Watching Nature Documentaries Can Produce “Real Happiness,” Finds a Study from the BBC and UC-Berkeley

in Environment, Nature, Science, Television | October 15th, 2019

Hol­ly­wood sci­ence fic­tion films imag­ine future humans in worlds that are no longer green, or nev­er were—from Soy­lent Green’s dying Earth to that of Inter­stel­lar. And from Soy­lent Green to Ad Astra, humans in the future expe­ri­ence plant and ani­mal life as sim­u­la­tions on a screen, in hyper­re­al pho­tog­ra­phy and video meant to paci­fy and com­fort. Maybe we live in that world already, to some extent, with apoc­a­lyp­tic films and sci­ence fic­tion express­ing a col­lec­tive mourn­ing for the extinc­tions brought on by cli­mate change.

“Over the course of my lifetime—I’m 46,” writes Wash­ing­ton Post art crit­ic Sebas­t­ian Smee, “the plan­et has lost more than half of its wildlife pop­u­la­tions, accord­ing to the World Wildlife Fund.” Sure­ly this brute fact explains the immense pop­u­lar­i­ty of high pro­duc­tion-val­ue nature doc­u­men­taries, the anti­dote to apoc­a­lyp­tic futur­ism. They have become “block­buster events,” argues Ed Yong at The Atlantic, with fan­doms as fierce as any.

Viewed “from the per­spec­tive of the future,” writes Smee, nature doc­u­men­taries “are great art. Maybe the great­est of our time.” But can view­ing film and pho­tographs of nature pro­duce in us the feel­ings of awe and won­der that poets, artists, and philoso­phers have described feel­ing in actu­al nature for cen­turies? BBC Earth, pro­duc­er of sev­er­al major block­buster nature doc­u­men­tary series, under­took some psy­cho­log­i­cal research to find out, part­ner­ing with researchers from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley.

The team exam­ined the effects of watch­ing the BBC’s Plan­et Earth II doc­u­men­tary series rel­a­tive to oth­er kinds of pro­grams. “It is a deep human intu­ition that view­ing nature and being in nature is good for the mind and body,” they write in the study, titled “Explor­ing the Emo­tion­al State of ‘Real Hap­pi­ness.’” (Socio­bi­ol­o­gist E.O. Wil­son coined the term “bio­phil­ia” to describe the evolved pref­er­ence for nat­ur­al beau­ty.) Does screen­time equal phys­i­cal time spent out­doors? Not exact­ly, but nature doc­u­men­taries can low­er stress lev­els and, yes, pro­duce feel­ings of “real hap­pi­ness.”

There have been sev­er­al pre­vi­ous such stud­ies. The authors cite one in which a few min­utes of the orig­i­nal series Plan­et Earth “led peo­ple, com­pared to con­trol par­tic­i­pants, to feel 45.6% more awe and 31.4% more grat­i­tude, but no shifts in feel­ings of neg­a­tive emo­tions such as fear and sad­ness.” The Plan­et Earth II study may be the largest of its kind, with almost 3,500 par­tic­i­pants in the U.S., around a thou­sand in the U.K., India, and Aus­tralia, each, and around 500 in both South Africa and Sin­ga­pore for a total of approx­i­mate­ly 7,500 view­ers.

Par­tic­i­pants across a range of age groups, from 16 to 55 and over, were shown short clips of a vari­ety of TV pro­grams, includ­ing clips from Plan­et Earth II. They were sur­veyed on an array of emo­tion­al respons­es before and after each view­ing. The study also mea­sured stress lev­els using the Per­ceived Stress Scale (PSS), and used a facial map­ping tech­nol­o­gy called CrowdE­mo­tion to track phys­i­cal respons­es. The researchers aggre­gat­ed the data and con­trolled for pop­u­la­tion size in each coun­try.

The find­ings are fas­ci­nat­ing. Across the scale, Plan­et Earth II clips gen­er­at­ed more feel­ings of hap­pi­ness and awe, with clips from news and enter­tain­ment shows caus­ing more fear. In most of the study’s mea­sures, these good feel­ings peaked high­est at the low­er demo­graph­ic age range of 16–24. Younger view­ers showed greater pos­i­tive emo­tion­al respons­es in facial map­ping and sur­vey data, a fact con­sis­tent with BBC rat­ings data show­ing that 16–34 year-olds make up around 41% of the audi­ence share for Plan­et Earth II.

