How John Coltrane Introduced the World to His Radical Sound in the Groundbreaking Recording of “My Favorite Things”

in Music | December 7th, 2020

John Coltrane released “more sig­nif­i­cant works” than his 1960 “My Favorite Things,” says Robin Wash­ing­ton in a PRX doc­u­men­tary on the clas­sic rework­ing of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Broad­way hit. “A Love Supreme” is often cit­ed as the zenith of the saxophonist’s career. “But if you tried to explain that song to an aver­age lis­ten­er, you would lose them. [“My Favorite Things”] is a defin­i­tive work that every­one knows, and any­one can lis­ten to, and the fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry of its evo­lu­tion is some­thing every­one can share and enjoy.” The song is acces­si­ble, a com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful hit, and it is also an exper­i­men­tal mas­ter­piece.

Indeed, “My Favorite Things” may be the per­fect intro­duc­tion to Coltrane’s exper­i­men­tal­ism. After the dizzy­ing chord changes of 1959’s “Giant Steps,” this 14-minute, two-chord excur­sion pat­terned on the ragas of Ravi Shankar announced Coltrane’s move into the modal forms he refined until his death in 1967, as well as his embrace of the sopra­no sax­o­phone and his new quar­tet. It became “Coltrane’s most request­ed tune,” says Ed Wheel­er in The World Accord­ing to John Coltrane, “and a bridge to a broad pub­lic audi­ence.”

Coltrane’s take is also mes­mer­iz­ing, trance-induc­ing, “often com­pared to a whirling dervish,” notes the Poly­phon­ic video above, a ref­er­ence to the Sufi med­i­ta­tion tech­nique of spin­ning in a cir­cle. It’s an unlike­ly song choice for the exer­cise, which makes it all the more fas­ci­nat­ing. The Sound of Music, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s final Broad­way col­lab­o­ra­tion, was an “instant clas­sic,” and every­one who’d seen it walked away hum­ming the tune to “My Favorite Things.” By 1960, it had become a stan­dard, with sev­er­al cov­er ver­sions released by Leslie Uggams, The Pete King Chorale, the Hi-Lo’s, and the Nor­man Luboff Choir.

Hun­dreds more cov­ers would fol­low. None of them sound­ed like Coltrane’s. The modal form—in which musi­cians impro­vise in dif­fer­ent kinds of scales over sim­pli­fied chord structures—created the “open free­dom” in music explored on Miles Davis’ path­break­ing Kind of Blue, on which Coltrane played tenor sax. (It was Davis who bought Coltrane his first sopra­no sax that year.) Coltrane’s use of modal form in adap­ta­tions of pop­u­lar stan­dards like “My Favorite Things” and George Gershwin’s “Sum­mer­time” from Por­gy and Bess was an explic­it strat­e­gy to court a wider pub­lic, using the famil­iar to ori­ent his lis­ten­ers to the new.

The video essay brings in the exper­tise of musi­cian, com­pos­er, and YouTu­ber Adam Neely, who explains what makes Rogers and Hammerstein’s clas­sic unique among show tunes, and why it appealed to Coltrane as the cen­ter­piece of the 1961 album of the same name. The song’s unusu­al form and struc­ture allow the same melody to be played over both major and minor chords. Coltrane’s mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the song reduces it to the two ton­ics, E major and E minor, over which he and the band solo, intro­duc­ing a shift­ing tonal­i­ty and mood to the melody with each chord change.

Neely goes into greater depth, but it’s over­all an acces­si­ble expla­na­tion of Coltrane’s very acces­si­ble, yet ver­tig­i­nous­ly deep, “My Favorite Things.” Maybe only one ques­tion remains. Coltrane’s ren­di­tion came out four years before Julie Andrews’ icon­ic per­for­mance in the film adap­ta­tion of The Sound of Music, evok­ing the obvi­ous ques­tion,” says Wash­ing­ton: “Did he influ­ence her?”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jazz Decon­struct­ed: What Makes John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” So Ground­break­ing and Rad­i­cal?

