Neil Armstrong Sets Straight an Internet Truther Who Accused Him of Faking the Moon Landing (2000)

in Letters, Science | June 24th, 2020

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Peo­ple have been grad­u­at­ing from col­lege this year who are as old as the role of inter­net truther. It is a ven­er­a­ble hob­by (some might call it a cult) lead­ing increas­ing num­bers of peo­ple to bizarre con­clu­sions drawn from dubi­ous evi­dence prof­fered by spu­ri­ous sources; peo­ple con­vinced that some wild alle­ga­tion or oth­er must be true because they saw it on the Inter­net, shared by peo­ple they knew and liked.

Twen­ty years ago, one pio­neer­ing truther wrote Mr. Neil Arm­strong to put him in his place about that bug­bear, the faked moon land­ing. The author of the let­ter, a Mr. Whit­man, iden­ti­fies him­self as a “teacher of young chil­dren” charged with “a duty to tell them his­to­ry as it tru­ly hap­pened, and not a pack of lies and deceit.” His let­ter shows some dif­fi­cul­ty with gram­mar, and even more with crit­i­cal think­ing and stan­dards of evi­dence.

Mr. Whit­man makes his accu­sa­tions with cer­tain­ty and smug­ness. “Per­haps you are total­ly unaware,” he writes, “of all the evi­dence cir­cu­lat­ing the globe via the Inter­net,” which he then sum­ma­rizes.

He also sends Neil Armstrong—an astro­naut who either walked on the Moon or engaged in per­haps the great­est con­spir­a­cy in history—a URL, “to see for your­self how ridicu­lous the Moon land­ing claim looks 30 years on.” Whit­man sent Arm­strong the let­ter on the astro­naut’s 70th birth­day.

Armstrong’s response, via Let­ters of Note, can be read in full above. Per­haps Mr. Whit­man learned some­thing from the exchange—or had a moment of clar­i­ty about his meth­ods of inves­ti­ga­tion. One can hope. In any case, Armstrong’s unspar­ing reply serves as a tem­plate for responding—should some­one be so inclined—to inter­net truthers armed with wild con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries 20 years lat­er. These let­ters have been col­lect­ed in A Reluc­tant Icon: Let­ters to Neil Arm­strong.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Stan­ley Kubrick Faked the Apol­lo 11 Moon Land­ing in 1969, Or So the Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry Goes

Watch the Orig­i­nal TV Cov­er­age of the His­toric Apol­lo 11 Moon Land­ing: Record­ed on July 20, 1969

Every Har­row­ing Sec­ond of the Apol­lo 11 Land­ing Revis­it­ed in a New NASA Video: It Took Place 50 Years Ago Today (July 20, 1969)

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

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Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #49 Considers Conspiracy Theories as Pop

in Podcasts, Politics, Pretty Much Pop | June 24th, 2020

Ex-philoso­pher Al Bak­er works at the UK-based Log­i­cal­ly, a com­pa­ny that fights mis­in­for­ma­tion.

He joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to try to answer such ques­tions as: What’s the appeal of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries? How sim­i­lar is being con­sumed them to being a die-hard fan of some pop cul­ture prop­er­ty? What’s the rela­tion between per­ni­cious con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and fun spec­u­la­tion (like, maybe Elvis is alive)? Is there a harm­less way to engage in con­spir­a­cy the­o­riz­ing as a hob­by? Is some­thing still a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry in the pejo­ra­tive sense if it turns out to be true?

We touch on echo cham­bers, the role of irony and humor in spread­ing these the­o­ries, how both oppo­nents and pro­po­nents claim to be skep­tics, Dan Brown Nov­els, Tom Han­ks, the Mel Gib­son film Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry, and doc­u­men­taries like Behind the Curve (about Flat Earth­ers) and The Fam­i­ly.

For expert opin­ions on the psy­chol­o­gy of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, try The Con­ver­sa­tion’s Antill Pod­cast, which had a whole series on this top­ic. For even more pod­cast action, try FiveThir­tyEight, BBC’s The Why Fac­tor pod­cast, Skep­toid, and The Infi­nite Mon­key Cage.

