Watch Moebius and Miyazaki, Two of the Most Imaginative Artists, in Conversation (2004)

The worlds so thor­ough­ly imag­ined by the French com­ic artist Jean Giraud, bet­ter known as Moe­bius, and the Japan­ese ani­ma­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki, imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nized the world over by his fam­i­ly name alone, could have arisen from no oth­er artis­tic minds. It stands to rea­son not only that appre­ci­a­tors of one would appre­ci­ate the oth­er, but that the two men would hold each oth­er’s work in high regard. “Japan­ese ani­ma­tion is impres­sive,” Moe­bius once said to Miyaza­ki as the two expressed their mutu­al appre­ci­a­tion. “I real­ly think it is the best in the world, and Miyaza­k­i’s work is top in Japan.”

“Moe­bius first dis­cov­ered Miyaza­k­i’s work in 1986, when his son Julien (then a school­boy) showed him a pirate copy of a video con­tain­ing a title­less, author­less, and undubbed ani­mat­ed fea­ture,” writes Dani Cav­al­laro in The Ani­me Art of Hayao Miyaza­ki. “The French artist was instant­ly seduced by the film’s graph­ic vig­or and tech­ni­cal inven­tive­ness but took it to be the one-off accom­plish­ment of an unfamed ani­ma­tor. When he even­tu­al­ly dis­cov­ered that the film’s name was Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind and that its cre­ator’s name was Hayao Miyaza­ki, Moe­bius endeav­ored to delve deep­er into the Japan­ese ani­ma­tor’s oeu­vre and to pub­licly voice his admi­ra­tion.”

And Miyaza­ki turns out to have drawn inspi­ra­tion from Moe­bius when he focused on ani­ma­tion. Miyaza­ki, who began as a com­ic artist him­self, remem­bers dis­cov­er­ing Moe­bius through Arzach, his series of word­less visu­al sto­ries of a hero who rides a ptero­dactyl through oth­er­word­ly and for­bid­ding­ly sub­lime land­scapes. “It was a big shock,” says Miyaza­ki. “Not only for me. All man­ga authors were shak­en by this work. Unfor­tu­nate­ly when I dis­cov­ered it, I already had a con­sol­i­dat­ed style. So I could­n’t use his influ­ence to enrich my draw­ing. Though, even today, I think he has an awe­some sense of space. I direct­ed Nau­si­caä under Moe­bius’ influ­ence.”

In 2004, the exhi­bi­tion Miyazaki/Moebius pre­sent­ed brought them togeth­er in Paris. Cav­al­laro describes it as “a panoram­ic sur­vey of the two artists’ careers through 300 works includ­ing water­col­ors sto­ry­boards, cels and con­cept designs, the­mat­i­cal­ly arranged, drawn from their per­son­al col­lec­tions,” includ­ing a draw­ing of Nau­si­caä by Moe­bius and one of Arzach by Miyaza­ki. They also sat down there for the con­ver­sa­tion record­ed in the video above. “The 21st cen­tu­ry is a tricky time,” says Miyaza­ki. “Our future isn’t clear. We need to re-exam­ine many things we’ve tak­en for grant­ed, whether it’s our com­mon sense or our way of think­ing.” The sheer imag­i­na­tive pow­er of artists like the both of them con­tin­ues to show us the way for­ward.

You can read tran­scripts of their record­ed con­ver­sa­tions here and here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In Search of Mœbius: A Doc­u­men­tary Intro­duc­tion to the Inscrutable Imag­i­na­tion of the Late Com­ic Artist Mœbius

French Stu­dent Sets Inter­net on Fire with Ani­ma­tion Inspired by Moe­bius, Syd Mead & Hayao Miyaza­ki

Moe­bius Gives 18 Wis­dom-Filled Tips to Aspir­ing Artists (1996)

Watch Hayao Miyaza­ki Ani­mate the Final Shot of His Final Fea­ture Film, The Wind Ris­es

