Free Online Writing & Journalism Courses

in Online Courses, Writing | January 8th, 2020

Image by Book Mama, via Flickr Com­mons

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The Strange, Spiritual Origins of the Ouija Board

in History | January 8th, 2020

Even as an avid hor­ror movie fan, I find it hard to sus­pend dis­be­lief when Oui­ja boards show up, and they show up often enough, in clas­sics like The Exor­cist and mod­ern favorites like Para­nor­mal Activ­i­ty. Oui­ja boards have always seemed more like wands with plas­tic flow­ers in them than telegraphs to the after­life or the infer­nal abyss. But I grew up with peo­ple who con­sid­ered it a gate­way to hell, just as spir­i­tu­al­ists have con­sid­ered it a por­tal to the beyond, where their dead rel­a­tives wait­ed to give them mes­sages.

So, how did this nov­el­ty item become such a potent fig­ure of fear and fas­ci­na­tion in Amer­i­ca? When it was mass-mar­ket­ed by “a Pitts­burgh toy and nov­el­ty shop” in the late 19th cen­tu­ry, as Lin­da Rodriquez McRob­bie writes at Smith­son­ian, “this mys­te­ri­ous talk­ing board was basi­cal­ly what’s sold in board game aisles today.” Its adver­tise­ments promised “nev­er fail­ing amuse­ment and recre­ation for all the class­es,” and a bridge “between the known and unknown, the mate­r­i­al and imma­te­r­i­al.”

The Oui­ja board might have become a toy by the end of the cen­tu­ry, but through­out the ear­li­er decades, belief in the super­nat­ur­al held seri­ous sway among “all the class­es.” The aver­age lifes­pan was less than 50. “Women died in child­birth; chil­dren died of dis­ease; and men died in war. Even Mary Todd Lin­coln, wife of the ven­er­a­ble pres­i­dent, con­duct­ed séances in the White House after their 11-year-old son died of a fever in 1862.” Dis­ease epi­demics and the Civ­il War left mil­lions bereft.

“Com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the dead was com­mon,” says Oui­ja his­to­ri­an Robert Murch. “It wasn’t seen as bizarre or weird,” even among the staunchest reli­gious peo­ple who filled the pews each Sun­day. “It’s hard to imag­ine that now, we look at that and think, ‘Why are you open­ing the gates of hell?’” These com­mon­ly held beliefs may not have damned anyone’s soul, but they made even the rarest minds, like Sher­lock Holmes’ cre­ator Arthur Conan Doyle, sus­cep­ti­ble to fraud and trick­ery.

It was only a mat­ter of time before believ­ers in spir­i­tu­al­ism became a tar­get demo­graph­ic for the cheap com­modi­ties spread­ing across the coun­try with the rail­roads. “Peo­ple were des­per­ate for meth­ods of com­mu­ni­ca­tion” with the dead “that would be quick­er” than the local medi­um. “While sev­er­al entre­pre­neurs real­ized that,” McRob­bie writes, “it was the Ken­nard Nov­el­ty Com­pa­ny that real­ly nailed it” with their 1886 prod­uct. But they didn’t invent it. Such devices date back years ear­li­er.

Some ear­ly ver­sions “looked like Oui­ja boards, and some didn’t,” notes Vox. “Some devices even used planchettes (that’s the name for the thing you hold when you oper­ate a Oui­ja.” (Planchette, from medieval French, means a small board.) As for the non­sense word “Oui­ja,” one leg­end has it that the name came from an 1890 ses­sion in which the board was asked what it would like itself to be called. Learn more in the Vox video above about why the Oui­ja board came to loom so large, or in their words, became so “over­rat­ed,” in the Amer­i­can imag­i­na­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Eerie 19th Cen­tu­ry Pho­tographs of Ghosts: See Images from the Long, Strange Tra­di­tion of “Spir­it Pho­tog­ra­phy”

Eerie 19th Cen­tu­ry Pho­tographs of Ghosts: See Images from the Long, Strange Tra­di­tion of “Spir­it Pho­tog­ra­phy”