Here are some more arti­cles:

If you enjoy this, try Pret­ty Much Pop #14 on UFOs. The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life episodes referred to in this dis­cus­sion are #96 on Oppen­heimer and the Rhetoric of Sci­ence Advis­ers and #82 on Karl Pop­per.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

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The World According to Le Corbusier: An Animated Introduction to the Most Modern of All Architects

in Animation, Architecture, History | June 23rd, 2020

Among mod­ern archi­tects, was any archi­tect ever so moder­ni­ty-mind­ed as Charles-Édouard Jean­neret, bet­ter known a Le Cor­busier? Like many cul­tur­al fig­ures well-known out­side their field — Franz Kaf­ka, George Orwell, David Lynch — his name has long since been adjec­tivized, though nowa­days the term “Cor­bu­sian” is sel­dom used as a com­pli­ment. Many a self-described oppo­nent of mod­ern archi­tec­ture, what­ev­er they con­sid­er mod­ern archi­tec­ture to be, points to Le Cor­busier as the orig­i­na­tor of all the inhu­man­i­ty of build­ings designed over the past 90 years, and espe­cial­ly the sec­ond half of the 20th cen­tu­ry: their drab col­ors (or lack there­of), their depress­ing aus­ter­i­ty, their for­bid­ding scale, their dark cor­ri­dors, their leaky roofs. But how much, real­ly, is he to blame?

“Le Cor­busier rec­om­mend­ed that the hous­es of the future be ascetic and clean, dis­ci­plined and fru­gal,” says The Book of Life, the com­pan­ion site to Alain de Bot­ton’s School of Life. Remem­bered as an archi­tect but both an artist and engi­neer at heart, he thought that “true, great archi­tec­ture – mean­ing, archi­tec­ture moti­vat­ed by the quest for effi­cien­cy – was more like­ly to be found in a 40,000-kilowatt elec­tric­i­ty tur­bine or a low-pres­sure ven­ti­lat­ing fan” than in the cap­i­tals of old Europe. For inspi­ra­tion he looked to mod­ern machines, espe­cial­ly those that had begun appear­ing in the sky in his youth: “he observed that the require­ments of flight of neces­si­ty rid air­planes of all super­flu­ous dec­o­ra­tion,” says de Bot­ton in the ani­mat­ed School of Life primer above, “and so unwit­ting­ly trans­formed them into suc­cess­ful pieces of archi­tec­ture.”

Hence Le Cor­busier’s infa­mous pro­nounce­ment that “a house is a machine for liv­ing in,” which first appeared in his 1923 man­i­festo Vers une archi­tec­ture (Towards an Archi­tec­ture). Le Cor­busier was a writer — and a painter, and a fur­ni­ture design­er, and an urban plan­ner — as much as he was an archi­tect. “The prob­lem is that both his detrac­tors and his acolytes want to believe that his writ­ten man­i­festos, urban­is­tic visions, utopi­an ide­olo­gies and the­o­ries are com­pat­i­ble with his build­ings,” writes Jonathan Meades, some­time archi­tec­tur­al crit­ic and full-time res­i­dent of Le Cor­busier’s Unité d’habi­ta­tion apart­ment block in Mar­seilles. But “Le Cor­busier, writer, has lit­tle in com­mon with Le Cor­busier, mak­er of the century’s most pro­found­ly sen­su­ous, most mov­ing archi­tec­ture”: one was a “self-adver­tis­ing pro­pa­gan­dist,” the oth­er “an artist-crafts­man of peer­less orig­i­nal­i­ty.”

Le Cor­busier’s head­line-mak­ing urban-renew­al pro­pos­als includ­ed, Meades writes, “the destruc­tion of the Right Bank in Paris and its replace­ment with ranks of cru­ci­form sky­scrap­ers”; he also pro­posed demol­ish­ing Man­hat­tan, as de Bot­ton says, “to make way for a fresh and more ‘Carte­sian’ attempt at urban design.” Le Cor­busier’s utopi­an dreams of colos­sal sky­scrap­ers placed in the mid­dle of vast green park­land and sur­round­ed by ele­vat­ed free­ways led, in this telling, to “the dystopi­an hous­ing estates that now ring his­toric Paris, the waste­lands from which tourists avert their eyes in con­fused hor­ror and dis­be­lief on their way into the city.” But if cities can still use Le Cor­busier’s plan­ning ideas as a neg­a­tive exam­ple, they have more to learn from the pos­i­tive exam­ple of his aes­thet­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty, which remains exhil­a­rat­ing today, even amid a kind of moder­ni­ty the man him­self could nev­er have imag­ined.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 50+ Doc­u­men­taries on Famous Archi­tects & Build­ings: Bauhaus, Le Cor­busier, Hadid & Many More

