding an elephant-lady in my box! Know that my love is with you now and that I envision you safe and happy with Deborah and with your mother and with yourself. I’m thrilled to have found you and I love you! [Susun Weed] friday 7 oct 83 dearest darling! just time for a short note, but so much to share w/you. i’ve felt you very close to me all day, enfolding me in your warmth & love. [. . .] i’m sitting here covered in oil & sawdust . . . been out in the woods insuring my warmth this winter. when i finish writing this, i’ll submerge my whining muscles in a hot bath. the psychic who “read” for me yesterday said that my spiritual work was to tell people about plant & earth energy—glad i didn’t have to pay her! i envision you happy & excited, surrounded by new music & old friends and i send my love & light to merge w/yours! [Susun Weed]21

How did you meet Susun Weed? Mmm, how did I meet her. Well, maybe she showed up in the meadow! I don’t remember how we met, I don’t remember what the occasion was. But, you know, she might have come up to the meadow with somebody, and I met her there. The meadow was where I lived, behind the Zen Center, in 1981 and ’82. It must have been about 1983. People would come up, you know, for one reason or another and I think that’s probably how it happened, and I met her. What did your relationship with her teach you?

Conversation 163 Be careful! [laughter] I learned a lot about herbal medicine. She teaches herbal medicine. She’s quite the expert. Yes, an expert and very well known these days. So that was very valuable, I think. I enjoyed Susun intellectually. To talk with her was really interesting. I was interested in her work, also. The herbs and healing work that she was doing. So we had some really wonderful conversations. At one point, you were involved with Deborah Hay and Susun Weed simultaneously. [laughter] That wasn’t my choice to do that, but it happened. Looking at your history of relationships you practiced a kind of serial monogamy. But here you were involved with two people at the same time and both are long-distance relationships—you weren’t living with either one. It’s all a bit out of character for you, in a way. What was positive about that, what did you like about that? I didn’t like it. Too conflicting. It wasn’t my style, though it certainly was Susun’s. It is for a lot of people. Right. But it really wasn’t for me. I guess I was experimenting. Was it a worthwhile experiment? Well, I learned that it wasn’t for me and that the relationship with Susun was more experimental, so to speak. February 13, 1985 Dear Ursula: I thank you very much for your support and your beautiful performance at the Kennedy Center last week. I was very pleased with the whole affair and look forward to working with you again in the nearest future. My very warmest wishes, Pauline Oliveros22

In 1985 you worked with Ursula Oppens at the Kennedy Center. What was that? What’s the name of that violinist—Paul Zukofsky, he was curating concerts for the Kennedy Center, and I think Ursula had convinced him that he should have me do a concert. So I did a concert at the Kennedy Center with the Relâche Ensemble from Philadelphia, and Deborah came and did a couple of the pieces we were working on from The Well and The Gentle. Relâche was playing those pieces. Ursula played in that. Yes, it was really nice. I worked with her again in Germany with Marilyn Crispell, Marianna Schroder, and Deborah Richards— four really world-class pianists. They each did a Piano Portrait, and then they played my Gathering Together. That was really quite special. I was just thinking about some of your recordings from this time, especially The Wanderer —that’s a really wild piece! How did that come about? Well, that was a piece that nobody asked me to write. I just wanted to do it

164 Conversation and did it. I had been wanting to write a piece for a lot of accordions, so I just did it. The couple of years up there on the mountain gave me time to do that, and I did it. What strikes me about it is that the rhythmic energy is so different from many of your other pieces. Well, I do have other pieces that have motor rhythms. I have always been interested in polyrhythms. On the other hand, I have turned my back on metrical rhythms, but if I get into it that’s what I like. As a matter of fact, I was talking to the class at U.C. Santa Cruz a couple of weeks ago [November 1997], and I was talking about my new orchestra piece which just premiered in Prague in October [1997]. In the program note I wrote that the piece had no melody, no harmony, and no metrical rhythm. Therefore, the players could just concentrate on making sound! [laughter] It’s a give and take. Yes. Your piece, Horse Sings From Cloud: there’s the solo version and the collaborative version with three other women (Linda Montano, Heloise Gold, and Julia Haines). What’s the difference for you—you’re in both of them— It’s perfectly possible to do the meditation as a solo, and a lot of my meditations are that way, but they can also be combined so that each person can be doing the same meditation and it turns into ensemble. But [this is] from a different perspective than ensemble, which is about interlocking parts. This is about doing a particular meditation and resonating parts. You are sharing the auditory space, and it goes together because it’s happening together. It’s really lovely, all four of you together. Yes, it was fun. Heloise was playing in that, and she was very excited. She was playing her harmonium and she’s not a trained musician. Linda isn’t either. So there was that aspect of the trained and the untrained sharing the auditory space. What do you think about music as something that builds community? Well, I think all societies use music in this way, but it’s not necessarily benevolent. Because music synchronizes human activity at the motor level and at the psychic and spiritual levels. So all societies have some kind of conservatism, or regulation of music. I think this is something worth a lot of deep study: to understand what’s happening to people when they are participating or not participating, or how it’s working, how it’s functioning in the society, or community. So for you, how does music have an ethical trajectory? Well, it’s very important to me to help facilitate creative process in others, to empower people to understand and use sound as a force in their lives and in their realization of who they are, creatively and spiritually. And in this way, you build community. You build a community of understanding based on sounding and listening, but it’s not about controlling and regulating. It’s a different approach.

Conversation 165 Very different. It’s very important to me, and it’s also fairly recent that I can even articulate that, in the way that I just have. Well, thank you! When you say “I am interested in the sensual nature of sound”—that’s a very provocative and even utopian statement. What do you mean by “sensual”? Can you elaborate on “the sensual nature of sound”? Yes—it feels good! [laughter] It brings about the highest state of ecstasy— sound. It’s a sensual input, and if one is receptive and open to that it’s a special feeling and state that you can’t get any other way. So, yes, I’m interested in it! [laughter] Why is Deep Listening so important to you? Well, because listening is what one can cultivate and practice over a whole lifetime. Listening is learned, it isn’t a natural thing. It’s something that you can deepen with practice and with receptivity. So it’s important to me because it’s a tool for growth and change and spirituality. Cultivating it and learning to extract the last possible drop of meaning from sound that is intelligence is very important to me. Is anyone else as deeply concerned with listening as you are, or is this something you see yourself doing on your own? It’s something that I’ve certainly been calling attention to for many years now, but business people are interested in it. I just bought a book recently called Listening, The Forgotten Art, and it’s written for business seminars. As a matter of fact, there’s some place in New Jersey that trademarked “Deep Listening” for their seminars, and we tried to show we had prior claim to it. I don’t know whatever happened to that, but we say “Deep Listening™” and try to protect it. 1988 is the year I started using it. But you know, I don’t care so much. The main thing I care about is that people do it, and that it’s important to people to understand that listening is power. It’s not something you can own. Right, it’s empowering. It’s important for everyone to learn as many ways as possible to vitalize their lives, whatever it is, for music, for relationship, for business, for pleasure, the works. Deep Listening: listening to all sounds all the time. Have you ever found that there is anything unpleasant about that? I mean, what is the role of evaluation of sound on that sensual level? Obviously there are sounds which connote very negative activity, very unpleasant. I’m not advocating that we listen to those as music necessarily. But I don’t even want to make a description of what that might be because it’s unpleasant. Generally speaking, being aware and in touch with what is sounding around us is important to me, because it is a primordial, primary environment, and if you shut things out, you shut down. You start limiting who you are in relation to where you are. So I feel it’s important to be listening all the time, and, as I said, this is my meditation, my practice: doing this all the time and reminding

166 Conversation myself if I am not. That’s my practice, and there’s no way to shut down hearing. You can shut down listening, but you always hear everything if your ears are healthy. It’s the processing of what you hear that’s what listening is about, and we don’t always make that distinction. We’re kind of sloppy about our language: we talk about hearing stuff, and equating hearing with listening, and they’re not the same. “I heard that,” but “What did I understand from it; how did I listen?” is another thing. We are also admonished to listen—listen to this, listen to that— and so we feel coerced about it. So, there’s a lot to sort out around the whole issue. And, like I said, listening is the way we learn: we use listening to learn more than anything else. More than writing, more than reading, but we pay very little attention to what it is. You said in the video The Sensual Nature of Sound “If I am aware of all that I am playing and all that’s coming to me to play in my imagination as well as all of the audience that may be present—the total field—then I am listening deeply.” This is a really tall order! I’m curious about how do you know that you’re really including everything. In other words, what are the limits to Deep Listening? Have you ever been thrown off, or run into some kind of barrier while listening deeply? What happens when you are at the outer edge of listening, what are you pushing up against? Well, there have been times with some technical barriers. For example, when amplification is involved and you have a false field. If you have a monitor sticking in your face and you hear stuff coming out of the monitor which is one thing, but what’s really out there is completely another, and that really is a barrier. It’s something that I don’t like very much. When I’m playing in an amplified field, I want to be in the field. Of course, I’ve said things like I wish to be able to have my ears extend out into the audience and turn around so I can hear how it comes across. [laughter] There are some things, yes, physical technical things in terms of performance that are difficult. So, there are situations that I prefer over others. I can tell you a few stories, if you like. One of the recent things is that I played at the Interval Research Corporation for a group of computerheads, and they have kind of a black box theater which is really a studio. The walls are treated as a studio would be, so that there’s no reflections, really. Tom Dougherty works there, and he told me they were putting a carpet on the floor, so I’m thinking “oh wow” you know. So I go there to play this concert, and warm up a little in the room, and it’s really beautiful. There’s no reflection, so everything is crystal clear. So you could play very soft or loud. I also engaged everyone, about eighty people, in sounding, before I played. I asked them to sound childhood sounds, so there were all these sounds happening among these eighty people. Each one was crystal clear, even if it was a cluster of sound, everything was clear and very very beautiful to hear. So then, I played my concert after that and it was a really wonderful experience. Very enthusiastic response as well. Everybody really seemed to enjoy it a lot.

Conversation 167 That was one situation where it was really possible to do what I said. Now, another really wild experience was September 1997 in Guelph, Canada, and I played in the jazz festival there which featured women in jazz. So I did a solo concert in Saint George’s Anglican Church, which was a wonderful space, beautiful, and there were about 400 people there. This was the Saturday of Princess Diana’s funeral, and all morning I was in the motel watching the funeral, because of course this was the largest media event in history. And it was an amazing thing, and I am quite affected by it. I was very surprised at how affected I was. So that night I said to the audience that I wanted to dedicate the concert to Princess Diana and Mother Theresa for their compassion for humanity. I invited the audience to take a journey with me to the spirit of these two women. Then I talked about Deep Listening and mentioned the elements of what that is for me, and at the moment I said “I listen to everything all the time,” or “I have to listen to everything all the time” the stained glass windows lit up from a lightning strike, and then there was a roll of thunder. So there was a collective sigh from the audience—ohhhh! [laughter] Then I sat down and started to play, and the storm came, and the lightning flared, and the windows lit up, and these tremendous thunder claps—just absolutely loud crashes of thunder—and intense rain. The whole time I’m playing I’ve got this drummer, and of course the audience is primed because I had talked to them. I’m playing the whole concert, and coming to an end. I end my piece and the thunder storm fades out. Wow! OK, so there was that. The next morning a woman came to my Deep Listening workshop, brought me a clipping from the newspaper about the storm and there had been not one, but two twisters that had gone through the town. [laughter] So that was my serendipitous journey. Two twisters, two amazing women. . . . That’s how it goes—I don’t know. And you just go with it. Yes, it feels completely natural. It was a tremendous verification of that work, and I was having an amazing time playing with that. It was wonderful. Well congratulations! Thank you. [laughter] In the Bob Ashley video (Unnatural Acts Between Consenting Adults) at one point you were talking about change, and you said “I welcome change although I find it very painful” and at this stage your toenails are being painted. “Why do we do these changes?— to learn more, move, and feel the movement. But I have never been satisfied with my work if I find that I’m becoming too comfortable with it.” Is that still true for you? Can you give an example of a time when you were not satisfied with your work? I have a meditation that says “if you want to change, stay with the tone until you don’t want to change, and then you change it.” [laughter] A time that I was not comfortable with my work? There may be cycles of feeling more or less

