Music That Helps You Write: A Free Spotify Playlist of Your Selections

in Music, Writing | May 26th, 2014

AliceColtraneUC

What music puts you in the mood to write? At the moment, I have on Alice Coltrane’s “Bat­tle at Armaged­don” from her 1971 Uni­ver­sal Con­scious­ness, a work of psy­che­del­ic free jazz that makes my fin­gers skit­ter over the key­board and sends thoughts rac­ing through my mind. Should Coltrane’s mys­tic jazz counter the mood I want to sum­mon, I might find some­thing less syn­co­pat­ed, more lugubri­ous, omi­nous, melan­choly, serene, etc. (Per­haps Grouper’s atmos­pher­ic suite of reverb-drenched tone-poems The Man Who Died in His Boat.)

This inter­ac­tion between the ears, the fin­gers, and the writ­ing mind struck our inter­est back in 2012, and we put out a call to read­ers to sug­gest the best pieces of music to write by. Some read­ers found that silence made for the best—or only—accompaniment. Many more made rec­om­men­da­tions rang­ing from Miles Davis, to min­i­mal­ist com­pos­er Steve Reich, sitar mae­stro Ravi Shankar, the clas­sic Krautrock sound of Neu!, the dub reg­gae of King Tub­by, the vio­lin Sonatas of Bach, and the ambi­ent sound­scapes of Bri­an Eno. We took it upon our­selves to com­pile a sam­pling of your sug­ges­tions with Youtube videos at the time. Now we offer above a more portable Spo­ti­fy ver­sion of our “music to write by” playlist—over 13 hours of music. (Stream it above. Or find it online here. If you need to down­load Spo­ti­fy, grab the soft­ware here.) I’ve added Alice Coltrane, Grouper, and the beau­ti­ful …Until We Felt Red (2006) from one of my favorite gui­tarists, Kaki King.

I hope this playlist inspires you, or at least inspires you to make your own. While it could go on indef­i­nite­ly, the key to a good mix­tape is the art of judi­cious selec­tion. Please tell us in the com­ments, what would you absolute­ly have to add? What artists, com­posers, and musi­cians get you in the mood to write, help you shift tem­pos, or move you from major to minor keys while you com­pose, whether you write non­fic­tion, poet­ry, tech­ni­cal man­u­als, or the Great Amer­i­can What­ev­er? We’ll add many of your sug­ges­tions to the playlist over the next few days.

Relat­ed Con­tents:

The Best Music to Write By: Give Us Your Rec­om­men­da­tions

The Best Music to Write By, Part II: Your Favorites Brought Togeth­er in a Spe­cial Playlist

Lis­ten to Philip K. Dick’s Favorite Clas­si­cal Music: A Free, 11-Hour Playlist

62 Psy­che­del­ic Clas­sics: A Free Playlist Cre­at­ed by Sean Lennon

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

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Chicken Infinite: A 532 Page Avant-Garde Chicken Recipe

in Food & Drink | May 26th, 2014

chicken-recipe

Ear­li­er this year, Gre­gor Weich­brodt, a Ger­man col­lege stu­dent, took all of the geo­graph­ic stops men­tioned in Jack Ker­ouac’s On the Road, plugged them into Google Maps, and end­ed up with a 45-page man­u­al of dri­ving direc­tions, divid­ed into chap­ters par­al­lel­ing those of Kerouac’s orig­i­nal book. Now he’s back with a culi­nary mashup. Not mashed pota­toes, but mashed up recipes for cook­ing chick­en.

