The Live Music Archive Lets You Stream/Download More Than 250,000 Concert Recordings–for Free

The Inter­net Archive main­tains an enor­mous Live Music Archive of con­cert record­ings, not all of them by the Grate­ful Dead. There are more than 17,000 such record­ings in its Grate­ful Dead col­lec­tion — 2,000 more than when last we fea­tured it here on Open Cul­ture — but one must com­pare that fig­ure to the 250,000 items now in the whole of the LMA. “It would be a great sto­ry to have the first item as part of the col­lec­tion to be some rare Grate­ful Dead record­ing from 1968,” says a post at the Inter­net Archive blog reflect­ing on the twen­ti­eth anniver­sary of the LMA last year, “but it is actu­al­ly an unas­sum­ing Rust­ed Root audi­ence record­ing from August 24, 2001.”

In addi­tion to Rust­ed Root and the Grate­ful Dead, you can stream or down­load a wealth of record­ed live shows from bands like Lit­tle Feat, Blues Trav­el­er, My Morn­ing Jack­et, Los Lobos, and the Smash­ing Pump­kins, as well as singer-song­writ­ers like War­ren Zevon, Elliott Smith, Jack John­son, Robyn Hitch­cock, and John May­er.

How wide or nar­row a vari­ety of musi­cal expe­ri­ences these names con­jure up will, of course, depend on your per­spec­tive. But if they do share a major char­ac­ter­is­tic in com­mon, it’s the fact, to their true fans, their live per­for­mances count for as much as — or, often, more than — their stu­dio record­ings. The truest (or at least most tech­ni­cal­ly adept) such fans have donat­ed their time and skills to make these live per­for­mances freely acces­si­ble and end­less­ly reliv­able on the LMA.

“For years, con­cert-goers record­ed and trad­ed tapes, but in 2002, the Inter­net Archive offered a reli­able infra­struc­ture to pre­serve per­for­mances files,” writes the Inter­net Archive’s Car­alee Adams in a blog post mark­ing the upload­ing of 250,000 record­ings. “Part­ner­ing with the etree music com­mu­ni­ty, the Live Music Archive was estab­lished to pro­vide ongo­ing, free access to loss­less and MP3-encod­ed audio record­ings.” Over the past 21 years, “more than 8,000 artists have giv­en per­mis­sion to have record­ings of their shows archived on the Live Music Archive, and users from around the world have lis­tened to files more than 600 mil­lion times.” Whether or not you’re into jam bands, if you’ve ever enjoyed live music, have a look through the LMA’s 250 ter­abytes of record­ings made in venues from sta­di­ums to neigh­bor­hood cof­fee shops. There’ll be a con­cert for you, no charge for admis­sion.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Jam­Base Launch­es a New Video Archive of 100,000 Stream­ing Con­certs: Phish, Wilco, the Avett Broth­ers, Grate­ful Dead & Much More

Stream 385,000 Vin­tage 78 RPM Records at the Inter­net Archive: Louis Arm­strong, Glenn Miller, Bil­lie Hol­i­day & More

Stream a Mas­sive Archive of Grate­ful Dead Con­certs from 1965–1995

Down­load 10,000 of the First Record­ings of Music Ever Made, Cour­tesy of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia-San­ta Bar­bara

BBC Launch­es World Music Archive

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 or on Face­book.

The Oldest Known Photographs of Rome (1841–1871)

The rav­ages of COVID-19 have been fol­lowed by the rav­ages of the post-pan­dem­ic tourism boom. If you’ve been read­ing recent cov­er­age of aggres­sive trav­el and its dis­con­tents, you may well assume that it’s too late to have a gen­uine expe­ri­ence of, say, the great cities of Europe. Paris, Vien­na, Barcelona: none are as they used to be, we’re told, and the same may even be true of the Eter­nal City. Lovers of such places were com­plain­ing about tourists decades and decades ago, of course, but how far back in time would one have to trav­el in order to take in the glo­ries of a Rome that had­n’t yet fall­en to the invad­ing T‑shirt-and-flip-flopped hordes?

One would have to trav­el back about 150 years, at least accord­ing to the pic­to­r­i­al evi­dence pro­vid­ed in the video above from Youtu­ber Jarid Boost­ers, who appears to have a strong inter­est in his­tor­i­cal pho­tog­ra­phy.