Watch Ground­break­ing Com­ic Artist Mœbius Draw His Char­ac­ters in Real Time

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Say Goodbye to Leonard Cohen Through Some of His Best-Loved Songs: “Hallelujah,” “Suzanne” and 235 Other Tracks

Anoth­er epi­taph for anoth­er fall­en star, anoth­er beloved icon, anoth­er bril­liant musi­cian who was also a bril­liant human being. I do not want to tell you what you already know, that Leonard Cohen died last night at age 82. Cohen, it seems, accept­ed it, just as David Bowie accept­ed his death, and both poured their accep­tance into one final record. Will we talk about You Want It Dark­er in the same awed tones as David Bowie’s Black­star—as a know­ing last let­ter of mixed hope and despair, a cryp­tic time cap­sule that opens a lit­tle bit more as the months ahead wear on?

If you are the deal­er, I’m out of the game

If you are the heal­er, it means I’m bro­ken and lame

If thine is the glo­ry then mine must be the shame

You want it dark­er

We kill the flame

.… I’m ready, my lord

No mat­ter what he had in mind, we can­not but see these lines now as a last tes­ta­ment. Cohen not only faced his own mor­tal­i­ty, but this year lost his long­time lover and muse Mar­i­anne Ihlen to can­cer. “I think I will fol­low you soon,” he wrote to her just before her death. “You Want It Dark­er” ties togeth­er the per­son­al, the polit­i­cal, the spir­i­tu­al, and the lit­er­ary in a prophet­ic lament, weav­ing his strug­gle into all of ours. There are no answers, but “There’s a lul­la­by for suf­fer­ing,” Cohen writes, then warns, “And a para­dox to blame.” The com­pres­sion of these lines belies a tremen­dous depth of reli­gious and philo­soph­i­cal sen­ti­ment, the weight—it feels in Cohen’s last album—of the world.

But then this describes the music he made 30 years ago. And 50 years ago. “Cohen’s songs are death-haunt­ed,” writes David Rem­nick, “but then they have been since his ear­li­est vers­es.” He released his first album in 1967, fol­lowed two years lat­er by Songs from a Room, the hal­lowed doc­u­ment of some of his best-loved songs: “Bird on the Wire,” “Sto­ry of Isaac,” “Tonight Will Be Fine,” and “The Par­ti­san.” Cohen did not write that last one, and yet, though he “is often incor­rect­ly cred­it­ed as the com­pos­er of the song,” writes Alex Young at Con­se­quence of Sound, “he is cer­tain­ly respon­si­ble for its sur­vival.”

Cohen uni­ver­sal­izes the orig­i­nal French ver­sion; “the Eng­lish lyrics con­tain no ref­er­ences to France or the Nazi occu­pa­tion.” It spoke direct­ly to the bro­ken par­ti­sans in both France and the U.S. post-1968, a year very much like this one, wracked with vio­lence, upheaval, tragedy, and resis­tance. Few song­writ­ers have been able to con­sis­tent­ly address the irra­tional pas­sion, vio­lence, and almost crush­ing deter­mi­na­tion of so much human expe­ri­ence with as much wis­dom as Cohen, even if he down­played what Rem­nick calls “the mys­ter­ies of cre­ation” in his work, telling the New York­er edi­tor in one of his final inter­views last month, “I have no idea what I am doing.”

Yet, almost no song­writer has inspired so much vol­u­bil­i­ty from Bob Dylan, who spoke to Rem­nick at length about the fine intri­ca­cies of Cohen’s “coun­ter­point lines.” “His gift or genius,” said Dylan, “is in his con­nec­tion to the music of the spheres.” Cohen’s lyri­cal sophis­ti­ca­tion chart­ed his het­ero­dox embrace of Judaism and Zen Bud­dhism, and his fas­ci­na­tion with Chris­tian­i­ty. But before he arrived in New York as a “musi­cal novice” at thir­ty-two and became a mys­ti­cal folk trou­ba­dour, he was a high­ly-regard­ed and con­tro­ver­sial poet and nov­el­ist, a “bohemi­an with a cush­ion” from a Mon­tre­al Jew­ish fam­i­ly “both promi­nent and cul­ti­vat­ed.” He even had a doc­u­men­tary about him made in 1965.

