David Lynch Made a Disturbing Web Sitcom Called “Rabbits”: It’s Now Used by Psychologists to Induce a Sense of Existential Crisis in Research Subjects

in Film, Television | May 30th, 2018

David Lynch has stayed pro­duc­tive in recent years — putting out an album and reviv­ing Twin Peaks, to name just two projects — but more than a decade has gone by since his last fea­ture film. Still, images from that one, 2006’s Inland Empire, may well linger in the heads of its view­ers to this day. Some of the most haunt­ing sequences that com­pose its three hours include clips of Rab­bits, a tele­vi­sion show about those very crea­tures. Or rather, a tele­vi­sion show about humanoid rab­bits who exchange lines of cryp­tic dia­logue in a shad­owy liv­ing room locat­ed, as the show puts it, “in a name­less city del­uged by a con­tin­u­ous rain” where they live “with a fear­ful mys­tery.”

So far, so Lynchi­an. Part of the direc­tor’s sig­na­ture atmos­phere aris­es, of course, from the men­ac­ing­ly pre­sent­ed 1950s domes­tic­i­ty and the bizarre appear­ance of human actors wear­ing expres­sion­less rab­bit heads. But just as much has to do with sound: along with an omi­nous score by fre­quent Lynch col­lab­o­ra­tor Ange­lo Badala­men­ti we hear that con­stant del­uge of rain, with occa­sion­al son­ic punc­tu­a­tion from an inex­plic­a­bly timed laugh track. You can binge-watch Rab­bits’ episodes on YouTube, an expe­ri­ence which will give you a fuller sense of why Uni­ver­si­ty of British Colum­bia psy­chol­o­gists used it to induce a sense of exis­ten­tial cri­sis in research sub­jects.

Lynch shot Rab­bits in 2002 on dig­i­tal video, a medi­um whose free­dom, com­pared to tra­di­tion­al film, he had recent­ly dis­cov­ered. (When he went on to use it for the whole of Inland Empire, the choice seemed as cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly star­tling, at the time, as any he’d ever made.) The shoots hap­pened at night, on a set built in his back­yard. Its prin­ci­pal cast of Nao­mi Watts, Lau­ra Har­ring, and Scott Cof­fey had all appeared the pre­vi­ous year in Lynch’s crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed Mul­hol­land Dri­ve, which itself began as a prospec­tive tele­vi­sion series. (Even the singer Rebekah del Rio, star of Club Silen­cio, turns up in one episode.) Lynch first “aired” the series on his web site, which must place him among not just the artis­tic but tech­ni­cal pio­neers of the web series form.

But why, exact­ly, did he make it in the first place? “Rab­bits is a sit­com,” writes a con­trib­u­tor called Peek 824545301 at The Arti­fice. “It is not mere­ly par­o­dy or satire; it exists as per­haps the most bizarre and arguably lit­er­al sit­com imag­in­able, though still an oppos­ing force that chal­lenges and defa­mil­iar­izes basic con­cepts.” Abstract­ing the basic ele­ments of the sit­com form while strip­ping them of nar­ra­tive, the show also sig­nals com­e­dy on one lev­el and dark­ness on anoth­er, putting itself “simul­ta­ne­ous­ly in align­ment with sit­u­a­tion come­dies in its essence while also serv­ing as a destruc­tive crit­i­cism.” In this view, Lynch moves from medi­um to medi­um not just as a sin­gu­lar kind of cre­ator but — with his imag­i­na­tion that has some­how come up with even stranger things than this rab­bit sit­com — a sin­gu­lar kind of crit­ic as well.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Posts His Night­mar­ish Sit­com Rab­bits Online–the Show That Psy­chol­o­gists Use to Induce a Sense of Exis­ten­tial Cri­sis in Research Sub­jects

What Makes a David Lynch Film Lynchi­an: A Video Essay

Ange­lo Badala­men­ti Reveals How He and David Lynch Com­posed the Twin Peaks‘ “Love Theme”

Dum­b­land, David Lynch’s Twist­ed Ani­mat­ed Series (NSFW)

Dis­cov­er David Lynch’s Bizarre & Min­i­mal­ist Com­ic Strip, The Angri­est Dog in the World (1983–1992)