Vis­it the Homes That Great Archi­tects Designed for Them­selves: Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Cor­busier, Wal­ter Gropius & Frank Gehry

An Espres­so Mak­er Made in Le Corbusier’s Bru­tal­ist Archi­tec­tur­al Style: Raw Con­crete on the Out­side, High-End Parts on the Inside

Every­thing You Ever Want­ed to Know About the Beau­ty of Bru­tal­ist Archi­tec­ture: An Intro­duc­tion in Six Videos

The Mod­ernist Gas Sta­tions of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe

Mod­ernist Bird­hous­es Inspired by Bauhaus, Frank Lloyd Wright and Joseph Eich­ler

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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Watch Hundreds of Free Films from Around the World: Explore Film Archives from Japan, France, and the U.S.

in Film | June 23rd, 2020

While the world retreat­ed indoors in March, and the cin­e­mas we knew and loved closed up shop, so many film libraries have turned around and opened up their archives to the world. This is a good thing. Don’t say you have noth­ing to watch! We have explored all the links below and can ver­i­fy that they are all indeed free to watch. Some are even free to down­load. Here’s a brief run­down of some we’ve found:

The Nation­al Film Reg­istry of the Library of Con­gress

The Library of Con­gress annu­al­ly selects films to pre­serve that it con­sid­ers “cul­tur­al­ly, his­tor­i­cal­ly or aes­thet­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant” and quite a lot of them are avail­able to screen. May we sug­gest:

Mod­es­ta, Ben­jamin Doniger’s 1955 short dra­ma about women’s rights in a rapid­ly mod­ern­iz­ing Puer­to Rico. It won the prize at the Venice Film Fes­ti­val in 1956.

St. Louis Blues, basi­cal­ly an extend­ed music video (before such a thing exist­ed) for the Queen of the Blues, Bessie Smith, from 1929.

With­in Our Gates, the astound­ing 1919 fea­ture film by Oscar Micheaux. Direct­ed by and star­ring African-Amer­i­cans, this rebut­tal to Birth of a Nation says some­thing more inci­sive about Amer­i­can racial pol­i­tics than most films cre­at­ed in the 20th cen­tu­ry.

Cin­e­math­eque Fran­caise

The phys­i­cal Cinematheque–a cul­tur­al insti­tu­tion since 1936, and cur­rent­ly housed in a Frank Gehry-designed building–might be closed, but its stream­ing plat­form, dubbed “Hen­ri” is up and show­ing some rare and restored clas­sics. On one hand, it real­ly helps if you can under­stand French, because not every­thing is sub­ti­tled. On the oth­er, there are plen­ty of silent and subbed films:

Pro­tea, Vic­torin-Hip­poly­te Jasset’s 1913 response to the Fan­tomas seri­als, fea­tures Josette Andri­ot as the slinky, sexy Mata Hari-like super-spy, a few years before Irma Vep and her sim­i­lar get-up.

The Fall of the House of Ush­er: Jean Epstein’s sur­re­al adap­ta­tion of the Poe clas­sic fea­tures bril­liant pho­tog­ra­phy and an expres­sion­ist style. Fans of The Light­house will appre­ci­ate its luna­cy.

Paris qui dort: Rene Clair’s *oth­er* sur­re­al film made in 1924 (the bet­ter known is Entr’acte), this glo­ri­ous 4K restora­tion looks like it was shot yes­ter­day as a group of friends wake up to find that all peo­ple in Paris have been frozen in place. Play time com­mences and there is some footage of climb­ing the Eif­fel Tow­er that might give you the willies. Watch it above.

