Watch the Sex Pistols’ Very Last Concert (San Francisco, 1978)

in Music | September 25th, 2013

Many things have hap­pened on the inter­net this week, among them some get off my lawn out­rage at a $375 Urban Out­fit­ters leather jack­et designed to repli­cate the home­made swag every punk rock kid once draped over their shoul­ders. Then there’s the Justin Bieber/Black Flag mash-up t‑shirt that “ruined punk for­ev­er.” I may have spent some for­ma­tive years immersed in ersatz punk and hard­core cul­ture, but no mat­ter how old and cranky I may be com­pared to the tar­get mar­ket of this mer­chan­dise, I just can’t bring myself to get both­ered. No one has said it bet­ter than Dave Berman: “punk rock died when the first kid said / ‘punk’s not dead, punk’s not dead.’”

The stri­dent desire of some to cling to a punk rock ethos can be amus­ing since the move­men­t’s most famous fig­ure­heads, the Sex Pis­tols, crashed and burned a lit­tle over three years after form­ing and one year after intro­duc­ing their mas­cot, Sid Vicious. The band’s cre­ative destruc­tion often seems like the most viable expres­sion of punk. It burns itself out on its own ener­gy. Every­thing else you can say about it is just more Mal­colm McLaren mar­ket­ing.

Or, put dif­fer­ent­ly, maybe the only dis­cus­sion worth hav­ing about punk rock is archival. It came, it went, get over it—but oh, what a glo­ri­ous comet trail left by the likes of John­ny Rot­ten! And we have evi­dence of the tail end on film. Above, you can see the Pis­tols very last per­for­mance at San Francisco’s Win­ter­land Ball­room in Jan­u­ary of 1978.

The film opens with text excus­ing some qual­i­ty con­trol issues: “The footage con­tained in this video is rare archive mate­r­i­al and irre­place­able. The pub­lish­ers feel that the qual­i­ty of the con­tent… far out­weighs any minor… short­com­ings of sound and vision.” Then we’re off to the races, intro­duced by a pair of announc­ers, male and female, like an Olympic event. Despite the dis­claimer, this is decent film and audio, and def­i­nite­ly “qual­i­ty con­tent.” Bril­liant, in fact (Sid actu­al­ly plays!), and an excel­lent argu­ment for why this band need­ed no future. A YouTube com­menter help­ful­ly breaks down the video into the track­list below. Great stuff.

01:45 — God Save The Queen , 05:56 — I Wan­na Be Me , 10:04 — Sev­en­teen , 12:27 — New York , 15:54 — EMI , 19:38 — Belsen Was Gas , 21:50 — Bod­ies , 25:50 — Hol­i­days In The Sun , 31:17 — Liar , 35:40 — No Feel­ings , 38:55 — Prob­lems , 43:26 — Pret­ty Vacant, 46:57 — Anar­chy In The UK , 52:43 — No Fun

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sex Pis­tols Front­man John­ny Rot­ten Weighs In On Lady Gaga, Paul McCart­ney, Madon­na & Katy Per­ry

John­ny Rotten’s Cor­dial Let­ter to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: Next to the Sex Pis­tols, You’re ‘a Piss Stain’

Mal­colm McLaren: The Quest for Authen­tic Cre­ativ­i­ty

The His­to­ry of Punk Rock

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Science of Breaking Bad: Professor Donna Nelson Explains How the Show Gets it Right

in Science, Television | September 24th, 2013

There’s noth­ing fun­ny about the rav­ages of high­ly addic­tive nar­cotics or gang­land turf wars. Nev­er­the­less, Vince Gilligan’s riv­et­ing hit Break­ing Bad man­aged to start on a (yes, dark­ly) com­ic note that still sounds occa­sion­al­ly as the show hur­tles toward its fate­ful con­clu­sion this Sun­day. (Conan O’Brien has had a lot of fun with these moments in par­o­dies of the show’s char­ac­ters’ quirks and its some­times-grue­some desert absur­di­ties.)

