David Bowie Offers Advice for Aspiring Artists: “Go a Little Out of Your Depth,” “Never Fulfill Other People’s Expectations”

in Life, Music | January 10th, 2017

Jan­u­ary 10th, 2017–David Bowie died one year ago today. Revis­it­ing my own mem­o­ries of him, it so often seemed impos­si­ble that he could grow old, much less pass away, even as we all watched him age over the decades. He did it much bet­ter than most, that’s for sure, and grew into the role of elder states­man with incred­i­ble poise and grace, though he also didn’t let that role be his last one.

What else should we have expect­ed from the artist who wrote “Changes”—the defin­i­tive cre­ative state­ment on fac­ing time and mortality—at the age of 24, before he’d even achieved the inter­na­tion­al super­star­dom that Zig­gy Star­dust brought him? Bowie was always an old soul. “It’s not age itself,” he told the BBC in 2002. “Age doesn’t both­er me. So many of my heroes were old­er guys.… I embrace that aspect of it.” And so, in his lat­er years, he became an old­er guy hero to mil­lions.

In 1997, after his drum and bass-inspired Earth­ling, Bowie gave an inter­view in which he offered the time­less wis­dom to younger artists in the clip above:

Nev­er play to the gallery.… Nev­er work for oth­er peo­ple in what you do. Always remem­ber that the rea­son that you ini­tial­ly start­ed work­ing was that there was some­thing inside your­self that you felt that if you could man­i­fest in some way, you would under­stand more about your­self and how you co-exist with the rest of soci­ety.… I think it’s ter­ri­bly dan­ger­ous for an artist to ful­fill oth­er people’s expec­ta­tions.

It’s advice we’ve like­ly heard some ver­sion of before—perhaps even from one of Bowie’s own old­er-guy heroes, William S. Bur­roughs (here by way of Pat­ti Smith). But I’ve nev­er heard it stat­ed so suc­cinct­ly and with so much con­vic­tion and feel­ing. We nat­u­ral­ly asso­ciate David Bowie with art­ful inau­then­tic­i­ty, with a suc­ces­sion of masks. He encour­aged that impres­sion at every turn, even telling a grad­u­at­ing Berklee Col­lege of Music class in 1999, “it seemed that authen­tic­i­ty and the nat­ur­al form of expres­sion wasn’t going to be my forte.”

But in hind­sight, and espe­cial­ly in the rapt, posthu­mous atten­tion paid to Bowie’s final work, Black­star, it can seem that his embrace of pos­es was often itself a pose. Bowie has always been can­did, in var­i­ous moments of self-reflec­tion, about his mis­steps and excess­es. But not to have tak­en the risks he did, not to have placed him­self in uncom­fort­able sit­u­a­tions, would have meant impov­er­ish­ing his work. “The oth­er thing I would say,” he goes on, “is that if you feel safe in the area you’re work­ing in, you’re not work­ing in the right area. Always go a lit­tle fur­ther into the water than you feel you are capa­ble of being in. Go a lit­tle bit out of your depth. When you don’t feel that your feet are quite touch­ing the bot­tom, you’re just about in the right place to do some­thing excit­ing.”

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Gives Grad­u­a­tion Speech At Berklee Col­lege of Music: “Music Has Been My Door­way of Per­cep­tion” (1999)

The Sto­ry of Zig­gy Star­dust: How David Bowie Cre­at­ed the Char­ac­ter that Made Him Famous

Pat­ti Smith Shares William S. Bur­roughs’ Advice for Writ­ers and Artists

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

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Hear a 9,000 Year Old Flute—the World’s Oldest Playable Instrument—Get Played Again

in History, Music | January 10th, 2017

Clas­si­cal music enthu­si­asts seem to agree that the renew­al of inter­est in peri­od instru­ments made for a notice­able change in the sound of most, if not all, orches­tral per­for­mances. But does­n’t the repli­ca­tion and use of vio­ls, oph­i­clei­des, and fortepi­anos from the times of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart raise a curios­i­ty about what peo­ple used to make music gen­er­a­tions before them, and gen­er­a­tions before that? How ear­ly can we get into ear­ly music and still find tools to use in the 21st cen­tu­ry? Since the end of the 20th, we’ve had the same answer: about nine mil­len­nia.