Arthur Conan Doyle & The Cot­tin­g­ley Fairies: How Two Young Girls Fooled Sher­lock Holmes’ Cre­ator

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

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An Animated Look at the Charade of the Global Elites: Claiming They Want to “Change the World,” They End Up Preserving the Unjust Status Quo

in Animation, Current Affairs, Politics | January 8th, 2020

From Peter Kropotkin to Leo Tol­stoy to Noam Chom­sky, some of the most revered anar­chist thinkers have exhaust­ed page after page explain­ing why pow­er over oth­ers is unjus­ti­fied, no mat­ter how it jus­ti­fies itself. To those who say the wealthy and pow­er­ful ben­e­fit soci­ety with char­i­ta­ble works and occa­sion­al­ly humane pol­i­cy, Tol­stoy might reply with the fol­low­ing illus­tra­tion, which opens Time edi­tor Anand Girid­haradas’ talk above, “Win­ner Take All,” as ani­mat­ed by the RSA:

I sit on a man’s back, chok­ing him and mak­ing him car­ry me, and yet assure myself and oth­ers that I am sor­ry for him and wish to light­en his load by all means pos­si­ble… except by get­ting off his back.

The author of Win­ners Take All: The Elite Cha­rade of Chang­ing the World, Girid­haradas doesn’t make the case for anar­chism here, except per­haps by the slight­est impli­ca­tion in his choice of epi­graph. But he does call out the “win­ners of our age,” no mat­ter how much they deter­mine to make a dif­fer­ence with human­i­tar­i­an aid, for being “unwill­ing to get off the man’s back.” Unwill­ing to pay tax­es, close loop­holes and tax shel­ters, pay high­er wages, or stop lob­by­ing to slash pub­lic ser­vices. Unwill­ing to rein­vest in the com­mu­ni­ties that made them.

“What does it look like to imag­ine the kind of change,” Girid­haradas asks, “that would involve the win­ners of our age step­ping off that guy’s back? Or being made to step off that guy’s back?” Here, he leaves us with an ellipses and moves to cri­tique the idea of the “win-win” as a means of mak­ing change, rather than just exchange.

The mar­ket econ­o­my has import­ed the cri­te­ria of exchange into pol­i­tics and social action. Every­thing is trans­ac­tion­al. But in order to address the gross inequities that result in peo­ple fig­u­ra­tive­ly sit­ting on the backs of oth­ers, some must gain more pow­er and oth­ers must have less. The par­ties do not meet in a state of ceteris paribus.

One might take issue with the very terms used in “win-win” think­ing. Rather than win­ners, some would call pow­er­ful cap­i­tal­ists oppor­tunists, prof­i­teers, and worse. (The term “rob­ber baron” was once in com­mon cir­cu­la­tion.) To claim that good works and good inten­tions obvi­ate mas­sive pow­er imbal­ances is to pre­sume that such imbal­ances are jus­ti­fi­able in the first place. Answer­ing this the­o­ret­i­cal ques­tion doesn’t, how­ev­er, address the prac­ti­cal prob­lem.

In the cur­rent sys­tem of cor­po­rate mis­rule, says Girid­haradas, “when every­thing is couched as a win-win, what you are real­ly say­ing… is that the best kinds of solu­tions don’t ask any­one to get off anyone’s back.” Unfet­tered cap­i­tal­ism has brought us the “pri­va­ti­za­tion of pub­lic prob­lems.” That is to say, com­pa­nies prof­it from the same issues they help cre­ate through pol­lu­tion, preda­to­ry schemes, and undue polit­i­cal influ­ence.