His most pop­u­lar videos include gath­er­ings-up of pic­tures of old Los Ange­les, of the lost archi­tec­ture of the Ger­man Empire, of nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Iran. In this new episode, he presents the ear­li­est known pho­tographs tak­en in Rome, which date from the ear­ly eigh­teen-for­ties to the ear­ly eigh­teen-sev­en­ties. Most were tak­en by an ear­ly Ital­ian adopter of pho­tog­ra­phy named Gioacchi­no Alto­bel­li.

Soon after pick­ing up a cam­era in the eigh­teen-thir­ties, Alto­bel­li ded­i­cat­ed his career to “pho­tograph­ing some of the most ancient and most infa­mous sites through­out Rome,” says Boost­ers. “From 1841 through 1871, Alto­bel­li, along with a team of oth­er pho­tog­ra­phers, includ­ing Richard Jones, took it upon them­selves to doc­u­ment the most famous and ancient city of Rome as com­plete­ly as pos­si­ble.” Their sub­jects includ­ed the still-rec­og­niz­able likes of the Colos­se­um and Hadri­an’s tomb, nat­u­ral­ly, as well as the Arch of Drusus, the Tem­ple of Venus and Roma, and the Por­to di Ripet­ta. Hav­ing been demol­ished by the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, the Por­to di Ripet­ta stands out as one of the fea­tures that sets the Rome of Alto­bel­li’s day apart from the Rome of today — well, that and the absence of self­ie-tak­ers.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Rome Comes to Life in Pho­tochrom Col­or Pho­tos Tak­en in 1890: The Colos­se­um, Tre­vi Foun­tain & More

New Dig­i­tal Archive Puts Online 4,000 His­toric Images of Rome: The Eter­nal City from the 16th to 20th Cen­turies

Some of the Old­est Pho­tos You Will Ever See: Dis­cov­er Pho­tographs of Greece, Egypt, Turkey & Oth­er Mediter­ranean Lands (1840s)

Behold the Pho­tographs of John Thom­son, the First West­ern Pho­tog­ra­ph­er to Trav­el Wide­ly Through Chi­na (1870s)

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Rome, Cir­ca 320 CE: Explore Stun­ning Recre­ations of The Forum, Colos­se­um and Oth­er Mon­u­ments

High-Res­o­lu­tion Walk­ing Tours of Italy’s Most His­toric Places: The Colos­se­um, Pom­peii, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca & More

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 or on Face­book.

Watch Fritz Lang’s Metropolis with a Modern, New Electronic Soundtrack (1927)

From sound artist Tomer Baruch and drum­mer Alex Bra­jković comes a new elec­tron­ic sound­track for Fritz Lang’s cen­tu­ry-old clas­sic film, Metrop­o­lis. The new score comes with this pref­ace:

One of the most sig­nif­i­cant themes in the dystopi­an fea­ture is the blurred-to-nonex­is­tent line sep­a­rat­ing man and machine; Human-like machines, Mechan­i­cal-humans, real-life android deep­fakes, and above all the city of Metrop­o­lis, an enor­mous machine and with­in it men, slaved to main­tain its oper­a­tion. The theme that was dis­turb­ing in the begin­ning of the 20th cen­tu­ry is as rel­e­vant as ever with the lat­est devel­op­ments in AI, forc­ing us to rethink again what makes us human.

In anal­o­gy to that the sound­track is based on archive record­ings of ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry machin­ery, on top of which Tomer Baruch and Alex Bra­jkovic play ana­log syn­the­siz­ers and drums. They inter­face with the machines and embody a relent­less­ly repet­i­tive mechan­i­cal motion, one which is usu­al­ly sequenced or pro­grammed. By cre­at­ing music which is in itself blur­ring the line between man and machine, by sub­ject­ing them­selves to machine-like pat­terns, the musi­cians become a part of Metrop­o­lis, cre­at­ing a dis­il­lu­sioned, inten­si­fied and dark­er than ever sound­track for the film.

Baruch and Alex Bra­jković cre­at­ed the sound­track for the Sounds of Silence Film Fes­ti­val, Den Haag in 2019. Stream it above.