John Coltrane Draws a Pic­ture Illus­trat­ing the Math­e­mat­ics of Music

John Coltrane Talks About the Sacred Mean­ing of Music in the Human Expe­ri­ence: Lis­ten to One of His Final Inter­views (1966)

Stream the “Com­plete” John Coltrane Playlist: A 94-Hour Jour­ney Through 700+ Trans­for­ma­tive Tracks

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

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For Dave Brubeck’s 100th Birthday, Watch Pakistani Musicians Play an Enchanting Version of “Take Five”

in Music | December 6th, 2020

How’s this for fusion? Here we have The Sachal Stu­dios Orches­tra, based in Lahore, Pak­istan, play­ing an inno­v­a­tive cov­er of “Take Five,” the jazz stan­dard writ­ten by Paul Desmond and orig­i­nal­ly per­formed by The Dave Brubeck Quar­tet in 1959. Brubeck–who would have cel­e­brat­ed his 100th birth­day today–called it the “most inter­est­ing” ver­sion he had ever heard. Once you watch the per­for­mance above, you’ll know why.

Accord­ing to The Guardian, The Sachal Stu­dios Orches­tra was cre­at­ed by Izzat Majeed, a phil­an­thropist based in Lon­don. When Pak­istan fell under the dic­ta­tor­ship of Gen­er­al Zia-ul-Haq dur­ing the 1980s, Pakistan’s clas­si­cal music scene fell on hard times. Many musi­cians were forced into pro­fes­sions they had nev­er imag­ined — sell­ing clothes, elec­tri­cal parts, veg­eta­bles, etc. What­ev­er was nec­es­sary to get by. Today, many of these musi­cians have come togeth­er in a 60-per­son orches­tra that plays in a state-of-the-art stu­dio, designed part­ly by Abbey Road sound engi­neers.

You can pur­chase their album, Sachal Jazz: Inter­pre­ta­tions of Jazz Stan­dards & Bossa Nova, on Ama­zon and iTunes. It includes ver­sions of “Take Five” and “The Girl from Ipane­ma.”

For good mea­sure, we’ve added Sachal’s take on “Eleanor Rig­by,” some­thing George Har­ri­son would sure­ly have loved.

Note: A ver­sion of this post first appeared on our site back in 2013. But as enchant­i­ng as it is, it seemed worth bring­ing back.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Dave Brubeck’s Time Out Changed Jazz Music

Watch Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’ Per­formed on a Gayageum, a Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment

Talk­ing Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Per­formed on Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Instru­ments

An Uplift­ing Musi­cal Sur­prise for Dave Brubeck in Moscow (1997)

Ultra Ortho­dox Rab­bis Sing Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” on the Streets of Jerusalem

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Hieronymus Bosch Figurines: Collect Surreal Characters from Bosch’s Paintings & Put Them on Your Bookshelf

in Art | December 5th, 2020

Few painters have cre­at­ed as rich a world as Hierony­mus Bosch did in The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights. The late 15th- or ear­ly 16th-cen­tu­ry trip­tych, which depicts the cre­ation of man, the licen­tious frol­ick­ing of all crea­tures on a par­a­disi­a­cal Earth, and the sub­se­quent fall into damna­tion, draws a scruti­ny — and caus­es an amuse­ment — as intense as ever. As we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, you can now take a vir­tu­al tour of the paint­ing (there’s even an app for it), see it brought to life with mod­ern ani­ma­tion, and hear the song tat­tooed on the pos­te­ri­or of one of the work’s many char­ac­ters.

Bosch not only cre­at­ed a world with The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights, he pop­u­lat­ed it thor­ough­ly. And despite the human-cen­tric sto­ry the work appears to take as its basis, the cast with which it retells it extends far beyond mere human­i­ty: the pan­els fea­ture not just wildlife of all shapes and sizes but a vari­ety of myth­i­cal grotesques, from imps to chimeras to hybrids of man and ani­mal to much more besides.