“Chi­nese arche­ol­o­gists have unearthed what is believed to be the old­est known playable musi­cal instru­ment,” wrote Hen­ry Foun­tain in a 1999 New York Times arti­cle on the dis­cov­ery of “a sev­en-holed flute fash­ioned 9,000 years ago from the hol­low wing bone of a large bird.”

Those holes “pro­duced a rough scale cov­er­ing a mod­ern octave, begin­ning close to the sec­ond A above mid­dle C,” and the fact of this “care­ful­ly select­ed tone scale indi­cates that the Neolith­ic musi­cians may have been able to play more than sin­gle notes, but actu­al music.”

You can hear the haunt­ing sounds of this old­est playable musi­cal instru­ment known to man in the clip above. When would those pre­his­toric humans have heard it them­selves? Foun­tain quotes eth­no­mu­si­col­o­gist Fred­er­ick Lau as say­ing that these flutes “almost cer­tain­ly were used in rit­u­als,” per­haps “at tem­ple fairs, buri­als and oth­er rit­u­al­is­tic events,” and pos­si­bly even for “for per­son­al enter­tain­ment.” 9,000 years ago, one sure­ly took one’s enter­tain­ment where one could find it.

If this lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence has giv­en you a taste for the real oldies — not just the AM-radio but the his­to­ry-of-mankind sense — you can also hear in our archive the 43,000-year-old “Nean­derthal flute” (found only in frag­ments, but recon­struct­ed) as well as such ancient songs as 100 BC’s “Seik­i­los Epi­taph,” a com­po­si­tion by Euripi­des from a cen­tu­ry before that, and a 3,400-year-old Sumer­ian hymn known as the old­est song in the world, all of which rais­es an impor­tant ques­tion: what will the peo­ple of the year 11000 think when they unearth our DJ rigs, those arti­facts of so many of our own rit­u­al­is­tic events, and give them a spin?

You can get more infor­ma­tion on this ancient flute here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the “Seik­i­los Epi­taph,” the Old­est Com­plete Song in the World: An Inspir­ing Tune from 100 BC

What Ancient Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Hear a Recon­struc­tion That is ‘100% Accu­rate’

Hear the World’s Old­est Sur­viv­ing Writ­ten Song (200 BC), Orig­i­nal­ly Com­posed by Euripi­des, the Ancient Greek Play­wright

Lis­ten to the Old­est Song in the World: A Sumer­ian Hymn Writ­ten 3,400 Years Ago

Hear the World’s Old­est Instru­ment, the “Nean­derthal Flute,” Dat­ing Back Over 43,000 Years

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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How The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Changed Album Cover Design Forever

in Art, Music | January 10th, 2017

I am old­er than Evan Puschak, The Nerd­writer, one of a hand­ful who have mas­tered the online video essay. But I still find myself agree­ing with his take on the music video as most­ly unnec­es­sary and dis­tract­ing. At least at first. Then I get nos­tal­gic and remem­ber some of the videos of my youth, like, say The Cure’s “Pic­tures of You” or Boyz II Men’s “It’s So Hard to Say Good­bye to Yes­ter­day”—both bit­ter­sweet tracks about nostalgia—and I feel dif­fer­ent­ly. The video can have a pow­er­ful emo­tion­al pull on us. But its pow­er to sell music has per­haps nev­er matched that of the album cov­er, even after the death of the record store. Puschak makes the case that The Bea­t­les for­ev­er changed the form, mak­ing it into the “almost lim­it­less” art we know today.

Anoth­er crit­ic besides Puschak—one who remem­bers buy­ing a first press­ing of Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band—might be alleged to have fall­en vic­tim to a rever­ie. But there is nos­tal­gia and there are qual­i­ta­tive his­tor­i­cal argu­ments, and Puschak, a con­sum­mate­ly care­ful, if exceed­ing­ly con­cise, essay­ist, makes the lat­ter. In times past, he informs us, dur­ing the first few decades of the indus­try, record cov­ers were more or less util­i­tar­i­an brown paper bags, with some excep­tions. Then came Colum­bia Records design­er Alexan­der Stein­weiss in 1938 to rev­o­lu­tion­ize album art, ini­ti­at­ing a “huge boom in sales.” The mar­ket fol­lowed suit and record shops bloomed with col­or as album cov­ers became lit­tle bill­boards for their con­tents.