Japan­ese Ani­mat­ed Film Clas­sics

With works that go back as far as 1917, this is a deep dive into the world of Japan­ese ani­ma­tion curat­ed by the Nobuo Ofu­ji Memo­r­i­al Muse­um. There’s tra­di­tion­al cell ani­ma­tion, but also a sur­pris­ing amount of cut-out ani­ma­tion

The Dull Sword, Junichi Kuichi’s short film from 1917, is a tale of a hap­less samu­rai with an end­ing told in shad­ow pup­pets.

Prop­a­gate is a 1935 film from Shige­ji Ogi­no, show­ing the cycle of plant life through a mod­ernist dance of black and white shapes, close to Oskar Fischinger in style.

Ari-chan the Ant is more what we expect from ani­ma­tion in 1941–a copy of the Disney/Merrie Melodies house style, pleas­ant enough, but under Mit­suyo Seo’s direc­tion also a cri­tique of impe­ri­al­ism, how­ev­er sub­tle. Seo would go on to direct Japan’s first fea­ture-length ani­mat­ed film, Momotaro’s Divine Sea War­riors.

Nation­al Film Preser­va­tion Foun­da­tion

Bring­ing us full cir­cle, the NFPF is a non-prof­it cre­at­ed by Con­gress in 1997 to save films that oth­er­wise would dis­ap­pear, and that includes many ear­ly ani­mat­ed films, avant-garde works, and films that were once thought lost but have since been dis­cov­ered in Aus­tralia and New Zealand, around 2,500 works.

Too Much John­son is the long-thought-destroyed film direct­ed by Orson Welles that was to be part of his 1938 mul­ti­me­dia pro­duc­tion for his Mer­cury The­ater. The archive presents both the 66 minute work print and a 34 minute reimag­ined cut.

The Fall of the House of Ush­er…wait, didn’t we already men­tion this? In fact, just like the year that brought us Armaged­don and Deep Impact, anoth­er Poe adap­ta­tion hit the screens in 1928. This one is short­er, and even more sur­re­al, and direct­ed by James Sib­ley Wat­son and Melville Web­ber.

At first this silent footage of the Negro Leagues seems a bit too comical–a base­ball ver­sion of the Harlem Globetrotters–but it’s actu­al­ly a por­trait of an era in flux, two years before seg­re­ga­tion was about to end in base­ball. Shot at Cincinnati’s Crosley Field, the star of this footage is Reece “Goose” Tatum of the Cincin­nati Clowns. As the film notes point out, just because they were goof­ing off for the cam­era doesn’t mean these play­ers weren’t athletes–Hank Aaron was their short­stop before sign­ing to the Braves, and the Clowns’ rival team, the Kansas City Mon­archs, boast­ed Jack­ie Robin­son also as a short­stop.

You can find more free films in the Relat­eds below…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

60 Free Film Noir Movies

Watch 3,000+ Films Free Online from the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da

Watch More Than 400 Clas­sic Kore­an Films Free Online Thanks to the Kore­an Film Archive

Down­load 6600 Free Films from The Prelinger Archives and Use Them How­ev­er You Like

1,150 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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John Trumbull’s Famous 1818 Painting Declaration of Independence Virtually Defaced to Show Which Founding Fathers Owned Slaves

in Art, History, Philosophy, Politics | June 23rd, 2020

Stat­ues of slave­hold­ers and their defend­ers are falling all over the U.S., and a lot of peo­ple are dis­traught. What’s next? Mount Rush­more? Well… maybe no one’s like­ly to blow it up, but some hon­esty about the “extreme­ly racist” his­to­ry of Mount Rush­more might make one think twice about using it as a lim­it case.

On the oth­er hand, a sand­blast­ing of the enor­mous Klan mon­u­ment in Stone Moun­tain, Geor­gia—cre­at­ed ear­li­er by Rush­more sculp­tor Gut­zon Borglum—seems long over­due.

We are learn­ing a lot about the his­to­ry of these mon­u­ments and the peo­ple they rep­re­sent, more than any of us Amer­i­cans learned in our ear­ly edu­ca­tion. But we still hear the usu­al defense that slave­hold­ers were only men of their time—many were good, pious, and gen­tle and knew no bet­ter (or they ago­nized over the ques­tion but, you know, every­one was doing it….) Peo­ple sub­ject­ed to the vio­lence and hor­ror of slav­ery most­ly tend­ed to dis­agree.