What anchors the show, even when it veers into gal­lows humor, is its sense of authen­tic­i­ty. Despite Break­ing Bad’s theatrical—almost Shakespearean—plotting, Gilli­gan and his writ­ers have tak­en care to build a very believ­able scaf­fold­ing behind every out­ra­geous set piece, even when it comes to the sci­ence of per­fec­tion­is­tic chem­istry teacher Wal­ter White’s super high-qual­i­ty crys­tal metham­phet­a­mine. In order to get the sci­ence right, Gilli­gan approached Don­na Nel­son, Pro­fes­sor of Organ­ic Chem­istry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Okla­homa.

Nel­son doesn’t only con­sult on the nature of illic­it chem­i­cal com­pounds; she has also pro­vid­ed the show’s writ­ers with insights into the moti­va­tions and meth­ods of chemists and teach­ers. As Nel­son says, “to us who are edu­cat­ed in sci­ence, when­ev­er we see sci­ence pre­sent­ed inac­cu­rate­ly, it’s like fin­ger­nails on a black­board. It just dri­ves us crazy, and we can’t stay immersed in the show.” As a Break­ing Bad fan who is, I’ll be hon­est, large­ly chem­istry-illit­er­ate, I’d still cred­it some of my immer­sion to how real the sci­ence feels, a by-prod­uct, sure­ly, of how gen­uine it is. Watch Pro­fes­sor Nel­son in the video above, pro­duced by the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety, explain how the show cre­at­ed its illu­sions with the stuff of 100% real sci­ence.

Well, okay, it’s maybe more like 96%. As you might have sus­pect­ed, the sig­na­ture pow­der blue col­or of Walter’s prod­uct is pure dra­mat­ic inven­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Orig­i­nal Audi­tion Tapes for Break­ing Bad Before the Final Sea­son Debuts

The Break­ing Bad Theme Played with Meth Lab Equip­ment

Inside Break­ing Bad: Watch Conan O’Brien’s Extend­ed Inter­view with the Show’s Cast and Cre­ator

Down­load Free Online Chem­istry Cours­es

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Discover Thomas Jefferson’s Cut-and-Paste Version of the Bible, and Read the Curious Edition Online

in History, Religion | September 24th, 2013

TJ Bible 2

Had he lived dur­ing the Inqui­si­tion, Thomas Jef­fer­son would have been burned at the stake. His ideas about Jesus and Chris­tian­i­ty were far from ortho­dox. A prod­uct of the Enlight­en­ment, Jef­fer­son believed that every­thing, includ­ing reli­gion, should be exam­ined in the light of rea­son.

When Jef­fer­son exam­ined the Gospels he came away with a strong­ly divid­ed opin­ion. “I find many pas­sages of fine imag­i­na­tion, cor­rect moral­i­ty, and of the most love­ly benev­o­lence,” he wrote in an 1820 let­ter to William Short, “and oth­ers again of so much igno­rance, so much absur­di­ty, so much untruth, char­la­tanism, and impos­ture, as to pro­nounce it impos­si­ble that such con­tra­dic­tions should have pro­ceed­ed from the same being.”

As ear­ly as 1804, when he was still pres­i­dent, Jef­fer­son began sep­a­rat­ing “the dia­mond from the dunghill,” as he lat­er put it, to assem­ble his own ver­sion of the Bible. He con­tin­ued the project in earnest dur­ing his lat­er years at Mon­ti­cel­lo, por­ing over var­i­ous edi­tions in Greek, Latin, French and King James Eng­lish. He clipped the pas­sages he thought were gen­uine teach­ings of Jesus and past­ed them, in the four lan­guages side by side, onto pages.

In 1820 — six years before his death at the age of 83 — Jef­fer­son pro­duced a leather-bound, 84-page vol­ume titled The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, Extract­ed Tex­tu­al­ly From the Gospels in Greek, Latin, French & Eng­lish. Jef­fer­son elim­i­nat­ed every­thing in the Bible con­cern­ing mir­a­cles. He end­ed the Gospel sto­ry with the exe­cu­tion and bur­ial of Jesus, omit­ting the res­ur­rec­tion. The retained pas­sages, Jef­fer­son explained in an 1813 let­ter to John Adams, con­tain “the most sub­lime and benev­o­lent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.”