168 Conversation comfortable. I experienced a period where there were some trials. In August 1997 I did Echoes From the Moon in Salzburg, and this involved transmission of sound to the moon and back. It was really an artistic risk, because here I was in Salzburg, in the Domplatz, the center of Salzburg, and I had to get permission from the Archbishop to put speakers up on the buildings, and all this. I had taken part in the protest against the exclusionary policy of the Vienna Philharmonic. The Vienna Philharmonic was playing a concert the same day as my concert, and there were rumbles about this. So here I was, in a position of artistic risk. What if it flopped, you know? Turns out it went very well, it was fine, and I came through it just fine. But there I was. I don’t know if it was comfort or discomfort—it simply was a risk. It was exciting, and it worked. It could have gone either way. There are times when you just don’t know. Yes, and that was one of them. Also, I was working with Andres Bosshard, a Swiss sound artist, and this was the first time we had worked together, so I really didn’t know. I really had not worked with him, and that was also a risk. But it was well worth it, and we’re going to work together again in January [1998] in Cologne. That was one, but another one, a bigger one, was the premiere of my orchestra piece in Prague. This is called Four Meditations for Orchestra and I was working with the Janác
ek Philharmonic Orchestra of Ostrava, which is a regional orchestra. They had never played any new music before, much less what I gave them which was four meditations, no notes. They had to make the sounds, invent the sounds, through these meditations. [laughter] It was another risk of putting this kind of notation in front of orchestral musicians who are a particular breed of musicians. I knew the pieces would work if the attitude was there, but how that was going to come about I really didn’t know. So those are positions of some discomfort. It’s perfectly fine to make a score that’s got conventional notation—there’s nothing that challenges anybody’s sense of propriety or appropriateness, and you come on like what you’re doing is fine, nobody can disagree, right? It’s like a legal document. But here I am, this upstart putting this kind of stuff in front of people and I don’t know how it’s going to work. I did have someone to run interference for me, that was Petr Kotik, who is Czech. He knows the language and he knows my music. He knows it not just from yesterday, but he knows it for more than twenty years. He translated the work and directed the orchestra, and as it turns out, it went very well. I also performed with the orchestra. I played an accordion interlude between each meditation. What I did, I actually transmitted the performance practice to the orchestra by playing—I knew I would be doing that. And it did work, it worked really well. So, those were two big things. Was this piece conducted?

Conversation 169 No, no conductor. Petr was standing in the position of conductor, but he was actually playing his flute. He’d pick up his flute and that meant that the piece had started, but he didn’t really do any conducting. I’m interested in delayed sounds— —me too— —tape delay, digital delay, and also acoustic delay in the caves and cisterns. You have often said that your primary interest is in live performance, and in being able to play with delayed sounds as they’re happening. Why do you like that? Well, I think that most musicians through the ages have been interested in echo. I don’t see how they could not be. Who isn’t? You go out and shout and you hear your voice coming back—isn’t it fascinating? Isn’t it always fascinating to do that? And if you’re a blind person, echo is all-important in terms of location. And it is important to us, too, in terms of location. We locate ourselves through detecting echoes and reflections, but we don’t have it at a very conscious level. If you’re a musician and you like a hall where you perform, you like it because of how it supports your sound. Some support it very well. How do you like it when you go into one of those abominable practice rooms? It’s awful! It sounds terrible. But in a really good concert hall, there is a certain kind of reverberation time that really is supportive and wonderful, and you really like it! So there’s that, but I like a variety of reverberation times. You’re really expanding on this whole idea. Yes. The idea of virtual space is very interesting to me, but more than that is the ability to change the apparent space minutely, like a progression. My right hand could be playing in a space and gradually change to another space while I’m playing some passage or holding a tone, and hearing the space change so that the tone color changes. At the same time my left hand is wandering around somewhere else. Well, this is fun—this is plain fun! It’s playful. It would be like a dolphin or a whale sounding in the ocean, sounding the spaces, which is what they do. Bats do it, too. Of course, they’re looking for food, but it seems to me a wonderful element of creative work. Can you tell me about the CD Epigraphs in the Time of AIDS and your piece “In Memory of Peter Oliveros” with text by Ione? Peter was my half-brother. He was 25 years younger than I. He contacted me in New York and we saw one another just a few times. He was very erratic in his appearances. This was in the 1980s. The last time I saw him, he had told me that he had AIDS, borrowed some money from me, and I never heard from him again. I heard about his death later. I wasn’t able to be with him, or know where he was. Typical Oliveros male behavior, which is “now you see me, now you don’t.” How did that make you feel? I was sad, because I was really kind of delighted that he showed up in my life and that I might have the chance of getting to know him. Because I don’t know my other half-siblings. There are three other sisters whom I don’t know, I really

170 Conversation don’t. I saw Linda and Cathy when they were babies. This was shortly after World War II ended, and I haven’t seen them since. There’s another one, Kimberly, and I haven’t seen her since she was 6 or 7 years old. I have no idea where she is, or what she’s doing. Cathy and Linda were born first, then Kimberly and Peter were like another set. What’s the music like on this piece? This is a project that the Deep Listening Band did with Ellen Fullman and her Long-stringed Instrument. There is a CD of this project, and it was selected by Sarah Cahill in the East Bay Express as one of the ten best recordings of the year. It was really nice. We spent three weeks all together in Austin working with Ellen, one week at a time. We did a work-in-progress version of her piece and my piece each time. Then I think we did about five performances there in her studio. Her long-stringed instrument is very long, it’s 85 feet long! [laughter] It has about 200 strings. It’s a wonderful instrument, really extraordinary. Ione’s text for my piece is “you are the one” and permutations of that: “you are the one—you—you are—you are the one you are” and so on. Beautiful. Yes, it is. It’s lovely, and I sang that in this piece. Why is assembling archives important to you? What does it mean? It’s always been a part of my life to keep things. Are you a pack rat? In a way, yes. It’s hard to part with things! Upstairs right now I have all the music I owned from when I was a little kid, the violin pieces I played. I’ve got all that. Recently I’ve been thinking it would be good to get that out of here. I’d like to unload as much as possible. One of the things that stops me is there are people who sell their archives, you know. An attorney advised me that that’s part of my assets. I just turned over stuff to the New York Public Library. They consider me a donor, so do UCSD and Houston Public Library. I’ve been equivocating about what to do with what I have left, and accumulating also. [laughter] When people study your archives, what is it that you want them to learn or know about? I don’t have any agenda for that. I guess, for example, in my score files whatever notes that I took or attempts that I made to make the piece are in there. There’s failed stuff and stuff that worked—it’s all in there for anyone who wants to look at it. But if it’s not there, then it’s not there. I just feel fairly open about it. My process is certainly different from those who write meticulous scores all the time. I don’t do that. Some things are nothing more than a title. Some things are just expressed once, like Bye Bye Butterfly and that’s it. There’s a lot of that. What musical projects are you working on now? Mmmm! I’m doing the soundtrack for Vicky Funari’s new film called Maquilopolis. It’s about the maquiladoras, and the women who work in these factories in Tijuana. This project is very exciting, and it’s a very powerful film.

Conversation 171 It’s told from the point of view of the women. It’s also in collaboration with a group in Tijuana called Nortek which is a musicians collective. They’re going to be remixing my stuff for the film, so I’m excited about that. What music did you do? Actually, I found some stuff that I already had done with Reynols, the group in Argentina. We had attempted to do a netcast probably around 1997 or ’98 because I had done some improvisation on the Internet from California to Boston to New York and that was fun. I tried to set it up to do it with Reynols in Buenos Aires and they thought they had it all together to do that, and it turned out that they really didn’t. But they recorded what they did and we recorded what we did, we sent it to them and they mixed it. So I had this recording from the netcast, and I thought about it, and it seemed to really work well with the film. So I sent it to Vicky and she loves it. This was more industrial stuff, which fit with the factories, so she asked me for more material that would be more reflective of the women and their concerns. So I had this recording that I made in Berlin of a workshop that I gave that had about twenty women who were doing a piece of mine. And it worked perfectly with the film so I sent her that. She liked it. I was thinking about this idea of remixing so I was really looking around for material that would work. She loves the vocal stuff. I can feel how it could be taken apart and put into different parts of the film. I may need to do some more music. I’ve written a few pieces lately. One is called 70 Chords for Terry: a meditation on string theory for the Kronos Quartet, for Terry Riley’s seventieth birthday. I was out there for the concert in May 2005. I wrote a piece for Monique Buzzarté and Sarah Cahill, The Gender of Now, and I wrote Speak Your Mind commissioned by Brassiosaurus, a brass trio in the Bay Area, and they premiered that recently. So I’m doing a lot of different things. At the Atlantic Center for the Arts where I am going next, I have a team of programmers now working on a project called Dome Works. We’re going to have a 20-foot dome there and a projector for it that projects 360 degrees over the dome. I’m reprogramming another configuration of EIS, the expanded instrument system. Actually, I’ve been reconfiguring EIS for thirty years, and different pieces come out of it. We’ll be there for three weeks with eight associates. Ione will also be there with me. We’ll make pieces for the dome. I don’t know what that’s going to be—we’ll see! Otherwise, I have performance engagements coming up in South Africa, Russia, UK, and Japan. It’s a busy busy time. The other thing I’ve been thinking a lot about is installations. I don’t know what form it will take yet, but I feel like it’s a good direction. What interests you about an installation? Well, that it’s possible to go to some place and interact with something. I would like to do it with sound. I don’t know yet how I’m going to do it, but

172 Conversation I want to do something that is pleasurable and interesting to be in. Some installations don’t feel like there is anything happening. You want something that connects with the sensual nature of sound. Definitely. What is the most important thing that you want people to know about your music? I don’t know if I can articulate that exactly. It’s a question where I think “wait a minute, now, there are a lot of differences in my output.” I guess the most important thing is that people actually engage with the sound. To listen and feel that engagement. To relate with compassion—that’s important to me. My final question is what is it like to be interviewed? It depends greatly on the interviewer and the questions, and I must say that it’s an incredible pleasure with you because you’ve done so much homework. You’ve brought me back to some things that I have forgotten, which is very interesting, and the questions help me to codify a few things. So when that happens in an interview, I know it’s a good one. I’m saying things that I haven’t heard myself say before. Oh good! You’ve mentioned spirituality a few times. How would you describe your spirituality? Gee, I don’t know if I can. Well, I’m interested in the well-being of others as well as of myself. As I said, I’m interested in facilitating creative process through the work that I do so that people feel like they can do it too, if they want to. So that’s an important aspect of my work, which I think is a spiritual aspect. It’s the caring for community and connecting into a larger purpose than just for your own edification or your own satisfaction in a small realm. Thank you so much. Oh you’re welcome, Martha.

Notes

1 Intonation 1 2 3

4

5

6

Letter from Pauline Oliveros to her mother, Edith Gutierrez, September 14, 1959, Oliveros Archive, Houston Public Library. Dorothy Allison, “Femme,” in Skin: Talking About Sex, Class and Literature (Ithaca: Firebrand, 1994), 157. Castle, The Apparitional Lesbian (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 15–16, and quotes Edward Said, “The Politics of Knowledge,” Raritan 11 (1991): 17–31. For a discussion of lesbian “worlds” see María Lugones, “Playfulness, ‘World’-travelling, and loving perception,” Hypatia 2/2 (1987): 3–19. The exceptions to this are Jennifer Rycenga, “The Uncovering of Ontology in Music: Speculative and Conceptual Feminist Music,” repercussions 3/1 (Spring 1994): 22–46, and Pauline Oliveros and Fred Maus, “A Conversation About Feminism and Music,” Perspectives of New Music 32/2 (Summer 1994): 174–93. Heidi Von Gunden, The Music of Pauline Oliveros (Metuchen, NJ and London: Scarecrow Press, 1983), 105. The publication Von Gunden refers to is Source: Music of the Avant-Garde 5/2 (1971): 103–7. Eight years later she echoed this statement about lesbianism and feminism in her article “The Music of Pauline Oliveros: A Model for Feminist Criticism,” International League of Women Composers Journal (June 1992): 7. Here Oliveros paraphrases her contribution to the liner notes for the recording Lesbian American Composers (CRI [Composer’s Recordings Inc.], 1998).