“This younger group,” note the authors, “was more like­ly to expe­ri­ence sig­nif­i­cant pos­i­tive shifts in emo­tion.” They also start­ed out, before view­ing the clips, with sig­nif­i­cant­ly more envi­ron­men­tal anx­i­ety, scor­ing high­ly on the stress scale. 71% described them­selves as “extreme­ly wor­ried about the state of the world’s envi­ron­ment and what it will mean for my future.” A small­er per­cent­age showed the low­est lev­el of agree­ment with the state­ment “I reg­u­lar­ly get out­side and enjoy spend­ing time with nature.”

For near­ly all of the study’s view­ers, nature doc­u­men­taries seemed to pro­duce at least fleet­ing feel­ings of “real hap­pi­ness.” For many, they may also be a way of coun­ter­ing fears of the future, and com­pen­sat­ing in advance for a loss of the nat­ur­al beau­ty that remains. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the study did not mea­sure the num­ber of par­tic­i­pants who viewed Plan­et Earth II and oth­er “block­buster” nature doc­u­men­taries as a call to action against envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion. Maybe that’s a sub­ject for anoth­er study. Read the full Plan­et Earth II study results here. And if you’re feel­ing stressed, watch thir­ty min­utes of “Visu­al Sound­scapes,” pre­sent­ed by Plan­et Earth II, above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Japan­ese Prac­tice of “For­est Bathing”—Or Just Hang­ing Out in the Woods—Can Low­er Stress Lev­els and Fight Dis­ease

Becom­ing: A Short Time­lapse Film Shows a Sin­gle Cell Mor­ph­ing Into a Com­plete, Com­plex Liv­ing Organ­ism

Do Octopi Dream? An Aston­ish­ing Nature Doc­u­men­tary Sug­gests They Do

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

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MIT Researchers 3D Print a Bridge Imagined by Leonardo da Vinci in 1502— and Prove That It Actually Works

in History, MIT, Technology | October 15th, 2019

Pho­to by Gretchen Ertl, via MIT News

Unfor­tu­nate though it may be for the dream­ers of the world, we’re all judged not by what we imag­ine, but what we actu­al­ly do. This goes dou­ble for those specif­i­cal­ly tasked with cre­at­ing things in the phys­i­cal envi­ron­ment, from engi­neers and archi­tects to inven­tors and artists. Leonar­do da Vin­ci, the orig­i­nal “Renais­sance man,” was an engi­neer, archi­tect, inven­tor, artist, and more besides, and five cen­turies after his death we con­tin­ue to admire him for not just the works of art and tech­nol­o­gy he real­ized dur­ing his life­time, but also the ones that nev­er made it off his draw­ing board (or out of his note­books). And as we con­tin­ue to dis­cov­er, many of the lat­ter weren’t just flights of fan­cy, but gen­uine inno­va­tions ground­ed in real­i­ty.

Take the bridge Leonar­do pro­posed to Sul­tan Bayezid II, who in 1502 had “sent out the Renais­sance equiv­a­lent of a gov­ern­ment RFP (request for pro­pos­als), seek­ing a design for a bridge to con­nect Istan­bul with its neigh­bor city Gala­ta,” writes MIT News’ David L. Chan­dler. Writ­ing to the sul­tan, Leonar­do describes his design as “a mason­ry bridge as high as a build­ing, and even tall ships will be able to sail under it.”

At the time, such bridges required the sup­port of piers all along their spans, which pre­vent­ed large ships from pass­ing under­neath. But Leonar­do’s design would do the job with only “a sin­gle enor­mous arch.” About ten times longer than the typ­i­cal bridge of the ear­ly 16th cen­tu­ry, it took a page from the bridges of ancient Rome, designed as it was to “stand on its own under the force of grav­i­ty, with­out any fas­ten­ers or mor­tar to hold the stone togeth­er.”

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Alas, Leonar­do, who had bet­ter luck with Ital­ian patrons, did­n’t win this par­tic­u­lar com­mis­sion. His bridge design must at least have impressed the sul­tan with its sheer ambi­tion, but would it have held up? A team at MIT con­sist­ing of grad­u­ate Kar­ly Bast, pro­fes­sor John Ochsendorf, and under­grad­u­ate Michelle Xie recent­ly put it to the test, scru­ti­niz­ing the mate­r­i­al Leonar­do left behind, repli­cat­ing the geo­log­i­cal con­di­tions of the pro­posed site, and build­ing a 1:500 scale mod­el out of 126 3D-print­ed blocks. Not only could the mod­el bear weight using only the strength of its own geom­e­try, the design also came with oth­er fea­tures, such as sta­bi­liz­ing abut­ments (which Chan­dler com­pares to the legs of “a stand­ing sub­way rid­er widen­ing her stance to bal­ance in a sway­ing car”) to keep the bridge upright in that earth­quake-prone area of mod­ern-day Turkey.

