The Virtual Choir: Watch a Choir Conductor Digitally Unite 3500 Singers from Around the World

in Music, Technology | November 13th, 2019

For decades we’ve been hear­ing promis­es about how com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy will one day elim­i­nate dis­tance itself, mak­ing every­one around the globe feel as if they might as well be in the same room. Such a future would have its down­side as well as its upside, but even now, approach­ing the third decade of the 21st cen­tu­ry, it has­n’t quite arrived yet. Nev­er­the­less, we’ve already grown so used to the idea of real-time glob­al col­lab­o­ra­tion that it takes an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly ambi­tious project to let us step back and appre­ci­ate the tech­no­log­i­cal real­i­ty that makes it pos­si­ble. Take, for exam­ple, con­duc­tor Eric Whitacre’s Vir­tu­al Choir, whose per­for­mance of Whitacre’s own piece “Lux Arumque” appears above.

“Vir­tu­al,” here, is a bit of a mis­nomer, encour­ag­ing as it does Gib­son­ian visions of the 100-per­cent dig­i­tal voic­es of syn­thet­ic singers res­onat­ing pure­ly in cyber­space. And while Whitacre’s project would­n’t have been pos­si­ble with­out stream­ing dig­i­tal audio and video tech­nol­o­gy — as well as the infra­struc­ture of what we may as well still call cyber­space — it begins with the real voic­es of 100-per­cent ana­log humans.

185 such humans, to be pre­cise, based in twelve coun­tries, and all of them vis­i­ble on their sep­a­rate screens as Whitacre plays the role of con­duc­tor on his own. The much larg­er-scale per­for­mance of “Water Night,” a piece com­posed for the poet­ry of Octavio Paz, brings togeth­er 3,746 videos from 73 coun­tries, neces­si­tat­ing a cred­its sequence longer than the piece itself.

The Vir­tu­al Choir grew, as many such immense works do, from a small seed: “It all start­ed with this one young girl who sent me this video of her­self singing one of my choral pieces,” says Whitacre in this video on the prepa­ra­tion for the Vir­tu­al Choir’s “Sleep” video. “I was struck so hard by the beau­ty, the inti­ma­cy of it, the sweet­ness of it, and I thought, ‘Boy, it would be amaz­ing if we could get 100 peo­ple to do this and cut it all togeth­er.” The expe­ri­ence of assem­bling this vir­tu­al choir, or even hear­ing it, shows that “singing togeth­er and mak­ing music togeth­er is a fun­da­men­tal human expe­ri­ence,” and on a scale hard­ly imag­in­able a gen­er­a­tion or two ago. But on the most basic lev­el, even this new way of mak­ing music is mere­ly an expan­sion of the old­est way of mak­ing music: with one human voice, then anoth­er, and anoth­er.

via Swiss Miss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

30 Fans Joy­ous­ly Sing the Entire­ty of Bob Marley’s Leg­end Album in Uni­son

25 John Lennon Fans Sing His Album Work­ing Class Hero Word for Word, and Note for Note

Pat­ti Smith Sings “Peo­ple Have the Pow­er” with a Choir of 250 Fel­low Singers

Watch David Byrne Lead a Mas­sive Choir in Singing David Bowie’s “Heroes”

Watch Choirs Around the World Sim­u­late the Rain­storm in Toto’s “Africa” Using Only Their Hands

Bri­an Eno Lists the Ben­e­fits of Singing: A Long Life, Increased Intel­li­gence, and a Sound Civ­i­liza­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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 Face­book.

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Watch the Buddhism-Inspired Video for Leonard Cohen’s Newly-Released Song, “Happens to the Heart”

in Music | November 12th, 2019

Leonard Cohen had an inti­mate rela­tion­ship with despair. “I’ve seen the future,” he dead­panned, “Broth­er, it is mur­der.” But for many peo­ple, there is no one from whom we’d rather hear the news. In her har­row­ing essay “Fac­ing Extinc­tion,” med­i­ta­tion teacher and for­mer cli­mate jour­nal­ist Cather­ine Ingram frames the cat­a­stro­phe of cli­mate change with Cohen’s lyrics and the many con­ver­sa­tions she had with him before his death in 2016.