David Lynch’s New ‘Crazy Clown Time’ Video: Intense Psy­chot­ic Back­yard Crazi­ness (NSFW)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Explore 7,600 Works of Art by Edvard Munch: They’re Now Digitized and Free Online

in Archives, Art | May 30th, 2018

If there were ever an exhi­bi­tion of artis­tic “one-hit-won­ders,” sure­ly Edvard Munch’s The Scream would occu­py a cen­tral place, maybe hung adja­cent to Grant Wood’s Amer­i­can Goth­ic. The ratio of those who know this sin­gle paint­ing to those who know the artist’s oth­er works must be expo­nen­tial­ly high, which is some­thing of a shame. That’s not to say The Scream does not deserve its exalt­ed place in pop­u­lar culture—like Wood’s stone-faced Mid­west farm­ers, the wavy fig­ure, clutch­ing its scream­ing skull-like head, res­onates at the deep­est of psy­chic fre­quen­cies, an arche­typ­al evo­ca­tion of exis­ten­tial hor­ror.

Not for noth­ing has Sue Prideaux sub­ti­tled her Munch biog­ra­phy Behind the Scream. “Rarely in the canon of West­ern art,” writes Tom Rosen­thal at The Inde­pen­dent, “has there been so much anx­i­ety, fear and deep psy­cho­log­i­cal pain in one artist. That he lived to be 80 and spent only one peri­od in an asy­lum is a trib­ute not only to Munch’s phys­i­cal sta­mi­na but to his iron will and his innate, robust psy­cho­log­i­cal strength.” Born in Nor­way in 1863, the sick­ly Edvard, whose moth­er died soon after his birth, was raised by a harsh dis­ci­pli­nar­i­an father who read Poe and Dos­to­evsky to his chil­dren and, in addi­tion to beat­ing them “for minor infrac­tions,” would “invoke the image of their blessed moth­er who saw them from heav­en and griev­ed over their mis­be­hav­ior.”

The trau­ma was com­pound­ed by the death of Munch’s sis­ter and, lat­er, his broth­er, and by the insti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion of anoth­er sis­ter, Lau­ra, diag­nosed with schiz­o­phre­nia. Munch’s own child­hood ill­ness made his school­ing errat­ic, though he did man­age to receive some artis­tic train­ing, briefly, at Oslo’s Art Asso­ci­a­tion, an artist’s club where he “learnt by copy­ing the works on dis­play.”

From there the young Munch launched him­self into an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly pro­duc­tive career, punc­tu­at­ed by leg­endary bouts of drink­ing and carous­ing and intense friend­ships with lit­er­ary fig­ures like August Strind­berg.

If we count our­selves among those who know lit­tle of Munch’s work, a new ini­tia­tive from the Munch Muse­um in Oslo aims to cor­rect that by mak­ing over 7,600 of Munch’s draw­ings avail­able online. “The online cat­a­log, free to all,” notes Hyperallergic’s Sarah Rose Sharp, “rep­re­sents a tremen­dous feat of logis­tics, and fea­tures draw­ings that go back as far as the artist’s child­hood, sketch­books, stud­ies of tools, coins, and keys that demon­strate Munch’s ded­i­ca­tion as a dis­ci­plined drafts­man, and water­col­ors of build­ings that were some of the first bod­ies of work devel­oped by the artist in his youth.”

Over 90% of the draw­ings on dig­i­tal dis­play come from the Museum’s hold­ings, the rest from oth­er pub­lic and pri­vate col­lec­tions. “The goal is to make Munch’s art known and eas­i­ly acces­si­ble to as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble,” Magne Bruteig, Senior Cura­tor for Prints and Draw­ings, tells Hyper­al­ler­gic. “Since the major­i­ty of the draw­ings had nev­er been exhib­it­ed or pub­lished in any way, it has been of spe­cial impor­tance to reveal this ‘hid­den trea­sure.’” The online col­lec­tion, then, not only serves as an intro­duc­tion for Munch novices but also for long­time admir­ers of the artist’s work, who have hith­er­to had lit­tle to no access to this huge col­lec­tion of stud­ies, prepara­to­ry sketch­es, water­col­ors, etc., which includes the mis­er­able fam­i­ly group­ing of Angst, at the top, the reprise of his infa­mous Scream fig­ure, fur­ther up, from 1898, and The Sick Child, above, a por­trait of his sis­ter Sophie who died in child­hood.