Cohen began pub­lish­ing poet­ry in col­lege and put out his first col­lec­tion at 22, then moved to the Greek island of Hydra, where he met Mar­i­anne and pub­lished sev­er­al more col­lec­tions and two nov­els. Lat­er while liv­ing in Lon­don, he wrote to his pub­lish­er about his desire to write for “inner-direct­ed ado­les­cents, lovers in all degree of anguish, dis­ap­point­ed Pla­ton­ists, pornog­ra­phy-peep­ers, hair-hand­ed monks and Popists.” (His one­time lover Joni Mitchell dis­missed him as a “boudoir poet.”) Cohen more than achieved this aim as a song­writer, doing as much, per­haps, as Nico—whom he once pined for and maybe part­ly imitated—to inspire 80s Goths and New Roman­tics.

The dark eroti­cism in his work did not recede when, “frus­trat­ed by poor book sales,” writes Rolling Stone, “Cohen vis­it­ed New York in 1966 to inves­ti­gate the city’s robust folk-rock scene.” There, under the encour­age­ment of Judy Collins, he “quick­ly became the songwriter’s song­writer of choice for artists like Collins, James Tay­lor, Willie Nel­son and many oth­ers.” His first hit, “Suzanne,” above, vivid­ly imag­ines Renais­sance love scenes and echoes with the refrain “her per­fect body,” while also imbu­ing its fleet­ing moments with the depth of sad­ness Cohen’s spa­cious bari­tone con­tained. Lat­er albums like the Phil Spec­tor-pro­duced (and unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly loud) Death of a Ladies’ Man treat with sneer­ing irony his “unbri­dled sex­u­al­i­ty and bru­tal voyeurism.”

Cohen looked unflinch­ing­ly and with monk­ish inten­si­ty at his own excess­es and weak­ness, and at ours, and saw them, trag­ic and beau­ti­ful, as our only strengths. “There is a crack in every­thing,” he sang in 1992’s “Anthem”—live in Lon­don below—“that’s how the light gets in.” No trib­ute can leave out his most beloved and most cov­ered song—one of the most cov­ered and beloved songs ever writ­ten— “Hal­lelu­jah.” From its best-known Jeff Buck­ley ver­sion in 1994 to Rufus Wain­wright’s and count­less oth­ers, the song instant­ly con­jures grav­i­tas and stirs deep wells of emo­tion in the sec­u­lar and reli­gious alike. First released in 1984 on Cohen’s album Var­i­ous Posi­tions, it attract­ed lit­tle atten­tion at first.

His ver­sion lacks the high gospel dra­ma of many inter­pre­ta­tions, despite the back­ing gospel choir, but his lop­ing bar­room deliv­ery and lounge-pop back­ing music work in hyp­not­ic dis­so­nance. It’s a song that took him five years to write. (Mal­colm Glad­well has a whole pod­cast ded­i­cat­ed to the writ­ing of the song.) “He draft­ed dozens of vers­es,” writes Rem­nick, around 80, “and then it was years before he set­tled on a final ver­sion.” Dylan per­formed the song in the late eight­ies, “as a roughshod blues.” In con­ver­sa­tion with Rem­nick, Dylan paused his very detached eval­u­a­tion of Cohen’s tech­ni­cal genius to remark it’s “the point-blank I‑know-you-bet­ter-than-you-know-your­self aspect of the song [that] has plen­ty of res­o­nance for me.” I think we’ll find that to be true of Leonard Cohen the more we unpack his aus­tere, sen­su­al, pro­found­ly lyri­cal-in-the-most-ancient-of-ways body of work.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mal­colm Glad­well on Why Genius Takes Time: A Look at the Mak­ing of Elvis Costello’s “Depor­tee” & Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah”

Ladies and Gen­tle­men… Mr. Leonard Cohen: The Poet-Musi­cian Fea­tured in a 1965 Doc­u­men­tary

Leonard Cohen Recounts “How I Got My Song,” or When His Love Affair with Music Began

The Poet­ry of Leonard Cohen Illus­trat­ed by Two Short Films

Rufus Wain­wright and 1,500 Singers Sing Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah”

Leonard Cohen Reads The Great World War I Poem, “In Flan­ders Fields”

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

Watch the Celebrated Ballerina Anna Pavlova Perform “The Dying Swan” (1925)

Pre­pare my swan cos­tume.