Cohen “under­stood human nature and assumed we would do our­selves in,” Ingram writes. Yet, with his razor-sharp gal­lows wit, he deliv­ered his grim prophe­cies with deep love and con­cern. Con­fronting her own despair, Ingram asked the ail­ing poet for advice on how to wake up peo­ple who’d rather tune it all out. “There are things,” he said, “we don’t tell the chil­dren.”

Com­ing from some­one else, this might sound supreme­ly patron­iz­ing. From Cohen, it reminds me of what Japan­ese Zen mas­ter Dogen called “grand­moth­er mind”—pro­tec­tive, uncon­di­tion­al com­pas­sion for oth­ers who may not, and may nev­er, be ready to take in the facts. It also speaks of some­one liv­ing with clin­i­cal depres­sion, car­ry­ing the weight of the world. Cohen once called the con­di­tion a life­long “back­ground of anguish and anx­i­ety.”

He met his suf­fer­ing with med­i­ta­tion, prac­tic­ing Rin­zai Zen for decades and liv­ing as a monk for five years at the Mount Baldy monastery in Los Ange­les. This peri­od pro­vides the inspi­ra­tion for the new video above, direct­ed by Daniel Askill, that dra­ma­tizes Cohen’s trans­for­ma­tion from grief to “ordi­nary silence,” the mean­ing of his Japan­ese ordi­na­tion name, Jikan.

Askill calls the video a “qui­et, sym­bol­ic nar­ra­tive that charts the let­ting go of ego and the trap­pings of fame.” The inter­pre­ta­tion is “straightforward—almost pious,” says Matthew Gindin at Tri­cy­cle, and also “an intel­li­gent update and homage” to imagery from Cohen’s first album.

The song, “Hap­pens to the Heart” is the first on “an unex­pect­ed har­vest of new songs” released on the posthu­mous album Thanks for the Dance, com­ing Novem­ber 22. “Hap­pens to the Heart,” is a dis­til­la­tion of clas­sic Cohen themes: the weari­ness of plea­sure, cos­mic absur­di­ty, com­pas­sion, and despair.

I had no trou­ble bet­ting
On the flood against the ark
You see I knew about the end­ing
What hap­pens to the heart

Its title refrain turns each stan­za into a case for how and why to care, inves­ti­gat­ing the mind’s life­time of turn­ings from “the heart”—the con­stant split­ting in two that Zen sees as the source of suf­fer­ing. “I fought for some­thing final,” Cohen intones at the song’s end, “not the right to dis­agree.”

Cohen talks about his jour­ney into the monastery in the inter­view fur­ther up. “Maybe this whole activ­i­ty,” the for­mal prac­tice of Zen, “is a response to a sense of despair that I’ve always had.… By and large, I didn’t have what it took to real­ly enjoy my suc­cess, or my celebri­ty. I was nev­er able to locate it. I was nev­er able to use it.” He learned how to dis­as­so­ci­ate and quar­an­tine him­self.

In the prison of the gift­ed
I was friend­ly with the guards
So I nev­er had to wit­ness
What hap­pens to the heart

In the aus­ter­i­ties of the monastery, Cohen dis­cov­ered “a volup­tuous sense of econ­o­my that you can’t find any­where else,” a dai­ly prac­tice “nec­es­sary to open the heart to the fact that you’re not alone,” even if, as he says wry­ly in “The Goal,” above—the first release from Thanks for the Dance—you “can’t stop the rain, can’t stop the snow.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Leonard Cohen’s Final Inter­view: Record­ed by David Rem­nick of The New York­er

Leonard Cohen’s Last Work, The Flame Gets Pub­lished: Dis­cov­er His Final Poems, Draw­ings, Lyrics & More

How Leonard Cohen & David Bowie Faced Death Through Their Art: A Look at Their Final Albums

Hal­lelu­jah!: You Can Stream Every Leonard Cohen Album in a 22-Hour Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist (1967–2016)

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

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A Schoolhouse Rock-Inspired Guide to Impeachment

in Current Affairs, Politics | November 12th, 2019

How does a bill become a law? You can’t hear the ques­tion and not hum a few bars from School­house Rock’s “I’m Just a Bill.” The groovy car­toon civics les­son was for mil­lions the first they learned about the leg­isla­tive process. Ask anoth­er ques­tion, how­ev­er, like “how does impeach­ment work,” and you may hear more crick­ets than 70’s edu­ca­tion­al TV jin­gles.