You don’t have to be an anar­chist to see a seri­ous prob­lem with that. But if you see the prob­lem, you should want to imag­ine how things could be oth­er­wise.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Saul Alinsky’s 13 Tried-and-True Rules for Cre­at­ing Mean­ing­ful Social Change

Noam Chom­sky Explains the Best Way for Ordi­nary Peo­ple to Make Change in the World, Even When It Seems Daunt­ing

Teach­ing Tol­er­ance to Activists: A Free Course Syl­labus & Anthol­o­gy

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

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Pink Floyd Films a Concert in an Empty Auditorium, Still Trying to Break Into the U.S. Charts (1970)

in Music | January 7th, 2020

It’s hard to imag­ine that in the late 60s, the band who would become the most famous of the psy­che­del­ic era was still an obscu­ri­ty to most U.S. lis­ten­ers. Nowa­days “Pink Floyd may be the only rock band that can cred­i­bly be com­pared to both the Bea­t­les and Spinal Tap,” writes Bill Wyman in a Vul­ture ret­ro­spec­tive of their entire cat­a­logue. Indeed, it’s pos­si­ble their sta­di­um-sized pop­u­lar­i­ty has been under­es­ti­mat­ed. Accord­ing to the data, they’ve actu­al­ly sold more albums world­wide than the Fab Four.

But they had to pay dues in the States. “In the last week of April 1973,” notes KQED’s Richie Unter­berg­er, Dark Side of the Moon “reached No. 1 on the Amer­i­can charts. In the last week of April 1970, though, they had yet to crack the U.S. Top 50 after three years of record­ing and per­form­ing.”

Their first singer/songwriter, and lat­er trag­ic muse, Syd Bar­rett, had come and gone after their debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. They were already well into what Wyman describes as the sec­ond phase of “four, or arguably five, Pink Floyds.”

This ver­sion “was one of the founders of pro­gres­sive rock, a psy­che­del­ic, space-rock­‑y, qua­si-impro­vi­sa­tion­al ensem­ble.” They were excel­lent live musi­cians and mas­ters of mood and atmos­phere. But their exper­i­men­tal direc­tion didn’t sell. “At that point, they were real­ly anx­ious to have what­ev­er pub­lic­i­ty they could,” says Jim Far­ber, who co-pro­duced the hour-long TV con­cert film above for KQED, San Francisco’s pub­lic tele­vi­sion sta­tion.

We did not have much of a bud­get. Pink Floyd did the per­for­mance and offered the rights for a cer­tain num­ber of air­ings for prac­ti­cal­ly noth­ing. My mem­o­ry is we paid them $200.

The band played in the emp­ty Fill­more Audi­to­ri­um for a film crew. The venue wasn’t emp­ty because no one showed up. They could draw a crowd and had already played the Fill­more West and toured the U.S. three times. But, “for as strong an under­ground fol­low­ing as they were build­ing in the Unit­ed States,” writes Unter­berg­er, they “were so eager for an Amer­i­can audi­ence that they played a free con­cert at UCLA a week lat­er” after the KQED tap­ing.

The sta­tion, which in 1970 “was more known for Sesame Street than psy­che­del­ic rock,” had already begun to move into con­cert films. “Local icons” like “Big Broth­er & the Hold­ing Com­pa­ny, Jef­fer­son Air­plane, and Quick­sil­ver Mes­sen­ger Ser­vice all got air­time.” But Pink Floyd was some­thing dif­fer­ent indeed. The film, broad­cast in Jan­u­ary of ’71, “got an incred­i­bly pos­i­tive response when we aired it in San Fran­cis­co,” says Far­ber. “After that, it had two nation­al broad­casts on PBS.”

You can watch the full “Hour with Pink Floyd,” as the pro­gram was called, just above. At the top, see the band play “Astron­o­my Domine” in footage cut from the orig­i­nal broad­cast. Fur­ther up, see the six­teen minute “Atom Heart Moth­er,” a tes­ta­ment to how far out Pink Floyd could go, and how much a local pub­lic tele­vi­sion sta­tion was will­ing to go with them. The track opens with five min­utes of aer­i­al footage of the San Joaquin Val­ley, the band nowhere in sight. When Pink Floyd final­ly arrives onscreen, the desert vis­tas con­tin­ue to weave in and out.