That par­tic­u­lar loca­tion did­n’t get a bridge until 1845, when Valide Sul­tan ordered the con­struc­tion of the first, wood­en, Gala­ta Bridge. It stood for 18 years until its replace­ment by anoth­er wood­en bridge, part of an infra­struc­ture-build­ing push before Napoleon III’s vis­it to Istan­bul. The third Gala­ta Bridge, com­plet­ed in 1875 from a design by a British engi­neer­ing firm, float­ed on pon­toons. The fourth was a Ger­man-designed float­ing bridge in use from 1912 until a fire dam­aged it in 1992. Only the fifth and cur­rent Gala­ta Bridge, with its tram tracks above, its pedes­tri­an­ized deck full of shops and mar­ket spaces below, and it draw­bridge sec­tion in the mid­dle, was built by a Turk­ish com­pa­ny. In all its iter­a­tions, the Gala­ta Bridge has become one of Istan­bul’s cul­tur­al ref­er­ence points and major attrac­tions as well — not that hav­ing been designed by Leonar­do would have hurt its image any.

via MIT News/Pop­u­lar Mechan­ics

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Build Leonar­do da Vinci’s Inge­nious Self-Sup­port­ing Bridge: Renais­sance Inno­va­tions You Can Still Enjoy Today

Leonar­do da Vin­ci Draws Designs of Future War Machines: Tanks, Machine Guns & More

Watch Leonar­do da Vinci’s Musi­cal Inven­tion, the Vio­la Organ­ista, Being Played for the Very First Time

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry Of Avi­a­tion: From Leonar­do da Vinci’s Sketch­es to Apol­lo 11

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Huge Note­book Col­lec­tions, the Codex Forster, Now Dig­i­tized in High-Res­o­lu­tion: Explore Them Online

A Com­plete Dig­i­ti­za­tion of Leonar­do Da Vinci’s Codex Atlanti­cus, the Largest Exist­ing Col­lec­tion of His Draw­ings & Writ­ings

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 on Face­book.

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Yo-Yo Ma Performs the First Classical Piece He Ever Learned: Take a 12-Minute Mental Health Break and Watch His Moving “Tiny Desk” Concert

in Life, Music, Radio | October 15th, 2019

For those who feel their enjoy­ment of J.S. Bach’s gor­geous Pre­lude from Cel­lo Suite No. 1 in G major has been under­cut rather than enhanced by its fre­quent TV and film appear­ances, Yo-Yo Ma’s 2018 NPR Music Tiny Desk Con­cert is a ton­ic.

As he explains above, the pre­lude was the first piece he learned as a begin­ning four-year-old cel­list, adding one mea­sure per day, an incre­men­tal approach he rec­om­mends.

He and the 300-some-year-old com­po­si­tion have done well by each oth­er through­out a rela­tion­ship span­ning near­ly six decades.

His first record­ing of the Suites, in 1983, result­ed in his first Gram­my.

Cur­rent­ly, he’s wrap­ping up the Bach Project, play­ing the Suites in 36 icon­ic loca­tions around the world, believ­ing that Bach has a unique abil­i­ty to unite humans and inspire col­lab­o­ra­tion, espe­cial­ly in “a time when our civic con­ver­sa­tion is so often focused on divi­sion.”

The leg­endary cellist’s unas­sum­ing, friend­ly demeanor is also a uni­fi­er, well suit­ed to the infor­mal­i­ty of the Tiny Desk Con­certs.

(Pro­duc­er Tom Huizen­ga—a non-cellist—recounts how Ma passed him his bow, along with a 1712 Stradi­var­ius, encour­ag­ing him to “play some­thing.”)

Music is a clear­ly a major part of Ma’s DNA, and also the way in which he expe­ri­ences the cir­cle of life. He intro­duces the Sara­bande as the heart of the suite, telling how he played it at two friends’ wed­dings and then again at their memo­r­i­al ser­vices, illus­trat­ing the ways in which music is a cumu­la­tive emo­tion­al propo­si­tion.

As he told NPR’s Mary Louise Kel­ly imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing his per­for­mance:

You try and tran­scend tech­nique to get to what you think is there. Instead of say­ing, “Here are these notes and this is dif­fi­cult and I’m going to try and nail it,” you try to express it.