Sure­ly we took some­thing from Bill Clinton’s impeach­ment tri­al besides cig­ars, stained blue dress­es, and the spec­ta­cle of moral­ly com­pro­mised politi­cians wag­ging their fin­gers at a moral­ly com­pro­mised politi­cian? Sure­ly we’ve all read the Water­gate tran­scripts, and can quote more from that his­to­ry than Richard Nixon’s “I am not a crook” (mut­tered before he resigned instead of fac­ing the charges)?

Maybe not. Despite the talk of closed-door hear­ings and con­flict­ed jurors, many of us have not paid close atten­tion to the par­tic­u­lars of the process, giv­en that impeach­ment tri­als can make for such com­pelling­ly broad polit­i­cal the­ater. And we nev­er got our School­house Rock impeach­ment episode. Until now.

See­ing as how the pres­i­dent faces pub­lic, tele­vised impeach­ment hear­ings next week, there may be no more oppor­tune time to get caught up on some details with Jonathan Coulton’s School­house Rock-inspired “The Good Fight.” Its ani­ma­tion style and catchy tune recalls the 70s edu­ca­tion­al series, but Coul­ton doesn’t address the kids at home as his pri­ma­ry audi­ence.

“Your tiny hands may scratch and claw,” sings Coul­ton, “but nobody’s above the law.” You won’t win any prizes for guess­ing who this means—a per­son in need of a child­like explain­er on basic gov­ern­ment, it seems. More ver­bal jabs are thrown, and the alleged crimes enu­mer­at­ed, end­ing with trea­son (and a mis­placed, anachro­nis­tic ham­mer and sick­le by ani­ma­tors Head Gear Ani­ma­tion). The video final­ly gets into the impeach­ment process over a minute in, past the halfway mark.

View­ers might find the first half emo­tion­al­ly sat­is­fy­ing, with its char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of impeached pres­i­dents as way­ward chil­dren in need of cor­rec­tion by a swag­ger­ing Con­sti­tu­tion and a sassy band of founders. It’s cute but leaves pre­cious lit­tle time for learn­ing how this account­abil­i­ty process is sup­posed to work. Coul­ton rush­es through the expla­na­tion, and you may find your­self skip­ping back to hear it sev­er­al times.

Nev­er fear: Google—or the search engine of your choice—is here to fer­ry you to thou­sands of guides to the impeach­ment process. “The Good Fight” isn’t, after all, actu­al­ly a School­house Rock ad, but a fun civic-mind­ed reminder to every­one that the pres­i­dent is not above the law, and that Con­gress is enti­tled by the Con­sti­tu­tion to hold the hold­er of that office, whomev­er they may be, account­able. An explain­er by Vox appears below:

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

School­house Rock: Revis­it a Col­lec­tion of Nos­tal­gia-Induc­ing Edu­ca­tion­al Videos

I’m Just a Pill: A School­house Rock Clas­sic Gets Reimag­ined to Defend Repro­duc­tive Rights in 2017

Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry Rock: The School­house Rock Par­o­dy Sat­ur­day Night Live May Have Cen­sored

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

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Watch Nirvana Go Through Rehearsals for Their Famous MTV Unplugged Sessions: “Polly,” “The Man Who Sold the World” & More (1993)

in Music, Television | November 12th, 2019

“Fame is a prison,” tweet­ed Lady Gaga, and many Twit­ter wars ensued. She was only echo­ing an old sen­ti­ment passed down through the enter­tain­ment ages, from Gre­ta Gar­bo (“I detest crowds”) to Don John­son. The emo­tion­al toll of celebri­ty is so well-known as to have become a stan­dard, almost cliché, theme in sto­ry­telling, and no recent artist has exem­pli­fied the tor­tured, reluc­tant celebri­ty more promi­nent­ly than Kurt Cobain.

Cobain may have want­ed to be famous when Nir­vana broke out of Wash­ing­ton State and signed with major label Gef­fen, but he did not want the kind of thing he got. At the end 1993, when the band record­ed their MTV Unplugged in New York spe­cial, he seemed pos­i­tive­ly suf­fo­cat­ed by star­dom. “We knew Cobain did­n’t seem all that hap­py being a rock star,” recalls music jour­nal­ist David Browne, who sat in the audi­ence for that leg­endary per­for­mance, “and that Nir­vana was essen­tial­ly acqui­esc­ing to indus­try dic­tates by tap­ing one of these shows.”