The draw­ings date back to 1873, when Munch was only ten years old and insert­ed a series of his own illus­tra­tions into a copy of Grimm’s Fairy­tales. The final works date from 1943, the year before the artist’s death, when he made the self-por­trait above in pas­tel cray­on. Munch’s work, writes Rosen­thal, “is com­pul­sive­ly auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal.” Remain­ing a com­mit­ted bach­e­lor all of his life, he said that “his paint­ings were his chil­dren, even though he gave many of them a some­what Spar­tan upbring­ing, delib­er­ate­ly leav­ing them not only unvar­nished but exposed to the ele­ments in his vast out­door stu­dio or hung on walls, unframed and with nails through them.” The sev­er­al thou­sand draw­ings he fathered seem to have been treat­ed with more care. Delve into the enor­mous col­lec­tion at the Oslo Munch Muse­um site here, where you can also view many of the artist’s paint­ings and learn much more about his life and work through arti­cles and essays.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

30,000 Works of Art by Edvard Munch & Oth­er Artists Put Online by Norway’s Nation­al Muse­um of Art

Edvard Munch’s Famous Paint­ing “The Scream” Ani­mat­ed to the Sound of Pink Floyd’s Pri­mal Music

The Edvard Munch Scream Action Fig­ure

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

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Watch the Rise and Fall of the British Empire in an Animated Time-Lapse Map ( 519 A.D. to 2014 A.D.)

in History, Maps | May 30th, 2018

The genre of ani­mat­ed time-lapse video maps—portraying the rise and fall of empires, the spread of peo­ple groups, the suc­ces­sion of rulers over hun­dreds of years, and oth­er his­to­ries that used to fill entire textbooks—is one of those inter­net-only phe­nom­e­na with use­ful, if lim­it­ed appli­ca­tion. As the bom­bas­tic music that some­times accom­pa­nies these videos sug­gests, one pri­ma­ry effect is the pro­duc­tion of max­i­mal­ly sweep­ing his­tor­i­cal dra­ma through map­ping, which cap­tures the imag­i­na­tion in ways dry pro­sa­ic descrip­tions often can’t.

The sub­ject of the video above—the British Empire—seems to jus­ti­fy such an approach, giv­en that, as one edu­ca­tion­al web­site notes, “the British Empire was the largest for­mal empire that the world had ever known.” Whether one cel­e­brates or deplores this fact is a mat­ter for polit­i­cal or moral debate—categories that have lit­tle seem­ing rel­e­vance to the pro­duc­tion of ani­mat­ed video maps.

“At its height in 1922,” writes Jon Stone at The Inde­pen­dent, “the British Empire gov­erned a fifth of the world’s pop­u­la­tion and the quar­ter of the world’s total land area.” His com­ment that this lega­cy “divides opin­ion” gross­ly under­states the case. Yet as bare his­tor­i­cal fact, the spread of the Empire is aston­ish­ing, an achieve­ment of mil­i­tary and mar­itime pow­er, unprece­dent­ed com­mer­cial ambi­tion, bureau­crat­ic sys­tem­iza­tion, trade maneu­ver­ing, and the mas­sive dis­place­ment, deten­tion, and enslave­ment of mil­lions of peo­ple.

How did it hap­pen? To para­phrase an often-divi­sive British singer, empire began at home.

The video begins in 519 A.D., after the end of Roman rule in Eng­land, when the so-called Hep­tarchy formed, the sev­en Anglo-Sax­on trib­al king­doms ruled by Ger­man­ic peo­ples who killed off or enslaved the native Celts. From there, we pro­ceed through the Nor­man inva­sion, the Eng­lish attempts to take French ter­ri­to­ry in Europe, Hen­ry VIII’s inva­sion and annex­a­tion of Ire­land, and oth­er col­o­niz­ing and empire-build­ing events that pre­cede British entry onto the far-flung glob­al stage with the found­ing of the British East India Company’s first post in Surat, India in 1612 and Puri­tan set­tle­ment at Ply­mouth in 1620.

We see these events unfold in a split screen map show­ing dif­fer­ent parts of the world, with a box on the side pro­vid­ing con­text and a col­or-cod­ed leg­end. This rush through Impe­r­i­al his­to­ry occurs at a rel­a­tive­ly break­neck speed, tak­ing only 18 min­utes to cov­er 1,500 years.

The long, slow rise of the British Empire was fol­lowed by a pre­cip­i­tous fall. By the mid-20th cen­tu­ry post­war years, Britain saw its major colonies in India, Africa, and the West Indies achieve inde­pen­dence one by one. “By 1979,” writes Adam Tay­lor at The Wash­ing­ton Post, the Empire “was reduced to a few pock­ets around the world.” And by the cur­rent year, the for­mer glob­al power’s over­seas colo­nial hold­ings com­prise 14 small ter­ri­to­ries, includ­ing most­ly unpop­u­lat­ed Antarc­tic land and the Falk­land Islands.

