Henry Miller Makes a List of “The 100 Books That Influenced Me Most”

in Books, Literature | April 20th, 2015

Henry_Miller_1940

Image licensed under Pub­lic Domain via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Take a sur­vey of a hun­dred writ­ers from the mid- to late-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry about the books that influ­enced them most and you’re bound to find plen­ty of Hen­ry Miller tucked in with the Vic­to­ri­ans, the Rus­sians, and the Beats. The Brook­lyn-raised author of such noto­ri­ous­ly banned nov­els as Trop­ic of Capri­corn and Trop­ic of Can­cer has long appealed to con­tem­po­rary writ­ers not only because of his frank explo­rations of sex­u­al­i­ty and oth­er taboo sub­jects but also because—like so many avant-garde and not so avant-garde writ­ers after him—he had the audac­i­ty to present his own life and loves as lit­er­ary mate­r­i­al. Long before the mem­oir became the dom­i­nant force in Amer­i­can let­ters, with all of the atten­dant con­tro­ver­sies about truth-telling in the form, Miller blend­ed fact and fic­tion in ways that made it hard to tell where one end­ed and the oth­er began.

Miller’s rep­u­ta­tion for liv­ing his fiction—or fic­tion­al­iz­ing his life—may have led many read­ers with only a pass­ing famil­iar­i­ty with his books to regard him as a kind of shame­less self-mythol­o­giz­er. The char­ac­ter­i­za­tion isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly wrong, but it only cap­tures part of the sto­ry. Like every seri­ous writer, Miller was also a seri­ous read­er, and his work is as much informed by the books he loved as by the women he loved.

Miller freely acknowl­edged the lit­er­ary rela­tion­ships in his life, the authors who exert­ed influ­ence on his work and whose styles and ideas he bor­rowed and made his own. He wrote an entire book on the sub­ject, The Books in My Life, which Maria Popo­va at Brain Pick­ings describes as “a sin­gu­lar lens on his approach to read­ing.” In the book, Miller’s “cen­tral con­cern is a kind of anato­my of influ­ence,” Popo­va writes, tak­ing a phrase from lit­er­ary crit­ic Harold Bloom.

In his med­i­ta­tion on “his sources of cre­ative spark,” Miller dis­cuss­es at length his ideas about edu­ca­tion, and its many fail­ings. And in the book’s appendix—as if antic­i­pat­ing our cur­rent mania for lists—he makes a com­pre­hen­sive record of “The 100 Books that Influ­enced Me Most.” See Miller’s com­plete list below, and read The Books in My Life free at the Open Library. A fair num­ber of the books on Miller’s list can be found in our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

