David Lynch Creates Daily Weather Reports for Los Angeles: How the Filmmaker Passes Time in Quarantine

in Current Affairs, Film | May 13th, 2020

David Lynch has­n’t direct­ed a fea­ture film in thir­teen years, but that does­n’t mean he’s been idle. Quite the oppo­site, in fact: in addi­tion to the acclaimed Show­time series Twin Peaks: The Return, he’s record­ed an album, writ­ten a mem­oir, taught a Mas­ter­class, over­seen the devel­op­ment of a Twin Peaks vir­tu­al real­i­ty game, and made a short film about ants devour­ing a piece of cheese. In his home stu­dio, he’s also con­tin­ued the visu­al art prac­tice he start­ed before turn­ing to film­mak­er in the 1970s. We may know Lynch best as the man behind Eraser­head, Blue Vel­vet, and Mul­hol­land Dri­ve, but he seems equal­ly com­fort­able work­ing in whichev­er form or medi­um is at hand. In this time of COVID-19 quar­an­tine, which has sus­pend­ed film­mak­ing, film­go­ing, and oth­er kinds of human activ­i­ty, one such medi­um is the weath­er report.

“Here in L.A.… kind of cloudy… some fog this morn­ing,” says the respect­ed film­mak­er in his weath­er-report video for May 11, 2020. “64 degrees Fahren­heit; around sev­en­teen Cel­sius. This all should burn off pret­ty soon, and we’ll have sun­shine and 70 degrees.” All just what one would expect from the cli­mate of Los Ange­les, the south­ern Cal­i­forn­ian metrop­o­lis where Lynch lives and which he often prais­es — and which, it’s recent­ly been report­ed, will like­ly extend its stay-at-home order for at least three more months.

The sud­den lack of move­ment in this famous­ly mobile city has done won­ders for the air qual­i­ty, but so far that ele­ment has­n’t fig­ured explic­it­ly into Lynch’s reports. “We’ve got clouds and kind of fog­gy weath­er, with some blue shin­ing through,” he says on the morn­ing of May 12th. But just as the day before, that fog “should burn off lat­er, and we’ll have sun­shine.” Long­time fol­low­ers of Lynch’s inter­net projects will rec­og­nize these as a sequel to the dai­ly video weath­er reports he post­ed in 2008:

They’ll also rec­og­nize most of the objects that sur­round Lynch in his office, from his set of draw­ers to his wall-mount­ed phone to his angu­lar-han­dled black cof­fee cup. But the dra­mat­ic increase in the res­o­lu­tion of inter­net video over the past dozen years has made every­thing vis­i­ble in a new­ly crisp detail, right down to the steam ris­ing from Lynch’s hot bev­er­age of choice. More dai­ly weath­er reports will pre­sum­ably appear on the David Lynch The­ater Youtube chan­nel, each one col­ored by his sig­na­ture (and, giv­en the unre­lent­ing­ly dis­turb­ing qual­i­ties of his best-known work, seem­ing­ly incon­gru­ous) opti­mism. “It’s going to be a dif­fer­ent world on the oth­er side,” he told Vice last month. “It’s going to be a much more intel­li­gent world. Solu­tions to these prob­lems are going to come and life’s going to be very good. The movies will come back. Every­thing will spring back and in a much bet­ter way, prob­a­bly.”

Find a playlist of Lynch’s weath­er reports here.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er David Lynch’s Bizarre & Min­i­mal­ist Com­ic Strip, The Angri­est Dog in the World (1983–1992)

David Lynch Made a Dis­turb­ing Web Sit­com Called Rab­bits: It’s Now Used by Psy­chol­o­gists to Induce a Sense of Exis­ten­tial Cri­sis in Research Sub­jects

David Lynch’s New ‘Crazy Clown Time’ Video: Intense Psy­chot­ic Back­yard Crazi­ness (NSFW)

How David Lynch Got Cre­ative Inspi­ra­tion? By Drink­ing a Milk­shake at Bob’s Big Boy, Every Sin­gle Day, for Sev­en Straight Years