2 Amplification 1 Letter from Oliveros to Gutierrez, December 24, 1961, Oliveros Archive, Houston Public Library. 2 Pauline Oliveros, “Valentine,” in Elliott Schwartz, Electronic Music: A Listener’s Guide, rev. edn (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1975), 246. This passage is also quoted in Heidi Von Gunden, The Music of Pauline Oliveros (Metuchen, NJ and London: Scarecrow Press, 1983), 51–2. This story is paraphrased in Oliveros, “Software for People” in her Software for People: Collected Writings 1963–80 (Baltimore, MD: Smith Publications, 1984), 181 and again in Oliveros, “Cues,” Musical Quarterly 77/3 (Fall 1993): 373. 3 Cole Gagne, “Pauline Oliveros,” in Soundpieces, Volume 2: Interviews With American Composers (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1993), 213.

174 Notes to pp. 23–9 4 Pauline Oliveros, “Introduction,” File W55, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego, 17. This is an unpublished manuscript originally intended for inclusion in Oliveros’s book on her theatre pieces from the 1960s; this book project was not completed. 5 For the New York performance, see flyer “Electronic Music Theatre of the Absurd,” July 8, 1968, Oliveros Archive, Houston Public Library. For the Seattle performance see announcement and program notes for “The Contemporary Group,” October 14, 1970, File W9, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego; for the Los Angeles performance see Vanguard News of the Theatre Vanguard, March 1975, File Z17A, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego. 6 This album became a highly valued collectors’ item, and was rereleased on compact disc in early 1997 by Composers Recordings, Inc., with the added subtitle “Women In Electronic Music 1977.” Charles Amirkhanian’s liner notes state that the original 1977 album title intentionally omitted any reference to gender. 7 See chapter 5 “Conversation.” 8 See chapter 5. 9 Jackson Mac Low, “being Pauline: narrative of a substitution,” Big Deal 4 (Fall 1976): 168–76. For Oliveros’s comments on Mac Low’s performance of her see Deena Rasky, “Pauline Oliveros: Two-Legged Composer,” Broadside 1/3 (December 1979): 13. Broadside is a Toronto feminist newspaper. See also P. Gregory Springer, “The Nonpareils of Pauline Oliveros,” The Advocate (February 22, 1979): 36. Oliveros informs me that Jones and Mac Low were the only participants in her Theater of Substitution. E-mail from Oliveros, April 10, 1998. 10 Heidi Von Gunden mistakenly claims the excerpt is drawn from Act II, Part I where Suzuki and Butterfly decorate her house with flowers while Butterfly awaits Pinkerton’s return. See Von Gunden, The Music of Pauline Oliveros, 55–7. 11 Norman Weinstein hears this as “amplified insect wing flutter,” but to me this rhythm is much steadier than the highly irregular flight patterns of butterflies. See Norman Weinstein, “Women’s Pioneering Role In Electronic Music,” Christian Science Monitor (June 30, 1997), 14. 12 Butterfly: “Dicon ch’oltre mare se cade in man dell’uom, ogni farfalla da uno spillo è trafitta ed in tavola infitta!” Pinkerton: “Un po’ di vero c’è. E tu lo sai perchè? Io t’ho ghermita, ti serro palpitante. Sei mia!” 13 Letter from Gutierrez to Oliveros, January 5, 1966, Oliveros Archive, Houston Public Library. This and other letters do not specify which composition(s) Oliveros included on the tape. 14 Ibid. 15 Letter from Oliveros to Gutierrez, July 25, 1966, Oliveros Archive, Houston Public Library. 16 Letter from Gutierrez to Oliveros, August 1, 1966, Oliveros Archive, Houston Public Library. 17 Pauline Oliveros, liner notes for I of IV on New Sounds in Electronic Music (Odyssey 3216 0160). See also Oliveros, “Tape Delay Techniques for Electronic Music Composers,” in Software for People, 44. 18 Consider the following comment Oliveros makes in the video The Sensual Nature of Sound: Four Composers (New York: Michael Blackwood Productions, 1993): “One of my favorite sound meditations is listening to the end of the sound, and [chuckles] you have to come to some kind of agreement with yourself whether you’re still hearing the sound or you’re imagining the sound at the end of it. Where does it, in fact, end? This is a practice.”

Notes to pp. 29–33 175 19 “Combination tone,” The New Harvard Dictionary of Music, ed. Don Michael Randel (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1986), 180–1. 20 Oliveros, “Some Sound Observations,” Software for People, 26. Also quoted in Von Gunden, The Music of Pauline Oliveros, 57–8; Katherine Setar, “An Evolution in Listening: An Analytical and Critical Study of Structural, Acoustic, and Phenomenal Aspects of Selected Works by Pauline Oliveros” (PhD diss., University of Southern California, 1997), 170; and retold by Oliveros in Barry Schrader, Introduction to Electro-Acoustic Music (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1928), 186; Craig Palmer, “The Magic Garden of Pauline Oliveros,” Coast FM and Fine Arts 11/7 (July 1970): 41; and Bob Doerschuk, “Pauline Oliveros: Accordion/Not Accordion,” Keyboard Magazine 13/1 (January 1987): 62. 21 Katherine Setar argues for an important difference between “combination tones” and “heterodyning,” a term commonly used in engineering: “The significance of the scientific description of heterodyning is that frequencies may be added, subtracted and/or multiplied. The more familiar term ‘combination tone’ refers only to the additive processes commonly observed in traditional acoustic instruments, and is therefore an incomplete representation of the physics of combining frequencies.” However, for my purposes, which lie more in perception than in production, I prefer the term “combination tone.” See Setar, “An Evolution in Listening,” 164. 22 Setar refers to this section as the “scream melody.” I don’t object to this designation, but to my ears the timbre is not sufficiently vocal to suggest a “scream,” and perhaps more importantly, there are no “breaths” in this melody—the sound is entirely continuous. See Setar, “An Evolution in Listening,” 194–217. 23 The reissue of I of IV (Paradigm Discs 04, 1997) runs about five minutes longer than the initial Odyssey recording. Oliveros ended the piece earlier on the Odyssey record and used the full length on the Paradigm CD. E-mail from Oliveros June 21, 2005. 24 E-mail communication from Oliveros, quoted in Setar, “An Evolution in Listening,” 227. 25 Gagne, “Pauline Oliveros,” 214, 215. Note: throughout this interview, the of in the title I of IV is incorrectly capitalized. 26 Alfred Frankenstein, “Electronic Music—Masterpieces and Other Pieces,” High Fidelity/Musical America 18/2 (February 1968), 45. Also reviewed in this article are Steve Reich’s Come Out and Richard Maxfield’s Night Music (both are on the Odyssey record along with I of IV), Luciano Berio’s Omaggio a Joyce, Luc Ferrari’s Visage V, Iannis Xenakis’s Orient-Occident, Henri Pousseur’s Trois Visages de Liège, John Cage’s Variations II, and Milton Babbitt’s Ensembles for Synthesizer. 27 Oliver Daniel, “Loops and Reels,” Saturday Review 52 (April 12, 1969), 63. Daniel abandons the piece, and continues in a sexist tangent: “She is reported to have spent a night recording a noisy toilet in a Vancouver hotel room. And this might lead to a new-type water music. Miss Oliveros studied composition with Robert Erickson and Thomas Nee. We have no information about her toilet training.” 28 Setar, “An Evolution in Listening,” 233. Setar identifies several errors in Von Gunden’s analysis and persuasively critiques her claim that I of IV is tonal and follows sonata form. See Setar, 152–237, and her Appendix B, 533–43. 29 Dorothy Allison, “Demon Lover,” Trash (Ithaca: Firebrand, 1988), 111. 30 Linda Dusman, “No Bodies There: Absence and Presence in Acousmatic Performance,” in Music and Gender: Negotiating Shifting Worlds, ed. Pirrko Moisala and Beverley Diamond (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000) 336–45. Oliveros used the same configuration of studio equipment for both I of IV and II of IV. For

176 Notes to pp. 33–42

31 32 33

34

Oliveros’s own views about the categories of composer and performer in the electronic music studio see Thomas Everett, “Five Questions: 40 Answers,” The Composer Magazine 3/1 (Fall 1971): 30–8. Oliveros, “Career Narrative,” [1973] File W11, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego, 3; also quoted in LePage, “Pauline Oliveros,” 172–3. Letter from Oliveros to Terry Riley, August 28, 1963, Box 22, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. Oliveros, “Some Sound Observations,” 27. This passage is also quoted in Von Gunden, The Music of Pauline Oliveros, 58–9, and in Setar, “An Evolution in Listening,” 219–20. Setar confirms that the studio referred to is the one at the University of Toronto. Letter from Lockwood to Oliveros, May 9, 1970, Box 17, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library.

3 Meditation 1 Quoted in Ron Drummond, “Toward a Rolling Sky: Some Pearls on Pauline Oliveros,” Interval: Journal of Music Research and Development V/1 (Fall–Winter 1985–86): 22. 2 See File Y11, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego. 3 Oliveros, “On Sonic Meditation,” in Software for People, 138. In this essay Oliveros offers an extremely useful, detailed reading of the first Sonic Meditation, “Teach Yourself to Fly,” which elaborates on each component of the meditation in a stepby-step fashion. 4 Ibid., 141. For an important explanation of how Oliveros understands attention and awareness see Tina Pearson, “Angels and Demons and Pauline Oliveros,” Musicworks 31 (1985): 4. 5 Oliveros, “On Sonic Meditation,” 148–9. Oliveros also recounts these events in Moira Roth, “An Interview with Pauline Oliveros,” New Performance 1/2 (1977): 48–50. See the handmade pamphlet on the 씸 Ensemble, File W1A, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego. 6 See the handmade pamphlet on the 씸 Ensemble, File W1A, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego. 7 See letters from Betty Wong and Shirley Wong to the 씸 Ensemble, October 6 and 8, 1971, File W1B, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego, and Oliveros, “씸 Ensemble, October 10, 1972,” File W1A, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego. 8 E-mail message from Oliveros, November 24, 1998. 9 Oliveros, “5th Session 11–23–71,” File W1B, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego. 10 Oliveros, “씸 Ensemble Nov. 14, 1972,” File W1A, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego. 11 Oliveros, “2nd Non-verbal Session Nov. 2, 1971,” File W1B, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego. 12 Entry for October 26, 1971 in Oliveros, “Pauline’s Diary,” File W1B, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego. 13 Ibid., entry for November 2, 1971. The “red circle exercise” is an early version of “Sonic Rorschach” and Oliveros indicated this in her plan for October 26, 1971: “Try to imagine a red circle or sphere. Try to focus on it for the duration of the white noise. It should be an actual (mental) concrete image of the red circle–sphere. Write in your diary the difficulty or ease you have in maintaining this image and your sense

Notes to pp. 42–8 177

14 15 16 17

18

19 20 21

22

23

24

of others.” See Oliveros, “Tues. Oct. 26,” [1971], File W1B, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego. Entry for November 9, 1971, “Pauline’s Diary,” File W1B, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego. Oliveros, “Introduction II,” Sonic Meditations ([Baltimore, MD:] Smith Publications, 1974), n.p. For a brilliant and insightful critique of the American conservatory, see Henry Kingsbury, Music, Talent, and Performance: A Conservatory Cultural System (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988). Oliveros, “Introduction I,” Sonic Meditations, n.p. Although this is not the place to pursue it, I believe that the Sonic Meditations invite an analysis of class issues in western art music, and that such an analysis would both enrich and complicate my discussion here. Feminist musicologists have examined basic and complex questions of sexism in western art music from historical and theoretical perspectives. This work is wonderfully vast, but major sources are: Jane Bowers and Judith Tick, eds., Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition, 1150–1950 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986); Susan McClary, Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991); Ruth Solie, ed., Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Marcia Citron, Gender and the Musical Canon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); and Ellie M. Hisama, Gendering Musical Modernism: The Music of Ruth Crawford, Marion Bauer and Miriam Gideon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Von Gunden, The Music of Pauline Oliveros, 105. In the Source edition, Oliveros begins by saying: “Pauline Oliveros is a two legged human being, a female, lesbian, musician, composer among other things which contribute to her identity.” Unpublished pamphlet, File W1A, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego; my emphasis. Ann Feldman, “Interview with Pauline Oliveros 4/25/96” (unpublished manuscript, 1996), 16–17. See also Moira Roth, “An Interview with Pauline Oliveros,” New Performance 1/2 (1977): 49, and Jann Pasler, “An Interview with Pauline Oliveros,” American Women Composers News/Forum IX (Spring/Summer, 1991): 10. See Karin Pendle, ed., Women and Music: A History (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991); Carol Neuls-Bates, “Women’s Orchestras in the United States, 1925–45,” in Bowers and Tick, Women Making Music, 349–69; J. Michele Edwards, “All-Women’s Music Communities: Fostering Leadership and Creativity, in Bridges of Power: Women’s Multicultural Alliances, ed. Lisa Albrecht and Rose Brewer (Philadelphia, PA: New Society Publishers, 1990): 95–107; Sherrie Tucker, Swing Shift: “All-Girl” Bands of the 1940s (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2000). After 1972, the Sonic Meditations were no longer a women-only endeavor in San Diego, and Oliveros led various workshops with mixed-gender groups throughout the West Coast. For nine weeks in the winter of 1973 Oliveros led a twentymember Sonic Meditations group at U.C. San Diego, every day for two hours. See Oliveros, “On Sonic Meditation,” 157, and Pasler, “An Interview with Pauline Oliveros,” 10. Carbon copy of letter from Pauline Oliveros to Kate Millett, Box 18, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. Oliveros tells me that she did not attend this event. See chapter 5, “Conversation.”