“Cook­ing recipes from the web have been col­lect­ed and mixed ran­dom­ly togeth­er,” and the result is Chick­en Infi­nite, an avant-garde recipe for mak­ing chick­en that spans some 532 pages. Accord­ing to Weich­brodt, Chick­en Infi­nite – avail­able as a free PDF or paper­back – “plays with the con­cept of instruc­tions itself” that you reg­u­lar­ly see on web­sites or in man­u­als. It’s a con­cept that cut-up artist William S. Bur­roughs could love. As for how Chick­en Infi­nite actu­al­ly tastes, some­one (with a lit­tle time and a sense of adven­ture) will have to let us know.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ernest Hemingway’s Favorite Ham­burg­er Recipe

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Weird, Sur­re­al­ist Video

Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Per­son­al, Hand­writ­ten Turkey-and-Stuff­ing Recipe

MIT Teach­es You How to Speak Ital­ian & Cook Ital­ian Cui­sine All at Once (Free Online Course)

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Read 4,500 Unpublished Pages of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary

in History, Literature | May 25th, 2014

MadameBovary

Why study a lan­guage like French? For the unpar­al­leled plea­sure, of course, of read­ing a beloved, respect­ed, and endur­ing nov­el like Madame Bovary in the orig­i­nal — or so lit­er­ar­i­ly inclined Fran­cophiles might argue. After all, they’d rhetor­i­cal­ly ask, can you real­ly say you’ve read the book if you haven’t actu­al­ly read the very same words Gus­tave Flaubert wrote? But now, lit­er­ar­i­ly inclined Fran­cophiles who also have an enthu­si­asm for the web (not an over­whelm­ing­ly large group, wags may point out) can insist that you haven’t real­ly read Madame Bovary unless you’ve read it all in the orig­i­nal: all 4,500 pages of it. Yes, the French do tend to write longer sen­tences than most, but that impres­sive length has less to do with a nation­al lit­er­ary style than with thor­ough­go­ing com­pletism, an impulse that brings togeth­er all of the 1856 nov­el­’s orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished pages as well as all of those cut, cen­sored, or revised, free to read online at bovary.fr.

“After a marathon effort of tran­scrip­tion by 130 vol­un­teers from all over the world, includ­ing a clean­ing lady, an oil prospec­tor and sev­er­al teenagers,” writes the Inde­pen­dent’s John Lich­field, “all the vari­ants of Gus­tave Flaubert’s mas­ter­piece can be con­sult­ed on a new web­site. This is believed to be the first time that the com­plete process of cre­ation, and pub­li­ca­tion, of a clas­sic nov­el has been made avail­able on the inter­net,” much less on a site that “con­tains not only the pub­lished text and images of the bare­ly leg­i­ble man­u­scripts but inter­ac­tive con­trols which allow the read­er to re-instate pas­sages cor­rect­ed or cut by Flaubert or his pub­lish­ers.” Despite this unprece­dent­ed­ly vast and acces­si­ble trove of Madame Bovary resources, strug­gles over the prop­er inter­pre­ta­tion of the once-scan­dalous nov­el will doubt­less only con­tin­ue, not only at the lev­el of just which word Flaubert intend­ed to write on the fourth draft of a par­tic­u­lar­ly cru­cial para­graph, but at the lev­el of whether to con­sid­er the whole book tragedy, com­e­dy, or some­thing in between. Enter the Madame Bovary Archive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

As Pride and Prej­u­dice Turns 200, Read Jane Austen’s Man­u­scripts Online

See F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Hand­writ­ten Man­u­scripts for The Great Gats­by, This Side of Par­adise & More

The Online Emi­ly Dick­in­son Archive Makes Thou­sands of the Poet’s Man­u­scripts Freely Avail­able

James Joyce Man­u­scripts Online, Free Cour­tesy of The Nation­al Library of Ire­land

Mary Shelley’s Hand­writ­ten Man­u­scripts of Franken­stein Now Online for the First Time

The Com­plete Works of Leo Tol­stoy Online: New Archive Will Present 90 Vol­umes for Free (in Russ­ian)