In “Grantch­ester Mead­ows,” below, for­est sounds and images intro­duce the song. The effect was to trans­late the mys­tique British lis­ten­ers asso­ci­at­ed with Pink Floyd to U.S. audi­ences just on the verge of being blown away by a very dif­fer­ent-sound­ing band who released Dark Side of the Moon three years lat­er.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Hour-Long Col­lec­tion of Live Footage Doc­u­ments the Ear­ly Days of Pink Floyd (1967–1972)

Hear Lost Record­ing of Pink Floyd Play­ing with Jazz Vio­lin­ist Stéphane Grap­pel­li on “Wish You Were Here”

How Pink Floyd’s “Com­fort­ably Numb” Was Born From an Argu­ment Between Roger Waters & David Gilmour

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

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John Coltrane’s Handwritten Outline for His Masterpiece A Love Supreme

in Jazz, Music | January 7th, 2020

Today we present a rare doc­u­ment from the Smith­so­ni­an’s Nation­al Muse­um of Amer­i­can His­to­ry: Coltrane’s hand­writ­ten out­line of his ground­break­ing jazz com­po­si­tion A Love Supreme.

Record­ed in Decem­ber of 1964 and released in 1965, A Love Supreme is Coltrane’s per­son­al dec­la­ra­tion of his faith in God and his aware­ness of being on a spir­i­tu­al path. “No road is an easy one,” writes Coltrane in a prayer at the bot­tom of his own lin­er notes for the album, “but they all go back to God.”

If you click the image above and exam­ine a larg­er copy of the man­u­script, you will notice that Coltrane has writ­ten the same sen­ti­ment at the bot­tom of the page. “All paths lead to God.” The piece is made up of a pro­gres­sion of four suites. The names for each sec­tion are not on the man­u­script, but Coltrane even­tu­al­ly called them “Acknowl­edge­ment,” “Res­o­lu­tion,” “Pur­suance” and “Psalm.”

In the man­u­script, Coltrane writes that the “A Love Supreme” motif should be “played in all keys togeth­er.” In the record­ing of “Acknowl­edge­ment,” Coltrane indeed repeats the basic theme near the end in all keys, as if he were con­scious­ly exhaust­ing every path. As jazz his­to­ri­an Lewis Porter, author of John Coltrane: His Life and Music, tells NPR in the piece below:

Coltrane more or less fin­ished his impro­vi­sa­tion, and he just starts play­ing the “Love Supreme” motif, but he changes the key anoth­er time, anoth­er time, anoth­er time. This is some­thing very unusu­al. It’s not the way he usu­al­ly impro­vis­es. It’s not real­ly impro­vised. It’s some­thing that he’s doing. And if you actu­al­ly fol­low it through, he ends up play­ing this lit­tle “Love Supreme” theme in all 12 pos­si­ble keys. To me, he’s giv­ing you a mes­sage here.

In sec­tion IV of the man­u­script, for the part lat­er named “Psalm,” Coltrane writes that the piece is a “musi­cal recita­tion of prayer by horn,” and is an “attempt to reach tran­scen­dent lev­el with orches­tra ris­ing har­monies to a lev­el of bliss­ful sta­bil­i­ty at the end.” Indeed, in the same NPR piece which you can lis­ten to below, Rev. Fran­zo Wayne King of the Saint John Coltrane African Ortho­dox Church in San Fran­cis­co describes how his con­gre­ga­tion one day dis­cov­ered that Coltrane’s play­ing cor­re­sponds direct­ly to his prayer at the bot­tom of the lin­er notes.