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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The Case for a Universal Basic Income in the Time of COVID-19

in Current Affairs, Economics | May 11th, 2020

The idea of Uni­ver­sal Basic Income (UBI) has been the sub­ject of much debate in the past few years. The can­di­da­cy of Andrew Yang for U.S. Pres­i­dent brought the issue to nation­al promi­nence, where it has remained dur­ing the spread of COVID-19. What is UBI? Put sim­ply, it pro­pos­es that the gov­ern­ment give every cit­i­zen a cer­tain amount of mon­ey each month to cov­er, at the least, basic liv­ing expens­es. As the video above by YouTube chan­nel Kurzge­sagt explains, those cit­i­zens are then free to live their lives as they like.

Unlike most wel­fare state mod­els, UBI usu­al­ly does not involve any means test­ing. In most schemes, every cit­i­zen, no mat­ter their cur­rent wealth or income, receives the ben­e­fit. (Though most stud­ies of the pro­gram have only giv­en it to poor or unem­ployed ben­e­fi­cia­ries.) Those who do not need the mon­ey can do what­ev­er they want with it, but so too can those who need it. UBI ensures that peo­ple do not have go home­less or hun­gry if they lose their liveli­hood, and that they can sur­vive with­out pater­nal­ist state agen­cies breath­ing down their necks.

UBI is not a new idea but dates back at least to Thomas Paine, whose Com­mon Sense inspired the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion and whose Rights of Man defend­ed the French a few years lat­er. As Paine argued in anoth­er, lit­tle-read, pam­phlet, Agrar­i­an Jus­tice, no one could be tru­ly free if they had no means of sub­sis­tence. Since cap­i­tal­ism had placed most of those means under pri­vate own­er­ship, he rea­soned, cit­i­zens should be com­pen­sat­ed for being deprived of resources that belonged to them by nat­ur­al right as much as to any­one else.

This philo­soph­i­cal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion doesn’t always enter into the con­ver­sa­tion, which is often framed in more prag­mat­ic terms as a polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic expe­di­ent in times of cap­i­tal­ist cri­sis: in times, for exam­ple, like the present moment. The COVID-19 cri­sis has inten­si­fied calls for a UBI, as mil­lions of lay­offs point toward the inevitabil­i­ty of a depres­sion. Push­ing peo­ple back to work dur­ing the pan­dem­ic seems to be the only thing the U.S. gov­ern­ment plans to do, but no amount of coer­cion can stop the virus from forc­ing clo­sures all over again.

Even the famous­ly lib­er­tar­i­an econ­o­mist Mil­ton Fried­man once embraced a ver­sion of UBI—as an alter­na­tive to the lib­er­al social pro­grams he loathed. Under Richard Nixon, of all peo­ple, such a pol­i­cy almost came into being in 1969. Nei­ther Fried­man nor Nixon believed in the nat­ur­al right of all cit­i­zens to a share in the prof­its of a state’s nat­ur­al resources. But they could see the wis­dom of ensur­ing mil­lions of U.S. cit­i­zens weren’t rel­e­gat­ed to liv­ing in des­ti­tu­tion.

The pro­gram required test­ing, so the admin­is­tra­tion set up a tri­al run. “Tens of mil­lions of dol­lars were bud­get­ed to pro­vide a basic income for more than 8,500 Amer­i­cans” in five states across the coun­try, writes Rut­ger Breg­man at The Cor­re­spon­dent. Researchers want­ed to know: 1. if those who received a basic income would work sig­nif­i­cant­ly less, 2. if the pro­gram would be too expen­sive, and 3. if it would prove “polit­i­cal­ly unfea­si­ble.” The find­ings? “No, no, and maybe.”