“Since music has no spa­tial dimen­sion,” and we can’t hold it in our hands, “the album cov­er emerged as the stand-in for the com­mod­i­ty to be pur­chased. This explains the so-called “per­son­al­i­ty cov­er” fea­tur­ing promi­nent band pho­tos that look like por­traits of actors’ troupes. It’s a con­ven­tion The Bea­t­les duti­ful­ly observed on their first few sleeves in the ear­ly six­ties. As their stature increased, how­ev­er, the band “seemed to become dark­ly aware of their sta­tus as com­modi­ties.” (Thus the glum looks on the cov­er of their unsub­tly titled 1964 Bea­t­les for Sale.)

Their evo­lu­tion from the teen­pop “per­son­al­i­ty cov­er” to the broody and sur­re­al is self-evi­dent, from Rub­ber Soul’s groovy band shot and psy­che­del­ic let­ter­ing to Revolver’s take on Aubrey Beard­s­ley, cour­tesy of Klaus Vor­mann, “The Bea­t­les were lead­ers in expand­ing an album cover’s func­tion from a mar­ket­ing tool to a work of art in its own right.” Then we come to Sgt. Pepper’s, and the shift is cement­ed. The album cover’s design­er, Peter Blake, explic­it­ly thought of the cov­er as “a piece of art rather than an album cov­er. It was almost a piece of the­ater design.” And the band them­selves had a direct hand in its cre­ation. “We all chose our own colours and our own mate­ri­als,” not­ed McCart­ney.

They also chose most of the peo­ple on the cov­er (out of many who turned them down or didn’t make the final cut). By “jux­ta­pos­ing high­brow artists and thinkers with pop icons,” says Puschak, “The Bea­t­les sig­nal the break­down and mix­ing of high and low cul­ture that they them­selves exem­pli­fied.” What’s bril­liant about the cov­er is that it taps into the band and the record buyer’s nos­tal­gia with an open acknowl­edge­ment of the music as com­merce. “We liked the idea of reach­ing out to the record-buy­er,” McCart­ney recalled, “because our mem­o­ries of spend­ing our own hard-earned cash and real­ly lov­ing any­one who gave us val­ue for mon­ey.”

But, as Puschak points out, the Sgt. Pepper’s cov­er also serves as its own cri­tique. “By stag­ing the scene as a per­for­mance and an audi­ence,” he says, “the band chal­lenges us to deal with the func­tion of both.” That this mes­sage coin­cides with their deci­sion to stop tour­ing sug­gests that the band was using the album cov­er as they were using their music to draw the audi­ence clos­er and give them the pri­vate emo­tion­al and aes­thet­ic expe­ri­ences so many invit­ing album cov­ers now rou­tine­ly promise. Design­er Blake and the band encour­aged lis­ten­ers to have an intel­lec­tu­al rela­tion­ship with the record from the very start, with the cryp­tic who’s‑who puz­zle pho­tomon­tage of famous peo­ple and the lyrics print­ed direct­ly on the back. In so doing, they announced that although record­ed music was inescapably a com­mod­i­ty, it was also, insep­a­ra­bly, a mod­ern art.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

7 Rock Album Cov­ers Designed by Icon­ic Artists: Warhol, Rauschen­berg, Dalí, Richter, Map­plethor­pe & More

Andy Warhol Cre­ates Album Cov­ers for Jazz Leg­ends Thelo­nious Monk, Count Basie & Ken­ny Bur­rell

Clas­sic Jazz Album Cov­ers Ani­mat­ed, or the Re-Birth of Cool

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

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The Corkscrew: The 700-Pound Mechanical Sculpture That Opens a Wine Bottle & Pours the Wine

in Art, Food & Drink, Technology | January 10th, 2017

We’ve shown you a very sim­ple way to open a bot­tle of wine, with noth­ing but a wall and a shoe. (Try it at your own risk.) Now comes the most art­ful­ly com­plex.