— alleged last words of bal­le­ri­na Anna Pavlo­va, as report­ed by her hus­band

The Inter­net sug­gests that swans are fair­ly tough spec­i­mens, quick to hiss and flap at any YouTu­ber unwise enough to vio­late their per­son­al space with a video cam­era.

The cel­e­brat­ed bal­le­ri­na Anna Pavlo­va (1881–1931) paints a dif­fer­ent pic­ture in her sig­na­ture piece, The Dying Swan.

Chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Mikhail Fokine cre­at­ed the four minute solo in 1905 at Pavlova’s request, draw­ing on her admi­ra­tion for some res­i­dent swans in a Leningrad pub­lic park and Alfred, Lord Ten­nyson’s poem “The Dying Swan.”

It was per­haps a hap­py acci­dent that he had just learned how to play Camille Saint-Saëns’ Le Cygne from Le Car­naval des Ani­maux on his man­dolin. Per­formed on cel­lo, as orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed, it sup­plies a mood of gor­geous melan­choly with which to observe the tit­u­lar char­ac­ter’s en pointe death throes.

Fokine’s descrip­tion of the work’s cre­ation in Dance Mag­a­zine’s August 1931 issue speaks to the rig­or of these prac­ti­tion­ers and their art form:

It was almost an impro­vi­sa­tion. I danced in front of her [Pavlo­va], she direct­ly behind me. Then she danced and I walked along­side her, curv­ing her arms and cor­rect­ing details of pos­es. Pri­or to this com­po­si­tion, I was accused of bare­foot­ed ten­den­cies and of reject­ing toe danc­ing in gen­er­al. The Dying Swan was my answer to such criticism…The dance is tech­ni­cal­ly more dif­fi­cult than it may appear. The dancer moves con­stant­ly using  dif­fer­ent bour­rees. The feet must be beau­ti­ful, express­ing a trem­bling. All paus­es in sus-sous must show legs brought to one point. The arms and the back work inde­pen­dent­ly of the feet which con­tin­ue to move reg­u­lar­ly.

The archival footage from 1925, above, con­veys what Fokine’s words cannot—the deep emo­tion for which this par­tic­u­lar inter­preter was known. It’s a vis­cer­al expe­ri­ence to watch this bro­ken ani­mal fight­ing for its sur­vival, quiv­er­ing and heav­ing, before crum­pling at last. (A pity that this ver­sion cuts off so abrupt­ly… that final note should linger.)

Pavlo­va per­formed The Dying Swan around 4000 times over the course of her career, nev­er sick­en­ing of it, or of the beasts who inspired it. Swans pop­u­lat­ed a small pond at her Eng­lish coun­try home. You can wit­ness her fond­ness for them, below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 82-Year-Old Igor Stravin­sky Con­duct The Fire­bird, the Bal­let Mas­ter­piece That First Made Him Famous (1965)

Watch an Avant-Garde Bauhaus Bal­let in Bril­liant Col­or, the Tri­adic Bal­let First Staged by Oskar Schlem­mer in 1922

Bal­let Dancers Do Their Hard­est Moves in Slow Motion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

An Animated Version of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner Made of 12,597 Watercolor Paintings

Three years ago Swedish artist Anders Ram­sell cre­at­ed this 35 minute con­densed ver­sion of Blade Run­ner, frame by frame, using water­col­ors. Blade Run­ner: The Aquarelle Edi­tion con­tains 12,597 impres­sion­is­tic works on water­logged artist paper that togeth­er present, if not a faith­ful rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Rid­ley Scott’s film, then a remem­brance of the film.