See many more fas­ci­nat­ing ani­mat­ed time-lapse maps, doc­u­ment­ing all of world his­to­ry, at the cre­ator Ollie Bye’s YouTube chan­nel.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

5‑Minute Ani­ma­tion Maps 2,600 Years of West­ern Cul­tur­al His­to­ry

Watch the His­to­ry of the World Unfold on an Ani­mat­ed Map: From 200,000 BCE to Today

Ani­mat­ed Map Shows How the Five Major Reli­gions Spread Across the World (3000 BC – 2000 AD)

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

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Hip Hop Fan Freaks Out When He Hears Rage Against the Machine’s Debut Album for the Very First Time

in Music | May 29th, 2018

I con­sid­er myself lucky to have been a child of the nineties. As you know from Port­landia’s trib­ute to the decade of slack, it was a time when “peo­ple were con­tent to be unam­bi­tious and sleep to 11 and just hang out with their friends.” Start a band, start a t‑shirt com­pa­ny, build a web­site, go to clown school, or don’t, what­ev­er, no pres­sure…. In con­trast to the hyper­com­pet­i­tive, social media-sat­u­rat­ed, pre­car­i­ous gig econ­o­my lives of har­ried, over­worked, under­paid mil­len­ni­als, we had it pret­ty easy. But we knew things were poised to explode. At the same time, it was a decade of cul­tur­al pas­sion for rev­o­lu­tion, peace, and justice—conscious hip hop, Riot Grrrl, Lilith Fair, and Rage Against the Machine, maybe the most rad­i­cal­ly uncom­pro­mis­ing band since Crass. The rap/rock/metal hybrid seam­less­ly blend­ed the rev­o­lu­tion­ary funk and polit­i­cal fury of Pub­lic Ene­my with the vir­tu­oso riffage of Eddie Van Halen.

I only wish that, like the guy in the video above, I could hear them again for the first time, blast­ing from the car stereo, blow­ing my mind every few sec­onds. How is it that this guy had nev­er heard Rage’s incred­i­ble self-titled debut? For one thing, I guess, he prob­a­bly hadn’t even been born when it came out in 1992.

For anoth­er, he’s a hip-hop head who didn’t lis­ten to rock and met­al until recent­ly, when, as his YouTube chan­nel doc­u­ments, he decid­ed to start sam­pling bands in his car and upload­ing his real-time reac­tions. How very 2018. He’s exposed him­self to some great stuff—Megadeth, Deftones, Iron Maid­en, Metal­li­ca, Motör­head. He’s sam­pled Audioslave, gui­tarist Tom Morello’s post-Rage super­group. And some oth­er bands I won’t com­ment on.

He also put togeth­er a mix­tape of met­al he thinks would cross over to his hip hop friends. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, many of the bands he rec­om­mends pull heav­i­ly from Rage Against the Machine, who them­selves pulled from the Beast­ie Boys, Anthrax, Sui­ci­dal Ten­den­cies, Faith No More.… Rage didn’t come from nowhere—we’d heard con­scious rap and met­al meet before, even just the pre­vi­ous year when Anthrax and Pub­lic Ene­my put out their ver­sion of “Bring the Noise.” The late eighties/early nineties pro­duced organ­ic rap/metal crossovers before the prob­lem­at­ic advent of “nu met­al.” But when YouTu­ber YouY­ouY­ou!!! hits pause at 3:38 and screams “WHAT IS THIS! WHAT IS THIS!” I relate. It was more or less my reac­tion when I first heard “Know Your Ene­my,” “Take the Pow­er Back,” and “Killing in the Name” blast from the tape deck. YouY­ouY­ou!!! takes rec­om­men­da­tions. I rec­om­mend he work his way through all of Rage’s cat­a­log.

via Twist­ed Sifter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear a 4 Hour Playlist of Great Protest Songs: Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, Bob Mar­ley, Pub­lic Ene­my, Bil­ly Bragg & More

What Makes This Song Great?: Pro­duc­er Rick Beato Breaks Down the Great­ness of Clas­sic Rock Songs in His New Video Series