You can exam­ine and read Jef­fer­son­’s com­plete 1820 Bible online by vis­it­ing the Smith­son­ian Insti­tu­tion’s inter­ac­tive Web dis­play.

Repro­duc­tions of Jef­fer­son­’s Bible can be pur­chased online.

The images above come cour­tesy of The Smith­son­ian.

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Watch The Surreal 1960s Films and Commercials of Jim Henson

in Animation, Film | September 24th, 2013

Today marks the 77th anniver­sary of Jim Hen­son’s birth. To cel­e­brate the pup­peteer, film­mak­er, and Mup­pet inven­tor’s life and career, we offer here three of his ear­ly short works. Most of us know only cer­tain high-pro­file pieces of Hen­son’s oeu­vre: The Mup­pet Show, the Mup­pet movies, Sesame Street, or per­haps such pic­tures now much attend­ed on the camp revival cir­cuit as Labyrinth and The Dark Crys­tal. But even by the Mup­pet Show’s 1974 debut, Hen­son (1936–1990) had already put in decades devel­op­ing his dis­tinc­tive aes­thet­ic of pup­pets and pup­petry. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured the unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly vio­lent com­mer­cials he pro­duced for Wilkins Cof­fee between 1957 and 1961 and Lim­bo, the Orga­nized Mind, his sev­en­ties trip of a John­ny Car­son seg­ment. But unless you count your­self as a seri­ous Hen­son, fan, you prob­a­bly haven’t yet seen the likes of Mem­o­ries, The Paper­work Explo­sion, and Rip­ples. Cre­at­ing each of these shorts, the young Hen­son col­lab­o­rat­ed with pianist, jazz com­pos­er, and sound engi­neer Ray­mond Scott, now remem­bered as a pio­neer in mod­ern elec­tron­ic music.

The par­tic­u­lar sound of Scott, no stranger to scor­ing car­toons (we’ve by now heard it in every­thing from Looney Tunes to Ren and Stimpy to The Simp­sons), also suit­ed the sorts of visions Hen­son real­ized for his var­i­ous projects of the six­ties. Mem­o­ries, which plunges into a man’s mind as he remem­bers (with nar­ra­tion by Hen­son him­self) one par­tic­u­lar­ly pleas­ant after­noon near­ly ruined by a headache, appeared in 1967 as a con­tin­u­a­tion of Hen­son’s com­mer­cial career; the pain reliev­er Bufferin, you see, lit­er­al­ly saved the day. That same year, the com­mer­cial (and in form, almost mini-doc­u­men­tary) The Paper­work Explo­sion illus­trates the time- space‑, and labor-sav­ing advan­tages of IBM’s then-new word-pro­cess­ing sys­tem, the MT/ST. Rip­ples Hen­son and Scott put togeth­er for Mon­tre­al’s Expo 1967. It takes place, like Mem­o­ries and Lim­bo, inside human con­scious­ness: an archi­tect (Sesame Street writer-pro­duc­er Jon Stone) drops a sug­ar cube in his cof­fee, and its rip­ples trig­ger a mem­o­ry of throw­ing peb­bles into a pond, which itself sends rip­ples through a host of his oth­er poten­tial thoughts. You’ve got to watch to under­stand how Hen­son and Scott pulled this off; con­ve­nient­ly, they only take one minute to do it.