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 

If Fritz Lang’s Icon­ic Film Metrop­o­lis Had a Kraftwerk Sound­track

Read the Orig­i­nal 32-Page Pro­gram for Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis (1927)

See Metrop­o­lis‘ Scan­dalous Dance Scene Col­orized, Enhanced, and New­ly Sound­tracked

Behold Beau­ti­ful Orig­i­nal Movie Posters for Metrop­o­lis from France, Swe­den, Ger­many, Japan & Beyond

Watch Metrop­o­lis’ Cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly Inno­v­a­tive Dance Scene, Restored as Fritz Lang Intend­ed It to Be Seen (1927)

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The First Masterpieces to Depict Regular People: An Introduction to the Reformation Painting of Pieter Bruegel the Elder

The skat­ing scene that opens A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas is such an evoca­tive, arche­typ­i­cal win­ter vision, it’s like­ly to stir nos­tal­gia even in those whose child­hoods did­n’t involve glid­ing across frozen ponds.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder cre­at­ed a sim­i­lar scene in the 16th-cen­tu­ry. His changed the course of West­ern art.

Pri­or to his 1558 Ice Skat­ing before the Gate of Saint George, Antwerp, West­ern artists most­ly stuck to VIP por­traits, and reli­gious and mytho­log­i­cal sub­jects.

As the Nerd­writer, Evan Puschak, explains above, the rare excep­tions to these themes were intend­ed to rein­force some moral instruc­tion, often via buf­foon­ish depic­tions of reg­u­lar peo­ple behav­ing bad­ly.

The cou­ple in Quentin Mat­sys’ The Mon­ey Chang­er and His Wife are far less grotesque than the cen­tral fig­ure of his satir­i­cal por­trait, The Ugly Duchess, but the sym­bol­ism and the wife’s keen focus on the coins her hus­band is count­ing point to a sort of spir­i­tu­al ugli­ness, name­ly a pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with mate­r­i­al wealth.

Jan Sanders van Hemessen’s Loose Com­pa­ny and Pieter Aertsen’s The Egg Dance are both set in broth­els, where debauch­ery is in ample evi­dence.

Bruegel paint­ed some works in this vein too. The Fight Between Car­ni­val and Lent pits pious church­go­ers against a plump butch­er rid­ing a bar­rel, a guy with a pot on his head, and many more rev­el­ers act­ing the fool.

His skat­ing scene, by con­trast, pass­es no judge­ments. It’s just an obser­va­tion of ordi­nary cit­i­zens amus­ing them­selves out­doors dur­ing the ‘Lit­tle Ice Age’ that gripped West­ern Europe in the mid 16th cen­tu­ry.

Adults bind run­ner-like blades to their feet with laces…

A small child uses poles to pro­pel him­self on a sled made from the mandible of a cow or horse…

A back­ground fig­ure plays with a hock­ey stick…

Less gift­ed skaters cut ungain­ly fig­ures as they attempt to remain upright. (Pity the poor woman sprawled in the mid­dle, whose skirts have flipped up to expose her bare heinie…)

Bruegel’s human­ist por­tray­al of a crowd engaged in a rec­og­niz­able, pop­ulist activ­i­ty proved wild­ly pop­u­lar with the grow­ing mer­chant class. They might not have been able to afford an orig­i­nal paint­ing, but prints of the engrav­ing, pub­lished by the won­der­ful­ly named Hierony­mus Cock, were well with­in their reach.

The every­day sub­ject mat­ter that so cap­ti­vat­ed them was made pos­si­ble in part by the Protes­tant Ref­or­ma­tion, which came to a head with the Icon­o­clas­tic Fury, eight years after “Peas­ant” Bruegel’s dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed image appeared.

The image wins the approval of mod­ern skat­ing buffs too.

Amer­i­can field hock­ey pio­neer Con­stance M.K. Apple­bee includ­ed it in her 20s era mag­a­zine, The Sports­woman. So did sports­writer Arthur R. Good­fel­low in 1972’s Won­der­ful world of skates: Sev­en­teen cen­turies of skat­ing which prompt­ed fig­ure skat­ing his­to­ri­an Ryan Stevens to quote a trans­lat­ed Old Flem­ish inscrip­tion on his blog:

Skat­ing on ice out­side the walls of Antwerp,

Some slide hith­er, oth­ers hence, all have onlook­ers every­where;

One trips, anoth­er falls, some stand upright and chat.

This pic­ture also tells one how we skate through our lives,

And glide along our paths; one like a fool, anoth­er like a wise;

On this per­ish­able earth, brit­tler than ice.