Above, watch Rob Hig­gs demo his mechan­i­cal sculp­ture, “The Corkscrew.” Cre­at­ed with found objects from scrap­yards and farm­steads, the sculp­ture has 382 mov­ing parts and weighs 700+ pounds, reports the BBC. Designed to pull a cork from a bot­tle and pour the wine, the steam­punk sculp­ture is not just beau­ti­ful. It actu­al­ly works.

Accord­ing to the Dai­ly Mail, you could buy “The Corkscrew” for some­where bew­teen $90,000 and $120,000.

via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Open a Wine Bot­tle with Your Shoe

Jane Austen Writes a Let­ter to Her Sis­ter While Hung Over: “I Believe I Drank Too Much Wine Last Night”

Christo­pher Hitchens, Who Mixed Drink­ing & Writ­ing, Names the “Best Scotch in the His­to­ry of the World”

How to Clean Your Vinyl Records with Wood Glue

Vin­tage Wine in our Col­lec­tion of 1100 Free Online Cours­es

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George Michael Gives a Stunning Performance of “Somebody to Love” with Queen, As David Bowie Nods Along in the Wings

in Music | January 9th, 2017

It’s been a year tomor­row since David Bowie left the plan­et, just two days after his 69th birth­day and the release of his phe­nom­e­nal and dif­fi­cult final album. His death began a year of shock­ing loss­es, end­ing with two in quick suc­ces­sion that griev­ed not only their life­long fans, but also peo­ple who knew their work pri­mar­i­ly from sam­ples, remix­es, and reboots: the immor­tal­ly fun­ny Car­rie Fish­er and, of course, on Christ­mas Day, the uncan­ny pop music force-of-nature, George Michael. As cos­mic jus­tice would have it, these were two of the most out­spo­ken char­ac­ters in pop­u­lar culture—two peo­ple who refused to be shamed into silence or apol­o­gize for their lives.

George Michael weath­ered what is hard to believe was a gen­uine scan­dal at the time: his 1998 Bev­er­ly Hills arrest, sub­se­quent vicious out­ing by the press, and the sor­did por­ing over of his pri­vate life. He respond­ed to every provo­ca­tion with defi­ance and, writes Chris­to Foufas, “went on the offen­sive.”

In his con­tro­ver­sial video for the sin­gle “Out­side,” for exam­ple, his turn as a wicked­ly satir­i­cal dis­co cop so effec­tive­ly piqued the police that his arrest­ing offi­cer sued him for slan­der, and lost. The pub­lic­i­ty sur­round­ing Michael at the height of his post-Wham! fame seemed to lib­er­ate him to become more and more him­self in the pub­lic eye, but it nev­er obscured what made him a star in the first place—his soar­ing, con­fi­dent voice and impec­ca­ble musi­cal instincts.

It is these qualities—Michael’s brava­do and true skill as a vocal­ist and performer—that also made him an absolute per­fect choice to cov­er an ear­li­er gay icon gone before his time, Fred­die Mer­cury. In his ren­di­tion of “Some­body to Love” with Queen at Mercury’s 1992 trib­ute con­cert Michael deliv­ered a stun­ning per­for­mance; while he lacked Mercury’s range, he near­ly matched the for­mer Queen singer in pow­er and charis­ma. And while we see can this feat on dis­play in the offi­cial con­cert video, above, it’s just as evi­dent in rehearsal footage, which you can see at the top of the post.

Imme­di­ate­ly after Michael’s death, this rehearsal video began mak­ing the rounds on social media, and peo­ple high­light­ed not only his mas­tery of a very chal­leng­ing vocal melody, but the appre­ci­a­tion of fel­low Mer­cury trib­ute per­former David Bowie, whom we see nod­ding along in the wings at around 3:00. It’s a very poignant moment, in hind­sight, that under­lines some of the sig­nif­i­cant sim­i­lar­i­ties between the two stars. Not only were they both sex­u­al­ly adven­tur­ous chameleons and riv­et­ing per­form­ers, but—as we learned in sto­ry after sto­ry shared in their many posthu­mous tributes—both men used their sta­tus to help oth­ers, often anony­mous­ly.