For more ear­ly works by Hen­son, see this Metafil­ter post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jim Henson’s Ani­mat­ed Film, Lim­bo, the Orga­nized Mind, Pre­sent­ed by John­ny Car­son (1974)

Jim Henson’s Orig­i­nal, Spunky Pitch for The Mup­pet Show

Jim Hen­son Pilots The Mup­pet Show with Adult Episode, “Sex and Vio­lence” (1975)

Jim Henson’s Zany 1963 Robot Film Uncov­ered by AT&T: Watch Online

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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F. Scott Fitzgerald Tells His 11-Year-Old Daughter What to Worry About (and Not Worry About) in Life, 1933

in Letters, Literature | September 24th, 2013

f-scott-fitzgerald

Born 117 years ago today in St. Paul, Min­neso­ta, F. Scott Fitzger­ald, that some­what louche denizen—some might say inventor—of the “Jazz Age,” has been immor­tal­ized as the ten­der young man we see above: Prince­ton dropout, writer of The Great Gats­by, boozy com­pan­ion to beau­ti­ful South­ern belle flap­per Zel­da Sayre. Amidst all the glam­or­iza­tion of his best and worst qual­i­ties, it’s easy to for­get that Fitzger­ald was also the father of a daugh­ter, Frances Scott Fitzger­ald, who went on to have her own suc­cess­ful career as a writer. Unlike the chil­dren of some of Fitzgerald’s con­tem­po­raries, Frances thrived, which must be some tes­ta­ment to her father’s par­ent­ing (and to Zelda’s as well, though she alleged­ly hoped, like Daisy Buchanan, that her daugh­ter would become a “beau­ti­ful lit­tle fool”).

We get more than a hint of Fitzgerald’s father­ly char­ac­ter in a won­der­ful lit­tle let­ter that he sent to her in August of 1933, when Frances was away at sum­mer camp. Fitzger­ald, renowned for his extremes, coun­sels an almost Epi­cure­an mid­dle way—distilling, per­haps, hard lessons learned dur­ing his decline in the thir­ties (which he wrote of can­did­ly in “The Crack Up”). He con­cludes with a list of things for his daugh­ter to wor­ry and not wor­ry about. It’s a very touch­ing mis­sive that I look for­ward to shar­ing with my daugh­ter some day. I’ll have my own advice and sil­ly in-jokes for her, but Fitzger­ald pro­vides a very wise lit­er­ary sup­ple­ment. Below is the full let­ter, pub­lished in the New York Times in 1958. The typos, we might assume, are all sic, giv­en Fitzgerald’s pen­chant for such errors:

AUGUST 8, 1933
LA PAIX RODGERS’ FORGE
TOWSON, MATYLAND

DEAR PIE:

I feel very strong­ly about you doing duty. Would you give me a lit­tle more doc­u­men­ta­tion about your read­ing in French? I am glad you are hap­py– but I nev­er believe much in hap­pi­ness. I nev­er believe in mis­ery either. Those are things you see on the stage or the screen or the print­ed page, they nev­er real­ly hap­pen to you in life.

All I believe in in life is the rewards for virtue (accord­ing to your tal­ents) and the pun­ish­ments for not ful­fill­ing your duties, which are dou­bly cost­ly. If there is such a vol­ume in the camp library, will you ask Mrs. Tyson to let you look up a son­net of Shake­speare’s in which the line occurs Lilies that fes­ter smell far worse than weeds…

I think of you, and always pleas­ant­ly, but I am going to take the White Cat out and beat his bot­tom hard, six times for every time you are imper­ti­nent. Do you react to that?…

Half-wit, I will con­clude. Things to wor­ry about:

Wor­ry about courage
Wor­ry about clean­li­ness
Wor­ry about effi­cien­cy
Wor­ry about horse­man­ship…
Things not to wor­ry about:
Don’t wor­ry about pop­u­lar opin­ion
Don’t wor­ry about dolls
Don’t wor­ry about the past
Don’t wor­ry about the future
Don’t wor­ry about grow­ing up
Don’t wor­ry about any­body get­ting ahead of you
Don’t wor­ry about tri­umph
Don’t wor­ry about fail­ure unless it comes through your own fault
Don’t wor­ry about mos­qui­toes
Don’t wor­ry about flies
Don’t wor­ry about insects in gen­er­al
Don’t wor­ry about par­ents
Don’t wor­ry about boys
Don’t wor­ry about dis­ap­point­ments
Don’t wor­ry about plea­sures
Don’t wor­ry about sat­is­fac­tions
Things to think about:
What am I real­ly aim­ing at?
How good am I real­ly in com­par­i­son to my con­tem­po­raries in regard to:
(a) Schol­ar­ship
(b) Do I real­ly under­stand about peo­ple and am I able to get along with them?
© Am I try­ing to make my body a use­ful intru­ment or am I neglect­ing it?