A Mas­sive 800-Track Playlist of 90s Indie & Alter­na­tive Music, in Chrono­log­i­cal Order

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

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How to Use Psychedelic Drugs to Improve Mental Health: Michael Pollan’s New Book, How to Change Your Mind, Makes the Case

in Books, Health, Psychology | May 29th, 2018

The his­to­ry of research on psy­che­del­ic drugs is so sen­sa­tion­al that more sober-mind­ed exper­i­ments (so to speak) often get obscured by the hip, the weird, and the nefar­i­ous, the lat­ter includ­ing secret CIA and Army test­ing of LSD and oth­er drugs as a means of psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare and “enhanced inter­ro­ga­tion.” These exper­i­ments inad­ver­tent­ly led to Ken Kesey’s infa­mous “Acid Tests” in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia. On the oth­er side of the coun­try, Har­vard psy­chol­o­gist Tim­o­thy Leary used ques­tion­able meth­ods in his psilo­cy­bin exper­i­ments with pris­on­ers and stu­dents, before get­ting fired and going on to expand the mind of the coun­ter­cul­ture, earn­ing the dis­tinc­tion of hav­ing Richard Nixon call him “the most dan­ger­ous man in Amer­i­ca.”

Mean­while, work­ing in rel­a­tive obscu­ri­ty in very dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances in the late 50s, a UC Irvine psy­chi­a­trist named Oscar Janiger brought vol­un­teer sub­jects, includ­ing sev­er­al dozen artists, to a house out­side L.A., where they were giv­en LSD and psy­chother­a­py. Janiger’s work has its sen­sa­tion­al side—a cousin of Allen Gins­berg, he report­ed­ly intro­duced Cary Grant, Anais Nin, Jack Nichol­son, and Aldous Hux­ley to acid. But his pri­ma­ry achieve­ment, in data that remained most­ly unpub­lished dur­ing his life­time, were his dis­cov­er­ies of the ther­a­peu­tic and cre­ative use of psy­che­del­ic drugs under con­trolled con­di­tions with sub­jects who were pre­pared for the expe­ri­ence and guid­ed through it by trained pro­fes­sion­als.

The exper­i­ments con­duct­ed by Janiger and oth­ers dif­fered marked­ly from the free­wheel­ing recre­ation­al drug use of the coun­ter­cul­ture and the weaponiza­tion of psy­che­delics by the U.S. gov­ern­ment. In recent years, sci­en­tists and psy­chol­o­gists have con­duct­ed sim­i­lar kinds of research under even more tight­ly con­trolled con­di­tions, sub­stan­ti­at­ing and expand­ing on the con­clu­sions of ear­ly exper­i­menters who found that psy­che­delics seem remark­ably effec­tive in treat­ing depres­sion, anx­i­ety, alco­holism, drug addic­tion, and oth­er stub­born­ly destruc­tive human ills. This research sup­ports with sound evi­dence LSD inven­tor Albert Hoff­man’s descrip­tion of his drug as “med­i­cine for the soul.”

While research orga­ni­za­tions like MAPS (Mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary Asso­ci­a­tion for Psy­che­del­ic Stud­ies) have cen­tral­ized and pro­mot­ed much of the cur­rent research, it’s now get­ting a huge pop­u­lar boost from none oth­er than food writer Michael Pol­lan, best­selling author of books like The Omnivore’s Dilem­ma and In Defense of Food. “A self-described ‘reluc­tant psy­cho­naut,’” writes NPR, Pol­lan sub­mit­ted him­self as a test sub­ject for exper­i­ments with “LSD, psilo­cy­bin and 5‑MeO-DMT, a sub­stance in the ven­om of the Sono­ran Desert toad.” He has described his expe­ri­ences and the work of the research com­mu­ni­ty in a new book titled How to Change Your Mind: What the New Sci­ence of Psy­che­delics Teach­es Us About Con­scious­ness, Dying, Addic­tion, Depres­sion, and Tran­scen­dence.

At the top of the post, see Pol­lan describe the book in a short video from Pen­guin. He dis­cuss­es such ancient ideas (as he has in past writ­ings) of psy­choac­tive drugs as “entheagens”—or chem­i­cal con­duits to the divine. “In the Dar­win­ian sense,” he says, the evo­lu­tion­ary pur­pose of psy­che­del­ic expe­ri­ences may be an increase in cog­ni­tive vari­ety and the stim­u­la­tion of “more metaphors, more insights.” In his Fresh Air inter­view above, Pol­lan fur­ther explains how this works ther­a­peu­ti­cal­ly. “One of the things our mind does is tell sto­ries about our­selves,” he says. “If you’re depressed, you’re being told a sto­ry per­haps that you’re worth­less, that no one could pos­si­bly love you… that life will not get bet­ter.”