He drew from the same sur­re­al imag­i­na­tive well to fill his oth­er paint­ings, and you can now pull out a few of these col­or­ful, men­ac­ing, pre­pos­ter­ous, and dark­ly humor­ous char­ac­ters your­self in col­lectible fig­urine form.

Though “not a big knick­knack per­son,” Dan­ger­ous Minds’ Tara McGin­ley admits to dig­ging this selec­tion of “tiny objects” straight from the mind of Bosch, all “kin­da cool-look­ing in their own obvi­ous­ly weird way” and none “too expen­sive. The fig­urines start at around $45, depend­ing on qual­i­ty, size and detail.” (You can find them on Ama­zon.) She high­lights such issues as “Hel­met­ed Bird Mon­ster,” which accord­ing to man­u­fac­tur­ers Para­s­tone fea­tures a sev­ered foot “swing­ing from the bird’s hel­met refer­ring to the hor­ri­ble cor­po­ral pun­ish­ments which could be expect­ed in hell.”

“Dev­il on Night Chair,” one of the most rec­og­niz­able denizens of The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights’ third pan­el, comes cast in his famous posi­tion, “eat­ing a per­son on a chair where he will excrete the human remains.” The con­sid­er­ably less sat­is­fied “Fat Bel­ly with Dag­ger” comes from the third pan­el of a dif­fer­ent trip­tych, The Temp­ta­tion of Saint Antho­ny, the dag­ger in his bel­ly show­ing “the con­se­quences of intem­per­ance. His eyes look out at you in acknowl­edg­ment.” Its mak­ers promise that “you will look at it in won­der as to how Bosch’s mind con­ceived of such an unusu­al lit­tle fel­low.” Find oth­er artis­tic scenes fea­tured on Ama­zon’s Bosch fig­urine page , and con­sid­er them for your­self or as gifts for friends and fam­i­ly. Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sal­vador Dalí’s Tarot Cards Get Re-Issued: The Occult Meets Sur­re­al­ism in a Clas­sic Tarot Card Deck

Sal­vador Dalí’s 1973 Cook­book Gets Reis­sued: Sur­re­al­ist Art Meets Haute Cui­sine

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Cre­ates Stun­ning Real­is­tic Por­traits That Recre­ate Sur­re­al Scenes from Hierony­mus Bosch Paint­ings

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Hierony­mus Bosch’s Bewil­der­ing Mas­ter­piece The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

New App Lets You Explore Hierony­mus Bosch’s “The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights” in Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty

Lis­ten to a Record­ing of a Song Writ­ten on a Man’s Butt in a 15-Cen­tu­ry Hierony­mus Bosch Paint­ing

Hierony­mus Bosch’s Medieval Paint­ing, The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights, Comes to Life in a Gigan­tic, Mod­ern Ani­ma­tion 

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Why Humans Are Obsessed with Cats

in Biology, History, K-12, Life, Nature, Science | December 4th, 2020

A house cat is not real­ly a fur baby, but it is some­thing rather more remark­able: a tiny con­quis­ta­dor with the whole plan­et at its feet —Abi­gail Tuck­er

As part of its Annals of Obses­sion video series, The New York­er invit­ed sci­ence jour­nal­ist Abi­gail Tuck­er, author of The Lion in the Liv­ing Room, to reflect on “how felines took over the Inter­net, our homes, and our lives.”

It goes with­out say­ing that cats and humans have co-exist­ed for a very long time.

Most of us are acquaint­ed with the high regard in which Ancient Egyp­tians held Felis catus.

And we may know some­thing of their sea­far­ing his­to­ry, begin­ning with the Vikings and con­tin­u­ing on through Unsink­able Sam and oth­er cel­e­brat­ed ship’s cats.

An over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of us have spent the last decade or so glued to online exam­ples of their antics—rid­ing robot vac­u­ums, react­ing with ter­ror to cucum­bers, and pounc­ing on humans, some of whom have had the temer­i­ty to write and record voiceovers that sug­gest they have insight as to what goes on inside a cat’s hat. (As if!)