Before the Hait­ian Rev­o­lu­tion ter­ri­fied the slave­hold­ing South, many promi­nent slave­hold­ers, Jef­fer­son and Wash­ing­ton includ­ed, expressed intel­lec­tu­al and moral dis­gust with slav­ery. They could not con­sid­er abo­li­tion, how­ev­er (though Wash­ing­ton freed his slaves in his will). There was too much prof­it in the enter­prise. As Jef­fer­son him­self wrote, “It [would] nev­er do to destroy the goose.”

What we see when we look at the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary peri­od is the fatal irony of a repub­lic based on ideals of lib­er­ty, found­ed most­ly by men who kept mil­lions of peo­ple enslaved. The point is made vivid­ly above in a vir­tu­al deface­ment of Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence, John Trumbull’s famous 1818 paint­ing which hangs in the U.S. Capi­tol rotun­da. All of the founders’ faces blot­ted out by red dots were slave­own­ers. Only the few in yel­low in the cor­re­spond­ing image freed the the peo­ple they enslaved.

These images were not made in this cur­rent sum­mer of nation­al upris­ings but in August of 2019, “a bloody month that saw 53 peo­ple die in mass shoot­ings in the US,” notes Hyper­al­ler­gic. Their cre­ator, Arlen Parsa sought to make a dif­fer­ent point about the Sec­ond Amend­ment, but wrote force­ful­ly about the founders’ enslav­ing of oth­ers. “There were no gen­tle slave­hold­ers,” writes Parsa. “Count­less chil­dren were born into slav­ery and died after a rel­a­tive­ly short lifes­pan nev­er know­ing free­dom for even a minute.” Many of those chil­dren were fathered by their own­ers.

Some found­ing fathers paid lip ser­vice to the idea of slav­ery as a blight because it was obvi­ous that kid­nap­ping and enslav­ing peo­ple con­tra­dict­ed demo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples. Slav­ery hap­pened to be the pri­ma­ry metaphor used by Enlight­en­ment philoso­phers and their colo­nial read­ers to char­ac­ter­ize the tyran­ni­cal monar­chism they opposed. The philoso­pher John Locke wrote slav­ery into the con­sti­tu­tion of the Car­oli­na colony, and prof­it­ed from it through own­ing stock in the Roy­al African Com­pa­ny. Yet by his lat­er, huge­ly influ­en­tial Two Trea­tis­es, he had come to see hered­i­tary slav­ery as “so vile and mis­er­able an estate of man… that ‘tis hard­ly to be con­ceived” that any­one could uphold it.

There were, of course, slave­hold­ing founders who resist­ed such talk and felt no com­punc­tion about how they made their mon­ey. But lofty prin­ci­ples or no, the U.S. founders were often on the defen­sive against non-slave­hold­ing col­leagues, who scold­ed and attacked them, some­times with frank ref­er­ences to the rapes of enslaved women and girls. These crit­i­cisms were so com­mon that Thomas Paine could write the case for slav­ery had been “suf­fi­cient­ly dis­proved” when he pub­lished a 1775 tract denounc­ing it and call­ing for its imme­di­ate end:

The man­agers of [the slave trade] tes­ti­fy that many of these African nations inhab­it fer­tile coun­tries, are indus­tri­ous farm­ers, enjoy plen­ty and lived qui­et­ly, averse to war, before the Euro­peans debauched them with liquors… By such wicked and inhu­man ways, the Eng­lish are said to enslave towards 100,000 year­ly, of which 30,000 are sup­posed to die by bar­barous treat­ment in the first year…

So mon­strous is the mak­ing and keep­ing them slaves at all… and the many evils attend­ing the prac­tice, [such] as sell­ing hus­bands away from wives, chil­dren from par­ents and from each oth­er, in vio­la­tion of sacred and nat­ur­al ties; and open­ing the way for adul­ter­ies, inces­ts and many shock­ing con­se­quences, for all of which the guilty mas­ters must answer to the final judge…

The chief design of this paper is not to dis­prove [slav­ery], which many have suf­fi­cient­ly done, but to entreat Amer­i­cans to con­sid­er:

With that con­sis­ten­cy… they com­plain so loud­ly of attempts to enslave them, while they hold so many hun­dred thou­sands in slav­ery and annu­al­ly enslave many thou­sands more, with­out any pre­tence of author­i­ty or claim upon them.