“These sto­ries,” Pol­lan says, “trap us in these rumi­na­tive loops that are very hard to get out of. They’re very destruc­tive pat­terns of thought.” Psy­che­del­ic drugs “dis­able for a peri­od of time the part of the brain where the self talks to itself. It’s called the default mode net­work, and it’s a group of struc­tures that con­nect parts of the cor­tex — the evo­lu­tion­ar­i­ly most recent part of the brain — to deep­er lev­els where emo­tion and mem­o­ry reside.” Dis­rupt­ing old nar­ra­tives helps peo­ple to write bet­ter, health­i­er sto­ries.

As Pol­lan says in the Time video above, psy­che­delics have been pop­u­lar­ly con­ceived as drugs that make you crazy—and in some cas­es, that hap­pens. But they are also “drugs that can make you sane, or more sane.”  One of the major dif­fer­ences between one out­come and the oth­er is the con­di­tions under which the drug is tak­en. When qual­i­ty and dosage of the drugs are con­trolled, and when sub­jects are pre­pared for “bad trips” with spe­cif­ic instruc­tions, even fright­en­ing hal­lu­ci­na­tions can con­tribute to bet­ter men­tal health.

In his psilo­cy­bin exper­i­ment, for exam­ple, Pol­lan was accom­pa­nied by two “guides” and giv­en “a set of ‘flight instruc­tions,” includ­ing what to do if you see a mon­ster.

…don’t try to run away. Walk right up to it, plant your feet and say, “What do you have to teach me? What are you doing in my mind?” And if you do that, accord­ing to the flight instruc­tions, your fear will morph into some­thing much more pos­i­tive very quick­ly.

In anoth­er exam­ple, anoth­er psy­lo­cy­bin sub­ject, Alana, describes in the Vox video below her guid­ed expe­ri­ence with the drug dur­ing a smok­ing ces­sa­tion tri­al at Johns Hop­kins. “There were scary parts, fore­bod­ing parts,” she says, but thanks to con­trolled con­di­tions and the reas­sur­ing pres­ence of a guide, “I always knew there was joy and peace on the oth­er side of it. It was free­ing.”

Using psy­che­delics to con­front and con­quer fears goes back many thou­sands of years in tra­di­tion­al soci­eties. Mod­ern tech­no­log­i­cal cul­ture has large­ly turned to anti­de­pres­sants and oth­er phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals to reg­u­late anx­i­ety, but as Pol­lan points out, “Prozac doesn’t help when you’re con­fronting mor­tal­i­ty,” the deep­est, most uni­ver­sal fear of all. But psychedelics—as Aldous Hux­ley found when he took LSD on his deathbed—can “occa­sion an expe­ri­ence in people—a mys­ti­cal experience—that some­how makes it eas­i­er to let go.” Sure­ly, there are oth­er ways to do so. In any case, psy­che­del­ic drugs seem so ben­e­fi­cial to psy­cho­log­i­cal well-being that they can be, and hope­ful­ly will be in the future, used to pos­i­tive­ly (respon­si­bly) shift the con­scious­ness and cre­ative poten­tial of mil­lions of suf­fer­ing peo­ple.

For more on this sub­ject, read Pol­lan’s lat­est book–How to Change Your Mind: What the New Sci­ence of Psy­che­delics Teach­es Us About Con­scious­ness, Dying, Addic­tion, Depres­sion, and Tran­scen­dence.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch The Bicy­cle Trip: An Ani­ma­tion of The World’s First LSD Trip Which Took Place on April 19, 1943

Rare Footage Shows US and British Sol­diers Get­ting Dosed with LSD in Gov­ern­ment-Spon­sored Tests (1958 + 1964)

Artist Draws 9 Por­traits While on LSD: Inside the 1950s Exper­i­ments to Turn LSD into a “Cre­ativ­i­ty Pill”

Aldous Huxley’s Most Beau­ti­ful, LSD-Assist­ed Death: A Let­ter from His Wid­ow

Ken Kesey Talks About the Mean­ing of the Acid Tests

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

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The Device Invented to Resuscitate Canaries in Coal Mines (Circa 1896)

in History, Technology | May 29th, 2018

Lewis Pol­lard, the cura­tor of the Muse­um of Sci­ence and Indus­try in Man­ches­ter, Eng­land, recent­ly high­light­ed his favorite object in his muse­um’s collections–this gad­get, cre­at­ed cir­ca 1896, used to resus­ci­tate canaries in coal mines.