It’s grat­i­fy­ing to hear Tuck­er echo what cat lovers have long sus­pect­ed (and embla­zoned on t‑shirts, cof­fee mugs, and dec­o­ra­tive pillows)—the cats, not the own­ers, are the ones run­ning the show.

For­give us. Dogs have own­ers. Cats have staff.

Cats took a com­men­sal path to domes­ti­ca­tion, moti­vat­ed, then as now, by the food they knew to be stored in our set­tle­ments.

Tuck­er describes it as a series of cat con­trolled takeovers—a process of arti­fi­cial selec­tion, under­tak­en on the cats’ own ini­tia­tive:

House cats are supreme­ly adapt­able. They can live any­where and, while they must have plen­ty of pro­tein, they eat prac­ti­cal­ly any­thing that moves, from pel­i­cans to crick­ets, and many things that don’t, like hot dogs. (Some of their imper­iled feline rel­a­tives, by con­trast, are adapt­ed to hunt only a rare species of chin­chilla.) House cats can tweak their sleep­ing sched­ules and social lives. They can breed like crazy.

In cer­tain ways the house cat’s rise is trag­ic, for the same forces that favor them have destroyed many oth­er crea­tures. House cats are car­pet­bag­gers, arriv­istes, and they’re among the most trans­for­ma­tive invaders the world has ever seen—except for Homo sapi­ens, of course. It’s no coin­ci­dence that when they show up in ecosys­tems, lions and oth­er megafau­na are usu­al­ly on their way out.

Aloof as many of their num­ber may be, cats have engi­neered things in such a way as to be phys­i­cal­ly irre­sistible to most humans:

Their big heads and big eyes are so cute!

Their fur is so soft!

We can car­ry them around!

Dress them in doll clothes (some­times)!

Their cries mim­ic the cries of hun­gry human babies, and elic­it a sim­i­lar response from their human care­givers.

We may not love lit­ter box duty, but with 1 in 3 humans infect­ed by Tox­o­plas­ma gondii, we’ll like­ly be teth­ered to them for all eter­ni­ty.

For bet­ter or worse, we love them. And so do dog lovers. They just don’t know it yet.

But do not ever imag­ine that the feel­ing is rec­i­p­ro­cal.

They’re arch­car­ni­vores who can­not open their own cans. As Tuck­er wry­ly observes:

I think it’s fair to say that we are obsessed and they are not.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild Preda­tor to Sofa Side­kick

GPS Track­ing Reveals the Secret Lives of Out­door Cats

In 1183, a Chi­nese Poet Describes Being Domes­ti­cat­ed by His Own Cats

How Humans Domes­ti­cat­ed Cats (Twice)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She loves cats, but most recent­ly appeared as a French Cana­di­an bear who trav­els to New York City in search of food and mean­ing in Greg Kotis’ short film, L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch “Jackson Pollock 51,” a Historic Short Film That Captures Pollock Creating Abstract Expressionist Art on a Sheet of Glass

in Art, Film | December 4th, 2020

Jack­son Pol­lock was described as an “action painter,” a label that sure­ly would­n’t have stuck if the pub­lic nev­er had the chance to see him in action. In that sense, only the era of pho­tog­ra­phy could have pro­duced an artist like him: not just because that tech­nol­o­gy pushed paint­ing toward abstrac­tion, but because it could dis­sem­i­nate images of the artist him­self far and wide. One pho­tog­ra­ph­er did more for this cause than any oth­er: the Ger­man-born Hans Namuth, who despite a lack of ini­tial inter­est in Pol­lock­’s work nev­er­the­less took up the chal­lenge of cap­tur­ing his cre­ative process — and there­by doing much to craft the artist’s image of raw, intu­itive and indi­vid­u­al­is­tic phys­i­cal­i­ty. Namuth accom­plished this even more mem­o­rably with a motion pic­ture: the short “Jack­son Pol­lock 51,” which you can watch above.

After attempt­ing some shoot­ing at the artist’s East Hamp­ton, Long Island home,“Namuth was unhap­py about hav­ing to choose between focus­ing on the paint­ing or on Pol­lock,” as the New York Times’ Sarah Box­er puts it. “He want­ed to catch painter and paint at once.” Namuth even­tu­al­ly hit upon a solu­tion: “The paint­ing would have to be on glass, and I would film from under­neath.”