Cobain’s rare tal­ent was to take his bit­ter­ness, despair, and rage and turn them back into deft­ly arranged melod­ic songs, stripped down in “one of the great­est live albums ever,” writes Andrew Wal­lace Cham­ings at The Atlantic. “An unfor­get­table doc­u­ment of raw ten­sion and artis­tic genius. While inti­ma­cy was an intend­ed part of the [Unplugged] con­cept… parts of the Nir­vana set at Sony’s Hells Kitchen stu­dio feel so per­son­al it’s awk­ward.”

The per­for­mance reveals “a singer uncom­fort­able in his own skin, through addic­tion and depres­sion” and the con­tin­ued demands that he make nice for the crowds. The clipped inter­ac­tions between Cobain and his band­mates, espe­cial­ly Dave Grohl, have become as much a part of the Nir­vana Unplugged mythol­o­gy as that frumpy green thrift-store cardi­gan (which recent­ly sold at auc­tion for $137,500).

Kurt’s disheveled crank­i­ness may have been part of Nirvana’s act, but he also nev­er seemed more authen­ti­cal­ly him­self than in these per­for­mances, and it’s riv­et­ing, if painful, to see and hear. Five months lat­er, he was dead, and. Unplugged would become Nirvana’s first posthu­mous release in Novem­ber 1994. In the quar­ter cen­tu­ry since, “accounts have emerged,” writes Browne, that show exact­ly “what was tak­ing place in the days lead­ing up to that tap­ing.”

“The rehearsals were tense,” Browne con­tin­ues, “MTV brass weren’t thrilled when the promised guests turned out to be the Meat Pup­pets and not, say, any­one from Pearl Jam. Cobain was going through with­draw­al that morn­ing.” And yet every song came togeth­er in one take—only one of three Unplugged spe­cials in which that had ever hap­pened. “The entire per­for­mance made you feel as if Cobain would per­haps sur­vive…. The qui­et seemed to be his sal­va­tion, until it wasn’t.”

Mark­ing the album’s 25th anniver­sary this month, Gef­fen has rere­leased Unplugged in New York both dig­i­tal­ly and as a 2 LP set, announc­ing the event with more behind-the-scenes glimpses in the rehearsal footage here, pre­vi­ous­ly only avail­able on DVD. At the top, see the band prac­tice “Pol­ly,” and see a frus­trat­ed Grohl, whom Cobain con­sid­ered leav­ing out of the show entire­ly, smoke and joke behind the scowl­ing singer.

Fur­ther up, see Cobain strain at the vocals in “Come as You Are,” while Grohl shows off his new­found restraint and the band makes the song sound as watery and wob­bly as it does ful­ly elec­tri­fied. Above, Cobain and gui­tarist Pat Smear work out their dynam­ic on Bowie’s “The Man Whole Sold the World,” while cel­list Lori Gold­ston helps them cre­ate “the pret­ti­est noise the band has ever made,” writes Cham­ings. Even 25 years on, “there is no way of lis­ten­ing to Unplugged in New York with­out invok­ing death; it’s in every note.” Some­how, this grim inten­si­ty made these per­for­mances the most vital of Nirvana’s career.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ani­mat­ed Video: Kurt Cobain on Teenage Angst, Sex­u­al­i­ty & Find­ing Sal­va­tion in Punk Music

How Kurt Cobain Con­front­ed Vio­lence Against Women in His “Dark­est Song”: Nevermind‘s “Pol­ly”

Watch Nir­vana Per­form “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” Just Days After the Release of Nev­er­mind (1991)

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

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An MRI Shows How a Singer Sings Two Tones at Once (With the Music of Mozart and Brian Eno)

in Music | November 12th, 2019

When peo­ple hear Anna-Maria Hefele sing, they won­der how she does it, and not just because of her impres­sive tra­di­tion­al chops. “While most of us strug­gle to voice one clear, dis­tinct note,” writes the Inde­pen­dent’s Christo­pher Hooton, the poly­phon­ic over­tone singer Hefele “can sing two at once, and move them around in sep­a­rate scales.” Also known as “throat singing,” this tech­nique “allows her to estab­lish a fun­da­men­tal note and then move the over­tone above it through dif­fer­ent notes, cre­at­ing an astound­ing, ethe­re­al effect.” With noth­ing more than what nature gave her, in oth­er words, Hefele man­ages to achieve a vocal effect more strik­ing than most any­thing heard as a result of even today’s most com­pli­cat­ed dig­i­tal process­es.