The chief objec­tion, idle­ness, held no water. As the chief data ana­lyst for the Den­ver exper­i­ment put it at the time, “The ‘lazi­ness’ con­tention is just not sup­port­ed by our find­ings.” The two groups who did cut back on hours, 20-some­things and moth­ers of young chil­dren, were peo­ple who most need­ed the mon­ey so they could go to col­lege or devote time to their kids. Oth­er­wise, recip­i­ents did not quit their jobs and lay around watch­ing TV.

Yet there remains a pow­er­ful species of human busy­body who can­not rest until they’re sure everyone’s work­ing. Such peo­ple con­tin­ue to object—whether in good faith or not—that “just giv­ing peo­ple mon­ey” will turn every­one into a slack­er, as though most peo­ple were only moti­vat­ed by the threat of star­va­tion. And so, tri­als con­tin­ue decades lat­er. Researchers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Helsin­ki recent­ly con­duct­ed a two-year study in Fin­land with a ran­dom selec­tion of 2,000 unem­ployed peo­ple across the coun­try. Each par­tic­i­pant was giv­en €560 (about $607) a month to ease their bur­den, and received the funds whether or not they sought or found a job.

“The scheme was not strict­ly speak­ing a uni­ver­sal basic income tri­al because the recip­i­ents came from a restrict­ed group and the pay­ments were not enough to live on,” points out Guardian cor­re­spon­dent Jon Hen­ley. Nonethe­less, the researchers found that recip­i­ents were sig­nif­i­cant­ly less stressed than a con­trol group—and that they could make dif­fer­ent choic­es than they might oth­er­wise. “Some said the basic income allowed them to go back to the life they had before they became unem­ployed,” the study authors write. “While oth­ers said it gave them the pow­er to say no to low-paid inse­cure jobs, and thus increased their sense of auton­o­my.”

Oth­er find­ings also showed how UBI could rad­i­cal­ize our rela­tion­ship to work. “Free­lancers and artists and entre­pre­neurs had more pos­i­tive views on the effects of the basic income, which some felt had cre­at­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties for them to start busi­ness­es.” Peo­ple pro­vid­ing unpaid care for oth­ers felt their time was more val­ued. “The secu­ri­ty of the basic income allowed them to do more mean­ing­ful things, as they felt it legit­imized this kind of care work.” The find­ings are being tak­en seri­ous­ly by many Euro­pean gov­ern­ments.

In Spain, Scot­land, and else­where, lead­ers are propos­ing or con­sid­er­ing some form of UBI to com­bat mas­sive unem­ploy­ment due to the pan­dem­ic. While the idea may have lit­tle polit­i­cal future in the U.S. at the moment, where pri­or­i­ties are to use the country’s wealth to fur­ther enrich the wealthy, UBI is becom­ing tremen­dous­ly pop­u­lar else­where. (A recent poll found sup­port among 71% of Euro­peans sur­veyed.) No one believes UBI is a panacea for the world’s ills, but as the Wired video above argues, there may be no bet­ter time than now to make the case for it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Alan Watts’s 1960s Pre­dic­tion That Automa­tion Will Neces­si­tate a Uni­ver­sal Basic Income

Buck­min­ster Fuller Rails Against the “Non­sense of Earn­ing a Liv­ing”: Why Work Use­less Jobs When Tech­nol­o­gy & Automa­tion Can Let Us Live More Mean­ing­ful Lives

To Save Civ­i­liza­tion, the Rich Need to Pay Their Tax­es: His­to­ri­an Rut­ger Breg­man Speaks Truth to Pow­er at Davos and to Fox’s Tuck­er Carl­son

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

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Drive-In Concerts and Even Raves Are Becoming the Rage in Europe

in Current Affairs | May 6th, 2020

If we are to remain social­ly dis­tant in the com­ing months of the pandemic—and near­ly every rep­utable health expert says we should—at least 21st cen­tu­ry tech­nol­o­gy has pre­pared us for life lived in iso­la­tion. If we insist on going out, we may see a 20th cen­tu­ry inno­va­tion become even more pop­u­lar. The dri­ve-in the­ater has returned as a safe venue for movies, con­certs, and even raves, at least in Den­mark, where the city of Aarhus recent­ly staged a dri­ve-in con­cert by singer-song­writer Mads Langer. “500 tick­ets sold out in min­utes,” reports Forbes. “The fol­low­ing day, the stage became a dri­ve-in cin­e­ma” show­ing Star Wars Episode IX. 