1 Ancient Greek Drama­tists
2 Ara­bi­an Nights (for chil­dren)
3 Eliz­a­bethan Play­wrights (except­ing Shake­speare)
4 Euro­pean Play­wrights of 19th Cen­tu­ry
5 Greek Myths and Leg­ends
6 Knights of King Arthur’s Court
7 Abèlard, Pierre, The Sto­ry of My Mis­for­tunes
8 Alain-Fournier, The Wan­der­er
9 Ander­sen, Hans Chris­t­ian, Fairy Tales
10 Anony­mous, Diary of a Lost One
11 Balzac, Hon­oré de, Seraphi­ta
12 Balzac, Hon­oré de, Louis Lam­bert
13 Bel­lamy, Edward, Look­ing Back­ward
14 Bel­loc, Hilaire, The Path to Rome
15 Blavatsky, Mme. H. P., The Secret Doc­trine
16 Boc­cac­cio, Gio­van­ni, The Decameron
17 Bre­ton, André, Nad­ja
18 Bronte, Emi­ly, Wuther­ing Heights
19 Bul­wyer-Lyt­ton, Edward, Last Days of Pom­peii
20 Car­roll, Lewis, Alice in Won­der­land
21 Céline, Louis-Fer­di­nand, Jour­ney to the End of the Night
22 Celli­ni, Ben­venu­to, Auto­bi­og­ra­phy
23 Cen­drars, Blaise, Vir­tu­al­ly the com­plete works
24 Chester­ton, G.K., Saint Fran­cis of Assisi
25 Con­rad, Joseph, His works in gen­er­al
26 Coop­er James Fen­i­more, Leather­stock­ing Tales
27 Defoe, Daniel, Robin­son Cru­soe
28 De Ner­val, Gérard, His works in gen­er­al
29 Dos­toievsky, Feodor, His works in gen­er­al
30 Dreis­er, Theodore, His works in gen­er­al
31 Duhamel, Geoges, Salavin Series
32 Du Mau­ri­er, George, Tril­by
33 Dumas, Alexan­der, The Three Mus­ke­teers
34 Eck­er­mann, Johann, Con­ver­sa­tions with Goethe
35 Eltzbach­er, Paul, Anar­chism
36 Emer­son, Ralph Wal­do, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Men
37 Fab­re, Hen­ri, His works in gen­er­al
38 Fau­re, Elie, The His­to­ry of Art
39 Fenol­losa, Ernest, The Chi­nese Writ­ten Char­ac­ter as a Medi­um for Poet­ry
40 Gide, André, Dos­toievs­ki
41 Giono, Jean, Refus d’Obéis­sance
42 Giono, Jean, Que ma joie domeure
43 Giono, Jean, Jean le Bleu
44 Grimm Broth­ers, Fairy Tales
45 Gutkind, Erich, The Absolute Col­lec­tive
46 Hag­gard, Rid­er, She
47 Ham­sun, Knut, His works in gen­er­al
48 Hen­ty, G. A., His works in gen­er­al
49 Hesse, Her­mann, Sid­dhartha
50 Hud­son, W. H., His works in gen­er­al
51 Hugo, Vic­tor, Les Mis­érables
52 Huys­mans, Joris Karl, Against the Grain
53 Joyce, James, Ulysses
54 Key­ser­ling, Her­mann, South Amer­i­can Med­i­ta­tions
55 Kropotkin, Peter, Mutu­al Aid
56 Lao-tse, Tao Teh Ch’ing
57 Latzko, Andreas, Men in War
58 Long, Haniel, Inter­lin­ear to Cabeza de Vaca
59 M, Gospel of Ramakr­ish­na
60 Machen, Arthur, The Hill of Dreams
61 Maeter­linck, Mau­rice, His works in gen­er­al
62 Mann, Thomas, The Mag­ic Moun­tain
63 Menck­en, H. L., Prej­u­dices
64 Niet­zsche, His works in gen­er­al
65 Nijin­sky, Diary
66 Nord­hoff & Hall, Pit­cairn Island
67 Nos­tradamus, The Cen­turies
68 Peck, George Wilbur, Peck­’s Bad Boy
69 Per­ci­val, W. O., William Blake’s Cir­cle of Des­tiny
70 Petro­n­ius, The Satyri­con
71 Plutarch, Lives
72 Powys, John Cow­per, Visions and Revi­sions
73 Prescott, William H., Con­quest of Mex­i­co
74 Prescott, William H., Con­quest of Peru
75 Proust, Mar­cel, Remem­brance of Things Past
76 Rabelais, Gar­gan­tua and Pan­ta­gru­el
77 Rim­baud, Jean-Arthur, His works in gen­er­al
78 Rol­land, Romain, Jean-Christophe
79 Rol­land, Romain, Prophets of the New India
80 Rud­h­yar, Dane, Astrol­o­gy of Per­son­al­i­ty
81 Saltus, Edgar, The Impe­r­i­al Pur­ple
82 Scott, Sir Wal­ter, Ivan­hoe
83 Sienkiewicz, Hen­ry, Quo Vadis
84 Sike­lianos, Angh­e­los, Proanakrous­ma
85 Sin­nett, A. P., Eso­teric Bud­dhism
86 Spencer, Her­bert, Auto­bi­og­ra­phy
87 Spen­gler, Oswald, The Decline of the West
88 Strind­berg, August, The Infer­no
89 Suarès, Car­lo, Krish­na­mur­ti
90 Suzu­ki, Daisetz Teitaro, Zen Bud­dhism
91 Swift, Jonathan, Guil­liv­er’s Trav­els
92 Ten­nyson, Alfred, Idylls of the King
93 Thore­au, Hen­ry David, Civ­il Dis­obe­di­ence & Oth­er Essays
94 Twain, Mark, Adven­tures of Huck­le­ber­ry Finn
95 Van Gogh, Vin­cent, Let­ters to Theo
96 Wasser­mann, Jacob, The Mau­r­iz­ius Case (Tril­o­gy)
97 Weigall, Arthur, Akhna­ton
98 Welch, Gal­braith, The Unveil­ing of Tim­buc­too
99 Wer­fel, Franz, Star of the Unborn
100 Whit­man, Walt, Leaves of Grass