It’s as if you boot­ed up a repli­cant film fan and had them try to recon­struct Blade Run­ner from mem­o­ry. (Ram­sell him­self calls it a “para­phrase” of the film.) It’s rec­og­niz­able, but due to the light­ness and fuzzy lines of water­col­or, there’s also a mag­ic to these images. (This is also due to the small size of each frame, 1.5 x 3 cm.)

The film is a jump for­ward from Ramsell’s oth­er works. Before 2011, he was dab­bling in var­i­ous media: nudes in ink on can­vas, abstract acrylic splotch­es, sur­re­al draw­ings that explore hors­es and preg­nan­cy. Div­ing into Blade Run­ner and the amaz­ing amount of work to pro­duce this film did the trick. Ram­sell has tak­en on this tech­nique as wor­thy of fur­ther explo­ration and made a new­er film, Gen­der­ness, which explores trans­sex­u­al­i­ty, and fea­tures a nar­ra­tion by none oth­er than Rut­ger Hauer, who decid­ed to work with Ram­sell after see­ing, Blade Run­ner: The Aquarelle Edi­tion. Watch it above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Blade Run­ner Sketch­book Fea­tures The Orig­i­nal Art of Syd Mead & Rid­ley Scott (1982)

Blade Run­ner is a Waste of Time: Siskel & Ebert in 1982

Wes Ander­son Movie Sets Recre­at­ed in Cute, Minia­ture Dio­ra­mas

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

When Franz Kafka Invented the Answering Machine (1913)

kafka-young

We’ve all had the expe­ri­ence, punc­tu­at­ed by inter­minable wait­ing, of cir­cling over and over again through some enor­mous com­pa­ny’s auto­mat­ic tele­phone answer­ing sys­tem. Whether or not it counts as gen­uine­ly “Kafkaesque” may be up for debate, but we do have some evi­dence that the tech­nol­o­gy itself, or at least the idea of it, does indeed trace back to the author of The Meta­mor­pho­sis and The Tri­al him­self. This comes out in Kaf­ka biog­ra­ph­er Rein­er Stach’s new book of pho­tographs, let­ters, and oth­er dis­cov­er­ies called Is that Kaf­ka? 99 Finds.

“Although Kaf­ka was timid and skep­ti­cal in his inter­ac­tions with the lat­est tech­ni­cal gadgets—particularly when they inter­vened in social communication—he was always fas­ci­nat­ed by peo­ple who knew how to han­dle these devices as a mat­ter of course,” writes Stach in an excerpt at the Paris Review. “That includ­ed his fiancée Felice Bauer, who worked in the Berlin offices of Carl Lind­ström AG, where she was in charge of mar­ket­ing for the ‘par­lo­graph,’ a dic­ta­tion machine.” It must have required no great leap of Kafka’s for­mi­da­ble imag­i­na­tion to dream up “a cross between a tele­phone and a par­lo­graph,” which he described in a 1913 let­ter to Bauer:

The inven­tion of a cross between a tele­phone and a par­lo­graph, it real­ly can’t be that hard. Sure­ly by the day after tomor­row you’ll be report­ing to me that the project is already a suc­cess. Of course that would have an enor­mous impact on edi­to­r­i­al offices, news agen­cies, etc. Hard­er, but doubt­less pos­si­ble as well, would be a com­bi­na­tion of the gramo­phone and the tele­phone. Hard­er because you can’t under­stand a gramo­phone at all, and a par­lo­graph can’t ask it to speak more clear­ly. A com­bi­na­tion of the gramo­phone and the tele­phone wouldn’t have such great sig­nif­i­cance in gen­er­al either, but for peo­ple like me, who are afraid of the tele­phone, it would be a relief. But then peo­ple like me are also afraid of the gramo­phone, so we can’t be helped at all. By the way, it’s a nice idea that a par­lo­graph could go to the tele­phone in Berlin, call up a gramo­phone in Prague, and the two of them could have a lit­tle con­ver­sa­tion with each oth­er. But my dear­est the com­bi­na­tion of the par­lo­graph and the tele­phone absolute­ly has to be invent­ed.