In addi­tion to Porter and King, NPR’s Eric West­er­velt inter­views pianist McCoy Tyn­er, the last sur­viv­ing mem­ber of Coltrane’s quar­tet. The 13-minute piece, “The Sto­ry of ‘A Love Supreme,’ ” is a fas­ci­nat­ing overview of one of the great mon­u­ments of jazz.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Orga­nized Reli­gion Got You Down? Dis­cov­er The Church Of Saint John Coltrane

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

John Coltrane Draws a Pic­ture Illus­trat­ing the Math­e­mat­ics of Music

The Secret Link Between Jazz and Physics: How Ein­stein & Coltrane Shared Impro­vi­sa­tion and Intu­ition in Com­mon

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Watch Peluca, the Student Film That Became the Cultural Phenomenon Napoleon Dynamite (2002)

in Film | January 7th, 2020

You could say that Jared and Jerusha Hess got lucky. When first the hus­band-and-wife team got the chance to make a fea­ture, it turned out to be Napoleon Dyna­mite, the movie that launched a mil­lion “VOTE FOR PEDRO” shirts. But that visu­al­ly, nar­ra­tive­ly, and cul­tur­al­ly askew tale did­n’t emerge ful­ly formed into the the­aters. Nor did its title char­ac­ter, an extrav­a­gant­ly nerdy and sav­age­ly defen­sive high-school stu­dent in small-town Ida­ho. Napoleon Dyna­mite has a pre­de­ces­sor in Pelu­ca, the short film Jared Hess made for an assign­ment at Brigham Young Uni­ver­si­ty’s film school. Napoleon Dyna­mite him­self has a pre­de­ces­sor in Seth, whose curly hair, enor­mous spec­ta­cles, severe awk­ward­ness, and pen­chant for thrift­ing and faux curs­ing will look famil­iar indeed.

Pelu­ca appears to have much the same to rela­tion­ship to Napoleon Dyna­mite as Wes Ander­son­’s Bot­tle Rock­et short has to the fea­ture ver­sion. Both were shot in black-and-white in locales their film­mak­ers clear­ly know well, both are mem­o­rably scored (Ander­son uses jazz, Hess uses Burt Bacharach), and both tell in a basic form sto­ries that would lat­er unfold to their full cin­e­mat­ic length.

Just as Bot­tle Rock­et, the short, stars Owen and Luke Wil­son, who would go on to reprise their roles and gain fame there­after, Jon Hed­er played Seth in Pelu­ca before play­ing Napoleon Dyna­mite. And just as there’s lit­tle obvi­ous dif­fer­ence between the two ver­sions of the char­ac­ter besides their names, the dis­tinc­tive­ness of Hess’ cin­e­mat­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty shows through in Pelu­ca just as it would, to a much wider audi­ence, in Napoleon Dyna­mite.

The Hess­es once drew fre­quent com­par­isons to Ander­son, though the past decade and a half has exposed their cin­e­mat­ic enter­pris­es as entire­ly dif­fer­ent. Their sec­ond fea­ture Nacho Libre, a Mex­i­can wrestling com­e­dy star­ring Jack Black, fit com­fort­ably enough into the Hol­ly­wood zone of ado­les­cent goofi­ness. But New York­er film crit­ic Richard Brody saw some­thing deep­er, call­ing it “the strangest Amer­i­can reli­gious film since The Last Temp­ta­tion of Christ,” one that “presents a case for noth­ing less than Catholic-Protes­tant rec­on­cil­i­a­tion.” The Hess­es’ third fea­ture Gen­tle­men Bron­cos, the sto­ry of a young aspir­ing sci­ence-fic­tion writer in north­ern Utah, went almost com­plete­ly ignored, but Brody deemed it an “even more ecsta­t­ic and per­son­al explo­ration — in loopy, gross-out com­ic form — of the essence of faith in cos­mic reli­gious vision itself, and the ease with which those visions can be per­vert­ed to world­ly ends.”