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leo Tol­stoy Cre­ates a List of the 50+ Books That Influ­enced Him Most (1891)

28 Impor­tant Philoso­phers List the Books That Influ­enced Them Most Dur­ing Their Col­lege Days

Stephen King Cre­ates a List of 96 Books for Aspir­ing Writ­ers to Read

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

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Yoda’s Long Lost Twin Found in a 14th Century Illuminated Manuscript

in Art, History, Sci Fi | April 18th, 2015

medieval yoda

In a new pic­ture book called Medieval Mon­sters, pub­lished by the British Library, his­to­ri­an Damien Kempf and art his­to­ri­an Maria L. Gilbert have gath­ered togeth­er illus­tra­tions that high­light the great mon­sters of the medieval world. Mon­sters were every­where, includ­ing “on the edges of man­u­script pages” and on “the fringes of maps.” The suc­ces­sor to Medieval Cats and Medieval Dogs, Medieval Mon­sters con­tains no short­age of fas­ci­nat­ing illus­tra­tions, includ­ing the one above. It looks remark­ably like Yoda, does­n’t it?

A British Library cura­tor told NPR, “The Yoda image comes from a 14th-cen­tu­ry man­u­script known as the Smith­field Dec­re­tals.”  “I’d love to say that it real­ly was Yoda, or was drawn by a medieval time trav­el­er.” But “it’s actu­al­ly an illus­tra­tion to the bib­li­cal sto­ry of Sam­son — the artist clear­ly had a vivid imag­i­na­tion!”

See more mon­sters at the British Library’s Medieval Man­u­scripts blog.

via NPR

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Medieval Cats Behav­ing Bad­ly: Kit­ties That Left Paw Prints … and Peed … on 15th Cen­tu­ry Man­u­scripts

Wear­able Books: In Medieval Times, They Took Old Man­u­scripts & Turned Them into Clothes

Won­der­ful­ly Weird & Inge­nious Medieval Books

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The Making of Star Wars As Told by C‑3PO & R2-D2: The First-Ever Documentary on the Film (1977)

in Film, Sci Fi | April 18th, 2015

The Earth, it seems, has only one tru­ly unlim­it­ed resource: enthu­si­asm for Star Wars. Not even The Phan­tom Men­ace, the deri­sion mag­net that opened the film series’ new­er tril­o­gy, made a seri­ous dent in our reserves. But did every­one who got togeth­er in the 1970s to make the very first Star Wars movie, from George Lucas on down the chain of com­mand, under­stand how deep a vein of fan­dom they had drilled into? The Mak­ing of Star Wars, a 1977 doc­u­men­tary on that beloved space opera-turned-cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non, will give you some idea.

Now that Star Wars has gen­er­at­ed such a uni­verse, if you like, of sup­ple­men­tary con­tent, one more 50-minute behind-the-scenes spe­cial might strike you as no great shakes. But when The Mak­ing of Star Wars appeared in ’77, it appeared as the first doc­u­men­tary about Star Wars ever. And it has much high­er ambi­tions than the aver­age pro­mo­tion­al short of the day, fea­tur­ing not only cast and crew inter­views but seg­ments on the (decid­ed­ly pre-CGI) effects tech­nol­o­gy employed in the pro­duc­tion.

Even the most ded­i­cat­ed Star Wars buffs will still find mate­r­i­al of inter­est here, includ­ing footage that nev­er made it into the picture’s the­atri­cal cut, and footage rein­tro­duced into 1997’s revamped “Spe­cial Edi­tion” of the orig­i­nal tril­o­gy but altered with CGI (anoth­er drain on sev­er­al generation’s Star Wars love). But many of us will watch The Mak­ing of Star Wars on one of its strengths alone: C‑3PO and R2-D2 host the whole thing. Could even those pre­ci­sion-engi­neered droids have fore­seen the thun­der­ous recep­tion that has met this year’s brand new teasers for Star Wars: The Force Awak­ens?