With dear­est love,

Relat­ed Con­tent:

F. Scott Fitzger­ald Cre­ates a List of 22 Essen­tial Books, 1936

“Noth­ing Good Gets Away”: John Stein­beck Offers Love Advice in a Let­ter to His Son (1958)

Read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Sto­ry “May Day,” and Near­ly All of His Oth­er Work, Free Online

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Recipes of Iconic Authors: Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath, Roald Dahl, the Marquis de Sade & More

in Books, Food & Drink, K-12, Literature | September 24th, 2013

dahl-kitkat

It comes as no sur­prise that Roald Dahl, author of Char­lie and the Choco­late Fac­to­ry, pos­sessed a sweet tooth. Hav­ing daz­zled young read­ers with visions of Cav­i­ty-Fill­ing Caramels, Ever­last­ing Gob­stop­pers, and snozzber­ry-fla­vored wall­pa­per, Dahl’s can­dy of choice was the more pedes­tri­an Kit-Kat bar. In addi­tion to savor­ing one dai­ly (a lux­u­ry lit­tle Char­lie Buck­et could but dream of, pri­or to win­ning that most gold­en of tick­ets) he invent­ed a frozen con­fec­tion called “Kit-Kat Pud­ding.”

The orig­i­nal recipe is, appro­pri­ate­ly, sim­ple enough for a child to make. Stack as many Kit-Kats as you like into a tow­er, using whipped cream for mor­tar, then shove the entire thing into the freez­er, and leave it there until sol­id.

Book pub­li­cist and self-described lit­er­ary fan­girl Nicole Vil­leneuve does him one bet­ter on Paper and Salt, a food blog devot­ed to the recipes of icon­ic authors. Her re-imag­ined and renamed Frozen Home­made Kit-Kat Cake adds bit­ter­sweet choco­late ganache, replac­ing Dahl’s beloved can­dy bars with high qual­i­ty wafer cook­ies. It remains a pret­ty straight-for­ward prepa­ra­tion, not quite as deca­dent as the Mar­quis de Sade’s Molten Choco­late Espres­so Cake with Pome­gran­ate, but sure­ly more to Dahl’s lik­ing than Jane Austen’s Brown But­ter Bread Pud­ding Tarts would have been. (The author once wrote that he pre­ferred his choco­late straight.)

Vil­leneuve spices her entry with his­tor­i­cal con­text and anec­dotes regard­ing ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry can­dy mar­ket­ing, Dahl’s hatred of the Cad­bury Crème Egg, and his dog’s han­ker­ing for Smar­ties. Details such as these make Paper and Salt, which fea­tures plen­ty of savories to go with the sweet, a deli­cious read even for non-cooks.

Mean­while, dessert chefs unwill­ing to source their ingre­di­ents from Rite-Aid’s Hal­loween aisle might try Sylvia Plath’s Lemon Pud­ding Cakes (“Is it taboo to write about bak­ing and Sylvia Plath?” Vil­leneuve won­ders), C.S. Lewis’ Cin­na­mon Bour­bon Rice Pud­ding, Willa Cather’s Spiced Plum Kolache or Wal­lace Stevens’ Coconut Caramel Gra­ham Cook­ies.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ernest Hemingway’s Favorite Ham­burg­er Recipe

Allen Ginsberg’s Per­son­al Recipe for Cold Sum­mer Borscht

How to Make Instant Ramen Com­pli­ments of Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion Direc­tor Hayao Miyza­ki