For about a century–from the 1890s through the 1980s–British coal min­ers had a tra­di­tion of low­er­ing canaries into a coal mine to detect the pres­ence of nox­ious gas­es. As the BBC explains, the “canary is par­tic­u­lar­ly sen­si­tive to tox­ic gas­es such as car­bon monox­ide which is colour­less, odour­less and taste­less. This gas could eas­i­ly form under­ground dur­ing a mine fire or after an explo­sion. Fol­low­ing a mine fire or explo­sion, mine res­cuers would descend into the mine, car­ry­ing a canary in a small wood­en or met­al cage. Any sign of dis­tress from the canary was a clear sig­nal the con­di­tions under­ground were unsafe and min­ers should be evac­u­at­ed from the pit and the mine­shafts made safer.”

In decid­ing to send canaries into the mines, inven­tors came up with the some­what humane device shown above. Accord­ing to Pol­lard, the cir­cu­lar door of the cage “would be kept open and had a grill to pre­vent the canary [from] escap­ing. Once the canary showed signs of car­bon monox­ide poi­son­ing the door would be closed and a valve opened, allow­ing oxy­gen from the tank on top to be released and revive the canary. The min­ers would then be expect­ed to evac­u­ate the dan­ger area.” This prac­tice con­tin­ued for almost 100 years, until canaries offi­cial­ly start­ed to get replaced by tech­nol­o­gy in 1986.

Read more about Pol­lard’s favorite object here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google Uses Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence to Map Thou­sands of Bird Sounds Into an Inter­ac­tive Visu­al­iza­tion

Cor­nell Launch­es Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Ani­mal Sounds, with Record­ings Going Back to 1929

Two Mil­lion Won­drous Nature Illus­tra­tions Put Online by The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library

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You Can Now Airbnb the Home of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Where the Author Wrote Tender Is the Night

in History, Literature, Travel | May 29th, 2018

Pho­to by George F. Lan­deg­ger, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

F. Scott Fitzger­ald start­ed writ­ing in earnest at Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, sev­er­al of whose lit­er­ary and cul­tur­al soci­eties he joined after enrolling in 1913. So much of his time did he devote to what would become his voca­tion that he even­tu­al­ly found him­self on aca­d­e­m­ic pro­ba­tion. Still, he kept on writ­ing nov­els even after drop­ping out and join­ing the Army in 1917. He wrote hur­ried­ly, with the prospect of being shipped out to the trench­es hang­ing over his head, but that grim fate nev­er arrived. Instead the Army trans­ferred him to Camp Sheri­dan out­side Mont­gomery, Alaba­ma, at one of whose coun­try clubs young Scott met a cer­tain Zel­da Sayre, the “gold­en girl” of Mont­gomery soci­ety.

With his sights set on mar­riage, Scott spent sev­er­al years after the war try­ing to earn enough mon­ey to make a cred­i­ble pro­pos­al. Only the pub­li­ca­tion of This Side of Par­adise, his debut nov­el about a lit­er­ar­i­ly mind­ed stu­dent at Prince­ton in wartime, con­vinced Zel­da that he could main­tain the lifestyle to which she had become accus­tomed. Between 1921, when they mar­ried, and 1948, by which time both had died, F. Scott and Zel­da Fitzger­ald lived an occa­sion­al­ly pro­duc­tive, often mis­er­able, and always intense­ly com­pelling life togeth­er. The sto­ry of this ear­ly cul­tur­al “pow­er cou­ple” has an impor­tant place in Amer­i­can lit­er­ary his­to­ry, and Fitzger­ald enthu­si­asts can now use Airbnb to spend the night in the home where one of its chap­ters played out.