The Mak­ing of Star Wars is a can­di­date for our list of Free Online Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 285 Free Doc­u­men­taries Online.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Star Wars Bor­rowed From Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Great Samu­rai Films

Watch the Very First Trail­ers for Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back & Return of the Jedi (1976–83)

Joseph Camp­bell and Bill Moy­ers Break Down Star Wars as an Epic, Uni­ver­sal Myth

Hun­dreds of Fans Col­lec­tive­ly Remade Star Wars; Now They Remake The Empire Strikes Back

Fans Recon­struct Authen­tic Ver­sion of Star Wars, As It Was Shown in The­aters in 1977

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Martin Scorsese Makes a List of 85 Films Every Aspiring Filmmaker Needs to See

in Film | April 17th, 2015

Martin_Scorsese_Berlinale_2010

Image by “Sieb­bi,” Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Before the rise of insti­tu­tion­al film schools—ensconced in uni­ver­si­ty walls with all the for­mal­i­ty that entails—those seek­ing to learn the craft did so by appren­tic­ing them­selves to stu­dios and mas­ter direc­tors, and by watch­ing lots and lots of movies. If we take the exam­ple of some of the most inter­est­ing film­mak­ers work­ing today, this still may be the best way to become a film­mak­er. Wern­er Herzog’s Rogue Film School, for exam­ple, for­goes the trap­pings of class­rooms for a much more rough-and-tum­ble approach—and a direct con­fronta­tion with the medi­um. Kevin Smith dropped out of film school, as did Paul Thomas Ander­son, spurred on part­ly by a love of Ter­mi­na­tor 2. “My film­mak­ing edu­ca­tion,” revealed Ander­son, “con­sist­ed of find­ing out what film­mak­ers I liked were watch­ing, then see­ing those films.” It’s more or less how Quentin Taran­ti­no learned to make movies too.

You could hard­ly do better—if you’ve decid­ed to take this inde­pen­dent route toward a cin­e­mat­ic education—than appren­tice your­self under Mar­tin Scors­ese. Or at least find out what films he loves, and watch them all your­self.

Last year, we fea­tured a list of 39 for­eign films the estimable direc­tor of Taxi Dri­ver, Rag­ing Bull, Hugo, Good­fel­las (etc., etc., etc.) rec­om­mend­ed to a young film­mak­er. Today, we bring you a list of 85 films Scors­ese ref­er­enced in the course of a four-hour inter­view he gave to Fast Com­pa­ny. “Some of the movies he dis­cussed,” writes Fast­Co, “Oth­ers he just men­tioned. But the cumu­la­tive total reflects a life lived entire­ly with­in the con­fines of movie mak­ing.” Shoot on over to Fast Com­pa­ny to read Scorsese’s com­men­tary on each of the films below, and see an aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing ver­sion of his list over at MUBI as well.

Like I said, you could hard­ly do bet­ter.