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

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Audio: The Beatles Play Their Final Concert at Candlestick Park, 1966

in Music | May 24th, 2014

Aside from a sur­prise send-off per­for­mance on the roof of their own Apple build­ing in 1969 (which you can see here), The Bea­t­les played their last offi­cial con­cert on August 29th, 1966 at Can­dle­stick Park in San Fran­cis­co before mov­ing on to make their most icon­ic stu­dio albums, then split­ting up three years lat­er. Know­ing it would be their final show, the band brought a cam­era onstage to take pho­tos of the crowd and them­selves. Paul McCart­ney asked the band’s press offi­cer Tony Bar­row to record the con­cert on a hand-held tape recorder. Bar­row described the atmos­phere as an “end of term spir­it,” even if “it wasn’t a spec­tac­u­lar occa­sion […] noth­ing like Shea Sta­di­um.” His rec­ol­lec­tion might seem strange, but we should keep in mind that the band had been tour­ing inces­sant­ly, play­ing mas­sive shows to are­nas packed with scream­ing fans. The Can­dle­stick Park con­cert by con­trast had large sec­tions of emp­ty seats, with only 25,000 tick­ets sold in a sta­di­um with a 42,500 seat capac­i­ty.

Bar­row record­ed the show, then, as he recalls, made one copy and locked the oth­er away:

Back in Lon­don I kept the con­cert cas­sette under lock and key in a draw­er of my office desk, mak­ing a sin­gle copy for my per­son­al col­lec­tion and pass­ing the orig­i­nal to Paul for him to keep. Years lat­er my Can­dle­stick Park record­ing re-appeared in pub­lic as a boot­leg album. If you hear a boot­leg ver­sion of the final con­cert that fin­ish­es dur­ing Long Tall Sal­ly it must have come either from Paul’s copy or mine, but we nev­er did iden­ti­fy the music thief!

Who­ev­er it was, we have that per­son to thank for the record­ing above. The audio qual­i­ty is what might be expect­ed from a hand­held recorder in a huge sta­di­um con­cert, but the his­toric val­ue of the doc­u­ment is ines­timable. See the com­plete track­list below and read more about that final show at The Bea­t­les Bible.

01 — Rock And Roll Music [0:00]

02 — She’s A Woman [1:40]

03 — If I Need­ed Some­one [4:53]

04 — Day Trip­per [7:50]

05 — Baby’s In Black [10:58]

06 — I Feel Fine [13:43]

07 — Yes­ter­day [16:24]

08 — I Wan­na Be Your Man [19:10]

09 — Nowhere Man [21:48]

10 — Paper­back Writer [24:36]

11 — Long Tall Sal­ly [27:20]

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les’ Rooftop Con­cert: The Last Gig Filmed in Jan­u­ary 1969

The Bea­t­les: Live at Shea Sta­di­um, 1965

Watch All of The Bea­t­les’ His­toric Appear­ances on The Ed Sul­li­van Show, 50 Years Ago

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

 

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NPR Launches Database of Best Commencement Speeches Ever

in Graduation Speech, Life | May 23rd, 2014

best grad speeches npr

NPR has cre­at­ed a brand new com­mence­ment speech data­base, “an inspi­ra­tion machine full of wise and fun­ny words going back to 1774.” You can search the data­base by name, school, date or theme. Take a spin and you will find speech­es by Adri­enne Rich at Dou­glass Col­lege (1977), the Dalai Lama at Tulane (2013), David Fos­ter Wal­lace at Keny­on Col­lege (2005), J.K. Rowl­ing at Har­vard  (2008), Jill Abram­son at Wake For­est (2014), Joseph Brod­sky at U. of Michi­gan (1988), Ray Brad­bury at Cal­tech (2000) and much more. Most of the speech­es are pre­sent­ed in text for­mat, some in video.