Jef­fer­son squared his the­o­ry of lib­er­ty with his prac­tice of slav­ery by pick­ing up the fad of sci­en­tif­ic racism sweep­ing Europe at the time, in which philoso­phers who prof­it­ed, or whose patrons and nations prof­it­ed, from the slave trade began to coin­ci­den­tal­ly dis­cov­er evi­dence that enslav­ing Africans was only nat­ur­al. We should know by now what hap­pens when racism guides sci­ence.…

Maybe turn­ing those who will­ful­ly per­pet­u­at­ed the country’s most intractable, damn­ing crime against human­i­ty into civic saints no longer serves the U.S., if it ever did. Maybe ele­vat­ing the founders to the sta­tus of reli­gious fig­ures has pro­duced a wide­spread his­tor­i­cal igno­rance and a very spe­cif­ic kind of nation­al­ism that are no longer ten­able. Younger and future gen­er­a­tions will set­tle these ques­tions their own way, as they sort through the mess their elders have left them. As Locke also argued, in a para­phrase from Amer­i­can His­to­ry pro­fes­sor Hol­ly Brew­er, “peo­ple do not have to obey a gov­ern­ment that no longer pro­tects them, and the con­sent of an ances­tor does not bind the descen­dants: each gen­er­a­tion must con­sent for itself.”

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What the Text­books Don’t Tell Us About The Atlantic Slave Trade: An Ani­mat­ed Video Fills In His­tor­i­cal Gaps

The Names of 1.8 Mil­lion Eman­ci­pat­ed Slaves Are Now Search­able in the World’s Largest Genealog­i­cal Data­base, Help­ing African Amer­i­cans Find Lost Ances­tors

The Atlantic Slave Trade Visu­al­ized in Two Min­utes: 10 Mil­lion Lives, 20,000 Voy­ages, Over 315 Years

The “Slave Bible” Removed Key Bib­li­cal Pas­sages In Order to Legit­imize Slav­ery & Dis­cour­age a Slave Rebel­lion (1807)

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

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Miles Davis is Attacked, Beaten & Arrested by the NYPD Outside Birdland, Eight Days After the Release of Kind of Blue (1959)

in History, Music | June 22nd, 2020

It is hard, on the oth­er hand, to blame the police­man, blank, good-natured, thought­less, and insu­per­a­bly inno­cent, for being such a per­fect rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the peo­ple he serves. He, too, believes in good inten­tions and is astound­ed and offend­ed when they are not tak­en for the deed. 

—James Bald­win

James Baldwin’s 1960 essay “Fifth Avenue, Uptown” is rich with heartrend­ing ironies and razor-sharp refu­ta­tions of the usu­al apolo­gies for racist vio­lence in Amer­i­ca. It does not mat­ter, Bald­win argues, whether indi­vid­u­als are “good” or “bad” apples in a sys­tem designed to enforce seg­re­ga­tion, whether by force of law or brute force of will. “None of the police commissioner’s men,” writes Bald­win, “even with the best will in the world, have any way of under­stand­ing the lives led by the peo­ple they swag­ger about in twos and threes con­trol­ling.”

This bru­tal igno­rance extends wide­ly to rad­i­cals, dis­si­dents, peace­ful pro­test­ers, and hap­less bystanders dur­ing times of mass polit­i­cal unrest. (As Ed Kil­go­re points out at New York mag­a­zine, the term “police riot” orig­i­nat­ed in the 1968 Chica­go Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­ven­tion.) The bru­tal­i­ty we’ve seen vis­it­ed on elder­ly white activists, jour­nal­ists, and even local politi­cians dur­ing recent protests (against bru­tal­i­ty) has been a dai­ly real­i­ty for mil­lions of black Amer­i­cans, even Amer­i­cans as famous as Miles Davis.