  • Ace in the Hole
  • All that Heav­en Allows
  • Amer­i­ca, Amer­i­ca
  • An Amer­i­can in Paris
  • Apoc­a­lypse Now
  • Arsenic and Old Lace
  • The Bad and the Beau­ti­ful
  • The Band Wag­on
  • Born on the Fourth of July
  • Cape Fear
  • Cat Peo­ple
  • Caught
  • Cit­i­zen Kane
  • The Con­ver­sa­tion
  • Dial M for Mur­der
  • Do the Right Thing
  • Duel in the Sun
  • The Four Horse­men of the Apoc­a­lypse
  • Europa ’51
  • Faces
  • The Fall of the Roman Empire
  • The Flow­ers of St. Fran­cis
  • Force of Evil
  • Forty Guns
  • Ger­many Year Zero
  • Gil­da
  • The God­fa­ther
  • Gun Crazy
  • Health
  • Heaven’s Gate
  • House of Wax
  • How Green Was My Val­ley
  • The Hus­tler
  • I Walk Alone
  • The Infer­nal Cake­walk
  • It Hap­pened One Nght
  • Jason and the Arg­onauts
  • Jour­ney to Italy
  • Julius Cae­sar
  • Kansas City
  • Kiss Me Dead­ly
  • Klute
  • La Ter­ra Trema
  • The Lady From Shang­hai
  • The Leop­ard
  • Mac­beth
  • The Mag­ic Box
  • M*A*S*H
  • A Mat­ter of Life and Death
  • McCabe & Mrs. Miller
  • The Mes­si­ah
  • Mid­night Cow­boy
  • Mishi­ma
  • Deeds Goes to Town
  • Smith Goes to Wash­ing­ton
  • Nashville
  • Night and the City
  • One, Two, Three
  • Oth­el­lo
  • Paisa
  • Peep­ing Tom
  • Pick­up on South Street
  • The Play­er
  • The Pow­er and the Glo­ry
  • Stage­coach
  • Raw Deal
  • The Red Shoes
  • The Rise of Louis XIV
  • The Roar­ing Twen­ties
  • Roc­co and his Broth­ers
  • Rome, Open City
  • Secrets of the Soul
  • Sen­so
  • Shad­ows
  • Shock Cor­ri­dor
  • Some Came Run­ning
  • Strom­boli
  • Sullivan’s Trav­els
  • Sweet Smell of Suc­cess
  • Tales of Hoff­man
  • The Third Man
  • T‑Men
  • Touch of Evil
  • The Tri­al
  • Two Weeks in Anoth­er Town

via Fast­CoCre­ate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­tin Scors­ese Cre­ates a List of 39 Essen­tial For­eign Films for a Young Film­mak­er

Mar­tin Scors­ese Reveals His 12 Favorite Movies (and Writes a New Essay on Film Preser­va­tion)

Wes Anderson’s Favorite Films: Moon­struck, Rosemary’s Baby, and Luis Buñuel’s The Exter­mi­nat­ing Angel

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists His Favorite Films Since 1992

Aki­ra Kurosawa’s List of His 100 Favorite Movies

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

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Interactive Music Video Lets You Explore the Apartments on the Cover of Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti

in Animation, Creativity, Music | April 17th, 2015

Dig that heavy met­al / Under­neath your hood / Baby I can work all night / Believe I got the per­fect tools / Talkin’ bout love

Last Feb­ru­ary, Led Zep­pelin released a deluxe, re-mas­tered ver­sion of their sprawl­ing 1975 dou­ble album Phys­i­cal Graf­fi­ti, a record per­haps best known for the epic, orches­tral grandeur of the 8 1/2 minute “Kash­mir” (not to be out­done by the 11-minute “In My Time of Dying”). In an album full of styl­is­tic depar­tures and sol­id returns to form, one track, “Tram­pled Under Foot,” man­ages to be both, dri­ven by down-and-dirty blues and uptown 70s funk, cour­tesy of John Paul Jones’ Ste­vie Won­der-inspired organ groove. With lyrics Robert Plant him­self described as “raunchy,” the song—one of Plant’s favorites—may be the band’s most 70s-sound­ing. That’s not to say it’s dat­ed, only that it most per­fect­ly cap­tures the sound of the Amer­i­can street rep­re­sent­ed on the album cov­er, a shot of two adja­cent ten­e­ments on New York City’s St. Mark’s Place.

Room-10---Kitchen-Girls

Now, lis­ten­ers can enter those build­ings and tool around the apart­ments, cour­tesy of the inter­ac­tive video at the top of the post (view it in a larg­er for­mat here), which fea­tures a pre­vi­ous­ly unre­leased rough mix of the track called “Brandy & Coke.” Con­ceived and direct­ed by Hal Kirk­land, the video pulls togeth­er some of my favorite things—the peri­od design and styling of That ‘70s Show, the most inven­tive tricks of the music video age, a la Tom Pet­ty or Peter Gabriel, and of course, Zep—with the added 21st cen­tu­ry tech­nol­o­gy of online inter­ac­tiv­i­ty. Click the arrow keys while the video plays and you’re trans­port­ed from one vivid tableaux to anoth­er, some rep­re­sent­ing funky apart­ment scenes, oth­ers some­thing else entire­ly. The video also inte­grates footage from Zeppelin’s per­for­mance of the song at Earl’s Court in ’75.