The Mer­cury trib­ute con­cert, an AIDS ben­e­fit, took place five years before Michael’s arrest and pub­lic full dis­clo­sure of his sex­u­al­i­ty. But even before he felt com­fort­able dis­cussing his per­son­al life, he involved him­self in the lives of oth­ers who strug­gled with sim­i­lar issues, includ­ing depres­sion. From the ear­li­est Wham! days of “Choose Life” t‑shirts and “cheeky cri­tiques of het­ero­nor­ma­tive life” to Michael’s barn­burn­ing per­for­mance with Elton John at Live Aid in 1985 and beyond, he was “a father fig­ure for polit­i­cal pop,” writes Bar­ry Wal­ters at NPR, and a role mod­el for a gen­er­a­tion of young gay men and women. And “it didn’t hurt that he could write and sing soul music with effort­less pow­er and grace,” even record­ing a duet “with Aretha Franklin with­out mak­ing a fool of him­self,” and fill­ing the shoes, for one night at least, of the leg­endary Fred­die Mer­cury.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981

The Mak­ing of Queen and David Bowie’s 1981 Hit “Under Pres­sure”: Demos, Stu­dio Ses­sions & More

Sci­en­tif­ic Study Reveals What Made Fred­die Mercury’s Voice One of a Kind; Hear It in All of Its A Cap­pel­la Splen­dor

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

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An Animated Introduction to the Feminist Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir

in Animation, Gender, Philosophy | January 9th, 2017

How influ­en­tial are the writ­ings of Simone de Beau­voir? So influ­en­tial that even the rushed, by all accounts shod­dy first Eng­lish trans­la­tion (exe­cut­ed by a zool­o­gist not espe­cial­ly acquaint­ed with phi­los­o­phy, and only some­what more so with the French lan­guage) of her book Le deux­ième sexe became, in 1953, The Sec­ond Sex. Though not prop­er­ly trans­lat­ed until 2009, it nev­er­the­less pro­vid­ed the foun­da­tion for mod­ern fem­i­nist thought in the West. But what, if we can ask this ques­tion sure­ly at least a cou­ple of “waves” of fem­i­nism lat­er, did de Beau­voir, born 109 years ago today, actu­al­ly think?

She thought, as the Har­ry Shear­er-nar­rat­ed His­to­ry of Ideas ani­ma­tion from the BBC and Open Uni­ver­si­ty above puts it, that “a woman isn’t born a woman, rather she becomes one,” mean­ing that “there is no way women have to be, no giv­en fem­i­nin­i­ty, no ide­al to which all women should con­form.”

The basic bio­log­i­cal facts aside, “what it is to be a woman is social­ly con­struct­ed, and large­ly by males at that. It is through oth­er peo­ple’s expec­ta­tions and assump­tions that a woman becomes ‘fem­i­nine,’ ” strug­gling to meet male-defined stan­dards of beau­ty, act­ing like noth­ing more than “pas­sive objects” in soci­ety, and in the fem­i­nist view, often wast­ing their lives in so doing.

A bold dec­la­ra­tion, espe­cial­ly at the time. But de Beau­voir’s belief “that women are fun­da­men­tal­ly free to reject male stereo­types of beau­ty and attrac­tive­ness, and to become more equal as a result” basi­cal­ly aligned with the exis­ten­tial­ist move­ment then ris­ing up through the zeit­geist. (Demon­strat­ing that the philo­soph­i­cal extends to the per­son­al, she spent much of her life in an open rela­tion­ship with her fel­low exis­ten­tial­ist icon Jean-Paul Sartre.) Yet it has­n’t real­ly gone stale, and has indeed proven adapt­able to var­i­ous dif­fer­ent inter­pre­ta­tions, eras, and con­texts — includ­ing, as we can see in the 8‑Bit Phi­los­o­phy video above, video games.