In 1959—eight days after the release of Kind of Blue and just after record­ing a broad­cast for armed forces radio—Davis was harassed and then vicious­ly attacked by the police out­side Bird­land in Mid­town Man­hat­tan. Then he was arrest­ed for resist­ing arrest and dragged to the police sta­tion for book­ing and fur­ther harass­ment. You can hear the sto­ry in a clip above from The Miles Davis Sto­ry. Davis him­self recount­ed the event in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy:

I had just fin­ished doing an Armed Forces Day broad­cast, you know, Voice of Amer­i­ca and all that bull­shit. I had just walked this pret­ty white girl named Judy out to get a cab. She got in the cab, and I’m stand­ing there in front of Bird­land wring­ing wet because it’s a hot, steam­ing, mug­gy night in August. 

This white police­man comes up to me and tells me to move on. I said, “Move on, for what? I’m work­ing down­stairs. That’s my name up there, Miles Davis,” and I point­ed to my name on the mar­quee all up in lights.

He said, “I don’t care where you work, I said move on! If you don’t move on I’m going to arrest you.”

I just looked at his face real straight and hard, and I didn’t move. Then he said, “You’re under arrest!” He reached for his hand­cuffs, but he was step­ping back…I kind of leaned in clos­er because I wasn’t going to give him no dis­tance so he could hit me on the head… A crowd had gath­ered all of a sud­den from out of nowhere, and this white detec­tive runs in and BAM! hits me on the head. I nev­er saw him com­ing. Blood was run­ning down the kha­ki suit I had on.

Davis, who grew up wealthy in St. Louis, came from vast­ly dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances than Bald­win. He under­stood the vio­lence of the South, but not of North­ern cities. Nonethe­less, his expe­ri­ence with the police was iden­ti­cal, whether in Mis­souri or New York. “Now I would have expect­ed this kind of bull about resist­ing arrest and all back in East St Louis,” he wrote, “but not here in New York City, which is sup­posed to be the slick­est, hippest city in the world. But then, again, I was sur­round­ed by white folks and I have learned that when that hap­pens, if you’re black, there is no jus­tice. None.”

He speaks from bit­ter expe­ri­ence. Davis lat­er sued the NYPD, but his case was dis­missed, “despite a moun­tain of evi­dence in his favour,” writes Queen’s Uni­ver­si­ty researcher Mitchell Crouse, “includ­ing mul­ti­ple wit­ness state­ments, pho­to­graph­ic evi­dence, and the fact that at least one of the offi­cers was drunk.”

Bald­win and Davis both wrote of what Jamelle Bouie describes in The New York Times as the raw knowl­edge afford­ed those who live under con­stant sur­veil­lance and threats of assault, arrest, or mur­der by agents of the state: “African-Amer­i­can observers have nev­er had any illu­sions about who the police are meant to serve.” See the many pho­tographs of a bloody Miles tak­en dur­ing and after his arrest at the 1959 Project.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Miles Davis Icon­ic 1959 Album Kind of Blue Turns 60: Revis­it the Album That Changed Amer­i­can Music

Miles Davis’ Bitch­es Brew Turns 50: Cel­e­brate the Funk-Jazz-Psych-Rock Mas­ter­piece

Miles Davis Dish­es Dirt on His Fel­low Jazz Musi­cians: “The Trom­bone Play­er Should be Shot”; That Ornette is “F‑ing Up the Trum­pet”

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

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Barcelona Opera Re-Opens with a Performance for 2,300 Potted Plants: Watch It Online

in Opera | June 22nd, 2020

Writes The Guardian: “Barcelon­a’s El Liceu opera house reopened on Mon­day with a con­cert to an audi­ence of 2,292 pot­ted plants. The event took place a day after Spain’s state of emer­gency came to an end after more than three months. It was the work of Span­ish con­cep­tu­al artist Euge­nio Ampu­dia, who said the inspi­ra­tion came from a con­nec­tion he built with nature dur­ing the pan­dem­ic: ‘I watched what was going on with nature dur­ing all this time. I heard many more birds singing. And the plants in my gar­den and out­side grow­ing faster. And, with­out a doubt, I thought that maybe I could now relate in a much more inti­mate way with peo­ple and nature.’ ”

You can watch the per­for­mance below. It begins at the 8:30 mark. And do know that plants will be donat­ed to front­line health work­ers.