Room-7---King-and-Queen

Clever ref­er­ences abound, like the nod to god­fa­ther of fan­ta­sy cin­e­ma Georges Méliès (above) and an allu­sion to the clas­sic MTV moon land­ing intro (below). Over­all, it’s an aston­ish­ing visu­al feast that hear­kens back to the very best in music video tech­nol­o­gy, a seem­ing­ly lost art that Kirk­land and com­pa­ny may sin­gle­hand­ed­ly res­ur­rect. See Kirkland’s site for more of his inter­net age music video cre­ations, includ­ing “Sour—Hibi No Neiro,” shot entire­ly on web­cams.

Room-14---Astronaut-Cockpit

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Led Zep­pelin Plays One of Its Ear­li­est Con­certs (Dan­ish TV, 1969)

Hear Led Zeppelin’s Mind-Blow­ing First Record­ed Con­cert Ever (1968)

Jim­my Page Describes the Cre­ation of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lot­ta Love”

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

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Watch Björk’s 6 Favorite TED Talks, From the Mushroom Death Suit to the Virtual Choir

in Architecture, Art, Biology, Design, Food & Drink, Music, Photography, TED Talks | April 17th, 2015

Björk_-_Hurricane_Festival

Image by Zach Klein

Singer-song­writer Björk, cur­rent­ly enjoy­ing a career ret­ro­spec­tive at the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art, cel­e­brat­ed TED’s bil­lionth video view with a playlist of six trea­sured TED Talks. What do her choic­es say about her?

In this talk, artist Jae Rhim Lee mod­els her Mush­room Death Suit, a kicky lit­tle snug­gy designed to decom­pose and reme­di­ate tox­ins from corpses before they leech back into the soil or sky. Despite Björk’s fond­ness for out­ré fash­ion, I’m pret­ty sure this choice goes beyond the mere­ly sar­to­r­i­al.

For more infor­ma­tion, or to get in line for a mush­room suit of your own, see the Infin­i­ty Bur­ial Project.

Con­tin­u­ing with the mush­room / fash­ion theme, Björk next turns to design­er Suzanne Lee, who demon­strates how she grows sus­tain­able tex­tiles from kom­bucha mush­rooms. The result­ing mate­r­i­al may var­i­ous­ly resem­ble paper or flex­i­ble veg­etable leather. It is extreme­ly recep­tive to nat­ur­al dyes, but not water repel­lent, so bring a non-kom­bucha-based change of clothes in case you get caught in the rain.

For more infor­ma­tion on Lee’s home­grown, super green fab­ric, vis­it Bio­Cou­ture.

Björk’s clear­ly got a soft spot for things that grow: mush­rooms, mush­room-based fab­ric, and now…building mate­ri­als? Pro­fes­sor of Exper­i­men­tal Archi­tec­ture Rachel Arm­strong’s plan for self-regen­er­at­ing build­ings involves pro­to­cols, or “lit­tle fat­ty bags” that behave like liv­ing things despite an absence of DNA. I’m still not sure how it works, but as long as the lit­tle fat­ty bags are not added to my own ever-grow­ing edi­fice, I’m down.

For more infor­ma­tion on what Dr. Arm­strong refers to as bot­tom up con­struc­tion (includ­ing a scheme to keep Venice from sink­ing) see Black Sky Think­ing.

Björk’s next choice takes a turn for the seri­ous… with games. Game Design­er Bren­da Romero began explor­ing the heavy duty emo­tion­al pos­si­bil­i­ties of the medi­um when her 9‑year-old daugh­ter returned from school with a less than nuanced under­stand­ing of the Mid­dle Pas­sage. The suc­cess of that exper­i­ment inspired her to cre­ate games that spur play­ers to engage on a deep­er lev­el with thorny his­tor­i­cal sub­jects. (The Trail of Tears required 50,000 indi­vid­ual red­dish-brown pieces).

Learn more about Romero’s ana­log games at The Mechan­ic is the Mes­sage.

Remem­ber those 50,000 indi­vid­ual pieces? As pho­tog­ra­ph­er Aaron Huey doc­u­ment­ed life on Pine Ridge Reser­va­tion, he was hum­bled by hear­ing him­self referred to as “wasichu,” a Lako­ta word that can be trans­lat­ed as “non-Indi­an.” Huey decid­ed not to shy away from its more point­ed trans­la­tion: “the one who takes the best meat for him­self.” His TED Talk is an impas­sioned his­to­ry les­son that begins in 1824 with the cre­ation of the Bureau of Indi­an Affairs and ends in an activist chal­lenge.