Explore anoth­er of Pieter Bruegel’s teem­ing depic­tions of ordi­nary life with the Khan Academy/Smart History’s  break­down of 1567’s Peas­ant Wed­ding, below.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Stay At Home Muse­um: Your Pri­vate, Guid­ed Tours of Rubens, Bruegel & Oth­er Flem­ish Mas­ters

What Makes Vermeer’s The Milk­maid a Mas­ter­piece?: A Video Intro­duc­tion

A Short Intro­duc­tion to Car­avag­gio, the Mas­ter Of Light

A Brief Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Mar­tin Luther’s 95 The­ses & the Reformation–Which Changed Europe and Lat­er the World

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

William Friedkin, RIP: Why the 80s Action Movie To Live and Die in L.A. Is His “Subversive Masterpiece”

William Fried­kin, who died yes­ter­day, will be most wide­ly remem­bered as the direc­tor of nine­teen-sev­en­ties genre hits like The French Con­nec­tion and The Exor­cist. But it was in the sub­se­quent decade that he made his most impres­sive pic­ture, at least accord­ing to the Paper Star­ship video essay above. As its nar­ra­tor Mar­cus Mus­ca­to puts it, Fried­kin’s To Live and Die in L.A. came out in 1985 as “a per­fect blend­ing of the crime and rene­gade cop gen­res, drenched bril­liant­ly in eight­ies aes­thet­ic and nihilis­tic exis­ten­tial glo­ry.” Over near­ly half an hour, he breaks down every major ele­ment of this “sub­ver­sive mas­ter­piece,” from its simul­ta­ne­ous­ly slick and dingy look and feel to its tech­ni­cal and nar­ra­tive brazen­ness to its sound­track by none oth­er than Wang Chung.

Like Fried­kin’s ear­li­er crime films, To Live and Die in L.A. traces “the thin line between cops and crim­i­nals, stat­ing how some of the best cops have some crim­i­nal in them, or have been crim­i­nals them­selves.” It does most of this through the char­ac­ter of Secret Ser­vice agent Richard Chance, played by William Petersen as a kind of “nihilis­tic Fonzie.” In pur­suit of Willem Dafoe’s sin­is­ter artist-coun­ter­feit­er Rick Mas­ters, Chance shows no cau­tion, and his dar­ing-to-the-point-of-reck­less ded­i­ca­tion. Fried­kin matched it with his own “spon­ta­neous, anti-author­i­tar­i­an guer­ril­la film­mak­ing,”  covert­ly shoot­ing and using per­for­mances his actors (whom he was­n’t above encour­ag­ing to do some rule-break­ing of their own) had been led to believe were rehearsals.

Fried­kin and his col­lab­o­ra­tors metic­u­lous­ly planned and painstak­ing­ly exe­cut­ed oth­er sequences, such as the cen­tral car chase. “The chase isn’t just on a free­way. It goes the wrong way down the free­way,” wrote Roger Ebert in his con­tem­po­rary review. “I don’t know how Fried­kin chore­o­graphed this scene, and I don’t want to know.” How­ev­er aston­ish­ing (and anx­i­ety-induc­ing) it remains today, it would­n’t be as effec­tive with­out the “hyp­no­tiz­ing yet ener­getic atmos­phere” cre­at­ed through­out the film by the music of Wang Chung, a band both indeli­bly asso­ci­at­ed with the eight­ies and also pos­sessed of a pen­chant for uncon­ven­tion­al, even sin­is­ter son­ic tex­tures. That’s true even of their ear­li­er sin­gles: wit­ness how well “Wait,” released in 1983, suits the ver­tig­i­nous plunge of the film’s star­tling but chill­ing­ly inevitable end­ing.

Yet even this con­clu­sion is just one mem­o­rable part among many. “Along with one of the great­est chase scenes, the film con­tains one of the most authen­tic and aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing depic­tions of the mon­ey coun­ter­feit­ing process,” Mus­ca­to says. Those with an aver­sion to spoil­ers would do best to watch the movie itself before the video essay, but like the work of any respectable auteur, it draws its pow­er from much more than plot twists. Its main theme, as Fried­kin him­self put it, was the “coun­ter­feit world: coun­ter­feit emo­tions, coun­ter­feit mon­ey, the coun­ter­feit super­struc­ture of the Secret Ser­vice. Every­one in the film has a kind of coun­ter­feit motive.” Giv­en that the world has become no more real over the past four decades, per­haps it’s no won­der that To Live and Die in L.A. holds up so well today.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Scari­est Film of All Time?: Revis­it­ing the Hys­te­ria in 1973 Around The Exor­cist by William Fried­kin (RIP)

Watch Randy Newman’s Tour of Los Ange­les’ Sun­set Boule­vard, and You’ll Love L.A. Too

Who Designed the 1980s Aes­thet­ic?: Meet the Mem­phis Group, the Design­ers Who Cre­at­ed the 80s Icon­ic Look

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 or on Face­book.