Ayun Hal­l­i­day  doc­u­ment­ed her own sweet tooth in Dirty Sug­ar Cook­ies: Culi­nary Obser­va­tions, Ques­tion­able Taste. Fol­low her @AyunHallliday

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John Coltrane’s Handwritten Outline for His Masterpiece A Love Supreme

in Jazz, Music | September 23rd, 2013

The great jazz sax­o­phone play­er John Coltrane was born 87 years ago today. To mark the occa­sion we present this rare doc­u­ment from the Smith­so­ni­an’s Nation­al Muse­um of Amer­i­can His­to­ry: Coltrane’s hand­writ­ten out­line of his ground­break­ing jazz com­po­si­tion A Love Supreme.

Record­ed in Decem­ber of 1964 and released in 1965, A Love Supreme is Coltrane’s per­son­al dec­la­ra­tion of his faith in God and his aware­ness of being on a spir­i­tu­al path. “No road is an easy one,” writes Coltrane in a prayer at the bot­tom of his own lin­er notes for the album, “but they all go back to God.”

If you click the image above and exam­ine a larg­er copy of the man­u­script, you will notice that Coltrane has writ­ten the same sen­ti­ment at the bot­tom of the page. “All paths lead to God.” The piece is made up of a pro­gres­sion of four suites. The names for each sec­tion are not on the man­u­script, but Coltrane even­tu­al­ly called them “Acknowl­edge­ment,” “Res­o­lu­tion,” “Pur­suance” and “Psalm.”

In the man­u­script, Coltrane writes that the “A Love Supreme” motif should be “played in all keys togeth­er.” In the record­ing of “Acknowl­edge­ment,” Coltrane indeed repeats the basic theme near the end in all keys, as if he were con­scious­ly exhaust­ing every path. As jazz his­to­ri­an Lewis Porter, author of John Coltrane: His Life and Music, tells NPR in the piece below:

Coltrane more or less fin­ished his impro­vi­sa­tion, and he just starts play­ing the “Love Supreme” motif, but he changes the key anoth­er time, anoth­er time, anoth­er time. This is some­thing very unusu­al. It’s not the way he usu­al­ly impro­vis­es. It’s not real­ly impro­vised. It’s some­thing that he’s doing. And if you actu­al­ly fol­low it through, he ends up play­ing this lit­tle “Love Supreme” theme in all 12 pos­si­ble keys. To me, he’s giv­ing you a mes­sage here.

In sec­tion IV of the man­u­script, for the part lat­er named “Psalm,” Coltrane writes that the piece is a “musi­cal recita­tion of prayer by horn,” and is an “attempt to reach tran­scen­dent lev­el with orches­tra ris­ing har­monies to a lev­el of bliss­ful sta­bil­i­ty at the end.” Indeed, in the same NPR piece which you can lis­ten to below, Rev. Fran­zo Wayne King of the Saint John Coltrane African Ortho­dox Church in San Fran­cis­co describes how his con­gre­ga­tion one day dis­cov­ered that Coltrane’s play­ing cor­re­sponds direct­ly to his prayer at the bot­tom of the lin­er notes.

In addi­tion to Porter and King, NPR’s Eric West­er­velt inter­views pianist McCoy Tyn­er, the last sur­viv­ing mem­ber of Coltrane’s quar­tet. The 13-minute piece, “The Sto­ry of ‘A Love Supreme,’ ” is a fas­ci­nat­ing overview of one of the great mon­u­ments of jazz.