Proof that Björk is not entire­ly about the quirk.

See Huey’s pho­tos from the Nation­al Geo­graph­ic cov­er sto­ry, “In the Spir­it of Crazy Horse.”

Björk opts to close things on a musi­cal note with excerpts from com­pos­er Eric Whitacre’s “Lux Aurumque” and “Sleep” per­formed by a crowd­sourced vir­tu­al choir. Its members—they swell to 1999 for “Sleep”—record their parts alone at home, then upload them to be mixed into some­thing son­i­cal­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly greater than the sum of its parts.

Lis­ten to “Sleep” in its entire­ty here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Album Björk Record­ed as an 11-Year-Old: Fea­tures Cov­er Art Pro­vid­ed By Her Mom (1977)

A Young Björk Decon­structs (Phys­i­cal­ly & The­o­ret­i­cal­ly) a Tele­vi­sion in a Delight­ful Retro Video

Björk and Sir David Atten­bor­ough Team Up in a New Doc­u­men­tary About Music and Tech­nol­o­gy

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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David Chase Reveals the Philosophical Meaning of The Soprano’s Final Scene

in Life, Television | April 17th, 2015

Eight years after it aired, the final scene of the final episode of The Sopra­nos still has peo­ple guess­ing: What hap­pened when the screen sud­den­ly went black? Did Tony Sopra­no get whacked? Or did he live to see anoth­er qua­si-ordi­nary day? Could he real­ly die as Jour­ney sings, “Don’t Stop Believ­ing?”

In a new inter­view appear­ing on The Direc­tors Guild of Amer­i­ca web site, David Chase, cre­ator of The Sopra­nos, revis­its the mak­ing of the final scene. Chase does­n’t direct­ly answer the ques­tions about Tony’s fate. But he does give us some insight into the deep­er philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions raised in the scene (watch it above) and how much they’re bound up in the lyrics of Jour­ney’s sound­track. There’s some deep­er mean­ing in the small town girl and the city boy tak­ing “the mid­night train goin’ any­where”:

I love the tim­ing of the lyric when Carmela enters: ‘Just a small town girl livin’ in a lone­ly world, she took the mid­night train goin’ any­where.’ Then it talks about Tony: ‘Just a city boy,’ and we had to dim down the music so you did­n’t hear the line, ‘born and raised in South Detroit.’ The music cuts out a lit­tle bit there, and they’re speak­ing over it. ‘He took the mid­night train goin’ any­where.’ And that to me was [every­thing]. I felt that those two char­ac­ters had tak­en the mid­night train a long time ago. That is their life. It means that these peo­ple are look­ing for some­thing inevitable. Some­thing they could­n’t find. I mean, they did­n’t become mis­sion­ar­ies in Africa or go to col­lege togeth­er or do any­thing like that. They took the mid­night train going any­where. And the mid­night train, you know, is the dark train.

And there’s mean­ing packed in the idea of “Strangers wait­ing up and down the boule­vard.”

Cut­ting to Mead­ow park­ing was my way of build­ing up the ten­sion and build­ing up the sus­pense, but more than that I want­ed to demon­strate the lyrics of the song, which is street­lights, peo­ple walk­ing up and down the boule­vard, because that’s what the song is say­ing. ‘Strangers wait­ing.’ I want­ed you to remem­ber that is out there. That there are street­lights and peo­ple out there and strangers mov­ing up and down. It’s the stream of life, but not only that, it’s the stream of life at night. There’s that pic­ture called His­to­ry Is Made at Night [from 1937]. I love that title. And that kind of echoes in my head all the time.