When Mississippi Tried to Ban Sesame Street for Showing a “Highly Integrated Cast” (1970)

On Novem­ber 10, 1969, Sesame Street made its broad­cast debut.

The very first lines were spo­ken by Gor­don (Matt Robin­son), a Black school­teacher who’s show­ing a new kid around the neigh­bor­hood, intro­duc­ing her to a cou­ple of oth­er kids, along with Sesame Street adult main­stays Bob, Susan, and Mr. Hoop­er, and Big Bird, whose appear­ance had yet to find its final form:

Sal­ly, you’ve nev­er seen a street like Sesame Street. Every­thing hap­pens here. You’re gonna love it.

The milieu would have felt famil­iar to chil­dren grow­ing up on New York City’s Upper West Side, or Harlem or the Bronx. While not every block was as well inte­grat­ed as Sesame Street’s cheer­ful, delib­er­ate­ly mul­ti­cul­tur­al, brown­stone set­ting, any sub­way ride was an oppor­tu­ni­ty to rub shoul­ders with New York­ers of all races, class­es and creeds.

Not six months lat­er, the all-White Mis­sis­sip­pi State Com­mis­sion for Edu­ca­tion­al Tele­vi­sion vot­ed 3 to 2 to remove Sesame Street from their state’s air­waves.

A dis­grun­tled pro-Sesame com­mis­sion mem­ber leaked the rea­son to The New York Times:

Some of the mem­bers of the com­mis­sion were very much opposed to show­ing the series because it uses a high­ly inte­grat­ed cast of chil­dren.

The whistle­blow­er also inti­mat­ed that those same mem­bers object­ed to the fact that Robin­son and Loret­ta Long, the actor por­tray­ing Susan, were Black.

They claimed Mis­sis­sip­pi was “not yet ready” for such a show, even though Sesame Street was an imme­di­ate hit. Pro­fes­sion­als in the fields of psy­chol­o­gy, edu­ca­tion, and med­i­cine had con­sult­ed on its con­tent, help­ing it secure a sig­nif­i­cant amount of fed­er­al and pri­vate grants pri­or to film­ing. The show had been laud­ed for its main mis­sion — prepar­ing Amer­i­can chil­dren from low-income back­grounds for kinder­garten through live­ly edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram­ming with ample rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

Kids grow­ing up in shel­tered, all-white enclaves stood to gain, too, by being wel­comed into a tele­vi­sion neigh­bor­hood where Black and white fam­i­lies were shown hap­pi­ly coex­ist­ing, treat­ing each oth­er with kind­ness, patience and respect. (Sonia Man­zano and Emilio Del­ga­do, who played Maria and Luis, joined the cast soon after.)

Even though Alaba­ma, Arkansas, Flori­da, Louisiana and Ten­nessee also moved to pre-empt the inno­v­a­tive hit show, the gov­ern­ment appointees on the Mis­sis­sip­pi State Com­mis­sion for Edu­ca­tion­al Tele­vi­sion who’d oust­ed Sesame Street found them­selves out­num­bered when Jack­son res­i­dents of all ages staged a protest in front of Mis­sis­sip­pi Pub­lic Broadcasting’s HQ.]

The Delta Demo­c­rat-Times pub­lished an edi­to­r­i­al piece argu­ing that “there is no state which more des­per­ate­ly needs every edu­ca­tion­al tool it can find than Mis­sis­sip­pi:”

There is no edu­ca­tion­al show on the mar­ket today bet­ter pre­pared than Sesame Street to teach preschool chil­dren what many can­not or do not learn in their homes….The needs are immense.

After 22 days, the ban was rolled back and Sesame Street was rein­stat­ed.