But what, exact­ly, is going on when she sings? These two videos, record­ed with Hefele per­form­ing inside a mag­net­ic res­o­nance imag­ing machine at the Insti­tute for Musi­cian’s Med­i­cine at the Uni­ver­si­ty Med­ical Cen­ter Freiburg, shed light on the mechan­ics of poly­phon­ic over­done singing. “What you see in this dynam­ic MRI-record­ing is the tongue move­ment in the vocal tract while doing over­tone singing and nor­mal singing,” says the descrip­tion.

“The posi­tions of the tongue forms the res­o­nance cav­i­ties which delete all not-want­ed over­tones in the sound of the voice at a cer­tain point in time, and then ampli­fy a sin­gle over­tone that is left, which can be heard as a sep­a­rate note above the fun­da­men­tal.” It has, in oth­er words, as much to do with sup­press­ing all the tones you don’t want to sing as with empha­siz­ing the ones you do. Hard­ly the eas­i­est musi­cal trick to pull off, much less inside an envi­ron­ment as unfor­giv­ing­ly noisy as an MRI machine.

But you can still learn the basic tech­niques, and from Hefele her­self at that: pre­vi­ous­ly here on Open Cul­ture we’ve fea­tured Hefele’s own demon­stra­tion of and how-to lessons on over­tone singing. No mat­ter how well we our­selves learn to sing two notes at once, though, we’d nev­er­the­less have lit­tle idea what’s going on to let us make such sounds with­out these reveal­ing MRI videos. (Oth­ers have sim­i­lar­ly exposed the inner work­ings of beat­box­ing and opera singing.) The footage also under­scores the respectable musi­cal taste of Hefele her­self or her col­lab­o­ra­tors in this research project, select­ing as they have the musi­cal exam­ples of “Sehn­sucht nach dem Früh­linge” by Hefele’s coun­try­man Wolf­gang Amadeus Mozart and “By This Riv­er” from singing advo­cate Bri­an Eno’s clas­sic LP Before and After Sci­ence — though you might call this an exam­ple of music made dur­ing sci­ence.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Musi­cian Shows How to Sing Two Notes at Once in Mes­mer­iz­ing Video

How to Sing Two Notes At Once (aka Poly­phon­ic Over­tone Singing): Lessons from Singer Anna-Maria Hefele

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

The Hu, a New Break­through Band from Mon­go­lia, Plays Heavy Met­al with Tra­di­tion­al Folk Instru­ments and Throat Singing

What Beat­box­ing and Opera Singing Look Like Inside an MRI Machine

Bri­an Eno Lists the Ben­e­fits of Singing: A Long Life, Increased Intel­li­gence, and a Sound Civ­i­liza­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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 Face­book.

 

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The Internet Archive Is Digitizing & Preserving Over 100,000 Vinyl Records: Hear 750 Full Albums Now

in Archives, History, Libraries, Music | November 11th, 2019

There seems to be wide­spread agreement—something spe­cial was lost in the rushed-to-mar­ket move from phys­i­cal media to dig­i­tal stream­ing. We have come to admit that some old­er musi­cal tech­nolo­gies can­not be improved upon. Musi­cians, pro­duc­ers, engi­neers spend thou­sands to repli­cate the sound of old­er ana­log record­ing tech­nol­o­gy, with all its quirky, incon­sis­tent oper­a­tion. And fans buy record play­ers and vinyl records in sur­pris­ing­ly increas­ing num­bers to hear the warm and fuzzy char­ac­ter of their sound.