On NPR’s blog, they’ve high­light­ed some of the key take­aways from the long his­to­ry of com­mence­ment speech­es: Be kind, dream, remem­ber his­to­ry, embrace fail­ure, don’t give up, etc.  Right above, you can see NPR’s new ani­ma­tion fea­tur­ing for­mer Clin­ton and Oba­ma speech­writer Jon Lovett at Pitzer Col­lege’s com­mence­ment.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Wear Sun­screen”: The Sto­ry Behind the Com­mence­ment Speech That Kurt Von­negut Nev­er Gave

Dis­si­dent Poet Joseph Brod­sky Gives Six Life Tips to Col­lege Grads (1988)

‘This Is Water’: Com­plete Audio of David Fos­ter Wallace’s Keny­on Grad­u­a­tion Speech (2005)

Meryl Streep Gives Grad­u­a­tion Speech at Barnard

Neil Gaiman Gives Grad­u­ates 10 Essen­tial Tips for Work­ing in the Arts

David Byrne’s Grad­u­a­tion Speech Offers Trou­bling and Encour­ag­ing Advice for Stu­dents in the Arts

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Edgy Bible Study: Jim Jarmusch & Neil Young Read The Old Testament

in Film, Music | May 23rd, 2014

Jim Jar­musch, that gor­geous­ly coiffed doyen of cin­e­mat­ic cool, made movies slow and under­stat­ed at a time when Hol­ly­wood increas­ing­ly cranked out flicks that were quick, slick and vac­u­ous.

From his ground­break­ing, huge­ly influ­en­tial sec­ond fea­ture Stranger Than Par­adise (1984), Jar­musch made a string of movies filled with lacon­ic down-and-out hip­ster, clever nar­ra­tive eli­sions and great music. Jar­musch was a vocal­ist for the No Wave band The Del Byzan­teens and his affin­i­ty for musi­cians is clear in his movies. Tom Waits played lead in Down By Law, Clash front­man Joe Strum­mer had a major role in Mys­tery Train and his omnibus movie Cof­fee and Cig­a­rettes fea­tured Iggy Pop, the White Stripes and a good chunk of the Wu Tang Clan. (See our pre­vi­ous post: Jim Jar­musch: The Art of the Music in His Films.)

So it sur­prised pret­ty much nobody when Jar­musch came out with the con­cert doc­u­men­tary Year of the Horse in 1997, about rock god Neil Young and his peren­ni­al band Crazy Horse. Young pre­vi­ous­ly record­ed the haunt­ing sound­track for Jarmusch’s psy­che­del­ic West­ern mas­ter­piece Dead Man (1995) and appar­ent­ly they hit it off. Jar­musch fol­lowed Crazy Horse on their 1996 tour and the result was a messy, ram­bling work that mir­rored the rough, ram­bling music of Crazy Horse. Jar­musch shot much of it in Super 8mm film stock and then blew it up to 35mm. For much of the film, espe­cial­ly dur­ing the con­cert sequences, you get the sense of watch­ing a Seu­rat paint­ing in the mid­dle of a jam ses­sion.

The movie didn’t do well com­mer­cial­ly. Roger Ebert, for one, hat­ed the movie with a white-hot pas­sion. But there were moments in the film that are pret­ty great. One, which you can see above, shows Jar­musch and Young hav­ing a dead­pan con­ver­sa­tion about the Bible.

The clip opens in 1978 when Young has been but­ton­holed by some kook who says that he’s Jesus. Just before he ducks out of the con­ver­sa­tion Young quips to the would-be prophet, “hope you make it this time. Last time was rough.” Cut to 1996; Jar­musch and Young are in the back of a tour bus and may or may not be high. Their con­ver­sa­tion, how­ev­er, is def­i­nite­ly stony. It wouldn’t be out of place in one of Jarmusch’s fic­tion films either. Young states, “The Bible is quite a book… What’s the old tes­ta­ment?” The film­mak­er responds, “The Old Tes­ta­ment is before Christ… It’s Moses and all that. And it’s when God is real­ly pissed all the time.” Jar­musch then reads a par­tic­u­lar­ly gory pas­sage from the Book of Ezekiel to illus­trate his point.