The mod­ern answer­ing machine took some time to devel­op, attain­ing its first com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful form, the Elec­tron­ic Sec­re­tary, in 1949, a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry after Kafka’s death. But alas, unbe­knownst to him, some­one had also beat­en him to it when first he thought it up. “The com­bi­na­tion of a tele­phone and a dic­ta­tion machine had already been invent­ed and patent­ed — includ­ing the func­tions of an answer­ing machine,” writes Stach, cit­ing the engi­neer Ernest O. Kum­berg’s inven­tion of some­thing called the “Tele­phono­graph” in 1900. This might seem like just one more dis­ap­point­ment in a life full of them, but remem­ber: just over a cen­tu­ry on, when voice­mail and even new­er tech­nolo­gies have replaced the answer­ing machine, nobody describes any­thing with the word “Kum­ber­gian.”

You can pick up a copy of Is that Kaf­ka? 99 Finds here.

via The Paris Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Find Works by Kaf­ka in our Free eBooks col­lec­tion

Four Franz Kaf­ka Ani­ma­tions: Enjoy Cre­ative Ani­mat­ed Shorts from Poland, Japan, Rus­sia & Cana­da

Franz Kafka’s Kafkaesque Love Let­ters

The Art of Franz Kaf­ka: Draw­ings from 1907–1917

The Ani­mat­ed Franz Kaf­ka Rock Opera

What Does “Kafkaesque” Real­ly Mean? A Short Ani­mat­ed Video Explains

Down­load Jim Rockford’s Answer­ing Machine Mes­sages as MP3s

Mark Twain’s Patent­ed Inven­tions for Bra Straps and Oth­er Every­day Items

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Young Frank Zappa Plays the Bicycle on The Steven Allen Show (1963)

Artists in tur­bu­lent times often must resort to extreme mea­sures to com­pen­sate for the gen­er­al state of cul­tur­al dis­or­der. How can one be heard over the sounds of civ­il unrest? Dada and sur­re­al­ist artists adopt­ed an arch­ly gib­ber­ish music hall idiom dur­ing World War I. Amidst the tumult of the 60s, some avant-gardists like Frank Zap­pa used more pop­ulist means, an osten­si­bly rock and roll for­mat and image, as a vehi­cle for his influ­en­tial clas­si­cal-prog-jazz.

Like the first Dadaists, how­ev­er, Zap­pa was a phys­i­cal artist. He start­ed small in the ear­ly six­ties, if you can call an appear­ance on the Steve Allen Show small. The act cer­tain­ly seems so at first. A young Zap­pa, clean-shaven with a well-tai­lored suit and dap­per hair­cut, appears solo on Allen’s show. He’s tac­i­turn at first dur­ing the inter­view, admit­ting that he can play gui­tar, vibes, bass, and drums. He has cho­sen, how­ev­er, to help the audi­ence recov­er what he sug­gests is a child­hood delight, play­ing the bicy­cle. “How long have you been play­ing bike, Frank?” Allen asks. “About two weeks,” says Zap­pa, get­ting his first big laugh.

Zap­pa also talks about an ear­ly, pre-Moth­ers of Inven­tion project, scor­ing the 1962 film The World’s Great­est Sin­ner, which he calls “the world’s worst movie.” The film, it turned out, didn’t air until 50 years lat­er (Mar­tin Scors­ese names it as a favorite). But the men­tion gives Zap­pa a chance to show off how much he knows about com­pos­ing for a 55-piece orches­tra. Allen seems unim­pressed, and remains so when Zap­pa begins his per­for­mance art. Then the gag strays into a Sal­vador Dali spoof via a John Cage per­for­mance, with Zap­pa as the weird, debonair straight man to Allen’s mouthy com­ic.