Brody con­tin­ues to speak for the cinephiles who’ve paid to the work of Jared and Jerusha Hess ever more atten­tion, not less, since Napoleon Dyna­mite. 2015’s Don Verdean, about a crooked Bib­li­cal archae­ol­o­gist, is “a pur­er, stranger, and more dan­ger­ous reli­gious vision than the three films that pre­ced­ed it.” 2016’s Mas­ter­minds, a Hes­s­ian treat­ment of a real-life North Car­oli­na heist gone wrong due to sheer incom­pe­tence, “has the reli­gious inten­si­ty and spir­i­tu­al res­o­nance that marks all of Hess’s oth­er films” and “extends his vision into dark­er cor­ners of exis­tence than he had for­mer­ly con­tem­plat­ed.” Con­sid­er­ing that pic­ture, Brody sees “a wide-eyed frontal­i­ty to Hess’s film­mak­ing, includ­ing face-to-face set pieces and action scenes done in wide and sta­t­ic tableaux that sug­gest a kin­ship with the tran­scen­den­tal cin­e­ma of Robert Bres­son and Carl Theodor Drey­er.” And from the right crit­i­cal per­spec­tive, we can see it in Pelu­ca as well.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wes Anderson’s First Short Film: The Black-and-White, Jazz-Scored Bot­tle Rock­et (1992)

The First Films of Great Direc­tors: Kubrick, Cop­po­la, Scors­ese, Taran­ti­no & Truf­faut

Doo­dle­bug, Christo­pher Nolan’s First Short: What Came Before The Dark Night, Memen­to & Incep­tion (1997)

Tim Burton’s Ear­ly Stu­dent Films: King and Octo­pus & Stalk of the Cel­ery Mon­ster

The Art of Sci-Fi Book Cov­ers: From the Fan­tas­ti­cal 1920s to the Psy­che­del­ic 1960s & Beyond

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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A Brief History of John Baldessari (RIP) Narrated by Tom Waits: A Tribute to the Late “Godfather of Conceptual Art”

in Art | January 6th, 2020

All mod­ern art is con­cep­tu­al in some way, bound to aes­thet­ic the­o­ries and com­bat­ive man­i­festoes against com­pla­cen­cy. But only in the move­ment known as cap­i­tal “C” Con­cep­tu­al Art do the ideas become more impor­tant than the objects. Con­cep­tu­al Art traces its his­to­ry to Mar­cel Duchamp and the Sur­re­al­ists who declared war on the bour­geois cul­tur­al sta­tus quo.

Lat­er exper­i­men­tal artists did the same by ele­vat­ing mass cul­ture to the sta­tus of high art: adver­tis­ing, com­ic books, Hol­ly­wood spec­ta­cle, and—in the past twen­ty-five years or so—the Inter­net: Pop Art fore­ground­ed con­cepts over objects by means of pas­tiche and meta­com­men­tary. The work of L.A. artist Ed Ruscha, for exam­ple, cen­ters slo­gans and clichés over ambigu­ous images that some­times look like stock desk­top back­grounds.

Both Duchamp and Ruscha were influ­ences on Amer­i­can Con­cep­tu­al­ist John Baldessari, who passed away yes­ter­day at age 88, leav­ing behind a lega­cy as “arguably America’s most influ­en­tial Con­cep­tu­al artist,” accord­ing to L.A. Times crit­ic Christo­pher Knight. Born of Euro­pean par­ents and raised in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, Baldessari incor­po­rat­ed humor, satire, and Pop Art ele­ments into his work.

He did not begin his career, how­ev­er, as part of a move­ment, and he nev­er expect­ed to have much of an audi­ence. In the ear­ly six­ties, he was teach­ing high school art in San Diego and felt “total­ly iso­lat­ed,” he says in the inter­view with Knight below. Baldessari resigned him­self to a “nor­mal life,” paint­ing when he could on the week­ends. These con­di­tions inspired him to “try to fig­ure out what art meant for me, what was the bot­tom line.”

Baldessari answers the ques­tion, to laughs from the audi­ence, with typ­i­cal lacon­ic wit: “any­thing you put on can­vas is art.” Baldessari reversed Duchamp’s for­mu­la. Put a cin­derblock in a muse­um, he says, and it becomes art through con­text, but put a can­vas on the street and it doesn’t become some­thing else. It always retains its sta­tus as an art object. Such objects, for Baldessari, served main­ly as mate­r­i­al plat­forms for ideas.