“This is Samus, defend­er of the galaxy,” says its nar­ra­tor, intro­duc­ing the space-suit­ed pro­tag­o­nist of the clas­sic Nin­ten­do game Metroid. “For those of you that don’t know, Samus is a woman.” This fact, revealed only after the defeat of the final boss, jolt­ed the gamers of the day. Metroid came out in 1986, just months after de Beau­voir’s death, and it came out onto a video-gam­ing land­scape where play­er char­ac­ters’ male­ness went with­out say­ing, where “man is a sav­ior and the fem­i­nine is a damsel in dis­tress. Man is a sub­ject where­as woman is the object of pos­ses­sion.” But to de Beau­voir’s mind, “a fun­da­men­tal ambi­gu­i­ty marks the fem­i­nine being,” leav­ing women — of any coun­try, of any time, or of actu­al or dig­i­tal real­i­ty — much greater free­dom to define them­selves than they may know.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Simone de Beau­voir & Jean-Paul Sartre Shoot­ing a Gun in Their First Pho­to Togeth­er (1929)

Pho­tos of Jean-Paul Sartre & Simone de Beau­voir Hang­ing with Che Gue­vara in Cuba (1960)

Edward Said Recalls His Depress­ing Meet­ing With Sartre, de Beau­voir & Fou­cault (1979)

The Fem­i­nist The­o­ry of Simone de Beau­voir Explained with 8‑Bit Video Games (and More)

A His­to­ry of Ideas: Ani­mat­ed Videos Explain The­o­ries of Simone de Beau­voir, Edmund Burke & Oth­er Philoso­phers

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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A Joan Miró-Inspired Animation of Federico García Lorca’s Poem, “Romance Sonámbulo”

in Animation, Art, Poetry | January 9th, 2017

What tod­dler is trans­fixed by a poem of trag­i­cal­ly thwart­ed desire?

Thou­sands of them, thanks to “The Sleep­walk­er,” ani­ma­tor Theodore Ushev’s cre­ative inter­pre­ta­tion of Fed­eri­co Gar­cía Lor­ca’s poem, “Romance Sonám­bu­lo.”

Ushev starts by scrap­ping the words, in favor of a pure­ly visu­al lan­guage that draws heav­i­ly on the work of Lorca’s con­tem­po­rary, sur­re­al­ist painter Joan Miró.

Would Lor­ca have approved?

Pos­si­bly. He had great admi­ra­tion for Miró, whose paint­ings he declared “the purest of all images” in a pub­lic lec­ture on mod­ern art at Grenada’s Athenaeum:

They come from dream, from the cen­ter of the soul, there where love is made flesh and incred­i­ble breezes of dis­tant sounds blow.

Ani­ma­tor Ushev is anoth­er who’s put a lot of stock in dreams:

I want­ed to cre­ate a joy­ful film, that makes the pub­lic hap­py – inex­plic­a­bly hap­py. The sur­re­al­ist move­ment was a play, a game itself. I often start my mas­ter­class­es with the quo­ta­tion, “The life is a dream (and every­thing is a game).” It is a mod­i­fied ver­sion of the roman­tic belief of anoth­er Span­ish writer – Pedro Calderón de la Bar­ca. This lit­tle film can be seen as such – an alle­go­ry over the joy and mys­tery of life.

His take may con­fuse those who’ve been debat­ing the orig­i­nal poem’s far-from-joy­ful mean­ing.

There are rec­og­niz­able forms … Lorca’s “gyp­sy girl,” for instance.

What’s going on?

Ask a tod­dler what’s he or she sees.

A wound­ed con­tra­band run­ner drag­ging him­self back to his for­bid­den lady love?

A grief-strick­en Juli­et throw­ing her­self in a cis­tern?

More like­ly, danc­ing, and lots of it, thanks to the irre­sistible score — Bul­gar­i­an musi­cian Kot­tarashky’s “Opa Hey.”

(Ushev made a con­scious deci­sion to expand the gyp­sy theme beyond Lorca’s native Andalucía to the Balkan region.)

“Romance Sonám­bu­lo”

Green, how I want you green.

Green wind. Green branch­es.

The ship out on the sea

and the horse on the moun­tain. 