Neil Young, who has relent­less­ly crit­i­cized every aspect of dig­i­tal record­ing, has dis­missed the resur­gence of the LP as a “fash­ion state­ment” giv­en that most new albums released on vinyl are dig­i­tal mas­ters. But buy­ers come to vinyl with a range of expec­ta­tions, writes Ari Her­stand at Dig­i­tal Music News: “Vinyl is an entire expe­ri­ence. Won­der­ful­ly tac­tile…. When we stare at our screens for the major­i­ty of our days, it’s nice to look at art that doesn’t glow and isn’t the size of my hand.” Vinyl can feel and look as good as it sounds (when prop­er­ly engi­neered).

While shiny, dig­i­tal­ly mas­tered vinyl releas­es pop up in big box stores every­where, the real musi­cal wealth lies in the past—in thou­sands upon thou­sands of LPs, 45s, 78s—relics of “the only con­sumer play­back for­mat we have that’s ful­ly ana­log and ful­ly loss­less,” says vinyl mas­ter­ing engi­neer Adam Gon­salves. Few insti­tu­tions can afford to store thou­sands of phys­i­cal albums, and many rar­i­ties and odd­i­ties exist in van­ish­ing­ly few­er copies. Their crack­le and hiss may be for­ev­er lost with­out the inter­ven­tion of dig­i­tal preser­va­tion­ists like the Inter­net Archive.

The Archive is “now expand­ing its dig­i­ti­za­tion project to include LPs,” reports Faye Lessler on the organization’s blog. This will come as wel­come news to cul­tur­al his­to­ri­ans, ana­log con­ser­va­tion­ists, and vinyl enthu­si­asts of all kinds, who will most­ly agree that dig­i­ti­za­tion is far bet­ter than extinc­tion, though the tac­tile and visu­al plea­sures may be irre­place­able. The Archive has focused its efforts on the over 100,000 audio record­ings from the Boston Pub­lic Library’s col­lec­tion, “in order to pre­vent them from dis­ap­pear­ing for­ev­er when the vinyl is bro­ken, warped, or lost.”

“These record­ings exist in a vari­ety of his­tor­i­cal for­mats, includ­ing wax cylin­ders, 78 rpms, and LPs,” though the project is cur­rent­ly focused on the lat­ter. “They span musi­cal gen­res includ­ing  clas­si­cal, pop, rock, and jazz, and con­tain obscure record­ings like this album of music for baton twirlers, and this record of radio’s all-time great­est bloop­ers.” The method of rapid­ly con­vert­ing the arti­facts at the rate of ten LPs per hour (which you can read more about at the Archive blog) serves as a tes­ta­ment to what dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy does best—using machine learn­ing and meta­da­ta to auto­mate the archival process and cre­ate exten­sive, search­able data­bas­es of cat­a­logue infor­ma­tion.

Cur­rent­ly, the project has uploaded 1,180 record­ings to its site, “but some of the albums are only avail­able in 30 sec­ond snip­pets due to rights issues,” Lessler points out. Browse the “Unlocked Record­ings” cat­e­go­ry to hear 750 dig­i­tized LPs avail­able in full: these include a record­ing of Gian Car­lo Menot­ti’s bal­let The Uni­corn, the Gor­gon, and the Man­ti­core, fur­ther up; The Beget­ting of the Pres­i­dent, above, a satire of Nixon’s rise to pow­er as Bib­li­cal epic, read by Orson Welles in his King of Kings’ voice; and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Con­cer­to no. 1 in B‑flat minor, played by Van Cliburn, below.

The range and vari­ety cap­tured in this collection—from fire­works sound effects to Elton John’s sec­ond, self-titled album to clas­sic Pearl Bai­ly to 80s new wave band The Com­mu­nards to Andres Segovia play­ing Bach to the Smokey and the Ban­dit 2 soundtrack—will out­last copy­right restric­tions. And they will leave behind an exten­sive record, no pun intend­ed, of the LP: “our pri­ma­ry musi­cal medi­um for over a gen­er­a­tion,” says the Archive’s spe­cial projects direc­tor CR Saik­ley, “wit­ness to the birth of both Rock & Roll and Punk Rock… inte­gral to our cul­ture from the 1950s to the 1980s.” Vinyl remains the most revered of musi­cal for­mats for good reason—reasons future gen­er­a­tions will dis­cov­er, at least vir­tu­al­ly, for them­selves some­day.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Vinyl Records Are Made: A Primer from 1956

An Inter­ac­tive Map of Every Record Shop in the World

25,000+ 78RPM Records Now Pro­fes­sion­al­ly Dig­i­tized & Stream­ing Online: A Trea­sure Trove of Ear­ly 20th Cen­tu­ry Music