“Pic­tures are not enough, Baldessari seems to sug­gest,” writes Alex Green­berg­er in an ART­news trib­ute. “Con­cepts mat­ter equal­ly, if not even more.” Baldessari has been called “the god­fa­ther of Con­cep­tu­al Art” for this insight, says Tom Waits says in his nar­ra­tion of “A Brief His­to­ry of John Baldessari” at the top. He’s also been called a “mas­ter of appro­pri­a­tion” and “Sur­re­al­ist for the dig­i­tal age.” He nev­er lim­it­ed him­self to just can­vas but worked in almost every medi­um of visu­al and tex­tu­al art.

Those media includ­ed cred­it card and iPhone app design. Art isn’t only mate­r­i­al: it is vir­tu­al, ephemer­al, and dis­pos­able. Baldessari demon­strat­ed his own com­mit­ment to destroy­ing the past when, in 1970, he burned all of the work he had made between 1953 and 1966 for a con­cep­tu­al piece called The Cre­ma­tion Project. But he wasn’t an art world anar­chist. As he toyed with and chal­lenged tra­di­tion, he also helped instill it.

Baldessari become famous enough to have war­rant­ed a guest spot on The Simp­sons (and was award­ed a Nation­al Medal of Arts). He became wealthy enough by far to quit his day job. But he nev­er stopped teach­ing, from high school to posts at CalArts, UCLA, and UC San Diego. “I’ve taught all my life,” he said in 2003, “Every­thing from grade school to col­lege to juve­nile delin­quents.”

We might be inclined to see in his teach­ing phi­los­o­phy a key to under­stand­ing his con­cep­tu­al uni­verse: “I set out to right all the things wrong with my own art edu­ca­tion. But I found that you can’t real­ly teach art, you can just sort of set the stage for it.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Mar­cel Duchamp Read “The Cre­ative Act,” A Short Lec­ture on What Makes Great Art, Great

Roy Licht­en­stein and Andy Warhol Demys­ti­fy Their Pop Art in Vin­tage 1966 Film

When Bri­an Eno & Oth­er Artists Peed in Mar­cel Duchamp’s Famous Uri­nal

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

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Peter Singer’s The Life You Can Save Available as a Free AudioBook and eBook: Features Narrations by Paul Simon, Kristen Bell & Stephen Fry

in Audio Books, e-books, Life, Philosophy | January 6th, 2020

In 2009, Prince­ton philoso­pher Peter Singer pub­lished his prac­ti­cal handbook/manifesto The Life You Can Save: How to Do Your Part to End World Pover­ty. Bill and Melin­da Gates called it “a per­sua­sive and inspir­ing work that will change the way you think about philanthropy”–a book that “shows us we can make a pro­found dif­fer­ence in the lives of the world’s poor­est.”

Now, on its tenth anniver­sary, Singer has released an updat­ed ver­sion of The Life You Can Save. And he’s made it avail­able as a free ebook, and also as a free audio­book fea­tur­ing nar­ra­tions by Kris­ten Bell, Stephen Fry, Paul Simon and Natalia Vodi­ano­va, among oth­ers. You can get the down­loads here.

Singer’s web­site fea­tures a page where you can find the best char­i­ties that address glob­al pover­ty. Each char­i­ty has been “rig­or­ous­ly eval­u­at­ed to help you make the biggest impact per dol­lar.” If you are look­ing for an effi­cient approach, you can also make one sin­gle dona­tion to sup­port all of the char­i­ties vet­ted and rec­om­mend­ed by Singer’s orga­ni­za­tion.

The audio ver­sion of The Life You Can Save will be added to our meta col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Life You Can Save in 3 Min­utes, by Peter Singer

Peter Singer’s Course on Effec­tive Altru­ism Puts Phi­los­o­phy Into World­ly Action

The Jour­nal of Con­tro­ver­sial Ideas, Co-Found­ed by Philoso­pher Peter Singer, Will Pub­lish & Defend Pseu­do­ny­mous Arti­cles, Regard­less of the Back­lash

Richard Dawkins’ Uncut Inter­views with Peter Singer & Big Thinkers

 

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