That fall, the cast made a pit­stop in Jack­son dur­ing a 14-city nation­al tour. Susan, Gor­don, Bob, Mr. Hoop­er and Big Bird sang and joked with audi­ence mem­bers as part of an event co-spon­sored by the very same com­mis­sion that had tried to black­ball them, and left with­out hav­ing received a for­mal apol­o­gy.

Sesame Street has stayed true to its pro­gres­sive agen­da through­out its fifty+ year his­to­ry, a com­mit­ment that seems more essen­tial than ever in 2023.

Below, Elmo, a Mup­pet who rose through the ranks to become a Sesame Street star engages in an entry-lev­el con­ver­sa­tion about race with some new­er char­ac­ters in an episode from two years ago.

The Sesame Work­shop rec­om­mends it for view­ers aged 1 to 4, though it seems our coun­try doesn’t lack for adult cit­i­zens who could do with a refresh­er on the sub­ject…

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Watch Twin Beaks, Sesame Street’s Par­o­dy of David Lynch’s Icon­ic TV Show (1990)

Philip Glass Com­pos­es Music for a Sesame Street Ani­ma­tion (1979)

Watch Jazzy Spies: 1969 Psy­che­del­ic Sesame Street Ani­ma­tion, Fea­tur­ing Grace Slick, Teach­es Kids to Count

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

How to Enter Flow State, Increase Your Ability to Concentrate, and Let Your Ego Fall Away : An Animated Primer

One needs hard­ly state that human beings desire things like wealth, pow­er, and love. But it does bear repeat­ing that, on a deep­er lev­el, we all desire flow. To say this is to repeat, in one form or anoth­er, the the­o­ries of the late psy­chol­o­gist Mihaly Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi, author of Flow: The Psy­chol­o­gy of Opti­mal Expe­ri­ence. When we enter a flow state, Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi once said in an inter­view, “the ego falls away,” and it is those words that open the ani­mat­ed TED-Ed les­son above. “A unique men­tal state of effort­less engage­ment,” says its nar­ra­tor, flow has been defined as “an altered state of con­scious­ness,” and those who enter it “feel so effort­less­ly engaged in a task that time seems to fly by.”

If you’re a nor­mal twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry per­son, this may not sound like an espe­cial­ly famil­iar expe­ri­ence. In fact, you may well think of your work­ing life as more char­ac­ter­ized by “cycles of pro­cras­ti­na­tion, when it can feel impos­si­ble to start an activ­i­ty.”

Dur­ing flow, by con­trast, “it can feel dif­fi­cult to stop”; “feel­ings of wor­ry or self-judg­ment” are dimin­ished; a “sense of one­ness” can arise between your­self and your activ­i­ty. This state occurs when you do “intrin­si­cal­ly moti­vat­ing” work, and even more so when the dif­fi­cul­ty of that work match­es or just slight­ly exceeds your skill lev­el: “If a task is too easy, you may get dis­tract­ed or feel bored. If it’s too chal­leng­ing, you may become dis­cour­aged.”

To max­i­mize your own chances of find­ing flow, engage in “activ­i­ties that have clear goals and allow you to assess your progress along the way.” If pos­si­ble, do it in “a qui­et envi­ron­ment, free from dis­tract­ing nois­es or devices.” Before you start, “break your tasks into small, spe­cif­ic seg­ments that are easy to track and learn from,” and also “set clear end goals that are chal­leng­ing, but not frus­trat­ing­ly so.” Above all, “don’t focus too much on reach­ing flow; that sort of dis­trac­tion might just pre­vent you from find­ing it.” The talks by Flow Research Col­lec­tive founder Steven Kotler and by Cskizent­mi­ha­lyi him­self pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture can sup­ple­ment the TED-Ed les­son — and, per­haps, reas­sure you that the strange puck­ered expres­sions on the face of its char­ac­ters are not, in fact, a require­ment for enter­ing the flow state.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cre­ativ­i­ty, Not Mon­ey, is the Key to Hap­pi­ness: Dis­cov­er Psy­chol­o­gist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s The­o­ry of “Flow”

How to Get into a Cre­ative “Flow State”: A Short Mas­ter­class

Albert Ein­stein Tells His Son The Key to Learn­ing & Hap­pi­ness is Los­ing Your­self in Cre­ativ­i­ty (or “Find­ing Flow”)

How to Enter a ‘Flow State’ on Com­mand: Peak Per­for­mance Mind Hack Explained in 7 Min­utes

The Phi­los­o­phy of “Flow”: A Brief Intro­duc­tion to Tao­ism

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 or on Face­book.