Zap­pa plays both the right-side-up and the upside-down bike, which involve dif­fer­ent tech­niques. Though it all, he keeps up the pat­ter of a sea­soned show­man, the direct­ness of a deter­mined band­leader, and a straight face. And per­haps that’s real­ly what’s on dis­play here—not the bicy­cle as a musi­cal instru­ment, but the phys­i­cal act of play­ing and con­duct­ing, using pre­cise move­ments and sequences to elic­it spe­cif­ic effects. For all the humor, there’s no rea­son not to think Zap­pa isn’t com­plete­ly seri­ous about all of this, as it expands into the kind of orga­nized chaos only he could so mas­ter­ly orches­trate.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Frank Zappa’s Exper­i­men­tal Adver­tise­ments For Luden’s Cough Drops, Rem­ing­ton Razors & Port­land Gen­er­al Elec­tric

The Bizarre Time When Frank Zappa’s Entire­ly Instru­men­tal Album Received an “Explic­it Lyrics” Stick­er

Hear the Musi­cal Evo­lu­tion of Frank Zap­pa in 401 Songs

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

Hear “Weightless,” the Most Relaxing Song Ever Made, According to Researchers (You’ll Need It Today)

As I write this, it’s elec­tion night, and I do not need to tell you about the thick haze of fear in the air. I have already had a cou­ple friends ask me about resources for med­i­ta­tion and relax­ation. I’m no expert, but I have looked into var­i­ous ways to deal with stress and hyper­ten­sion. Med­i­ta­tion tops my list (and those of many men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als). At a very close sec­ond place: Music.

We’ve brought you many med­i­ta­tion resources in the past (see here, here, here, and here). And we’ve point­ed you toward four hours of free orig­i­nal med­i­ta­tion music to help you “not pan­ic,” cour­tesy of Moby. We’ve also brought you music to help you sleep, from com­pos­er Max Richter and many oth­ers. Now, we bring you what “a team of sci­en­tists and sound ther­a­pists” claim is “the most relax­ing song ever,” as Elec­tron­ic Beats informs us. You can hear the track, “Weightless”—by Man­ches­ter band Mar­coni Union and Lyz Coop­er, founder of the British Acad­e­my of Sound Therapy—above.

The song’s relax­ing prop­er­ties sup­pos­ed­ly work “by using spe­cif­ic rhythms, tones, fre­quen­cies and inter­vals to relax the lis­ten­er,” writes Short­List. I’ve had it on repeat for an hour and will tes­ti­fy to its effi­ca­cy. So can 40 women who “found it to be more effec­tive at help­ing them relax than songs by Enya, Mozart and Cold­play.” In this exper­i­ment and oth­ers, says UK stress spe­cial­ist Dr. David Lewis, “Brain imag­ing stud­ies have shown that music works at a very deep lev­el with­in the brain, stim­u­lat­ing not only those regions respon­si­ble for pro­cess­ing sound but also ones asso­ci­at­ed with emo­tions.”

Emotions—fear, rage, and disgust—are run­ning wild nation­wide. Jus­ti­fi­able or not, they can wreak hav­oc on our men­tal and phys­i­cal health if we can’t find ways to relax. “Weight­less,” reports The Tele­graph, “induced a 65 per cent reduc­tion in over­all anx­i­ety and brought [study par­tic­i­pants] to a lev­el 35 per cent low­er than their usu­al rest­ing rates.” That’s no small change in atti­tude, but if you find this atmos­pher­ic track doesn’t do it for you, maybe try out some oth­er tunes from the research team’s top 10 list of most relax­ing (hear them all in the playlist above):

  1. Mar­coni Union and Lyz Coop­er – Weight­less
  2. Airstream – Elec­tra
  3. DJ Shah – Mel­lo­ma­ni­ac (Chill Out Mix)
  4. Enya – Water­mark
  5. Cold­play – Straw­ber­ry Swing
  6. Barcelona – Please Don’t Go
  7. All Saints – Pure Shores
  8. Adelev­Some­one Like You
  9. Mozart – Can­zonet­ta Sull’aria
  10. Cafe Del Mar – We Can Fly

And then, again, there’s Moby’s four hours of ambi­ent sounds, Max Richter’s eight-hour Sleep, the work of Ger­man ambi­ent com­pos­er Gas, and hun­dreds of oth­er supreme­ly relax­ing pieces of music to bring your stress lev­els down to man­age­able. Maybe keep some relax­ing music on hand for extra-stress­ful moments, and as always, don’t for­get to breathe.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Moby Lets You Down­load 4 Hours of Ambi­ent Music to Help You Sleep, Med­i­tate, Do Yoga & Not Pan­ic