The first in a series, the dri­ve-in shows are part of a larg­er trend in Europe. Pro­mot­ers in Lithua­nia have launched sim­i­lar events out­side Vil­nius. And if you’re won­der­ing what a dri­ve-in rave looks like, won­der no more—Germany held the first of many a few days back.

Does it look like a pre­cur­sor to the world of Mad Max: Fury Road? As some com­menters have sug­gest­ed, enough events like these around the world might be just what we need to accel­er­ate deser­ti­fi­ca­tion. But it’s a fun idea, with unde­ni­ably nos­tal­gic built-in brand­ing.

Dri­ve-in the­aters are dis­tinct­ly tied to teenage romances of the 1950s and envi­ron­men­tal­ly mon­strous vehi­cles large enough for very com­fort­able dou­ble dates. Their ori­gins are less roman­tic than the stereo­type. “The first patent­ed dri­ve-in was opened on June 6, 1933 by Richard Holling­shead in New Jer­sey,” notes the New York Film Acad­e­my. “He cre­at­ed it as a solu­tion for peo­ple unable to com­fort­ably fit into small­er movie the­ater seats after cre­at­ing a mini dri­ve-in for his moth­er. Appeal­ing to fam­i­lies, Holling­shead adver­tised his dri­ve-in as a place where ‘The whole fam­i­ly is wel­come, regard­less of how noisy the chil­dren are.’”

 

It is unlike­ly many par­ents today would sit through a dri­ve-in show with noisy chil­dren, when every­one can stay home with their own pri­vate screen. But for Matt Langer fan Signe Nygaard, a par­ent and for­mer gym­nast, the dri­ve-in made a dream come true. The singer invit­ed her onstage. “A few years ago,” she says, “I was sup­posed to dance at a con­ven­tion where Mads Langer sang live, but I couldn’t because I was preg­nant. Now I final­ly got the chance.” There will be feel­go­od sto­ries in the pan­dem­ic, but I do hope they stayed six feet apart.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Live Per­form­ers Now Stream­ing Shows, from their Homes to Yours: Neil Young, Cold­play, Broad­way Stars, Met­ro­pol­i­tan Operas & More

Free: Austin City Lim­its Opens Up Video Archives Dur­ing COVID-19 Pan­dem­ic

Sooth­ing, Uplift­ing Resources for Par­ents & Care­givers Stressed by the COVID-19 Cri­sis

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

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Watch Jean-Luc Godard’s Filmmaking Masterclass on Instagram

in Current Affairs, Film | May 4th, 2020

As the last liv­ing major French New Wave direc­tor, Jean-Luc Godard has become a kind of ora­cle for younger film­mak­ers and cinéastes. Despite hav­ing turned 89 last Decem­ber, he remains in a sense what film schol­ar David Bor­d­well not long ago called “the youngest film­mak­er at work today.” When Godard start­ed work­ing in cin­e­ma just about 65 years ago, it did­n’t take him long to make his name by break­ing its rules. Ever since, he’s ward­ed off com­pla­cen­cy by con­tin­u­ing to rethink, at the most fun­da­men­tal lev­el, not just film but the nature of images, sounds and words them­selves. And he pur­sues this line of think­ing in any avail­able medi­um, includ­ing, as demon­strat­ed in the con­ver­sa­tion above on “images in the time of the coro­n­avirus,” Insta­gram Live.