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In 1968, a Teenager Convinced Thelonious Monk to Play a Gig at His High School to Promote Racial Unity; Now the Concert Recording Is Getting Released

in Jazz, Music | June 22nd, 2020

In 1964, Thelo­nious Monk appeared on the cov­er of TIME. He had been cho­sen for an exten­sive pro­file, his biog­ra­ph­er Robin D.G. Kel­ley tells Ter­ry Gross, because the mag­a­zine thought Miles Davis or Ray Charles might be “too con­tro­ver­sial.” Monk, it was thought “had no com­plaints… he was­n’t so polit­i­cal.” This is not exact­ly so, Kel­ley writes in Thelo­nious Monk: The Life and Times of an Amer­i­can Orig­i­nal. The eccen­tric genius played ben­e­fit con­certs through­out the 60s. But he was also begin­ning to suf­fer from men­tal health issues that remained undi­ag­nosed to the end of his life. Still, he fol­lowed Civ­il Rights strug­gles close­ly. “Thelo­nious was moved by these events” and won­dered what more he could do.

That year Monk had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to make a direct con­tri­bu­tion by play­ing the most­ly white Palo Alto High School after the most “racial­ly tense” sum­mer of the decade, a moment in his­to­ry eeri­ly like the cur­rent time. The show was orga­nized by enter­pris­ing 16-year-old junior Dan­ny Sch­er, who would go on to become a major con­cert pro­mot­er.

Through his local con­nec­tions, Sch­er con­tact­ed Monk’s man­ag­er and arranged the book­ing. In order to fill the audi­to­ri­um, he pro­mot­ed the show in his wealthy Palo Alto enclave, in the local news­pa­pers, and in large­ly seg­re­gat­ed East Palo Alto. (“Against the urg­ing of the police depart­ment,” notes Jazz­iz.) Scher’s hard work turned the event into a rous­ing suc­cess, Kel­ley writes:

Nei­ther Thelo­nious nor six­teen-year-old Dan­ny Sch­er ful­ly grasped what this con­cert meant for race rela­tions in the area. For one beau­ti­ful after­noon, blacks and whites, P.A. and East P.A., buried the hatch­et and gath­ered togeth­er to hear “Blue Monk,” “Well, You Needn’t,” and “Don’t Blame Me.”

Monk played for over an hour to the inte­grat­ed audi­ence, then played an encore after “thun­der­ous applause.” The sto­ry of how the con­cert came about is full of plot twists, includ­ing the fact that Monk nev­er actu­al­ly saw the con­tract and only found out about the gig when Sch­er called him a few days before. But he “dug the kid’s chutz­pah and agreed to do it.” While Sch­er may have had the pres­ence of mind to fol­low up before the gig, he didn’t think to doc­u­ment the moment. That fell to a Black cus­to­di­an at the high school (whose name has been unfor­tu­nate­ly lost) who approached Sch­er, Nate Chi­nen tells NPR, and offered to tune the piano if he could record the gig.

The cus­to­di­an gave the tapes to Sch­er and the pro­mot­er held on to them for over 50 years. Now they’re final­ly being released as Palo Alto by Impulse! Records on July 31st. You can pre­view the new release with “Epistro­phy,” at the top. This record is no minor rar­i­ty, accord­ing to Monk’s son, T.S. Monk, who calls it “one of the best live record­ings I’ve ever heard by Thelo­nious.” Maybe he was ener­gized by the urgency of the moment, maybe it was the ener­gy of the audi­ence that drove his per­for­mance. What­ev­er inspired him that day, Monk showed, as many jazz musi­cians did at the time, how art can suc­ceed where pol­i­tics fail, and can—at least temporarily—unite com­mu­ni­ties who might have come to believe they have noth­ing left in com­mon.

via NPR

 Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Music Unites Us All: Her­bie Han­cock & Kamasi Wash­ing­ton in Con­ver­sa­tion

How Jazz Helped Fuel the 1960s Civ­il Rights Move­ment

Mar­tin Luther King Jr. Explains the Impor­tance of Jazz: Hear the Speech He Gave at the First Berlin Jazz Fes­ti­val (1964)

Thelo­nious Monk’s 25 Tips for Musi­cians (1960)

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

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