With the sand quick­ly slip­ping through the hour­glass of his 12-minute per­for­mance, he treats his audi­ence to Bach’s tiny, pop­ulist Gigue.

Set List:

J.S. Bach: “Pre­lude (from Suite No. 1 for Solo Cel­lo)”

J.S. Bach: “Sara­bande (from Suite No. 6 for Solo Cel­lo)”

J.S. Bach: “Gigue (from Suite No. 3 for Solo Cel­lo)”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonard Bern­stein Intro­duces 7‑Year-Old Yo-Yo Ma: Watch the Young­ster Per­form for John F. Kennedy (1962)

Watch 450 NPR Tiny Desk Con­certs: Inti­mate Per­for­mances from The Pix­ies, Adele, Wilco, Yo-Yo Ma & Many More

Yo-Yo Ma & The Goat Rodeo Ses­sions

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Novem­ber 4 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Louise Jor­dan Miln’s “Woo­ings and Wed­dings in Many Climes (1900). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Why Should We Read Dante’s Divine Comedy? An Animated Video Makes the Case

in Literature | October 14th, 2019

Dante Alighieri’s 14th-cen­tu­ry Divine Com­e­dy is revered for the force of its imagery, its inno­v­a­tive terza rima and bold use of the ver­nac­u­lar, its cre­ative inter­pre­ta­tion of medieval Catholic doc­trine, its fero­cious polit­i­cal satire…

And the poignant auto­bi­og­ra­phy the poet weaves through­out the sto­ry. The epic is ani­mat­ed by Dan­te’s own roman­tic long­ing and his bit­ter dis­il­lu­sion­ment with life. He paints him­self in the first stan­za as over­come by mid­dle-aged bewil­der­ment. Robert Durling’s trans­la­tion ren­ders the first lines thus:

In the mid­dle of the jour­ney of our life, I came to
myself in a dark wood, for the straight way was lost.

He is already adrift when Vir­gil turns up to guide him to the famous­ly inscribed gates of hell—“Abandon all hope ye who enter here.”

The grim descent “sets into motion what is per­haps the great­est love sto­ry ever told,” says the TED-Ed video above, script­ed by Sheila Marie Orfano and ani­mat­ed by Tomás Pichar­do-Espail­lat. Dante takes this epic jour­ney with two mus­es, Vir­gil, then Beat­rice, who guides him through Par­adise, a fig­ure drawn from an unre­quit­ed obses­sion the poet har­bored for a woman named Beat­rice Porti­nari.

Dante turned his crush into a muse, and trans­formed desire into chaste reli­gious alle­go­ry. He turned his hatred of church and state cor­rup­tion, how­ev­er, into glee­ful revenge fan­ta­sy, tor­tur­ing a num­ber of peo­ple still very much alive at the time of his writ­ing. A mem­ber of the White Guelphs, a Flo­ren­tine fac­tion that pushed back against Roman influ­ence, Dante fought fierce­ly opposed the Black Guelphs, a group loy­al to the Pope. He was even­tu­al­ly exiled from Flo­rence, but not silenced.

“Dis­hon­ored and with lit­tle hope of return,” he “freely aired his griev­ances” in the Divine Com­e­dy, writ­ing in Ital­ian, rather than Latin, to ensure “the widest pos­si­ble audi­ence.” His read­ers at the time would have picked up on the ref­er­ences. Now, we need hun­dreds of notes to explain the full con­text. We should also know some salient facts about the poet: a life of polit­i­cal bat­tle and reli­gious devo­tion, an imag­i­na­tive lit­er­ary love affair with a woman he sup­pos­ed­ly met twice; a thwart­ed desire for jus­tice and vengeance and an obses­sion with integri­ty.

We do not need exten­sive notes and crit­i­cal essays to feel the force of Dante’s lan­guage, just as we do not need to believe in the Divine Com­e­dy’s reli­gion. Like all great epic poet­ry, its meta­phys­i­cal themes ampli­fy pro­found­ly human emo­tion­al jour­neys.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Free Course on Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

Visu­al­iz­ing Dante’s Hell: See Maps & Draw­ings of Dante’s Infer­no from the Renais­sance Through Today

An Illus­trat­ed and Inter­ac­tive Dante’s Infer­no: Explore a New Dig­i­tal Com­pan­ion to the Great 14th-Cen­tu­ry Epic Poem

Gus­tave Doré’s Haunt­ing Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy

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

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Treasures in the Trash: A Secret Museum Inside a New York City Department of Sanitation Garage

in Environment, Museums | October 14th, 2019

Like many New York­ers, retired san­i­ta­tion work­er Nel­son Moli­na has a keen inter­est in his fel­low cit­i­zens’ dis­cards.