178 Notes to pp. 48–52 25 Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967–75 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989). These brands of feminism are not monolithic and at times overlap with one another ideologically. Very briefly, radical feminism understood gender differences between men and women as asymmetrical and socially conditioned, and sought to restructure society by eradicating gender as a category altogether. Cultural feminism understood gender difference as the result of an innate male or female essence, and celebrated “female culture” separate from the mainstream. Liberal feminism worked toward bringing women into the mainstream institutions of a society that did not need radical restructuring. See Echols, 3–22. 26 See Echols, Daring to Be Bad, 210–20 on homophobia in the early days of the women’s movement. I disagree with Timothy Taylor’s claim that “Oliveros’s particular brand of feminism” is cultural feminism; see Taylor, “The Gendered Construction of the Musical Self: The Music of Pauline Oliveros,” Musical Quarterly 77/3 (Fall 1993): 386. 27 Many of these women musicians recorded on Olivia Records, a women-owned and operated label based in Oakland, California, which started up in 1974 to produce Meg Christian’s legendary album I Know You Know. Jennifer Rycenga also notices the aesthetic gap between “women’s music” and the work of Pauline Oliveros and Yoko Ono. See Rycenga, “The Uncovering of Ontology,” repercussions 3/1 (Spring 1994): 29–30. 28 Echols, Daring to Be Bad, 83–92. Echols also discusses the disagreement about whether the primary function of consciousness-raising was psychological or political. For a more psychological approach to consciousness-raising, see Pamela Allen, Free Space: A Perspective on the Small Group in Women’s Liberation (New York: Times Change Press, 1970). 29 For a different, but closely related discussion of the Sonic Meditations, see Elisabeth LeGuin, “Uneasy Listening,” repercussions 3/1 (Spring 1994): 5–21. 30 I am grateful to Elizabeth Wood for a delightful conversation on the parallels between consciousness-raising and Oliveros’s Sonic Meditations. 31 Letter from Oliveros to Johnston, April 23, 1973, Jill Johnston Private Collection. 32 Flyer for Women’s Festival of the Arts, Center for Women’s Studies & Services, File W1B, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego. 33 For an announcement of this event see “Sonic Meditations,” City on a Hill Press [U.C. Santa Cruz] (June 1, 1972): 10. At this workshop, Oliveros made a personal connection with Jackie Christeve, a graduate student at U.C. Santa Cruz and friend of Karlene Kraus, a colleague of Jeanne Gallick. Christeve was extremely well informed about the structure and goings-on at CIW, and enthusiastically supported Oliveros’s upcoming workshops at CIW. See the letters from Christeve to Oliveros, October 19, 1972, undated (probably October 1972), and March 26, 1973, Box 5, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library, and the letter from Christeve to Oliveros, July 1, 1972, File W1B, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego. 34 Letter from Jeanne Gallick to Pauline Oliveros, October 5, 1972, File W1A, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego. 35 Note from Oliveros to 씸 Ensemble, October 10, 1972, File W1A, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego. 36 Note from Oliveros to 씸 Ensemble, October 17, 1972, File W1A, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego. 37 Letter from Pauline Oliveros to Ms. Anderson (no first name is indicated), November 20, 1972, File W1A, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego.

Notes to pp. 52–62 179 38 Note from Oliveros to 씸 Ensemble, November 21, 1972, File W1A, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego. 39 See chapter 5, “Conversation.” 40 Letter from Yolanda McAllister to Pauline Oliveros, May 12, 1975, Box 22, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. 41 Frau und Musik program book, File X2, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid., 33. 44 Nona Yarden, “A Meditation,” Perspectives of New Music 19 (1980–81): 454, 458, 459. 45 Note from Oliveros to 씸 Ensemble, November 9, 1971, File W1B, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego. 46 See Gayle Kimball, “Female Composition: Interview with Kay Gardner,” in Women’s Culture: The Women’s Renaissance of the 70s (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1981), 163–76, and J. Michele Edwards, “Kay Gardner,” in The Norton/Grove Dictionary of Women Composers, ed. Julie Anne Sadie and Rhian Samuel (London: Macmillan, 1995), 182–3. 47 Letter from Oliveros to Gardner, Kay Gardner Private Collection. 48 Letter from Gardner to Oliveros, Box 8, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. 49 Letter from Oliveros to Gardner, Kay Gardner Private Collection. 50 Letter from Gardner to Oliveros, Box 8, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. Above the words “came in” Gardner added “arrived.” 51 For Oliveros’s views see John Rockwell, “The Musical Meditations Of Pauline Oliveros,” New York Times (May 25, 1980): 19–20. 52 See Kimball, “Female Composition,” 163–76. 53 See Kay Gardner, Sounding the Inner Landscape: Music as Medicine (New York: Caduceus Publications, 1990) with accompanying tape. 54 Letter from Lockwood to Oliveros, Box 17, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. Sometime in the mid-1970s Lockwood changed her first name from “Anna” to “Annea.” I refer to her throughout as “Annea” but retain any written references to her as “Anna” in the correspondence quoted. 55 Letter from Oliveros to Lockwood, Annea Lockwood Private Collection. 56 See concert program, File BB-13, Box 32, MSS102 Acc 1981.2, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego. 57 Letter from Oliveros to Lockwood, Annea Lockwood Private Collection. 58 Letters from Lockwood to Oliveros, Box 17, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. 59 Letter from Oliveros to Lockwood, September 14, 1971, Annea Lockwood Private Collection. 60 Letter from Oliveros to Lockwood, October 27, 1971, Annea Lockwood Private Collection. 61 Ibid. 62 E-mail from Annea Lockwood, December 6, 1998. 63 Letter from Oliveros to Lockwood, May 16, 1973, Annea Lockwood Private Collection. 64 Photocopy of typescript, File B1–24, Box 28, MSS102 Acc 1981.2, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego. “Water Meditations” were expanded and published in Roger Johnson, Scores: An Anthology of New Music (New York: Schirmer Books, 1981). “Morning Meditation” remains unpublished.

180 Notes to pp. 63–70 65 Letter from Lockwood to Oliveros, January 18, 1975, Box 17, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. 66 Alison Knowles and Annea Lockwood, eds, Women’s Work (New York: self published, 1975). The other artists in this collection are Mieko Shiomi, Julie Winter, Sari Dienes, Mary Lucier, Bici Forbes, Simone Forti, Elaine Summers, Wendy Greenburg, Jackie Apple, Marilyn Wood, Heidi Von Gunden, Beth Anderson, and Carole Weber. See also Oliveros, “Attachment: Annual Supplement to BioBibliography,” (July 1, 1975–June 30, 1976), File V17, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego. 67 Photocopy of 12-page typescript, File C-48, Box 3, MSS102 Acc 1981.2, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego. The Hearing Studies remain unpublished, but Lockwood informs me that she and Anderson worked on them gradually from 1973 to about 1986. Lockwood started developing them for a course at Hunter College, “The Experience of Music.” Anderson added to them when she herself taught that course. E-mail from Lockwood, December 6, 1998 and July 17, 2005. 68 Photocopy of typescript, File C-48, Box 3, MSS102 Acc 1981.2, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego. On the front of this typescript Oliveros wrote “For Music 5 / Spring 1981 / Pauline Oliveros, Instructor.” 69 Tee Corinne, Cunt Coloring Book, revised (San Francisco, CA: Last Gasp, 1988), n.p. Tee Corinne also created the cover illustration on another lesbian-friendly “workbook”: see Joani Blank, The Playbook for Women About Sex (San Francisco, CA: Down There Press, 1975). This is a “sexual self-awareness” book that invites women to make drawings and take notes while reflecting on questions about their bodies, sexualities, tastes, experiences, fantasies, etc. 70 See Barbara Hammer, “The Politics of Abstraction,” in Queer Looks: Perspectives on Lesbian and Gay Film and Video, ed. Martha Gever, John Greyson, and Pratibha Parmar (New York: Routledge, 1993): 70–5. 71 Susie Bright, “Introduction,” in Nothing But the Girl: The Blatant Lesbian Image, ed. Susie Bright and Jill Posener (New York: Freedom Editions, 1996), 7. 72 Jane Rule, “Making the Real Visible: Lesbian and Writer,” Fireweed 13 (July 1982): 101; also reprinted as “Lesbian and Writer,” in InVersions: Writing by Dykes, Queers, and Lesbians, ed. Betsy Warland (Vancouver: Press Gang, 1991), 91–5. 73 Letter from Rule to Oliveros, undated, Box 22, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. 74 Letter from Rule to the author, October 6, 1997. 75 Letter from Rule to the author, October 30, 1997. Rule’s memory of tuxedo-clad Oliveros in “a concert” at Mills College is not entirely accurate. Oliveros tells me, “The performance she mentioned happened much later—it wasn’t in that year. I don’t think I had a tux on, though that’s a nice idea!” See chapter 5 “Conversation.” 76 Letter from Rule to the author, October 6, 1997. 77 Rule, Contract with the World (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 132. 78 Annea Lockwood, A Sound Map of the Hudson River (Lovely Music LCD 2081, 1989). 79 Ibid. 80 E-mail from Barbara Hammer, August 22, 1997. 81 E-mail from Barbara Hammer, December 1, 1998. 82 Letter from Hammer to Oliveros, Box 10, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. 83 Toronto Globe and Mail (September 15, 1970): 15.