Below you can watch a video of Young and Jar­musch talk­ing about how they came to col­lab­o­rate with each oth­er.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jim Jar­musch: The Art of the Music in His Films

Unseen Scenes from Jim Jarmusch’s 1986 Jail­break Movie Down By Law

Har­vard Presents Two Free Online Cours­es on the Old Tes­ta­ment

Free Online Reli­gion Cours­es

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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The First Children’s Picture Book, 1658’s Orbis Sensualium Pictus

in Books, History | May 22nd, 2014

I’ve heard a fair few new par­ents ago­niz­ing about what chil­dren’s books to admit into the fam­i­ly canon. Many of the same names keep com­ing up: 1947’s Good­night Moon, 1969’s The Very Hun­gry Cater­pil­lar, 1977’s Every­one Poops — clas­sics, all. Odd­ly, I’ve nev­er heard any of them men­tion the ear­li­est known chil­dren’s book, 1658’s Orbis Sen­su­al­i­um Pic­tus, or The World of Things Obvi­ous to the Sens­es Drawn in Pic­tures. “With its 150 pic­tures show­ing every­day activ­i­ties like brew­ing beer, tend­ing gar­dens, and slaugh­ter­ing ani­mals,” writes Charles McNa­ma­ra at The Pub­lic Domain review, the Orbis looks “imme­di­ate­ly famil­iar as an ances­tor of today’s children’s lit­er­a­ture. This approach cen­tered on the visu­al was a break­through in edu­ca­tion for the young. [ … ] Unlike trea­tis­es on edu­ca­tion and gram­mat­i­cal hand­books, it is aimed direct­ly at the young and attempts to engage on their lev­el.” In oth­er words, its author, Czech-born school reformer John Come­nius, accom­plish­es that still-rare feat of writ­ing not down to chil­dren, but straight at them — albeit in Latin.

EarliestChildrensBook

The Orbis holds not just the sta­tus of the first chil­dren’s book, but the first megahit in chil­dren’s pub­lish­ing, receiv­ing trans­la­tions in a great many lan­guages and becom­ing the most pop­u­lar ele­men­tary text­book in Europe. It opens with a sen­tence that, in McNa­ma­ra’s words, “would seem pecu­liar in today’s children’s books: ‘Come, boy, learn to be wise.’ We see above a teacher and stu­dent in dia­logue, the for­mer hold­ing up his fin­ger and sport­ing a cane and large hat, the lat­ter lis­ten­ing in an emo­tion­al state some­where between awe and anx­i­ety. The stu­dent asks, ‘What doth this mean, to be wise?’ His teacher answers, ‘To under­stand right­ly, to do right­ly, and to speak out right­ly all that are nec­es­sary.’ ” This leads into some­thing like “an ear­ly ver­sion of ‘Old Mac­Don­ald Had a Farm,’ ” lessons on “the philo­soph­i­cal and the invis­i­ble,” “thir­ty-five chap­ters on the­ol­o­gy, ele­ments, plants, and ani­mals,” and final­ly, an “exten­sive dis­cus­sion” of reli­gion which ends with “an admo­ni­tion not to go out into the world at all.” After read­ing the Orbis, embed­ded in full at the top of this post, you can judge for your­self whether it belongs on the shelf. Per­haps you could file it along­side Richard Scar­ry’s Busy­town books?

orbitus image

via The Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Inter­na­tion­al Children’s Dig­i­tal Library Offers Free eBooks for Kids in Over 40 Lan­guages

The Epis­te­mol­o­gy of Dr. Seuss & More Phi­los­o­phy Lessons from Great Children’s Sto­ries

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

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Neil deGrasse Tyson Puts Bill Gates’ Wealth into Funny Perspective

in Business, Random | May 22nd, 2014

Astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson has a way of putting things into per­spec­tive. Usu­al­ly he’s look­ing at where we — our plan­et, our civ­i­liza­tion — sit in rela­tion­ship to the larg­er cos­mos. But, in this clip record­ed at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton in 2011, he’s help­ing us wrap our head around some­thing equal­ly unfath­omable and seem­ing­ly infi­nite: Bill Gates’ big pile of mon­ey.

via Red­dit

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

Carl Sagan Writes a Let­ter to 17-Year-Old Neil deGrasse Tyson (1975)

Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains Why He’s Uncom­fort­able Being Labeled an ‘Athe­ist’

Free Online Physics Cours­es

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