But where­as oth­ers risk bed­bugs for the occa­sion­al curb­side score or dump­ster dive as an envi­ro-polit­i­cal act, Molina’s inter­est is couched in the cura­to­r­i­al.

The bulk of his col­lec­tion was amassed between 1981 and 2015, while he was on active duty in Carnegie Hill and East Harlem, col­lect­ing garbage in an area bor­dered by 96th Street, Fifth Avenue, 106th Street, and First Avenue.

At the end of every shift, he stashed the day’s finds at the garage. With the sup­port of his cowork­ers and high­er ups, his hob­by crept beyond the con­fines of his per­son­al area, fill­ing the lock­er room, and even­tu­al­ly expand­ing across the mas­sive sec­ond floor of Man­hat­tan East San­i­ta­tion Garage Num­ber 11, at which point it was declared an unof­fi­cial muse­um with the uncon­ven­tion­al name of Trea­sures in the Trash.

Because the muse­um is sit­u­at­ed inside a work­ing garage, vis­i­tors can only access the col­lec­tion dur­ing infre­quent, spe­cial­ly arranged tours. Hunter College’s East Harlem gallery and the City Reli­quary have host­ed trav­el­ing exhibits.

The Foun­da­tion for New York’s Strongest (a nick­name orig­i­nal­ly con­ferred on the Depart­ment of San­i­ta­tion’s foot­ball team) is rais­ing funds for an off­site muse­um to show­case Molina’s 45,000+ trea­sures, along with exhibits ded­i­cat­ed to “DSNY’s rich his­to­ry.”

Molina’s for­mer cowork­ers mar­vel at his unerr­ing instinct for know­ing when an undis­tin­guished-look­ing bag of refuse con­tains an object worth sav­ing, from auto­graphed base­balls and books to keep­sakes of a deeply per­son­al nature, like pho­to albums, engraved watch­es, and wed­ding sam­plers.

There’s also a fair amount of seem­ing­ly dis­pos­able junk—obsolete con­sumer tech­nol­o­gy, fast food toys, and “col­lectibles” that in ret­ro­spect were mere fad. Moli­na dis­plays them en masse, their sheer num­bers becom­ing a source of won­der. That’s a lot of Pez dis­pensers, Tam­agotchis, and plas­tic Furbees that could be clut­ter­ing up a land­fill (or Ebay).

Some of the items Moli­na sin­gles out for show and tell in Nico­las Heller’s doc­u­men­tary short, at the top, seem like they could have con­sid­er­able resell val­ue. One man’s trash, you know…

But city san­i­ta­tion work­ers are pro­hib­it­ed from tak­ing their finds home, which may explain why Depart­ment of San­i­ta­tion employ­ees (and Molina’s wife) have embraced the muse­um so enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly.

Even though Moli­na retired after rais­ing his six kids, he con­tin­ues to pre­side over the muse­um, review­ing trea­sures that oth­er san­i­ta­tion work­ers have sal­vaged for his approval, and decid­ing which mer­it inclu­sion in the col­lec­tion.

Preser­va­tion is in his blood, hav­ing been raised to repair rather than dis­card, a prac­tice he used to put into play at Christ­mas, when he would present his sib­lings with toys he’d res­cued and res­ur­rect­ed.

This thrifty ethos accounts for a large part of the plea­sure he takes in his col­lec­tion.

As to why or how his more sen­ti­men­tal or his­tor­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant arti­facts wound up bagged for curb­side pick­up, he leaves the spec­u­la­tion to vis­i­tors of a more nar­ra­tive bent.

Sign up for updates or make a dona­tion to the Foun­da­tion for New York’s Strongest’s cam­paign to rehouse the col­lec­tion in an open-to-the-pub­lic space here.

To inquire about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of upcom­ing tours, email the NYC Depart­ment of San­i­ta­tion at tours@dsny.nyc.gov.