Music That Helps You Sleep: Min­i­mal­ist Com­pos­er Max Richter, Pop Phe­nom Ed Sheer­an & Your Favorites

How a Good Night’s Sleep — and a Bad Night’s Sleep — Can Enhance Your Cre­ativ­i­ty

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

Is The Big Lebowski a Great Noir Film? A New Way to Look at the Coen Brothers’ Iconic Movie

The Big Lebows­ki, Joel and Ethan Coen’s sev­enth and most polar­iz­ing film, has raised every feel­ing in its view­ers from imme­di­ate and utter devo­tion to sim­ple puz­zle­ment. When some­one says “I don’t get it,” fans may find them­selves tempt­ed to quote Louis Arm­strong on the nature of jazz — but they’ll prob­a­bly quote Wal­ter, Don­ny, or the Dude him­self instead. The film’s very quota­bil­i­ty, longevi­ty, and ambi­gu­i­ty have enthralled some and frus­trat­ed oth­ers, sug­gest­ing that, as with any impor­tant work of art, you can see The Big Lebows­ki in a num­ber of dif­fer­ent ways. The Film School’d video essay above exam­ines one of those ways with the ques­tion, “Is The Big Lebows­ki a Film Noir?”

“We know film noir for its black-and-white cin­e­matog­ra­phy, grit­ty voiceovers, venet­ian blinds, detec­tives in trench coats, trou­bled dames, and femme fatales with legs that go all the way up,” says its nar­ra­tor, begin­ning in an imi­ta­tion of the mid-Atlantic accent so often heard in movies of the noir era. “But what if a film does­n’t imme­di­ate­ly qual­i­fy as film noir? What if that film uti­lizes all the major ele­ments, but car­ries a sar­don­ic tone that, at times, still takes itself very seri­ous­ly? What if that film does­n’t real­ly look like a film noir right away? What if, on the sur­face, that film appears to be an absur­dist ston­er com­e­dy about mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty, bowl­ing, and a stolen rug?”

We’ve cov­ered lists of the essen­tial ele­ments of film noir here at Open Cul­ture, and this video essay does a com­par­a­tive study, lin­ing aspects of The Big Lebows­ki against those of such clas­sics of the genre — or maybe move­ment, or maybe just fad — as The Big SleepTouch of EvilThe Big HeatD.O.A., and Mur­der My Sweet. Like those pic­tures, Lebows­ki also uses the much-pho­tographed city of Los Ange­les in a strik­ing­ly dif­fer­ent way from its con­tem­po­raries, and it pro­vides the Coen broth­ers a gold­en oppor­tu­ni­ty to indulge their skill for repur­pos­ing 20th-cen­tu­ry genre con­ven­tions (most recent­ly on dis­play in the 1951 Hol­ly­wood-set Hail, Cae­sar!).

The Big Lebows­ki is about an atti­tude, not a sto­ry,” wrote Roger Ebert , who also once drew up his own list of the rules of film noir, upon induct­ing The Big Lebows­ki into his pan­theon of great movies. “It’s easy to miss that, because the sto­ry is so urgent­ly pur­sued.” He could have said the same about the pic­tures in the core film noir canon, which you can kick back and catch up on from the com­fort of your own pad with our free film noir col­lec­tion. The Dude, and Ebert, would most cer­tain­ly abide.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

60 Free Film Noir Movies

The Essen­tial Ele­ments of Film Noir Explained in One Grand Info­graph­ic

The 5 Essen­tial Rules of Film Noir

Roger Ebert Lists the 10 Essen­tial Char­ac­ter­is­tics of Noir Films

The Two Gen­tle­men of Lebows­ki: What If The Bard Wrote The Big Lebows­ki?

The Big Lebows­ki Reimag­ined as a Clas­sic 8‑Bit Video Game

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.