Relat­ed con­tent:

John Coltrane’s ‘Giant Steps’ Ani­mat­ed

Watch John Coltrane and His Great Quin­tet Play ‘My Favorite Things’ (1961)

‘The Sound of Miles Davis’: Clas­sic 1959 Per­for­mance with John Coltrane

John Coltrane’s Naval Reserve Enlist­ment Mugshot (1945)

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Frida Kahlo Writes a Personal Letter to Georgia O’Keeffe After O’Keeffe’s Nervous Breakdown (1933)

in Art, Letters | September 23rd, 2013

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fridatoGeorgia

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Click for larg­er image

Impor­tant twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry painters, as every stu­dent of art his­to­ry learns, did­n’t tend to sail smooth­ly through exis­tence. Those even a lit­tle inter­est­ed in famed Mex­i­can self-por­traitist Fri­da Kahlo have heard much about the tra­vails both roman­tic and phys­i­cal she endured in her short life. But in this less­er-known instance, anoth­er artist suf­fered, and Kahlo offered the solace. Avail­able to view from Yale’s Bei­necke Rare Book & Man­u­script Library, we have here a let­ter Kahlo sent to Geor­gia O’Ke­effe, painter of blos­soms and south­west Amer­i­can land­scapes (and more besides), on March 1st, 1933. At that time, O’Ke­effe, who the year before had strug­gled and failed to com­plete a mur­al project for Radio City Music Hall on time, lived through the after­math of a ner­vous break­down which had hos­pi­tal­ized her (diag­no­sis: “psy­choneu­ro­sis”), sent her to no less remote a locale than Bermu­da to recu­per­ate, and pre­vent­ed her from paint­ing again until 1934.

Kahlo’s let­ter, sent from Detroit where her mural­ist hus­band Diego Rivera had tak­en a com­mis­sion for 27 fres­coes at the Insti­tute of the Arts, runs as fol­lows:

Geor­gia,

Was won­der­ful to hear your voice again. Every day since I called you and many times before months ago I want­ed to write you a let­ter. I wrote you many, but every one seemed more stu­pid and emp­ty and I torn them up. I can’t write in Eng­lish all that I would like to tell, espe­cial­ly to you. I am send­ing this one because I promised it to you. I felt ter­ri­ble when Sybil Brown told me that you were sick but I still don’t know what is the mat­ter with you. Please Geor­gia dear if you can’t write, ask Stieglitz to do it for you and let me know how are you feel­ing will you ? I’ll be in Detroit two more weeks. I would like to tell you every thing that hap­pened to me since the last time we saw each oth­er, but most of them are sad and you must­n’t know sad things now. After all I should­n’t com­plain because I have been hap­py in many ways though. Diego is good to me, and you can’t imag­ine how hap­py he has been work­ing on the fres­coes here. I have been paint­ing a lit­tle too and that helped. I thought of you a lot and nev­er for­get your won­der­ful hands and the col­or of your eyes. I will see you soon. I am sure that in New York I will be much hap­pi­er. If you still in the hos­pi­tal when I come back I will bring you flow­ers, but it is so dif­fi­cult to find the ones I would like for you. I would be so hap­py if you could write me even two words. I like you very much Geor­gia.

Frie­da

“Clear­ly Kahlo hoped for a deep­er friend­ship, or per­haps more, with O’Ke­effe, when she and Diego went to New York a few weeks lat­er,” writes Sharyn Rohlf­sen Udall in Carr, O’Ke­effe, Kahlo: Places of Their Own. “From there, she wrote to a friend on 11 April (by which time O’Ke­effe had gone to Bermu­da to con­va­lesce) that because of O’Ke­ef­fe’s ill­ness there had been no love­mak­ing between them that time. A boast­ful exag­ger­a­tion of their close­ness? Know­ing Kahlo’s predilec­tion for sex­u­al hyper­bole, this seems like­ly.”

via A Piece of Mono­logue, A Writer’s Rumi­na­tions

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Hand­writ­ing as Prac­ticed by Famous Artists: Geor­gia O’Keeffe, Jack­son Pol­lock, Mar­cel Duchamp, Willem de Koon­ing & More

The Real Geor­gia O’Keeffe: The Artist Reveals Her­self in Vin­tage Doc­u­men­tary Clips

Watch Mov­ing Short Films of Fri­da Kahlo and Diego Rivera at the “Blue House”

Fri­da Kahlo and Diego Rivera Vis­it Leon Trot­sky in Mex­i­co, 1938

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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