Pho­tos of Trea­sures in the Trash by Ayun Hal­l­i­day, © 2018

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Muse­um Ded­i­cat­ed Exclu­sive­ly to Poster Art Opens Its Doors in the U.S.: Enter the Poster House

The Muse­um of Fail­ure: A Liv­ing Shrine to New Coke, the Ford Edsel, Google Glass & Oth­er Epic Cor­po­rate Fails

The Dis­gust­ing Food Muse­um Curates 80 of the World’s Most Repul­sive Dish­es: Mag­got-Infest­ed Cheese, Putrid Shark & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Although she lives and works inside Nel­son Molina’s for­mer pick up zone, she has yet to see any of her dis­cards on dis­play. Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Octo­ber 7 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates the art of Aubrey Beard­s­ley. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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William Burroughs Meets Francis Bacon: See Never-Broadcast Footage (1982)

in Art, Literature, Television | October 14th, 2019

The writ­ing of William S. Bur­roughs and the paint­ings of Fran­cis Bacon take us into often trou­bling but nev­er­the­less com­pelling real­i­ties we could­n’t pos­si­bly glimpse any oth­er way. Some of that effect has to do with the inim­itable (if often unsuc­cess­ful­ly imi­tat­ed) styles they devel­oped for them­selves, and some with what was going on in their unusu­al lives as well as the even wilder realms of their minds. And though no schol­ars have yet turned up a Bur­roughs mono­graph on Bacon’s art, or Bacon-paint­ed illus­tra­tions for a Bur­roughs nov­el — just imag­ine Naked Lunch giv­en that treat­ment — those minds did meet now and again in life, start­ing in Moroc­co six decades ago.

“The two men first met in Tang­iers in the 1950s when Bur­roughs was tech­ni­cal­ly on the run for mur­der­ing his wife after a ‘shoot­ing acci­dent’ dur­ing a drunk­en game of William Tell,” writes Dan­ger­ous Minds’ Paul Gal­lagher. “Bacon was then in a bru­tal and near fatal rela­tion­ship with a vio­lent sadist called Peter Lacey who used to beat him with a leather stud­ded belt.” None oth­er than Allen Gins­berg made the intro­duc­tion between the two men, “as he thought Bacon paint­ed the way Bur­roughs wrote.” But Bur­roughs saw more dif­fer­ences than sim­i­lar­i­ties: “Bacon and I are at oppo­site ends of the spec­trum,” he once said. “He likes mid­dle-aged truck dri­vers and I like young boys. He sneers at immor­tal­i­ty and I think it’s the one thing of impor­tance. Of course we’re asso­ci­at­ed because of our mor­bid sub­ject mat­ter.”

Bacon and Bur­roughs rem­i­nisce about their first meet­ing — what they can remem­ber of it, any­way — in an encounter filmed by the BBC for a 1982 doc­u­men­tary on the writer. “Are­na fol­lowed him to the home and stu­dio of old friend Fran­cis Bacon, where he drops in for a cup of tea and a catch up,” says the BBC’s site. “This meet­ing has nev­er been broad­cast.” But you can see their con­ver­sa­tion pre­sent­ed in a ten-minute edit in the video above. Gal­lagher notes that the cam­era-shy Bur­roughs gets into the spir­it of things only when the talk turns to his favorite sub­jects at the time: “Jajou­ka” — a Moroc­can vil­lage with a dis­tinct musi­cal tra­di­tion — “Mayans, and immor­tal­i­ty.” Bacon, “waspish, bitchy, glee­ful like a naughty school­boy,” throws out barbs left and right about his fel­low artists and Bur­roughs’ fel­low writ­ers.

Bacon also recalls his and Bur­roughs’ “mutu­al friend­ship with Jane and Paul Bowles,” the famous­ly bohemi­an mar­ried cou­ple known for their writ­ing as well as their expat life in Moroc­co, “going on to dis­cuss Jane Bowles’ men­tal decline and the tragedy of her last years being tend­ed to by nuns, a sit­u­a­tion which Bacon thought ghast­ly. Iron­i­cal­ly, Bacon died just over a decade lat­er being tend­ed to by nuns after becom­ing ill in Spain (an asth­ma attack).” Even the most knowl­edgable fans of Bur­roughs, Bacon, and all the illus­tri­ous fig­ures in their world­wide cir­cles sure­ly don’t know the half of what hap­pened when they got togeth­er. And though this ten-minute chat adds lit­tle con­crete infor­ma­tion to the record, it still gets us imag­in­ing what all these artis­tic asso­ci­a­tions might have been like — fir­ing up our imag­i­na­tions being the strong suit of cre­ators like Bacon and Bur­roughs, even decades after they’ve left us to our own real­i­ty.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Visu­al Art of William S. Bur­roughs: Book Cov­ers, Por­traits, Col­lage, Shot­gun Art & More

Gun Nut William S. Bur­roughs & Gonzo Illus­tra­tor Ralph Stead­man Make Polaroid Por­traits Togeth­er

When William S. Bur­roughs Appeared on Sat­ur­day Night Live: His First TV Appear­ance (1981)

The Dis­ci­pline of D.E.: Gus Van Sant Adapts a Sto­ry by William S. Bur­roughs (1978)

Who Was Joan Vollmer, the Wife William Bur­roughs Alleged­ly Shot While Play­ing William Tell?