The film first shows Pol­lock paint­ing more or less as usu­al (albeit out­doors, to obvi­ate the need for light­ing), and in lacon­ic voiceover the artist describes his devel­op­ment and process. “I can con­trol the flow of the paint,” he says. “There is no acci­dent, just as there is no begin­ning and no end. Some­times, I lose a paint­ing.” Indeed, he admits, “I lost con­tact with my first paint­ing on glass, and I start­ed anoth­er one.”

This hints at the rig­or­ous stan­dards — and stan­dards entire­ly his own — to which Pol­lock held his work. But he also left his sec­ond glass paint­ing to ruin, hav­ing by some accounts entered per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al freefall imme­di­ate­ly after he and Namuth wrapped this shoot. The two got into a shout­ing match that night, accus­ing one anoth­er of phoni­ness; at its height, Pol­lock action-paint­ed the din­ing-room floor by over­turn­ing the laden din­ner table in anger. “Accord­ing to Pol­lock lore, his rela­tion­ship with the cam­era was a Faus­t­ian bar­gain,” writes Box­er. “After that night [with Namuth], Pol­lock nev­er stopped drink­ing.… Six years lat­er, bloat­ed, depressed and drunk, he drove his car into a tree, killing him­self and a friend.” “The impli­ca­tion is that Namuth killed Pol­lock, that the pho­tographs stole the artist’s ‘sav­age’ spir­it. In doing things for the cam­era that he once did more spon­ta­neous­ly, Pol­lock came to feel he was indeed a pho­ny.” But it’s also thanks to Namuth, too-active a direc­tor of the action though he may have been, that we can look at a Pol­lock can­vas today and so vivid­ly imag­ine its cre­ation.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Por­trait of an Artist: Jack­son Pol­lock, the 1987 Doc­u­men­tary Nar­rat­ed by Melvyn Bragg

Was Jack­son Pol­lock Over­rat­ed? Behind Every Artist There’s an Art Crit­ic, and Behind Pol­lock There Was Clement Green­berg

The MoMA Teach­es You How to Paint Like Pol­lock, Rothko, de Koon­ing & Oth­er Abstract Painters

Dripped: An Ani­mat­ed Trib­ute to Jack­son Pollock’s Sig­na­ture Paint­ing Tech­nique

Vin­tage Footage of Picas­so and Jack­son Pol­lock Paint­ing… Through Glass

How the CIA Secret­ly Fund­ed Abstract Expres­sion­ism Dur­ing the Cold War

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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One of the Greatest Dances Sequences Ever Captured on Film Gets Restored in Color by AI: Watch the Classic Scene from Stormy Weather

in Dance, Film, Music | December 4th, 2020

It real­ly is a won­der, know­ing what we know about the his­to­ry of racism and dis­crim­i­na­tion in Hol­ly­wood and Amer­i­ca in gen­er­al, that the musi­cal Stormy Weath­er even got made in 1943. Along with one oth­er sim­i­lar film Cab­in in the Sky, it’s one of the few Amer­i­can musi­cals of the 20th cen­tu­ry with an all-Black cast, top billing and all. And what a cast, just some of the most tal­ent­ed artists of their time: Bojan­gles Robin­son, Lena Horne, Fats Waller, Cab Cal­loway, and the Nicholas Broth­ers star. Kather­ine Dun­ham, the “queen moth­er of Black dance” per­forms and chore­o­graphs. Cole­man Hawkins, though uncred­it­ed, is there too, play­ing sax.

The film also gave you its money’s worth, with near­ly two dozen musi­cal num­bers in less than 80 min­utes. And the top per­for­mance is the one that clos­es the film, seen here remas­tered from a high qual­i­ty source (make sure your YouTube is set to 1080p) and col­orized with DeOld­ify, the machine-learn­ing col­oriza­tion tool. (Your mileage may vary with the col­oriza­tion, but hey, it’s a start. Check back in a year or so and we might have anoth­er ver­sion that looks like it was tru­ly shot in col­or.)