This form, as a film­mak­er like Godard would sure­ly appre­ci­ate, suits the sub­stance. No venue could be more of the moment than Insta­gram Live, as per­form­ers of all kinds have tak­en to stream­ing them­selves from home in the midst of the glob­al pan­dem­ic. But where many such fig­ures use the oppor­tu­ni­ty to take view­ers’ minds off the coro­n­avirus, Godard and his inter­view­er Lionel Baier, head of the cin­e­ma depart­ment at Lau­san­ne’s ECAL Uni­ver­si­ty of Art and Design, use it as a start­ing point. What begins as a dis­cus­sion of Godard­’s news-watch­ing habits turns into a con­ver­sa­tion­al jour­ney across such sub­jects as film­mak­ing, writ­ing, paint­ing, phi­los­o­phy, sci­ence, med­i­cine, law, and lan­guage. “I don’t believe in lan­guage,” goes one of Godard­’s char­ac­ter­is­tic pro­nounce­ments. “What needs to be changed is the alpha­bet. There are too many let­ters and we should delete lots of them.”

Per­haps that does­n’t come as a sur­prise from a direc­tor whose recent pic­tures include one called Good­bye to Lan­guage. But spo­ken or filmed, Godard­’s ideas on the mat­ter also reflect his per­son­al expe­ri­ence: he tells of hav­ing for a time lost the mem­o­ry of names of cer­tain fruits and veg­eta­bles, and con­se­quent­ly devel­op­ing a visu­al method of remem­ber­ing his gro­cery lists. Such every­day sto­ries come along with ref­er­ences to a wide range of artists, sci­en­tists, philoso­phers, and “adven­tur­ers” in his­to­ry, espe­cial­ly from the his­to­ry of the Fran­coph­o­ne world. More than once aris­es the name of Nicéphore Niépce, the 19th-cen­tu­ry French inven­tor respon­si­ble for the first known pho­to­graph ever tak­en (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture) and a sub­ject of one of Godard­’s cur­rent works-in-progress.

“In the film I’m going to make,” Godard explains, “I ask what Niépce believed he was doing or what his inten­tions were when he sim­ply want­ed to copy real­i­ty.” All through­out his decades as a film­mak­er, Godard has clear­ly kept ask­ing the same ques­tion about him­self: in mak­ing films, does he want to “copy real­i­ty” or do some­thing more inter­est­ing? For­tu­nate­ly for cin­e­ma, he always seems to have opt­ed for the lat­ter, back to his days with his Nou­velle Vague com­pa­tri­ots François Truf­faut, Jacques Riv­ette, Claude Chabrol, and Éric Rohmer, all of whom fig­ure into his rem­i­nis­cences here. And will COVID-19 fig­ure in a future Godard film? “It’ll have an influ­ence but not direct­ly,” he says. “The virus should def­i­nite­ly be talked about once or twice. With every­thing that comes with it, the virus is a form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. It does­n’t mean we’re going to die from it, but we might not live very well with it either.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to Jean-Luc Godard’s Inno­v­a­tive Film­mak­ing Through Five Video Essays

How the French New Wave Changed Cin­e­ma: A Video Intro­duc­tion to the Films of Godard, Truf­faut & Their Fel­low Rule-Break­ers

Jean-Luc Godard Takes Cannes’ Rejec­tion of Breath­less in Stride in 1960 Inter­view

How Jean-Luc Godard Lib­er­at­ed Cin­e­ma: A Video Essay on How the Great­est Rule-Break­er in Film Made His Name

Jean-Luc Godard Gives a Dra­mat­ic Read­ing of Han­nah Arendt’s “On the Nature of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism”

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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A Michigan Family Makes Everyone Passing Their House Do Monty Python Silly Walks, and Then Puts Recordings on Instagram

in Comedy, Current Affairs | April 30th, 2020

Even if you don’t know the Bea­t­les, you know “Love Me Do.” Even if you don’t know the Rolling Stones, you know “Sat­is­fac­tion.” Even if you don’t know Mon­ty Python, you know “The Min­istry of Sil­ly Walks.” Like an AM radio hit, the sketch works on sev­er­al dif­fer­ent aes­thet­ic and intel­lec­tu­al lev­els while cap­ti­vat­ing audi­ences of dis­parate ages and cul­tures, all with­in the span of a few min­utes. As a satire of British gov­ern­ment bureau­cra­cy it com­pares, in its way, to Antony Jay and Jonathan Lyn­n’s series Yes Min­is­ter, which would debut on the BBC a decade lat­er. As sheer phys­i­cal com­e­dy, it draws its pow­er, as all those old songs do, from the innate char­ac­ter­is­tics of its per­form­ers. Or rather, from John Cleese, who not only looks the part of a born estab­lish­ment fig­ure, but stands near­ly six and a half feet tall.