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 on Face­book.

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H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds Becomes a New BBC Miniseries Set in Edwardian England

in Literature, Sci Fi, Television | October 14th, 2019

H.G. Wells began writ­ing the nov­el that would become The War of the Worlds in the Eng­land of the mid-1890s. As a set­ting for this tale of inva­sion from out­er space, he chose the place he knew best: Eng­land of the mid-1890s. Stag­ing spec­ta­cles of unfath­omable mal­ice and fan­tas­ti­cal destruc­tion against such an ordi­nary back­drop made The War of the Worlds, first as a mag­a­zine ser­i­al and then as a stand­alone book, a chill­ing­ly com­pelling expe­ri­ence for its read­ers. Orson Welles under­stood the effec­tive­ness of that choice, as evi­denced by the fact that in his famous­ly con­vinc­ing 1938 radio adap­ta­tion of Wells’ nov­el, the hos­tile aliens land in mod­ern-day New Jer­sey.

Sub­se­quent adap­ta­tions have fol­lowed the same prin­ci­ple: in 1953, the first War of the Worlds Hol­ly­wood film set the action in 1950s Los Ange­les; the lat­est, a Steven Spiel­berg-direct­ed Tom Cruise vehi­cle that came out in 2005, set it in the New York and Boston of the 2000s. But now, set to pre­miere lat­er this year on BBC One, we have a three-part minis­eries that returns the sto­ry to the place and time in which Wells orig­i­nal­ly envi­sioned it — or rather, the place and very near­ly the time. Shot in Liv­er­pool, the pro­duc­tion recre­ates not the Vic­to­ri­an Eng­land in which The War of the Worlds was first pub­lished but the brief Edwar­dian peri­od, last­ing rough­ly the first decade of the 20th cen­tu­ry, that fol­lowed it.

In a way, a peri­od War of the Worlds reflects our time as clear­ly as the pre­vi­ous War of the Worlds adap­ta­tions reflect theirs: tele­vi­sion view­ers of the 2010s have shown a sur­pris­ing­ly hearty appetite for his­tor­i­cal dra­ma, and often British his­tor­i­cal dra­ma at that. Think of the suc­cess ear­li­er this decade of Down­ton Abbey, whose upstairs-down­stairs dynam­ics proved grip­ping even for those not steeped in the British class sys­tem. This lat­est War of the Worlds, whose trail­er you can watch at the top of the post, uses sim­i­lar themes, telling the sto­ry of a man and woman who dare to be togeth­er despite their class dif­fer­ences — and, of course, amid an alien inva­sion that threat­ens to destroy the Earth. It remains to be seen whether the minis­eries will rise to the cen­tral chal­lenge of adapt­ing The War of the Worlds: will the emo­tions at the cen­ter of the sto­ry be as con­vinc­ing as the may­hem sur­round­ing them?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Orson Welles’ Icon­ic War of the Worlds Broad­cast (1938)

Hor­ri­fy­ing 1906 Illus­tra­tions of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds: Dis­cov­er the Art of Hen­rique Alvim Cor­rêa

Ray Harryhausen’s Creepy War of the Worlds Sketch­es and Stop-Motion Test Footage

Edward Gorey Illus­trates H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds in His Inim­itable Goth­ic Style (1960)

Things to Come, the 1936 Sci-Fi Film Writ­ten by H.G. Wells, Accu­rate­ly Pre­dicts the World’s Very Dark Future

Stream Mar­cel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, a BBC Pro­duc­tion Fea­tur­ing Derek Jaco­bi (Free for a Lim­it­ed Time)

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 on Face­book.

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How Grace Slick Wrote “White Rabbit”: The 1960s Classic Inspired by LSD, Lewis Carroll, Miles Davis’ Sketches of Spain, and Hypocritical Parents

in Music | October 11th, 2019

I nev­er know what to do with the fact that Jef­fer­son Air­plane became Jef­fer­son Star­ship became Starship—purveyors of “We Built This City,” a “bar­na­cle made of syn­the­siz­ers and cocaine,” writes GQ, and an hon­ored guest on worst-of lists every­where. (Also a song co-writ­ten by none oth­er than Elton John lyri­cist Bernie Taupin).