Notes to pp. 70–7 181 84 Edwin Safford, “Much More Than a Matter of Pink and Blue Blankets,” Providence Journal (September 20, 1970): T13. I thank Nancy Newman for her help in locating this source. 85 Letter from Eichelberger Ivey to Oliveros, Box 14, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. Unfortunately, Eichelberger Ivey’s letter to the editor was not preserved in either of Oliveros’s archives, nor could I find evidence that it was published in the New York Times. 86 Letter from Fine to Oliveros, Box 7, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. 87 Letter from Smith to Oliveros, Box 23, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. 88 The full text of Van de Vate’s letter is reprinted in Oliveros, “Rags and Patches,” Software for People, 121. 89 Letter from Oliveros to Lucy (no last name is indicated), File W29, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego. It appears that this is one of two handwritten drafts of Oliveros’s letter to Lucy. The second draft is dated July 30, [1974]. To the best of my knowledge, the final version of Oliveros’s letter is not present in this archive. 90 See Oliveros, Priscilla McLean, Alison Nowak, and Anna Rubin, “To Make a Universe of Sound: Four Visions,” Paid My Dues 2/4 (Summer 1978): 8–11. 91 In 1973 Judith Rosen wrote a feminist critique of women’s subordination in western music in reply to the controversial question, “Why Haven’t Women Become Great Composers?” also answered by psychologist Grace Rubin-Rabson. Both articles by Rosen and Rubin-Rabson were published side by side and widely read by feminists working in music. See “Why Haven’t Women Become Great Composers?” High Fidelity/Musical America 23/2 (February 1973): 46–53. 92 Photocopy of letter from Oliveros to Rosen, Box 22, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. 93 Carbon copy of letter from Oliveros to Samuels, File W29, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego. Bracketed passage in original. Priaulx Rainier died in 1986. 94 Letter from Oliveros to David Ewen, April 18, 1979, Box 7, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. Oliveros’s stepfather, Pat Gutierrez, died in 1985. CME is the Center for Music Experiment at U.C. San Diego. 95 See chapter 5 “Conversation.” 96 Oliveros, “Sonic Meditations,” Source 5/2 (1971): 103. She continues with her feminist view of women composers in western music, which recalls her letter to Judith Rosen: “She believes that Sappho, the great Greek poetess was the archetype of women composers and that the destruction of her work by the early christians is representative of a movement which eliminated and suppressed all models of women as creators in the arts.” 97 Program notes (eight-page typescript), File X7, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego. 98 No author, WAG News 4/5 (October 1977): 9. 99 Deena Rasky, “Pauline Oliveros: Two-Legged Composer,” Broadside 1/3 (December 1979): 13. In 1976 Oliveros published Pauline’s Proverbs, ed. Linda Montano (Berkeley, CA: Serendipity Books). 100 Letter from Bruce Condra to Oliveros, File W1B, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego. With his letter Condra also enclosed his business card. 101 Letter from Johnston to Oliveros, undated, Box 11, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. 102 See chapter 5, “Conversation.”

182 Notes to pp. 78–97 103 Letter from Oliveros to Johnston, November 15, 1971, Johnston Private Collection. 104 Letter from Oliveros to Johnston, April 23, 1973, Johnston Private Collection. 105 Letter from Oliveros to Johnston, January 29, 1974, Johnston Private Collection. For a shorter draft of this letter see Box 11, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. 106 Ibid. Lester Ingber was Oliveros’s karate instructor. 107 See/hear the recordings Deep Listening (New Albion 022, 1989), Troglodyte’s Delight (What Next? 0003, 1990), and The Ready Made Boomerang (New Albion 044, 1991). 108 For an insightful review of these two CDs, see James L. Zychowicz “Beyond Any Sensual Classics: Reflections on CRI’s Gay American Composers,” GLSG Newsletter 7/2 (October 1997): 16–19. 4 Respiration 1 The accordion is used in Alban Berg’s Wozzeck, and composers such as Paul Creston, Roy Harris, William Grant Still, and Virgil Thomson have written concert works for the accordion, but these are rarely performed. See G. Romani and Ivor Benyon, “Accordion,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan Press, 1984): I: 6–8. 2 See Doktorski 1997; Duckworth 1995, 171; Oliveros, “Cues,” 1993, 375; Von Gunden, The Music of Pauline Oliveros, 1983, 16; Gagne 1993, 212; Schloss 1993, 160–1; and [no author] “Der Lange Ton,” Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 155 (February 1994), 32. 3 See Oliveros’s list of compositions up to 1992 in Gagne, “Pauline Oliveros,” 225–9. A more detailed worklist up to 1981 can be found in Von Gunden, Music of Pauline Oliveros, 152–79. 4 Roth, “An Interview with Pauline Oliveros,” 48. See also Pasler, “Interview with Pauline Oliveros,” 10, and Oliveros, Software for People, 148, 184. 5 Such pieces include Link (which later became Bonn Feier), Meditation On the Points of the Compass, To Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe In Recognition of their Desperation, Why Don’t You Write a Short Piece, Sonic Meditations, Post Card Theater, What To Do, Sonic Images, Phantom Fathom, A Ceremony of Sounds, Crow, Crow Two-A Ceremonial Opera, and Theater of Substitution. See the Oliveros worklists in Gagne and Von Gunden (see note 3 above). 6 Jill Johnston Private Collection. A draft of this letter remains in Box 14, Pauline Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. 7 March 31/April 1, 1974, Jill Johnston Private Collection. 8 April 8, 1974, Jill Johnston Private Collection. 9 October 12, 1974, Elinor Barron Private Collection. 10 November 10, 1974, Barron Private Collection. See also Johnston’s letters to Oliveros November 6 and 15, 1974, Box 14, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. 11 November 23 and 24, 1974, Barron Private Collection. 12 Box 17, Pauline Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. 13 Montano, Art in Everday Life, n.p. 14 Ibid., n.p. The handcuff piece Montano refers to is Handcuff: Linda Montano and Tom Marioni from 1973 which took place at the Museum of Conceptual Art in San Francisco.

Notes to pp. 97–107 183 15 For a very similar account see Feldman, “Interview with Pauline Oliveros,” 22–4. 16 Oliveros tells me that this dog belonged to Philip Makanna, director and camera man. She and Ashley thought the dog was cute, and invited him to take part in the interview. E-mail communication, September 8, 1998. 17 In the New York Public Library Oliveros Archive, many letters to Oliveros from the period 1975–82 make mention of Rose, Rosie, or Rosita. 18 The piece referred to here is Montano’s Listening to My Heart . . . A Congenital Murmur, performed at the Camerawork Gallery, San Anselmo, Marin County, August 1975. See Montano, Art in Everyday Life, n.p. and Oliveros, “Annual Supplement to BioBibliography,” [July 1, 1975–June 30, 1976], File V17, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego. 19 See chapter 5, “Conversation.” 20 Osterreich, “Music With Roots in the Aether,” 222–3. 21 Cariaga, “Oliveros—Composer Moving East,” 61; ellipse in original. 22 Meese, (Sem)Erotics, 63–83. Many people have mentioned to me that they see “Steinian” qualities in Oliveros. Although I am tempted, this is not the place to compare Stein and Oliveros. Instead, I acknowledge the handful of critics and reviewers who refer to her as a “musical Stein.” Jill Johnston refers to Oliveros as a “musical Gertrude Stein,” in her “Dance Journal: The Wedding,” Village Voice 16 (January 14, 1971): 33. Nancy Vreeland, a dance critic, writes “[Oliveros] is shortish, stocky, with cropped gray hair, so that one finds oneself thinking, ‘I didn’t know Gertrude Stein played the accordian’ and looking around for Alice B. Toklas.” See Vreeland, “New York Briefs,” Dance Magazine 58/3 (March 1984): 49. Kyle Gann says, “Like Susan B. Anthony in Gertrude Stein’s The Mother of Us All (and who is music’s Stein if not Oliveros?), she’s evolved a receptive life view with listening as its primary metaphor,” in his “Listening for Peace: Where Is the Male Pauline Oliveros?,” Village Voice 36 (March 12, 1991): 73. Robert Carl proposes, “Perhaps it is the comprehensiveness of [Oliveros’s] critique—social, sexual, political, aesthetic, that has given her the strength to take so many risks and become the holy mother, the Gertrude Stein of downtown New York’s new music scene.” See Carl, “Six Case Studies in New American Music: A Postmodern Portrait Gallery,” College Music Symposium 30/1 (Spring 1990): 55. 23 I am thinking of such ground-breaking work as Terry Castle, “In Praise of Brigitte Fassbaender (A Musical Emanation)” in The Apparitional Lesbian: Female Homosexuality and Modern Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 200–38; many of the essays in En Travesti: Women, Gender Subversion, Opera, ed. Corinne E. Blackmer and Patricia Juliana Smith (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995); and Elizabeth Wood, “Sapphonics,” in Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology, ed. Philip Brett, Elizabeth Wood, and Gary C. Thomas (New York: Routledge, 1994), 27–66. 24 See Allan Evans, “Pauline Oliveros: Deep Listening,” Fanfare 15/5 (1992): 371–5; Bonnie Langston, “Oliveros Digs for ‘Roots of the Moment,’” Daily Freeman (May 19, 1988): 29; Bob Doerschuk, “Pauline Oliveros: Accordion/Not Accordion,” Keyboard Magazine 13/1 (January 1987): 62; Jann Pasler, “Interview with Pauline Oliveros,” 10. See also the liner notes coordinated by Dolores Hajosy on Pauline Oliveros, The Wanderer (Lovely Music, 1984) VR 1902. 25 I heartily thank Liz Wood for suggesting the connection between breath and caress. 26 My ideas here are inspired by de Teresa Lauretis, “Film and the Visible,” in How Do

184 Notes to pp. 107–12

27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

37 38 39 40

41 42 43

I Look? Queer Film and Video, ed. Bad Object-Choices (Seattle, WA: Bay Press, 1991): 223–64. Montano continued to create long-term performances (even after ending her relationship with Oliveros) in her major pieces Art/Life One Year Performance 1983–1984 with Tehching Hsieh and 14 Years of Living Art (1984–1998), a solo piece. See chapter 5, “Conversation.” Montano, Art in Everyday Life, n.p. Henry Kingsbury elaborates on this with great depth and insight in his book, Music, Talent and Performance: A Conservatory Cultural System (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1987). Oliveros, “Rose Mountain Slow Runner,” typescript, File W45, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego. For a related, more extended discussion of vocality see Leslie C. Dunn and Nancy A. Jones, “Introduction,” in Embodied Voices: Representing Female Vocality in Western Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 1–13. Osterreich, “Music With Roots in the Aether,” 222, and Cariaga, “Oliveros— Composer Moving East,” 61. Palmer, “The Magic Garden of Pauline Oliveros,” 40. Tuck, “Music Accordion to Pauline Oliveros,” B7. Oliveros, “Annual Supplement to Bio-Bibliography [July 1, 1975 to June 30, 1976],” typescript, File V17, and flyer for performance “Pauline, Pauline: An Evening of Sonic Meditation,” October 23, 1975, File X7, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego. Quoted in Dolores Hajosy’s liner notes for Horse Sings From Cloud on Oliveros’s album Accordion and Voice (Lovely Music, VR 1901, 1982). For a brief review of this performance see Caux, “Les «Sonic Meditations», de Pauline Oliveros,” 34. Gutierrez, Trip Diary (1977), Oliveros Archive, Houston Public Library. In September 1977 Oliveros performed Horse Sings From Cloud in New York City where it was reviewed by both John Rockwell for the New York Times and Tom Johnson for the Village Voice. Rockwell enjoys the “increasing complexity and grittiness” of the accordion chords, and curiously designates the “breathlike pulsing of the accordion, in and out” as an “extramusical, ritualistic aspect.” I disagree with this, and as argued earlier, hear the breath as fundamental to the musical structure and erotic energy. Johnson tunes into the breath rhythms and notices that the “instrument [accordion] breathes slowly and steadily, but there are subtle differences between its inhaling and exhaling.” See John Rockwell, “New Music: Pauline Oliveros,” New York Times (September 23, 1977): C26, and Tom Johnson, “The Composer Meditates,” Village Voice 22 (October 10, 1977): 70. In January 1982 she performed Horse Sings From Cloud with Guy Klucevsek (on accordion) and audience in New York. Reviewer Gregory Sandow does not mention breath; instead he finds the music “gorgeously pretty,” “musically ingenious,” but not challenging. See Gregory Sandow, “New Traditions, New and Old,” Village Voice 27 (January 10–16, 1982), 88, 90. Hay, “Dancing Breath,” Musicworks 33 (1985–86): 12. Program note for The Pathways of the Grandmothers, File Z68a, and Oliveros, “Activities 1978,” File X4, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego. See File DD-3, Box 33, MSS 102, Acc. 1981.2, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego.