Though few of us can sing like Paul McCart­ney or Mick Jag­ger, it does­n’t stop us from join­ing in when their songs come on the radio. By the same token, though few of us pos­sess the sheer leg length to walk as sil­ly as Cleese does, we can all gen­er­ate our own kind of lev­i­ty by giv­ing our best. And much of the Unit­ed States, locked down by the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, lev­i­ty is just what’s need­ed. Hence the estab­lish­ment of York­shire Sil­ly Walks, which announces itself in no uncer­tain terms: “YOU HAVE ENTERED THE JURISDICTION OF THE MINISTRY OF SILLY WALKS,” reads its signs. “COMMENCE SILLY WALKING IMMEDIATELY.” All who pass through this ter­ri­to­ry are cap­tured by a video cam­era, and some will lat­er find them­selves post­ed to York­shire Sil­ly Walks’ Insta­gram page — as long as they’ve walked with suf­fi­cient silli­ness.

They don’t have to do it for long: the juris­dic­tion of this Min­istry of Sil­ly Walks extends only across the side­walk in front of a sin­gle house in Grosse Pointe Park, Michi­gan. The home­’s York­shire Road address will con­jure up mem­o­ries of anoth­er beloved sketch in the minds of seri­ous Python fans — a group to which Liz Koto and her fam­i­ly, the house­’s occu­pants, must belong. They’ve post­ed to Insta­gram well over 100 videos, each cap­tur­ing a dif­fer­ent sil­ly walk exe­cut­ed by the peo­ple of their sub­ur­ban neigh­bor­hood out for a stroll — just about the only thing many Amer­i­cans can do to get out of the house these days. And they do it more joy­ful­ly than Cleese him­self, who has spo­ken of how, like a rock star con­demned to play the same hit over and over again, he grew deeply weary of play­ing the Min­is­ter of Sil­ly Walks on stage for Mon­ty Python’s live shows over the decades. After hav­ing under­gone two hip replace­ments, he’s sure­ly hap­py to leave sil­ly-walk­ing to the fans.

View this post on Insta­gram

Wood­stock called, they want their dancers back.

A post shared by York­shire Sil­ly Walks (@yorkshire.silly.walks) on

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cleese Revis­its His 20 Years as an Ivy League Pro­fes­sor in His New Book, Pro­fes­sor at Large: The Cor­nell Years

John Cleese on The Impor­tance of Mak­ing and Embrac­ing Mis­takes

Ital­ians’ Night­ly Sin­ga­longs Prove That Music Soothes the Sav­age Beast of Coro­n­avirus Quar­an­tine & Self-Iso­la­tion

Inge­nious Impro­vised Recre­ations of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring, Using Mate­ri­als Found Around the House

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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How to Find Emotional Strength & Resilience During COVID-19: Advice from Elizabeth Gilbert, Jack Kornfield, Susan David & Other Experts

in Current Affairs, Health, Life, Psychology, TED Talks | April 23rd, 2020

There are many roads through the coro­n­avirus cri­sis. One is denial, which only makes things worse. Anoth­er is ser­vice and self-sac­ri­fice, a choice we hon­or in the med­ical pro­fes­sion­als putting their lives at risk every day. For most of us, how­ev­er, the best course of action is non-action—staying home and iso­lat­ing our­selves from oth­ers. Days bleed into weeks, weeks into months. It can seem like life has come to a com­plete halt. It hasn’t, of course. All sorts of things are hap­pen­ing inside us. We don’t know how long this will last; cur­rent cours­es of action don’t bode well. What do we do with the fear, anger, lone­li­ness, grief, and buzzing, ever-present anx­i­ety?