But if you’re look­ing for the philo­soph­i­cal essence of the scene, then look no fur­ther than the mantra, “Don’t stop believin.’ ” That’s what it’s all about:

I thought the end­ing would be some­what jar­ring, sure. But not to the extent it was, and not a sub­ject of such dis­cus­sion. I real­ly had no idea about that. I nev­er con­sid­ered the black a shot. I just thought what we see is black. The ceil­ing I was going for at that point, the biggest feel­ing I was going for, hon­est­ly, was don’t stop believ­ing. It was very sim­ple and much more on the nose than peo­ple think. That’s what I want­ed peo­ple to believe. That life ends and death comes, but don’t stop believ­ing. There are attach­ments we make in life, even though it’s all going to come to an end, that are worth so much, and we’re so lucky to have been able to expe­ri­ence them. Life is short. Either it ends here for Tony or some oth­er time. But in spite of that, it’s real­ly worth it. So don’t stop believ­ing.

Read Chase’s com­plete account of the famous final scene here.

Thanks to Ted Mills for flag­ging this. Fol­low him at @TedMills.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and  share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

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Enter the Church of the SubGenius, the Parody Religion Backed by R. Crumb, David Byrne & Other Alt-Icons

in Comedy, Religion | April 16th, 2015

You may not know much about the Church of the Sub­Ge­nius, but you’ve def­i­nite­ly seen its prophet. The inten­sive­ly groomed, Ward Cleaveresque J. R. “Bob” Dobbs (below) began as a hum­ble piece of 1950s clip art and went on to become “a way of life to mil­lions… yet half of them don’t even know it.” Or so claims the sweep­ing, absur­di­ty-laced, son­i­cal­ly (and per­haps intel­lec­tu­al­ly) twist­ed nar­ra­tion of Arise! The Sub­Ge­nius, an “instruc­tion­al bar­rage video” put out by the Church in 1992 as the most potent dis­til­la­tion of its reli­gion-sat­i­riz­ing sen­si­bil­i­ty.

Arise-Church-SubGenius

The obses­sion with world­wide con­spir­a­cies, the impor­tance grant­ed to vora­cious con­sump­tion and “remix­ing” of pop cul­ture (vis­i­ble every­where in Arise!), the hard­line oppo­si­tion to work, the all-impor­tant and nev­er-defined qual­i­ty of “Slack,” the askew escha­tol­ogy: how much of the Church of the Sub­ge­nius’ doc­trine has remained mere par­o­dy reli­gion, and how much, since its found­ing in the late 1970s, have its “followers”—a group that includes such alt-icons as David Byrne, Robert Crumb, and Mark Mothersbaugh—come to con­sid­er as good as the real thing?

But what­ev­er legit­i­ma­cy this sur­pris­ing­ly long-run­ning post­mod­ern joke has attained, we can also view it, like all reli­gions, as a cul­tur­al move­ment. This approach rais­es its own ques­tions: how, exact­ly, did Dobbs’ pipe-clench­ing, father­ly yet sin­is­ter vis­age become one of the most rec­og­niz­able sub­cul­tur­al emblems of the 1980s and 1990s? You may nev­er learn the answer, just as you may nev­er get a han­dle on the entire­ty of the Church’s ever more labyrinthine and aggres­sive­ly pre­pos­ter­ous mythol­o­gy, but you’ll cer­tain­ly find it all strange­ly com­pelling in the attempt.

And even if Arise! The Sub­Ge­nius does­n’t recruit you into the Church of the Sub­Ge­nius’ ranks, you’ve got to respect what they’ve pre­dict­ed: not the end of the world, as much as they talk about it, but our cur­rent­ly thriv­ing 21st-cen­tu­ry cul­ture of media appro­pri­a­tion, recon­tex­tu­al­iza­tion, and absur­di­fi­ca­tion. If ever there were a reli­gion for the Youtube era, here it is. And if you find noth­ing nov­el in its char­ac­ter­is­tic ambiva­lence about what counts as seri­ous and what does­n’t, maybe the Church of the Sub­Ge­nius’ teach­ings have pen­e­trat­ed even deep­er into the zeit­geist than all those “Bob” stick­ers made us sus­pect.

via Net­work Awe­some

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 8 Clas­sic Cult Films for Free: Night of the Liv­ing Dead, Plan 9 from Out­er Space & More

When William S. Bur­roughs Joined Sci­en­tol­ogy (and His 1971 Book Denounc­ing It)

Mon­ty Python’s Life of Bri­an: Reli­gious Satire, Polit­i­cal Satire, or Blas­phe­my?

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma 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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