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

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Why David Sedaris Hates America’s Favorite Word, “Awesome”

in English Language | November 11th, 2019

David Sedaris has made his name as a humorist, not­ing the absur­di­ties of every­thing from life with his par­ents and sib­lings to the per­pet­u­al cycle of world trav­el and book-sign­ing into which fame has launched him. But as his long­time read­ers know, he’s real­ly a stu­dent of lan­guage: not only has his own voice on the page been shaped by close obser­va­tion of Eng­lish, he’s stud­ied and con­tin­ues to study a host of for­eign lan­guages as well. Long­time read­ers will remem­ber how much mate­r­i­al he got out of the French class­es that gave his book Me Talk Pret­ty One Day its title, and he has more recent­ly writ­ten of his strug­gles to get a han­dle on such diverse tongues as Ger­man, Japan­ese, and Slovene. (I myself wrote an essay about Sedaris’ lan­guage-learn­ing in the Los Ange­les Review of Books.)

Though he’s nev­er explic­it­ly cit­ed it as part of his writ­ing process, these stud­ies have clear­ly honed Sedaris’ ear for lan­guage in gen­er­al, espe­cial­ly when it comes to its local tics and eccen­tric­i­ties. “In France the most often used word is ‘con­ner­ie,’ which means ‘bull­shit,’ ” he says in the audio­book clip at the top of the post from his lat­est col­lec­tion Calyp­so, “and in Amer­i­ca it’s hands-down ‘awe­some,’ which has replaced ‘incred­i­ble,’ ‘good,’ and even ‘just OK.’ Pret­ty much every­thing that isn’t ter­ri­ble is awe­some in Amer­i­ca now.” What once denot­ed a sight or expe­ri­ence filled with the emo­tion of “dread, ven­er­a­tion, and won­der that is inspired by author­i­ty or by the sacred or sub­lime” has become, in Sedaris’ view, a syn­onym for “fine.”

“It just got out of hand to me,” Sedaris explains to USA Today. “Everything’s awe­some all the time. I was in Boul­der, Col­orado” — a city he has else­where described as “the ‘awe­some’ cap­i­tal” — “and some­one said, ‘I’ll have a dou­ble espres­so, awe­some,’ and the oth­er per­son said, ‘Awe­some.’ ”

(In anoth­er inter­view, he men­tions that he often fines peo­ple “a dol­lar a time at events for using the A‑word. I warn them first, because it’s only fair, but I can make pret­ty good mon­ey that way.”) This may sound like a futile objec­tion to inevitable lin­guis­tic change, but only to those who haven’t noticed the under­ly­ing debase­ment of mean­ing. If “awe­some” can now describe a cof­fee, what word, if any, indi­cates gen­uine awe?

A sim­i­lar fate has befall­en oth­er Eng­lish words and expres­sions. “Great” pre­ced­ed “awe­some” into the seman­tic haze, and “to beg the ques­tion” has become a stan­dard exam­ple of a phrase to whose orig­i­nal mean­ing only a pedant would cling. Peo­ple now often use it syn­ony­mous­ly with “rais­ing the ques­tion,” but if we accept that as its mean­ing, we’re left with no way to refer to ques­tion-beg­ging itself, a rhetor­i­cal prac­tice still as ram­pant as ever.  To crit­i­cize the mod­ern loos­en­ing of these usages is to keep sharp and com­plete one’s array of tools for expres­sion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion; we con­demn the overuse of a word not out of pure hatred but out of under­stand­ing the neces­si­ty of its true mean­ing. Even David Sedaris grants “awe­some” its prop­er time and place: “I went to the Great Wall of Chi­na once, and I have to say, that was awe­some. But that’s the only thing I can think of. Not a lat­te.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

20 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Sedaris: A Sam­pling of His Inim­itable Humor

David Sedaris Breaks Down His Writ­ing Process: Keep a Diary, Car­ry a Note­book, Read Out Loud, Aban­don Hope

David Fos­ter Wal­lace Cre­ates Lists of His Favorite Words: “Mau­gre,” “Taran­tism,” “Ruck,” “Prima­para” & More

Bertrand Rus­sell Lists His 20 Favorite Words in 1958 (and What Are Some of Yours?)