If you’ve nev­er seen the “Jumpin’ Jive” num­ber, or nev­er heard of the Nicholas Broth­ers, you will soon find out why Fred Astaire called it the great­est danc­ing he’d ever seen on film. Their jour­ney down the ris­ers, one leapfrog­ging over the oth­er and land­ing in the splits, has nev­er been matched. There’s moments where they just seem to float on air. The band leader, Cab Cal­loway, who knew how to slink and slide around a stage, wise­ly gives them the floor. And at the end, while applause bursts out, the entire club is invit­ed to flood the dance­floor. It’s pure joy on film.

Old­er broth­er Fayard Nicholas was 29 in the film, his younger broth­er Harold was 22. Eleven years before that they had moved to New York from Philadel­phia and wowed the audi­ences at the Cot­ton Club with their mix of tap, bal­let, and acro­bat­ics. It was when pro­duc­er Samuel Gold­wyn saw them at the Club that their career took off. But their sequences were always sep­a­rate in white musi­cals, so that racist cin­e­mas in the South could eas­i­ly edit them out. Not so in Stormy Weath­er, where they end the film.

It is often writ­ten that this sequence was shot in “one take” and impro­vised, but that is plain­ly not the case. There’s eleven cuts in the dance sequence where the cam­era repo­si­tions itself. That’s not to take away from the Nicholas Broth­ers’ mas­tery, and hey, maybe they zipped through the sequence, as danc­ing was like breath­ing to them. Let’s just cel­e­brate this for what it actu­al­ly is: the Nicholas Broth­ers at the height of their pow­ers, bring­ing the house down.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cab Calloway’s “Hep­ster Dic­tio­nary,” a 1939 Glos­sary of the Lin­go (the “Jive”) of the Harlem Renais­sance

Watch a Sur­re­al 1933 Ani­ma­tion of Snow White, Fea­tur­ing Cab Cal­loway & Bet­ty Boop: It’s Ranked as the 19th Great­est Car­toon of All Time

A 1932 Illus­trat­ed Map of Harlem’s Night Clubs: From the Cot­ton Club to the Savoy Ball­room

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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A Look into the Wondrous Life & Expansive Work of the Late Jan Morris, Who Wrote the Entire World

in Books, Travel | December 3rd, 2020

Jan Mor­ris spent her long life and career writ­ing about the world. Her volu­mi­nous body of work includes books about coun­tries like Spain, the Unit­ed States, and her ances­tral home­land of Wales; cities like Oxford, Tri­este, and Syd­ney; and even city-states like Hong Kong and her beloved (if some­times resent­ed) Venice. And yet, as she declared on CBS Sun­day Morn­ing twen­ty years ago, “I hate being called a trav­el writer, and I don’t believe I am one. When I go to a place, I describe its effect upon my own sen­si­bil­i­ty. I’m not telling the read­er what they’re going to find there; I’m just telling peo­ple what effect the place has had upon me.” To The Paris Review she called her­self a “a bel­letrist, an old-fash­ioned word,” and a bel­letrist “most­ly con­cerned with place.”

“It’s hard not to be fas­ci­nat­ed by Jan Mor­ris,” says Observ­er edi­tor Robert McCrum in the BBC pro­file just above. This would be true of any writer who had seen and con­sid­ered so much of the Earth, which in Mor­ris’ case also hap­pens to include the top of Mt. Ever­est, con­quered in 1953 along with the his­to­ry-mak­ing expe­di­tion of Sir Edmund Hillary.

She reached the sum­mit as a he, hav­ing lived for her first forty or so years as James Mor­ris; becom­ing Jan, in her per­cep­tion, con­sti­tut­ed a jour­ney of anoth­er kind. “I have inter­pret­ed this thing roman­ti­cal­ly, coy­ly, and tweely as some sort of a quest that has been imposed upon me,” she said in a 1974 talk-show appear­ance pro­mot­ing her nar­ra­tive of tran­si­tion Conun­drum — “an arro­gant book, an ego­tis­ti­cal book about myself, and I’m afraid that you must take it or leave it.”