With the shade around her waist 

she dreams on her bal­cony, 

green flesh, her hair green, 

with eyes of cold sil­ver. 

Green, how I want you green. 

Under the gyp­sy moon, 

all things are watch­ing her 

and she can­not see them.

Green, how I want you green. 

Big hoar­frost stars 

come with the fish of shad­ow 

that opens the road of dawn. 

The fig tree rubs its wind 

with the sand­pa­per of its branch­es, 

and the for­est, cun­ning cat, 

bris­tles its brit­tle fibers. 

But who will come? And from where? 

She is still on her bal­cony 

green flesh, her hair green, 

dream­ing in the bit­ter sea.

—My friend, I want to trade 

my horse for her house, 

my sad­dle for her mir­ror, 

my knife for her blan­ket. 

My friend, I come bleed­ing 

from the gates of Cabra.

—If it were pos­si­ble, my boy, 

I’d help you fix that trade. 

But now I am not I, 

nor is my house now my house.

—My friend, I want to die

decent­ly in my bed. 

Of iron, if that’s pos­si­ble, 

with blan­kets of fine cham­bray. 

Don’t you see the wound I have 

from my chest up to my throat?

—Your white shirt has grown 

thirsty dark brown ros­es. 

Your blood oozes and flees a

round the cor­ners of your sash. 

But now I am not I, 

nor is my house now my house.

—Let me climb up, at least, 

up to the high bal­conies; 

Let me climb up! Let me, 

up to the green bal­conies. 

Rail­ings of the moon 

through which the water rum­bles.

Now the two friends climb up, 

up to the high bal­conies.

Leav­ing a trail of blood. 

Leav­ing a trail of teardrops. 

Tin bell vines

were trem­bling on the roofs.

A thou­sand crys­tal tam­bourines 

struck at the dawn light.

Green, how I want you green, 

green wind, green branch­es. 

The two friends climbed up. 

The stiff wind left 

in their mouths, a strange taste 

of bile, of mint, and of basil 

My friend, where is she—tell me—

where is your bit­ter girl?

How many times she wait­ed for you! 

How many times would she wait for you, 

cool face, black hair, 

on this green bal­cony! 

Over the mouth of the cis­tern

the gyp­sy girl was swing­ing, 

green flesh, her hair green, 

with eyes of cold sil­ver. 

An ici­cle of moon

holds her up above the water. 

The night became inti­mate 

like a lit­tle plaza.

Drunk­en “Guardias Civiles”

were pound­ing on the door. 

Green, how I want you green. 

Green wind. Green branch­es. 

The ship out on the sea. 

And the horse on the moun­tain.

Read “Romance Sonám­bu­lo” in the orig­i­nal Span­ish here

Read an inter­view with ani­ma­tor Ushev here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith Reads Fed­eri­co Gar­cia Lorca’s “Lit­tle Vien­nese Waltz” in New York City

Hear Jorge Luis Borges Read 30 of His Poems (in the Orig­i­nal Span­ish)

Watch Ani­ma­tions of Two Ita­lo Calvi­no Sto­ries: “The False Grand­moth­er” and “The Dis­tance from the Moon”

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.

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Stream David Bowie’s New EP No Plan and Hear His Final Four Recordings

in Music | January 8th, 2017

Today marks what would have been David Bowie’s 70th birth­day. And you can com­mem­o­rate that bit­ter­sweet occa­sion by stream­ing his brand new EP called No Plan. It fea­tures four tracks–the last four songs Bowie ever record­ed.

Lis­ten­ers might be famil­iar with the first track, “Lazarus.” But not so much with the remain­ing three–“No Plan,” “Killing a Lit­tle Time” and “When I Met You.” You can stream the EP for free on Spo­ti­fy below. (If you need their soft­ware, down­load a copy here.) You can also pur­chase copies of No Plan on Ama­zon and iTunes. Watch the video for “No Plan” above.

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.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti Breaks Down the Mak­ing of David Bowie’s Clas­sic “Heroes,” Track by Track

David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

David Bowie Lists His 25 Favorite LPs in His Record Col­lec­tion: Stream Most of Them Free Online

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