Novelist Michael Chabon Digitally Re-Creates the Science Fiction & Fantasy Section of His Favorite 1970s Bookstore

Michael Chabon was born in 1963, which placed him well to be influ­enced by the unpre­dictable, indis­crim­i­nate, and often lurid cul­tur­al cross-cur­rents of the nine­teen-sev­en­ties. He seemed to have received much of that influ­ence at Page One, the local book­store in his home­town of Colum­bia, Mary­land — and it was to Page One that his imag­i­na­tion drift­ed dur­ing the long days of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic spent in his per­son­al library. “As I sat around com­muning with my tat­tered old friends,” he writes, “I dis­cov­ered that I retained a sharp rec­ol­lec­tion — title, author, cov­er design — of what felt like every sin­gle book that had ever appeared on those tall shelves along the left wall of Page One, toward the back, between 1972 and 1980.”

That was the store’s “Sci­ence Fic­tion & Fan­ta­sy” sec­tion, which in that peri­od was well-stocked with titles by such stars of those gen­res as Ray Brad­bury, Ursu­la K. LeGuin, Arthur C. Clarke, J. G. Bal­lard, C. J. Cher­ryh, Michael Moor­cock, and Philip K. Dick.

Or at least it did if Chabon’s dig­i­tal re-cre­ation “The Shelves of Time” is any­thing to go by. Down­load­able here in “small” (96 MB), “large” (283 MB) and “very large” (950 MB) for­mats, the lav­ish image func­tions as what Chabon calls a “time tele­scope,” offer­ing “a look back at the visu­als that embod­ied and accom­pa­nied my ear­ly aspi­ra­tions as a writer, and at the mass-mar­ket splen­dor of paper­back sf and fan­ta­sy in those days.”

“I’m the same age as Chabon, and I was also a book­store rat, star­ing at these exact same cov­ers and ago­niz­ing over which one I’d lay down my $1.25 for,” writes Ruben Bolling at Boing Boing. “Just look at those beau­ti­ful John Carter of Mars cov­ers. I col­lect­ed and cher­ished these, and the Tarzan series.” Bolling also high­lights the adap­ta­tions Chabon includes on these re-imag­ined shelves: there’s “the James Blish Star Trek series, just as I remem­ber it,” and also the nov­el­iza­tion of Star Wars, which he read before the open­ing of the film itself.  “So instead of expe­ri­enc­ing the movie as it should have been — as campy movie fun — I expe­ri­enced it as an adap­ta­tion of a lit­er­ary work.”

Despite being a cou­ple of decades younger, I, too, remem­ber these cov­ers vivid­ly. My own sci-fi-and-fan­ta­sy peri­od occurred in the late nineties, by which time these very same mass-mar­ket paper­backs from the sev­en­ties were turn­ing up in quan­ti­ty at used book­stores. For me, few images from these gen­res of that era could trig­ger read­ing mem­o­ries as rich as those Bal­lan­tine cov­ers of The Sheep Look Up, The Shock­wave Rid­er, and Stand on Zanz­ibar by John Brun­ner, a British spe­cial­ist in social and envi­ron­men­tal cat­a­stro­phe. Like many read­ers, I put this sort of thing aside after a few years, but Chabon has proven infi­nite­ly more ded­i­cat­ed: half a cen­tu­ry after his days haunt­ing Page One, his mis­sion to “drag the decay­ing corpse of genre fic­tion out of the shal­low grave where writ­ers of seri­ous lit­er­a­ture aban­doned it,” as crit­ic Ruth Franklin once described it, con­tin­ues apace.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed con­tent:

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

Nov­el­ist Michael Chabon Sang in a Punk Band Dur­ing the ’80s: New­ly Released Audio Gives Proof

600+ Cov­ers of Philip K. Dick Nov­els from Around the World: Greece, Japan, Poland & Beyond

The Dune Ency­clo­pe­dia: The Con­tro­ver­sial, Defin­i­tive Guide to the World of Frank Herbert’s Sci-Fi Mas­ter­piece (1984)

The Amaz­ing Adven­tures of Kava­lier and Clay: Ani­ma­tion Con­cepts

The Ency­clo­pe­dia of Sci­ence Fic­tion: 17,500 Entries on All Things Sci-Fi Are Now Free Online

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 or on Face­book.

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