It might seem peev­ish to get so worked up over how bad “We Built this City” is, if it didn’t derive from the lega­cy of one of the best bands of the 1960s. Even Grace Slick dis­avows it. “This is not me,” she says.

Of course, by 1985, all of Slick’s best collaborators—the great Jor­ma Kauko­nen, Jack Cas­sidy, Paul Kant­ner, Mar­ty Balen, Spencer Dry­den, et al.—had moved on, and it was that volatile col­lec­tion of musi­cal per­son­al­i­ties that made psych rock clas­sics like “Some­body to Love” and the slinky, drug­gy, Lewis Car­roll-inspired bolero “White Rab­bit” so essen­tial.

Grace Slick is a great singer and song­writer, but she need­ed a band as uncan­ni­ly tal­ent­ed as Jef­fer­son Air­plane to ful­ly real­ize her eccen­tric vision, such as the acid rock song about drug ref­er­ences in Alice in Won­der­land, played in the style of Span­ish folk music and Miles Davis’ Sketch­es of Spain.

Before she wrote “White Rab­bit,” Slick dropped acid and lis­tened to Davis’ jazz/folk/classical exper­i­ment “over and over for hours,” she told The Wall Street Jour­nal in 2016. “Sketch­es of Spain was drilled into my head and came squirt­ing out in var­i­ous ways as I wrote ‘White Rab­bit.’”

No less­er band could have tak­en this swirl of influ­ences and turned into what the Poly­phon­ic video at the top calls a dis­til­la­tion of the entire era. But “White Rab­bit” didn’t always have the per­fect­ly exe­cut­ed inten­si­ty we know from 1967’s Sur­re­al­is­tic Pil­low and Jef­fer­son Airplane’s com­mand­ing per­for­mance at Wood­stock (above).

In 1965, LSD was still legal. Grace Slick was work­ing, she tells WSJ, “as a cou­ture mod­el at I. Magnin in San Fran­cis­co.” Before sign­ing on as the singer for Jef­fer­son Air­plane, she formed The Great Soci­ety with her then-hus­band Jer­ry Slick. She wrote “White Rab­bit” for that ensem­ble and the band first per­formed it “in ear­ly ’66,” she says, “at a dive bar on Broad­way in San Fran­cis­co.”

Below, you can hear a 6‑minute live ver­sion of The Great Society’s “White Rab­bit.” It’s unrec­og­niz­able until Slick starts to sing over four min­utes into the song. We are not like­ly to be remind­ed of Miles Davis. But when Slick brought “White Rab­bit” to Jef­fer­son Air­plane, as the Poly­phon­ic video demon­strates, they real­ized its full poten­tial, ref­er­ences to Sketch­es of Spain and all.

Record­ed in 1966, the sin­gle “kicked off” the fol­low­ing year’s Sum­mer of Love, “cel­e­brat­ing the grow­ing psy­che­del­ic cul­ture” and freak­ing out par­ents, who pas­sion­ate­ly hat­ed “White Rab­bit.” These were the very peo­ple Slick want­ed to pay atten­tion. “I always felt like a good-look­ing school­teacher singing ‘White Rab­bit,’ ” she says. “I sang the words slow­ly and pre­cise­ly, so the peo­ple who need­ed to hear them wouldn’t miss the point. But they did.”

Slick’s own par­ents were a lit­tle freaked out when she start­ed her first band, after an inter­view she gave the San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle got back to them. “I argued in favor of mar­i­jua­na and LSD,” she says. “It was painful for them, I’m sure, but I didn’t care whether they mind­ed. Par­ents were crit­i­ciz­ing a generation’s choic­es while sit­ting there with their glass­es of scotch.” They were also reg­u­lar­ly pop­ping pills, although “the ones that moth­er gives you,” she sang, “don’t do any­thing at all.”

“To this day,” she says, “I don’t think most peo­ple real­ize the song was aimed at par­ents who drank and told their kids not to do drugs. I felt they were full of crap, but write a good song, you need a few more words than that.” And to turn a good song into an instant clas­sic, you need a band like Jef­fer­son Air­plane.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Grace Slick’s Hair-Rais­ing Vocals in the Iso­lat­ed Track for “White Rab­bit” (1967)

Jef­fer­son Air­plane Plays on a New York Rooftop; Jean-Luc Godard Cap­tures It (1968)

Dick Clark Intro­duces Jef­fer­son Air­plane & the Sounds of Psy­che­del­ic San Fran­cis­co to Amer­i­ca: Yes Par­ents, You Should Be Afraid (1967)

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

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