Notes to pp. 112–18 185 44 C. W. Child [Kay Gardner], “Concerts: The Pathways of the Grandmothers,” Paid My Dues (Winter 1978): 40. 45 On July 26, 1980 Oliveros performed The Pathways of the Grandmothers at the Creative Music Studio in West Hurley, New York. I am not aware of any published review(s) of this event. See Oliveros, “Activities and Personal Appearances, October 1979-October 1980,” typescript, File V013, Oliveros Archive, U.C. San Diego. 46 Box 11, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. 47 Draft of a letter from Oliveros to Hay, October 20, 1982, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. Oliveros’s new instrument was a Titano Emperor Accordion purchased from Ernest and Faithe Deffner in Mineola, New York. The Deffners were active members of the Mineola-based American Accordionists’ Association. See Deffner correspondence, Box 6, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. 48 Quoted in liner notes, coordinated by Dolores Hajosy, The Wanderer (Lovely Music, 1984) VR 1902. This story is echoed in Evans, “Pauline Oliveros: Deep Listening,” 374. 49 I find it interesting that on the album cover hexagram 53 “Development (Gradual Progress)” appears before and after the title The Wanderer, like a frame. I am not certain if this is an error, or yet another message from the I Ching. 50 Diagram taken from The I Ching or Book of Changes, trans. Richard Wilhelm and Cary F. Baynes, 3rd edn, Bollingen Series XIX (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977), 216. 51 The general of theme of “wandering” also comes alive for me while listening to this piece, especially to “Dance.” Each instrumental part is marked by repetition, but changes gradually occur. The cross-rhythms invite me to listen to each individual part and hear its unique relationship to the others, and my ears “wander” from one idea to another. However, the piece as a whole never strays very far, because the unchanging harmony, the strict adherence to the scale, holds everything together. For the score, see Oliveros, The Wanderer (Deep Listening Publications, 1982). 52 For Elizabeth Harris Oliveros composed Seven Passages for Elizabeth Harris (1963) and Before the Music Ends (1965); for Ann Halprin she wrote The Bath (1966); for Merce Cunningham she wrote In Memoriam Nikola Tesla, Cosmic Engineer (1969). See the worklist (up to 1981) in Von Gunden, The Music of Pauline Oliveros, 160, and Oliveros “Choreography through Meditation” in The Roots of the Moment (New York: Drogue Press, 1998), 88–95. 53 Deborah Hay and Donna Jean Rogers, Moving through the Universe in Bare Feet: Ten Circle Dances for Everybody (1974; Chicago, IL: Swallow Press, 1975), 231; quoted in Foster, Reading Dancing, 8. 54 Hay, “Dance Talks,” Dance Scope 12/1 (Fall–Winter 1977–78): 21; quoted in Foster, Reading Dancing, 9–11. 55 The Wanderer received positive reviews in both recorded and live performance: Tim Page, “Music: Brooklyn Orchestra Plays Modern Works,” New York Times (March 25, 1987): C24; John Diliberto, “Uncaged Melodies,” Downbeat 53/5 (May 1986): 34. I cannot resist quoting Diliberto’s final comment: “The Wanderer belies the accordion’s polka reputation and is guaranteed to make Lawrence Welk choke on his bubbles.” 56 Box 11, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. 57 June 20, 1984, Box 11, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. This letter and the letter dated June 12, 1984 are Oliveros’s handwritten drafts with “sent” written at the top of the first page. Oliveros may have typed them (or copied out again by

186 Notes to pp. 118–35

58 59

60 61 62 63 64

hand) before mailing them to Hay. The final versions may read somewhat differently from Oliveros’s drafts. Box 28, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. Irregularities in capitalization are Weed’s. Katherine Setar explains, “The watertank held twenty million liters of drinking water, and was emptied for two years for construction work. The longest audible reverberation time in the waterworks lasted approximately forty-five seconds. According to Professor Jobst Fricke, acoustics expert at the Institute of Music Science at the University of Cologne, the long, resonant echo was attributable to the large spatial volume of the reservoir, the low ceiling and numerous pillars within the reservoir resulting in the sounds’ immediate reflection and refraction; the pitches were distributed uniformly, resulting in almost imperceptible transition from the source sound to its reverberation. The intensity of the reverberation was due to a water-impermeable coating on the walls which stop the sounds’ absorption.” Setar cites the cover jacket for the album Vor der Flut: Hommage an einen Wasser Speicher (Eigelstein Musik produktions, 1984) ES 2025/26 which includes Oliveros’s composition Watertank Software, recorded in the same drained reservoir. See Setar, “An Evolution in Listening,” 430. Hay, “Dance Talks,” 21; quoted in Foster, Reading Dancing, 9–11. Oliveros, “Rose Mountain Slow Runner.” This scale differs from the one used in her ensemble version of The Gentle which is drawn from the lines of the hexagram for “The Gentle.” See the “score” for The Gentle in Musicworks 33 (Winter 1985–86), 11. The I Ching, 220–1. Oliveros also performed this piece live, although not in an underground setting, in September 1983 at the Zen Arts Center near Mount Tremper, New York. Tram Combs, a reviewer for this concert, noticed “a high drone with single notes, brief phrases and silences in the lower register” and thought the general timbre resembled “the sounds the wind makes.” See Tram Combs, “Music to Quiet the Mind,” Woodstock Times (September 15, 1983): 30.

5 Conversation 1 Letter from Suzon Small to Oliveros, Box 26, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. 2 Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro in America (1944). 3 “The Robin” was a nickname for a close friend of Oliveros who was transgender, and later female-to-male transsexual. “The Robin” did not want to be referred to by his real name in this book. 4 Patricio Gutierrez (1896–1985) was a professional pianist, organist, jazz musician, and teacher in Houston. In 1955 he and Edith were married. 5 Letters from Edith Gutierrez to Oliveros, Oliveros Archive, Houston Public Library. 6 Letter from Oliveros to Edith Gutierrez, Oliveros Archive, Houston Public Library. 7 Letter from Jennie Gates to Oliveros, Oliveros Archive, Houston Public Library. 8 Letter from Oliveros to Gates, Oliveros Archive, Houston Public Library. 9 Letter from Edith Gutierrez to Oliveros, Oliveros Archive, Houston Public Library. 10 Both letters from Jane Rule to Oliveros, Box 22, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. 11 Letter from Jane Rule to the author, October 30, 1997.

Notes to pp. 138–63 187 12 Letter from Oliveros to Edith Gutierrez, Oliveros Archive, Houston Public Library. 13 Draft of a letter from Oliveros to Jill Johnston, January 29, 1974, Box 14, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. 14 Letters from Johnston to Oliveros, Box 14, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. All irregularities in capitalization and punctuation are Johnston’s. 15 Letter from Kate Millett to Oliveros, Box 18, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. 16 Letter from Annea Lockwood to Oliveros, Box 17, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. 17 Letters from Judy Chicago to Oliveros, Box 4, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. 18 See Pauline Oliveros and Fred Maus, “A Conversation About Feminism and Music,” Perspectives of New Music 32/2 (Summer 1994): 174–93. 19 Letter from Annea Lockwood to Oliveros, Box 17, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. 20 Letter from Barbara Hammer to Oliveros, Box 10, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. 21 Letters from Susun Weed to Oliveros, Box 28, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library. Irregularities in capitalization, spelling, etc., are Weed’s. Weed rarely signed her name in her letters; instead, she usually drew a small flower lying on its side. 22 Letter from Oliveros to Ursula Oppens, Box 21, Oliveros Archive, New York Public Library.

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196 Bibliography Schloss, Myrna F. “Out of the Twentieth Century: Three Composers, Three Musics, One Femininity.” PhD diss., Wesleyan University, 1993. Schmidt, Dörte. “Experimentierfeld Universität—über die Bedeutung des akademischen Umfelds im Werk von Pauline Oliveros.” Dissonanz/Dissonance 45 (August 1995): 18–22. Schnorbus, Joan. “The Unexpected Music.” San Dieguito Citizen (June 7, 1978): A1–2. Schrader, Barry. Introduction to Electro-Acoustic Music. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall, 1982. Schroeder, Mildred. “Sonic Boom at Conservatory.” San Francisco Examiner (December 15, 1961): 25, 32. Schwartz, Elliott. Electronic Music: A Listener’s Guide, rev. edn. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1975. ——“Performance Ritual, Space and Illusion: A Re-Definition for the Loudspeaker Era.” Bericht über das Internationale Symposion “Charles Ives und die amerikanische Musiktradition bis zur Gegenwart” Köln 1988. Ed. Klaus Wolfgang Niemöller. 129–38. Köln: Gustav Bosse Verlag Regensburg, 1990. Setar, Katherine Marie. “An Evolution in Listening: An Analytical and Critical Study of Structural, Acoustic, and Phenomenal Aspects of Selected Works by Pauline Oliveros.” PhD diss., University of Southern California, 1997. Shere, Charles. “Pauline Oliveros Shows Feminism through Music.” Oakland Tribune (February 22, 1980): C7. Simoni, Mary. “Profiles of Determination.” Computer Music Journal 22/4 (winter 1998): 19–28. Smith, Geoff, and Nicola Walker Smith. “Pauline Oliveros.” New Voices: American Composers Talk About Their Music. 205–10. Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1995. Spahlinger-Ditzig, Ursula. “Den steinigen Weg begehbar machen.” Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (January–February 1981): 52–3. Spizizen, Louise. “The Composers of Area Code 714: Part II: Composers of Academe.” Applause Magazine 8/2 (October 1978): 16–17, 22, 24. Springer, Gregory P. “The Nonpareils of Pauline Oliveros.” The Advocate (February 22, 1979): 36. Stone, Carl. “Interview.” New Music America ‘81 Festival. 42–4. San Francisco, CA: New Music Alliance/New Music America San Francisco Examiner, 1981. Strongin, Theodore. “Concert Is Given for the Fun of It.” New York Times (March 27, 1968): 40. Sullivan, William. “UCSD Festival to Honor ‘Radical’ Composer on Her Departure.” Los Angeles Times (May 25, 1981): Part II: 7. Supree, Burt. “Drops from a Deep River.” Village Voice (December 20, 1983): 124. Swed, Mark. “American Composers: Pauline Oliveros.” Chamber Music 14/1 (February 1997): 14, 40–1. Swensen, Carol. “Panel Views Women’s Art Problems.” The Dakota Student (March 16, 1973): 10. Tanner, Marcia. “Pauline Oliveros: Composer Emphasizes Need for Awareness of All Our Sounds.” Campus Report [Stanford University] (November 14, 1979): 7–8. Taylor, Timothy Dean. “The Voracious Muse: Contemporary Cross-Cultural

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Index

Note: Page numbers in bold denote illustrations 1 of IV 27–36, 139, 140 reviews of 32–3 11 of IV 33 Accordion 92 accordion in American musical culture 89–91 bands at Houston rodeo 114 and breath 90, 106–7 incident at a Polish dance hall 90 Oliveros learns the 89 Oliveros on playing 29, 90, 92, 113, 114 photographs of Oliveros playing the 91, 109, 110 Accordion and Voice 111, 137 Accordion Crimes (Proulx) 90–1 Adam, Helen 138–9 Adler, Alfred 8 Ajemian, Maro 133 Alien Bog 139 Allison, Dorothy “Demon Lover” 33, 35–6 “Public Silence, Private Terror” 5, 49 American Composer: A Biographical Dictionary (Ewen) 75 American Dilemma, An (Myrdal) 125 “And Don’t Call Them ‘Lady’ Composers” 70–2 Anderson, Ruth 142 Hearing Studies 63–5 Angel with a Lariat (k.d. lang) 89

archives correspondence 13–14 letters from Annea Lockwood 63 letters from Esther Silver 159 Lynn Lonidier’s 150 Oliveros on her 170 performance history of Sonic Meditations 51, 86–8 softball clippings 37 Argentina 171 Art in Everyday Life (Montano) 96 Ashley, Robert 3, 98–106, 158–9 Atlantic Center for the Arts 171 Atlas Eclipticalis 133 audiences 44, 45, 47 Barnes, Djuna 8 Barron, Lin end of the relationship with Oliveros 92–5, 143–4 씸 Ensemble membership 40 lesbian wedding with Oliveros 78 letters from Oliveros at the end of their relationship 94, 95 regarding Jill Johnston 94 Oliveros on 141–2, 143–4 Sweet Alice concert 58 Basho 157 Beautiful Soop 139 Beethoven, Ludwig van 78 Beethoven was a Lesbian 77, 79, 147, 149