The Largest His­tor­i­cal Dic­tio­nary of Eng­lish Slang Now Free Online: Cov­ers 500 Years of the “Vul­gar Tongue”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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An Animated Leonard Cohen Offers Reflections on Death: Thought-Provoking Excerpts from His Final Interview

in Animation, Life, Magazines, Music | November 11th, 2019

A month before Leonard Cohen died in Novem­ber, 2016, The New York­er’s edi­tor David Rem­nick trav­eled to the songwriter’s Los Ange­les home for a lengthy inter­view in which Cohen looked both for­ward and back.

As a for­mer Zen monk, he was also adept at inhab­it­ing the present, one in which the shad­ow of death crept ever clos­er.

His for­mer lover and muse, Mar­i­anne Ihlen, had suc­cumbed to can­cer ear­li­er in the sum­mer, two days after receiv­ing a frank and lov­ing email from Cohen:

Well, Mar­i­anne, it’s come to this time when we are real­ly so old and our bod­ies are falling apart and I think I will fol­low you very soon. Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine. And you know that I’ve always loved you for your beau­ty and your wis­dom, but I don’t need to say any­thing more about that because you know all about that. But now, I just want to wish you a very good jour­ney. Good­bye old friend. End­less love, see you down the road.

The New York­er has nev­er shied from over-the-top phys­i­cal descrip­tions. The cour­te­ous, high­ly ver­bal young poet, who’d evinced “a kind of Michael Cor­leone Before the Fall look, sloe-eyed, dark, a lit­tle hunched” was now very thin, but still hand­some, with the hand­shake of “a court­ly retired capo.”

In addi­tion to an album, You Want It Dark­er, to pro­mote, Cohen had a mas­sive back­log of unpub­lished poems and unfin­ished lyrics to tend to before the sands of time ran out.

At 82, he seemed glad to have all his men­tal fac­ul­ties and the sup­port of a devot­ed per­son­al assis­tant, sev­er­al close friends and his two adult chil­dren, all of which allowed him to main­tain his music and lan­guage-based worka­holic habits.

Time, as he not­ed, pro­vides a pow­er­ful incen­tive for fin­ish­ing up, despite the chal­lenges posed by the weak­en­ing flesh:

At a cer­tain point, if you still have your mar­bles and are not faced with seri­ous finan­cial chal­lenges, you have a chance to put your house in order. It’s a cliché, but it’s under­es­ti­mat­ed as an anal­gesic on all lev­els. Putting your house in order, if you can do it, is one of the most com­fort­ing activ­i­ties, and the ben­e­fits of it are incal­cu­la­ble.

He had clear­ly made peace with the idea that some of his projects would go unfin­ished.

You can hear his fond­ness for one of them, a “sweet lit­tle song” that he recit­ed from mem­o­ry, eyes closed, in the ani­mat­ed inter­view excerpt, above:

Lis­ten to the hum­ming­bird

Whose wings you can­not see

Lis­ten to the hum­ming­bird

Don’t lis­ten to me.

Lis­ten to the but­ter­fly

Whose days but num­ber three

Lis­ten to the but­ter­fly

Don’t lis­ten to me.

Lis­ten to the mind of God

Which doesn’t need to be

Lis­ten to the mind of God

Don’t lis­ten to me.

These unfin­ished thoughts close out Cohen’s beau­ti­ful­ly named posthu­mous album, Thanks for the Dance, sched­uled for release lat­er this month.

Dianne V. Lawrence, who designed Cohen’s hum­ming­bird logo, a motif begin­ning with 1979’s Recent Songs album, spec­u­lates that Cohen equat­ed the hum­ming­bird’s enor­mous ener­gy usage and sus­te­nance require­ments with those of the soul.

Read Remnick’s arti­cle on Leonard Cohen in its entire­ty here. Hear a record­ing of David Rem­nick­’s inter­view with Cohen–his last ever–below:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Leonard Cohen’s Final Inter­view: Record­ed by David Rem­nick of The New York­er

Leonard Cohen’s Last Work, The Flame Gets Pub­lished: Dis­cov­er His Final Poems, Draw­ings, Lyrics & More

How Leonard Cohen Wrote a Love Song

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Decem­ber 9 for her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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