Maybe the first thing to do is to accept that we have those feel­ings and feel them, instead of stuff­ing them down, cov­er­ing them up, or push­ing them onto some­one else. Then we can rec­og­nize we aren’t by any means alone. That’s eas­i­er said than done in quar­an­tine, but psy­chol­o­gists and inspi­ra­tional writ­ers and speak­ers like Eliz­a­beth Gilbert have come togeth­er under the aus­pices of the TED Con­nect series, host­ed by the head of TED Chris Ander­son, to help.

TED, known for show­cas­ing “thinkers and doers [giv­ing] the talk of their lives in 18 min­utes (or less),” has wise­ly rec­og­nized the need to dig much deep­er. Ander­son and head of cura­tion Helen Wal­ters’ con­ver­sa­tion with Gilbert, above, runs a lit­tle over an hour.

As for that cease­less anx­i­ety, Gilbert sug­gests we should all give our­selves “a mea­sure of mer­cy and com­pas­sion.” We might feel like we need per­mis­sion to do so in soci­eties that demand we con­stant­ly jus­ti­fy our exis­tence. But admit­ting vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty is the begin­ning of strength. Then we find con­struc­tive ways for­ward. The kind of resilience we can build in iso­la­tion is the kind that can out­last a cri­sis. Still, it is hard won. As Ander­son says above, in addi­tion to the exter­nal bat­tle we must fight with the virus and our own gov­ern­ments, “there’s this oth­er bat­tle as well, that is prob­a­bly equal­ly as con­se­quen­tial. It’s a bat­tle that’s going on right inside our minds.”

Rather than killing time wait­ing fit­ful­ly for some accept­able form of nor­mal to return, we can build what psy­chol­o­gist Susan David calls “emo­tion­al courage.” In con­ver­sa­tion with TED’s Whit­ney Pen­ning­ton Rogers, above, David reveals that she her­self has good rea­son to fear: her hus­band is a physi­cian. She also under­stands the con­se­quences of a col­lec­tive denial of suf­fer­ing and death. “The cir­cum­stance that we are in now is not some­thing that we asked for, but life is call­ing on every sin­gle one of us to move into the place of wis­dom in our­selves… into the space of wis­dom and for­ti­tude, sol­i­dar­i­ty, com­mu­ni­ty, courage.” We move into that space by rec­og­niz­ing that “life’s beau­ty is insep­a­ra­ble from its fragili­ty.”

Themes of courage and con­nec­tion come up again and again in oth­er TED Con­nects inter­views, such as that above with Rab­bi Lord Jonathan Sacks and below with author Priya Park­er. Else­where on the inter­net, you’ll find sim­i­lar kinds of advice.

On the Tim Fer­ris show, you can hear inter­views with Jack Korn­field on find­ing peace in the pan­dem­ic, Esther Per­el on nav­i­gat­ing rela­tion­ships in quar­an­tine, and Ryan Hol­i­day on using Sto­icism to choose “alive time over dead time.”

Sto­icism has gath­ered a par­tic­u­lar­ly rich store of wis­dom about how to live in cri­sis. In his own med­i­ta­tion on iso­la­tion, Michel de Mon­taigne drew on the Sto­ics in advis­ing read­ers to “reserve a back­shop, whol­ly our own and entire­ly free, where­in to set­tle our true lib­er­ty, our prin­ci­ple soli­tude and retreat…. We have a mind pli­able in itself, that will be com­pa­ny; that has where­with­al to attack and to defend, to receive and to give: let us not then fear in this soli­tude to lan­guish under an uncom­fort­able vacu­ity.” In oth­er words, the road through iso­la­tion, though fraught with painful emo­tions and uncer­tain­ties, can be, if we choose, one of sig­nif­i­cant per­son­al and col­lec­tive growth.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Cours­es on the Coro­n­avirus: What You Need to Know About the Emerg­ing Pan­dem­ic