200 Index Bent Time (film) 69, 161 Big Mother is Watching You 139 Black Cat, San Francisco 6, 132 Bonn Feier 63, 78 Bosshard, Andres 168 Brassiosaurus 171 breath 106 and accordions 90, 106–7 and dance 116 Bright, Susie 65 Broadside 76 Brown, Rita Mae 155 Buddhism 150 Buzzarté, Monique 171 Bye Bye Birdie 26, 140 Bye Bye Butterfly 22–7, 31, 139, 140 Bynum, Tom 154 Cage, John 3, 133, 144 Cahill, Sarah 170, 171 California Institution for Women (CIW) 52, 152 Cariaga, Daniel 106 Case, Sue Ellen 108–9 Castle, Terry 8, 9, 33–4 “cellular consciousness” 116–17 Center for Contemporary Music, Mills College 135 Center for Social Services (San Diego) 112 Center for Women’s Studies & Services (CWSS) 51 change 102, 107–8, 167 Chicago, Judy 154–5 Chords for Terry: A Meditation on String Theory 171 Circle Dances (Hay) 116 Clément, Catherine 26 Collins, Jess 139 combination tones 29–30, 35 composers “The Contribution of Women as Composers” 72 “And Don’t Call Them ‘Lady’ Composers” 70–2 Oliveros on women at Mills College 135–6 Sweet Alice concert 58 in western art music 108

composition and conventional notation 34, 114, 168 of group pieces 157 a process to direct attention 157 and relationship to improvisation 19 and sexuality 9 Condra, Bruce 76 “consciousness-raising” 49–51 Contract with the World (Rule) 67–9 “Contribution of Women as Composers, The” 72 Corinne, Tee 65 Crispell, Marilyn 163 Crow Two 157 “Cues” 34 Cunningham, Merce 116, 133, 134, 144 Cunt Colouring Book (Corinne) 65 Cusick, Suzanne 9 dance compositions 116 Dancing Breath (Hay) 111–12 Daring to be Bad: Radical Feminism in America 1967-75 (Echols) 48 Daughters of Bilitis 7 Davis, Angela 151 Daydream of Darkness 139 Dead Chicken - Live Angel (Montano) 107 deep listening 11, 79, 117, 145, 165–6 barriers to 166 see also listening Deep Listening Band 79, 170 Deep Listening Chorus 80 Deep Listening Institute 1, 145 Deep Listening Retreats 80, 145 Deitch, Donna 134 “Demon Lover” (Allison) 33, 35–6 Dempster, Stuart 79 Desert of the Heart (Rule) 66, 134 Diana, Princess of Wales 167 Dinner Party, The (Chicago) 155 “Divisions Underground” 3, 72 Dome Works 171 Double Basses at Twenty Paces 78 drag show interview 98–105, 158–9, 167 Duckworth, William 10, 11–12, 34–5, 45

Index 201 Duffy, Maureen 34 Duguid, Brian 9 Duncan, Betty 125 Duncan, Robert 133, 139, 150 Duo for Accordion and Bandoneon with Possible Mynah Bird Obligato, Seesaw Version 133 echo 15, 24–5, 29, 30, 169 Echoes from the Moon 168 Echols, Alice 48 EIS (expanded instrument system) 171 Epigraphs in the Time of AIDS 169 Erickson, Robert 1, 131, 133, 155 erotic, the 10–11, 35 Ewen, David 75 expanded instrument system (EIS) 171 Female Freeway, The (Lonidier) 151 feminism consciousness-raising 49–51 do-it-yourself ethos 65 “And Don’t Call Them ‘Lady’ Composers” 70–2 and Oliveros’ critique of Western art music 46–9, 73–4 radical 2–3, 48, 49 and shared concerns with music 48–9, 50 and women’s music 48–9 feminist literature 48, 155 feminist movement and links with Sonic Meditations 48–54 Oliveros’ relationship to 48–9 “second wave” 2, 3, 15, 48 in Southern California 142 treatment of lesbians 48 Feminist Theory and Music Conference (1995) 80 Festival of Womanhood (Grand Forks) 53 film-making, lesbian 65, 69 Fine, Vivian 71 First National Congress on Women in Music 53 “Five Scenes” 72 Floren, Myron 89 “Former UCSD Professor Speaks Up, A” 142

Foster, Susan 116–17 Four Meditations for Orchestra 168 Frau und Musik festival 53–4 Fullman, Ellen 170 Funari, Vicky 170 Gagne, Cole 31–2 Gallick, Jeanne 52 Gardner, Kay 54 correspondence with Oliveros on Sonic Meditations event 55–6 Oliveros on 153 review of The Pathways of the Grandmothers 112 Sounding the Inner Landscape: Music as Medicine 154 Gates, Jennie 7, 129–31 Gathering Together 163 gender and effect on Sonic Meditations groups 59–61 as a social construction 70 Gender of Now, The 171 Gentle, The 118, 119–20, 120, 163 Girouard, Tina 111, 160 Gold, Heloise 111, 160, 164 Goodbye to All That 46 Grand Forks, North Dakota 53 Gribbin, Pauline (grandmother of Oliveros) 6, 12, 112 Gutierrez, Edith (mother of Oliveros) 12, 75 comments on Horse Sings From Cloud 111 correspondence with Oliveros 1, 12–13, 14, 17–18, 28, 128–9, 131, 137–8 gives Oliveros a tape recorder 17 reaction to Oliveros’ sexual orientation 5–6, 8, 127, 132 Gutierrez, Patricio (stepfather of Oliveros) 127 Haines, Julia 111, 164 Hall, Radclyffe 8, 119 Hammer, Barbara 65, 69 Bent Time 69, 161 letter to Oliveros 161

202 Index Oliveros on 161 a “Sonic Meditation” for Oliveros 69–70 “Harmonic Anatomy: Women in Improvisation” 80 Harris, Bertha 65 Harris, Elizabeth 137 Harrison, Lou 3, 133 Hay, Deborah appearance 121 “cellular consciousness” 116–17 Circle Dances 116 collaborations with Oliveros 117, 118–19, 121, 160, 160–1, 163 Nancy Vreeland on 121–2 Dancing Breath 111–12 ending of the affair with Oliveros 117–18 and I Ching 120 letters from Oliveros at the beginning of the relationship 113 at the end of the relationship 117–18 a musical valentine to 114, 117, 122 nature of relationship with Oliveros 113 Oliveros on 160–1 similarities with Oliveros’ work 116, 117 on space 119 working with untrained performers 116, 117, 160 Hays, Doris 155 Hearing Studies (Lockwood and Anderson) 63–5 hexagrams 114–15, 119, 120–1 Holiday, Billie 126 Holland, Madge 7 home studios 19, 20 Horse Sings From Cloud 111, 112, 164 Houston accordion bands 90, 114 being a lesbian in 3–4, 5 Oliveros leaves 5–6, 12–13, 130 racism in 125–6 Houston Public Library 13, 14, 170 Huang, Al 116, 157

I Ching 114, 115, 119, 120 Ichianagi, Toshi 133 improvisation 15, 19, 31–2, 136–7, 157, 159 In Memory of Peter Oliveros 169 Ingber, Lester 79, 158 installations 171–2 Interval Research Corporation 166 Ione 2, 144–6, 171 Ivey, Jean Eichelberger 71 Janácek Philharmonic Orchestra 168 Johnson, Laurel 17, 20, 21, 139 Oliveros on 136–7 Johnson, Miriam 159 Johnson, Tom 45 Johnston, Jill on “And Don’t Call Them ‘Lady’ Composers” 70–1 friendship with Oliveros 78, 92 Jane Rule on 134 Journey of the Daughters 79, 149 Lesbian Nation 78 letters from Oliveros jesting about Sonic Meditations 54 on lesbian invisibility 92–3, 143–4 letters to Oliveros 147–8 role in Oliveros’ “coming out” 78 tensions with Oliveros 94, 149 Jones, David 23, 24, 140 Josa-Jones, Paula 145 Journey of the Daughters 79, 149 Jung, Carl 61, 156 karate 99, 158 k.d. lang 89 Kefalis, Elinor 72 Kennedy Center 163 Kimball, Mary Alice (Mak) 6, 7, 8, 127 Klucevsek, Guy 89 Knowles, Alison 63, 77 Koestenbaum, Wayne 26–7 Kotik, Petr 168–9 KPFA 61, 131, 142 Kronos Quartet 171 LeCaine, Hugh 28, 157 Lehmann, Minnette 104

Index 203 lesbian the apparitional 8, 9, 33–4, 35 discourses in Western culture 20 erotic photography 65 film making 65, 69 invisibility 92–3 life before the women’s movement 5 life in San Francisco 6–7, 20, 132 literature 34, 35–6, 65, 66, 78, 132 musicality 2, 8–13, 106 Oliveros on the current scene 144, 146–7 softball 4, 37–8, 124–5 treatment in the women’s movement 48 urban life 20 Lesbian American Composers 80 Lesbian Avengers 22, 27 Lesbian Body,The (Wittig) 27, 65 Lesbian Nation (Johnston) 78 Liao, Ping-hui 25–6 listening Annea Lockwood’s compositions 61–2 deep 11, 80, 117, 145, 165–6 intensive integrated 38–9 Oliveros and Jane Rule 67–8 to overtones 1 “Roxanne Recording” 68–9 and social context 33 in “Some Sound Observations” 10 and sounding 10, 39 literature feminist 48, 155 lesbian 34, 35–6, 65, 66, 78, 131–2 Lockwood, Annea and comparisons with Oliveros’ meditations 62 Hearing Studies 63–5 letters from Oliveros on Sonic Meditations 58, 59, 60 letters to Oliveros 152–3 at the end of the relationship with Lin Barron 95 on feminism 62–3 on I of IV 36 on Jung 156 on Sonic Meditations 57–8, 59–60 Morning Meditation 61 Oliveros on meeting 142

Shone 58 Sound Map of the Hudson River, A 69 Water Meditation 61–2 Women’s Work 63 World Rhythms 62 long-stringed instrument 170 Lonidier, Fred 151 Lonidier, Lynn 40, 150–1 loop machines 157 L’Opéra ou la défaite des femmes (Clément) 26 Lorde, Audre 10–11, 12 Los Angeles Philharmonic 74 Los Angeles Times 106 Los Angeles Woman’s Building 96, 143 Love Song, A 118, 119, 122 Lover (Harris) 65 Lullaby for Daisy Pauline 157 Mac Low, Jackson 23, 152 MacInnis, Jimmy 6 Madama Butterfly 24, 25–7 mandala 39, 39 “Many Strands” 72, 78 Maquilopolis 170 marriage, same sex 145–6 Mayor, Geeta 94 McAllister, Yolanda 53 McCarthy era 131 mechanical instruments 138 meditation 39, 143, 152, 164, 167 Meese, Elizabeth 106 Memories, Dreams, and Reflections (Jung) 156 Metropolitan Community Church, San Diego 54 Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival 54, 69, 161 Microcosm, The (Duffy) 34 Midnight Well Water 118, 120, 121 Millett, Kate 46–8, 151–2 Mills College 2, 104, 128 Center for Contemporary Music (CCM) 135 Oliveros isolated at 67 Oliveros on opportunities for women at 135–6 Tape Music Center 1 Mink, Ben 89