Just as Mor­ris nev­er called her­self a trav­el writer, she nev­er spoke of hav­ing under­gone a sex change. “I did not change sex,” she told her final inter­view­er, The Guardian’s Tim Adams. “I real­ly absorbed one into the oth­er. I’m a bit of each now.” For her many read­ers, this great­ly deep­ens her val­ue as an observ­er. “I’ve writ­ten as an out­sider, always,” as she puts it to McCrum. “I’ve nev­er pre­tend­ed to get inside the spir­it, or the thoughts of oth­er cul­tures, oth­er peo­ple, oth­er cities, even. I’m always the onlook­er.” And yet this very nature made her, among oth­er things, “the kind­est, shrewdest and most inde­fati­ga­ble mas­ter por­traitist of cities,” as her fel­low writer of place Pico Iyer tweet­ed in response to the news of her death on Novem­ber 20 at the age of 94.

Among Mor­ris’ work not filed under “trav­el” one finds sub­jects like Abra­ham Lin­coln, the Japan­ese Bat­tle­ship Yam­a­to, and the rise and fall of the British Empire. To my mind, this his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive did a good deal to make her a mod­el “city crit­ic,” and one whose work lights the way for writ­ers of place to come. She con­tin­ued pub­lish­ing that work up until the end — and indeed will con­tin­ue past it, a delib­er­ate­ly posthu­mous vol­ume called Alle­go­riz­ings hav­ing been com­plet­ed years ago. “When I die, which I’m going to one of these days, I think peo­ple will be able to say that I’ve writ­ten an awful lot of books about the whole world at a par­tic­u­lar moment,” Mor­ris said in a recent inter­view on BBC Radio 3’s The Verb. She enjoyed a longer moment, not to men­tion a wider expanse, than most; through her writ­ing, we’ll car­ry on enjoy­ing it our­selves.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Venice in Beau­ti­ful Col­or Images 125 Years Ago: The Rial­to Bridge, St. Mark’s Basil­i­ca, Doge’s Palace & More

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

Watch Sir Edmund Hillary Describe His Ever­est Ascent, on the 60th Anniver­sary of His Climb

The Dig­i­tal Trans­gen­der Archive Fea­tures Books, Mag­a­zines & Pho­tos Telling the His­to­ry of Trans­gen­der Cul­ture

The Best Writ­ing Advice Pico Iyer Ever Received

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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The Power of Empathy: A Quick Animated Lesson from Brené Brown

in Psychology | December 3rd, 2020

Sev­er­al years back, the RSA (Roy­al Soci­ety of the Arts) cre­at­ed a series of dis­tinc­tive ani­mat­ed shorts where well-known intel­lec­tu­als pre­sent­ed big ideas, and a tal­ent­ed artist rapid­ly illus­trat­ed them on a white­board. Some of those talks fea­tured the likes of Slavoj Zizek, Car­ol Dweck, Steven Pinker and Bar­bara Ehren­re­ich. Now RSA presents a video series cre­at­ed in an entire­ly dif­fer­ent aes­thet­ic. Above, you can watch the first of many “espres­so shots for the mind.” This clip fea­tures Dr. Brené Brown, a well-known research pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hous­ton Grad­u­ate Col­lege of Social Work, pro­vid­ing some quick insights into the dif­fer­ence between sym­pa­thy and empa­thy, and explain­ing why empa­thy is much more mean­ing­ful. To learn more about The Pow­er of Empa­thy, you can watch Brown’s com­plete RSA lec­ture below . You can also watch her very pop­u­lar TED Talk on The Pow­er of Vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Decem­ber, 2013.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es (Part of our list of Free Online Cours­es)

Med­i­ta­tion 101: A Short, Ani­mat­ed Beginner’s Guide

The Psy­chol­o­gy of Blame: Anoth­er Ani­mat­ed Les­son That Can Make You a Bet­ter Per­son

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