The rentable apart­ment occu­pies part of the F. Scott Fitzger­ald Muse­um in Mont­gomery, an oper­a­tion run out of the house in which the Fitzger­alds lived in 1931 and 1932. For the increas­ing­ly trou­bled Zel­da, those years con­sti­tut­ed time in between hos­pi­tal­iza­tions. She had come from the Swiss sana­to­ri­um that diag­nosed her with schiz­o­phre­nia. She would after­ward go to Johns Hop­kins Hos­pi­tal in Bal­ti­more, where she would write an ear­ly ver­sion of her only nov­el Save Me the Waltz, a roman à clef about the Fitzger­ald mar­riage. For Scot­t’s part, the Mont­gomery years came in the mid­dle of his work on Ten­der is the Night, the fol­low-up to The Great Gats­by for which crit­ics had been wait­ing since that book’s pub­li­ca­tion in 1925.

“The house dates to 1910,” writes the Chica­go Tri­bune’s Beth J. Harpaz. “The apart­ment is fur­nished in casu­al 20th cen­tu­ry style: sofa, arm­chairs, dec­o­ra­tive lamps, Ori­en­tal rug, and pil­lows embroi­dered with quotes from Zel­da like this one: ‘Those men think I’m pure­ly dec­o­ra­tive and they’re fools for not know­ing bet­ter.’ ” Evoca­tive fea­tures include “a record play­er and jazz albums, a bal­cony, and flow­er­ing mag­no­lia trees in the yard.” It may not offer the kind of space need­ed to throw a Gats­by-style bac­cha­nal — to the end­less relief, no doubt, of the muse­um staff — but at $150 per night as of this writ­ing, trav­el­ers look­ing to get a lit­tle clos­er to these defin­ing lit­er­ary icons of the Jazz Age might still con­sid­er it a bar­gain. It also comes with cer­tain mod­ern touch­es that the Fitzger­alds could hard­ly have imag­ined, like wi-fi. But then, giv­en the well-doc­u­ment­ed ten­den­cy toward dis­trac­tion they already suf­fered, sure­ly they were bet­ter off with­out it.

You can book your room at Airbnb here.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: The Great Gats­by & Oth­er Major Works by F. Scott Fitzger­ald

Rare Footage of Scott and Zel­da Fitzger­ald From the 1920s

Win­ter Dreams: F. Scott Fitzger­ald’s Life Remem­bered in a Fine Film

The Evo­lu­tion of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Sig­na­ture: From 5 Years Old to 21

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

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Patti Smith, The Godmother of Punk, Is Now Putting Her Pictures on Instagram

in Life, Music, Photography, Poetry | May 28th, 2018

As evi­denced by her Insta­gram feed the God­moth­er is just like you and me. She posts pic­tures of her kids.

She gives her mom a Moth­ers Day shout out…

She cel­e­brates her friends’ birth­days, posts self­ies, trav­el shots, and pet pics…

She’s not above self-pro­mo­tion if the sit­u­a­tion war­rants.

But the accom­pa­ny­ing cap­tions set punk’s poet lau­re­ate apart. No LOLs here.  It’s clear that the award-win­ning author of Just Kids  and M Train thinks about her con­tent, care­ful­ly craft­ing each post before she pub­lish­es. Each is a bite-sized reflec­tion, a page-a-day med­i­ta­tion on what it means to be alive:

This is day two of my Venice report.

I bummed around think­ing of 

Venice in the sev­en­ties. It had

a strong Ras­ta vibe with Reg­gae

music drift­ing from the head shops

and boom box­es on the beach. 

Burn­ing Spear and Jim­my Cliff

and Bob Mar­ley. Venice has an 

ever chang­ing atmos­phere but 

I always like walk­ing around, 

anony­mous, just anoth­er freak. 

On Pacif­ic next to the Cafe Col­lage

I had steamed dumplings and 

gin­ger tea at Mao’s Kitchen. 

The food is great and rea­son­able.

Because it was ear­ly it was 

near­ly emp­ty. Since I was awake

since 4am i was near­ly hyp­no­tized 

by the turn­ing of their over­head 

fan. Before I left they gave me a

for­tune cook­ie. It was a true one.

Reflect­ing my past and cer­tain­ly 

my future. A very good day.

Fol­low Pat­ti Smith on Insta­gram here.

via W Mag­a­zine

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith’s 40 Favorite Books

Pat­ti Smith Cre­ates a Detailed Pack­ing List for Going on Tour: Haru­ki Muraka­mi Books, Loquat Tea & More

Hear Pat­ti Smith Read the Poet­ry that Would Become Hors­es: A Read­ing of 14 Poems at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, 1975

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her solo show Nurse!, in which one of Shakespeare’s best loved female char­ac­ters hits the lec­ture cir­cuit to set the record straight pre­mieres in June at The Tank in New York City. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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