204 Index Mitchell’s Death (Montano) 121 Montano, Linda Art in Everyday Life 96 and artistic connections with Oliveros 107, 150 collaborations with Oliveros 111, 150, 164 Dead Chicken - Live Angel 107 death of her husband 150 ending of relationship with Oliveros 111, 160 introducing Doris Hays 155 on meditation and transformation 107 meeting Oliveros 96–7, 143 Mitchell’s Death 121 a musical valentine to 106, 107, 108, 111 Oliveros in disguise 104 Oliveros on 143, 150, 160, 161 performance pieces 96, 107, 150 religious background 150 as “Rose Mountain” 103 Three Day Blindfold/How to Become a Guru 96–7 in Unnatural Acts Between Consenting Adults 98, 102–4, 105, 107 Morning Meditation (Lockwood) 61 Mumma, Gordon 3 Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago) 112 music on building community with 164 Oliveros’ joy at making 11–12, 34–5 Oliveros on women in 46–9, 70–5 and shared concerns with feminism 48–9, 50 Music for T’ai Chi 92 music map 156 Music with Roots in the Aether (Ashley’s ‘Opera for Television’) 98–106 musicality lesbian 2, 8–13, 106 and sexuality 10–11, 16 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) 125, 126

netcasts 171 New Music for Electronic and Recorded Media (album) 23, 24 New Sounds in Electronic Music (album) 29 New York Public Library for the Performing Arts 13–14, 63, 159, 170 New York Times 70 “non-verbal atmosphere” 41–2 Nortek, Tijuana 170–1 Northern Illinois University 111 Numus West (journal) 72 Odetta 130–1 Oliveros, Cathy (half-sister) 170 Oliveros, John (brother) 123–4, 128 Oliveros, Kimberly (half-sister) 170 Oliveros, Linda (half-sister) 170 Oliveros, Pauline appearance 109–10, 121–2 background 1–2, 75 career at University of California, San Diego 1, 23, 112, 157 childhood 3–4, 12 “coming out” 9, 76–7, 141–2 discovering her sexual identity 3–4, 5 and domesticity 20 extended family 146, 169–70 honorary doctorates 2 importance of I Ching 120 on joy of making music 11–12, 34–5 latest projects 171–2 leaving home 5–6, 12–13 memories of her father 123–4, 125 milestones in her artistic development 155 parents’ divorce 123–4 photographs of 77, 91, 109, 110 sense of being an outsider 4, 7, 132 in women’s music 49, 152 singing voice 108–9, 121, 122 “theatre of substitution” 23–4, 140 Oliveros, Peter (half-brother) 169 “On Sonic Meditation” (essay) 38 Ono, Yoko 155 Oppens, Ursula 163 Osterreich, Norbert 106 overtones 1

Index 205 Paid My Dues: A Quarterly Journal of Women in Music 72–3, 112 Panaiotis 79 Participle Dangling in Honor of Gertrude Stein 157 Pathways of the Grandmothers, The 112 Pauline Oliveros Foundation Inc 1 Phantom Fathom 157 photography, lesbian erotic 65 Piano Portrait 163 Pieces of Eight 78 Poem of Change 80 political unrest 39–40, 92 prisoners, women 51–2, 152 Proulx, E. Annie 90–1 “Public Silence, Private Terror” (Allison) 5, 49 Puccini, Giacomo 24, 25–6 Queen’s Throat, The: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire (Koestenbaum) 26–7 “queer” terminology 146–7 racism 90, 125–6 radios 22, 25 “Rags and Patches” 72 Ramsey, Anne 6, 7, 8, 127 Rattlesnake Mountain 69, 161 Reading Dancing (Foster) 116 Receptive, The 118, 119, 120–1, 122 Relâche Ensemble, Philadelphia 119, 163 Reynols, Argentina 171 Rich, Adrienne 155 Richards, Deborah 163 Riley, Terry 3, 6, 38, 132, 136, 171 Robin, The 6, 7, 125, 126–7 Roots of the Moment, The 154, 157 Rose Mountain Slow Runner 91–2, 96, 97 and breath 106–7 butch-femme dynamic 108 challenging musical intention 108 meaning of the name 103 a musical valentine to Linda Montano 106, 107, 108, 111 Oliveros on performance space 119 performances 98, 111 Music with Roots in the Aether 98, 105–6

reviews 106 Rosen, Judith 73–4 Roth, Moira conversations with Linda Montano 96–7, 107 conversations with Oliveros 49, 78 “Roxanne Recording” (Rule) 68–9 Rule, Jane Contract with the World 67–9 Desert of the Heart 66, 134 friendship with Oliveros 66–8, 135, 136 influence of Oliveros on 67–8 letters to Oliveros about a women’s lib meeting 66 on Jill Johnston 134 on meeting with Donna Deitch 134 listening with Oliveros 67 “Roxanne Recording” 68–9 Rush, Loren 38, 132, 136 Rycenga, Jennifer 48 Safford, Edwin 70 Saint George’s Anglican Church, Guelph 167 Samuels, Gerhard 74 San Francisco Black Cat club 6, 132 early years in 4, 127–8, 130 lesbian and gay life in 6–7, 20, 132 reasons for going to 5, 12 San Francisco Tape Music Center 1, 20, 22–3, 132, 133, 135, 137 San Francisco’s Burning 138 Sappho 73–4 Sarria, José 6 Scher, Valerie 121–2 Schimmel, William 89 Schroder, Marianna 163 SCUM Manifesto 155 Sender, Ramon 1, 17, 132, 136 Sensual Nature of Sound, The 166 Setar, Katherine 31, 33, 90 sexuality and musicality 10–11, 16 Shone (Lockwood) 58 signal generators 29, 35 Silver, Esther 159 Small, Suzon 5, 8, 125, 126

206 Index Smith, Julia 72 Smyth, Dame Ethel 13 social unrest 39–40, 92 softball 4, 37–8, 124–5 Software for People 3, 38, 72 Solanas, Valerie 155–6 “Some Sound Observations” 10, 57 sonic images 34–5 Sonic Meditation I (Teach Yourself to Fly) 42, 43, 45, 59 Sonic Meditation II 43, 44 Sonic Meditation III (Pacific Tell and Telepathic Improvisation) 43, 44 Sonic Meditation IV 44 Sonic Meditation V (Native) 43, 59, 80 Sonic Meditation VI (Sonic Rorschach) 41, 80–1 Sonic Meditation VII (Removing the Demon or Getting Your Rocks Off) 41, 42, 59, 81 Sonic Meditation VIII (Environmental Dialogue) 43, 81–2 Sonic Meditation IX (The Greeting) 43, 82 Sonic Meditation X 43 Sonic Meditation XI (Bowl Gong) 59, 82 Sonic Meditation XII (One Word) 43, 82 Sonic Meditation XIII (Energy Changes) 43, 83 Sonic Meditation XIV (Tumbling Song) 43, 83 Sonic Meditation XV (Zina’s Circle) 43, 83–4 Sonic Meditation XVI 43, 84 Sonic Meditation XVII (Ear Ly) 44 Sonic Meditation XVIII (Re Cognition) 43, 84 Sonic Meditation XIX 84–5 Sonic Meditation XX (Your Voice) 43, 50 Sonic Meditation XXI 43, 50, 85 Sonic Meditation XXII 43, 50, 85 Sonic Meditation XXIII (Pure Noise) 43, 85 Sonic Meditation XXIV 43, 85 Sonic Meditation XXV (Your Name: The Signature Meditation) 41, 63–4, 64–5, 86 Sonic Meditation XXVI (Link/Bonn Feier) 63, 78 Sonic Meditations accessibility 44

Annea Lockwood’s observations in Essex 59–60 audiences 44, 45, 47 at California Institution for Women (CIW) 52, 152 challenging Western conventions 43–5, 47 and “coming out” 76 connections with feminist movement 48–54 with David Jones at UC Santa Cruz 140 and deep listening 39, 80, 117 as a feminist composition 9, 15–16, 45–51 at Feminist Theory and Music Conference, California 80 First National Congress on Women in Music, New York 54 at Frau und Musik festival 53–4 in Grand Forks 53 group gender dynamics 59–61 Heidi Von Gunden on 9, 44, 45 inspiring lesbian creative and literary artists 65–70 Joshua Tree group 59, 60 Kay Gardner organizes a women-only event 55–6, 153 in the lesbian and gay communities 54 at Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival 161 Nona Yarden’s experience with 53–4 Oliveros’ correspondence with Annea Lockwood on 57–61 performance history 51, 86–8 physical space 44 power sharing in the group 10, 51 preliminary work for 38–9 in Source 43, 76 telepathic improvisation 44, 59 texts 43 Tuning Meditation 10, 54, 86 씸 Ensemble group 40–2, 45 Women’s Festival of Arts, San Diego 51 working with untrained performers 43, 47, 160 Sontag, Susan 155 Sonthoff, Helen 66, 134

Index 207 Sorrel, Doris 155 sound delayed 15, 31, 169 in 1of V 29 in Bye Bye Butterfly 24, 25 sensual nature of 11, 165, 166 Sound Patterns 36, 76 sounding and listening 10, 39 Sounding the Inner Landscape: Music as Medicine (Gardner) 153 Source 42–3, 76, 141–2 space, performance 44, 80, 119, 120, 121, 169 Speak Your Mind 171 spirituality 150, 172 Springfield Accordion Orchestra 114 Steinem, Gloria 155 studios 32, 35 home 19, 20 San Francisco Tape Music Center 1, 20, 22–3, 132, 133, 135, 137 self-education in 20, 22 University of Toronto 31 Subotnick, Morton 1, 132 Sweet Alice concert 58 Swenson, May 142

Toklas, Alice B. 106 Toronto Globe and Mail 70–1 “Tripping on Wires” 18 Tudor, David 133 Indian meal with 133–4 Tudor Fest 133 Tuning Meditation 10, 54, 86

T’ai Chi 40, 92, 157 Takemitsu, Toru 133 tape recorder(s) 34, 38 alterning the speed 18–19 Edith Gutierrez gives Oliveros a 17 loop machines 157 tape delay 15, 169 1 of IV 29 Bye Bye Butterfly 24, 25 Time Perspectives 17–19, 137 Tasting the Blaze 111, 117, 160 Texas Southern University 126 “theatre of substitution” 23–4, 140 Theatre Piece Book 153–4 Three Day Blindfold/How to Become a Guru (Montano) 96, 107 “Three Themes” 72 Tijuana factory workers 170–1 Time Perspectives 17–20, 21, 136–7 To Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe in Recognition of their Desperation 9, 155

Vencius, Carol 98–102, 104, 158 Vienna Philharmonic 168 Village Voice 148 vocality 108–9, 121 Von Gunden, Heidi on 1 of IV 31, 33 on Bye Bye Butterfly 25 on Sonic Meditations 9, 44, 45 Vreeland, Nancy 121–2

underground reservoirs 119, 120, 121 Ungar, Ruth 7, 128 University of California at San Diego archives 13, 37, 51, 63, 170 attitudes towards lesbianism 142, 146–7 Oliveros’ career at 1, 23, 112, 157 performance of Shone 58 teaching The Nature of Music 157 Women’s Studies 146 University of Toronto 27, 31, 157 Unnatural Acts Between Consenting Adults 98–105, 158–9, 167 untrained performers 43, 47, 116, 117, 160, 164 Up Your Ass (Solanas) 156 “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power” (Lorde) 10–11

Wanderer, The 111, 113–15, 117 a musical valentine for Deborah Hay 114, 117 Oliveros on 163–4 record sleeve 112 released recordings 137 Water Meditation 61–2 Weed, Susun 118, 162–3 Welk, Lawrence 89 Well of Loneliness, The (Hall) 8, 119 Well, The 117, 118, 120, 163 Scher’s review of 121

208 Index western art music composer’s intentions 108 Cusick’s critique of 9 Oliveros’ critiques of 46–9, 70–2, 73–4 subversion of the norms in Sonic Meditations 43–5, 47 What’s Cooking? festival 140 White, Pam 145 Winter Music 133 wire recorders 17, 28 Wittig, Monique 27, 65 Women Artists Group of the Northwest (WAG) 76 씸 Ensemble correspondence between Oliveros and Annea Lockwood 59–61 information pamphlet 45 members 40 Sonic Meditations meetings 40–2

workshop at California Institution for Women (CIW) 52, 152 “Women composers, too, play second fiddle to men” 70 Women in the Arts Festival, Grand Forks (1973) 53 Women’s Festival of Arts, San Diego 51 women’s music 2–3, 48–9 Kay Gardner’s involvement 54 Oliveros’ critique of 46–8 Oliveros on her place in 49, 152 Women’s Music Network 55 Women’s Wax Works 55 Women’s Work (Lockwood/Knowles) 63 Wood, Elizabeth 33 World Rhythms (Lockwood) 63 World’s Fair, Tokyo 150 Yankovic, Weird Al 89 Yarden, Nona 53–4