How Stress Can Change Your Brain: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Sto­icism, the Ancient Greek Phi­los­o­phy That Lets You Lead a Hap­py, Ful­fill­ing Life

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

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See Web Cams of Surreally Empty City Streets in Venice, New York, London & Beyond

in Current Affairs, Travel | April 16th, 2020

The lack of human pres­ence in major­ly pol­lut­ed cities these past cou­ple months has had some peo­ple see­ing utopias as the skies begin to clear. But emp­ty cities seem a lit­tle more dystopi­an to me. Dystopias are “a kind of sur­re­al­ism,” writes Kim Stan­ley Robin­son. They unearth the dream­like dread beneath the veneer of the nor­mal. No mat­ter when they’re set, dystopias don’t depict the future so much as “the feel­ing of the present… height­ened by exag­ger­a­tion to a kind of dream or night­mare.” The events in dystopi­an fic­tion approach the truth of someone’s sit­u­a­tion some­where in the world and make vis­i­ble what has been hid­den.

We know ghost cities exist as ancient dis­as­ters like Pom­peii and Her­cu­la­neum and mod­ern ones like Pripy­at, Ukraine, out­side Cher­nobyl. But there are more of them than many of us know. Gleam­ing cities like Ash­ga­bat, Turk­menistan, which broke ground in 1991 and con­tains the largest num­ber of mar­ble build­ings in the world.

The 4.5 mil­lion square meter metrop­o­lis has almost no inhab­i­tants, an enor­mous gov­ern­ment fol­ly. Towns and cities around the world have been aban­doned for for all sorts of rea­sons, and they con­tin­ue to as sea lev­els rise. Which is what makes view­ing live cam­era footage of some of the world’s most icon­ic streets—almost com­plete­ly emp­tied by the pan­dem­ic at the height of tourist season—so… sur­re­al.

It’s true that peo­ple haven’t fled these cities, but made cozy bunkers of their apart­ments. Yet see­ing the vacant streets live on cam­era, in Venice, Lon­don, New York, and else­where in the world,  I get the uncan­ny feel­ing of look­ing at pro­to-sur­re­al­ist painter Gior­gio de Chirico’s The Enig­ma of a Day, a depic­tion of a shad­owy, unin­hab­it­ed street through which we expect the Ital­ian ver­sion of a tum­ble­weed to roll. Sur­veil­lance tech­nol­o­gy has inad­ver­tent­ly become a medi­um of mod­ernist art.

There is so much beau­ty in the live view at the top of the Ponte delle Guglie in Venice from the Hotel Filù Venezia, and there is also such lone­ly melan­choly, depend­ing on the time of day and where the shad­ows fall. See a live view of Times Square, above, and anoth­er Times Square view at Earth­Cam, where you can also catch a feed of a most­ly emp­ty Abbey Road (some times of day emp­ti­er than oth­ers, as in the ear­ly-morn­ing screen­shot below). Sky­line Web­cams hosts even more live cam­era views of Venice, includ­ing feeds from the Rial­to Bridge and the Piaz­za San Mar­co, as well as live feeds from sev­er­al sites in Pad­ua and oth­er places in Italy.

These real-time visions are trans­port­ing in their strange­ness. Are we liv­ing in the present or the future? In a dystopi­an world, there isn’t any dif­fer­ence. All futures are fore­closed by cat­a­stro­phe, “all dis­tances in time and space are shrink­ing,” wrote Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger, a thinker who under­stood dis­as­ter, and who fell in line behind it. In that same essay, “The Thing” (as trans­lat­ed by Albert Hof­s­tad­er), the Ger­man philoso­pher made his famous com­ment, “the ter­ri­ble has already hap­pened.”

The ter­ri­ble that has hap­pened to us is not only a dead­ly pan­dem­ic. The virus is not like­ly to dis­ap­pear on its own; who knows how long this will go on? But not far behind the cur­rent cri­sis are more cli­mate events that threat­en to emp­ty streets. If we emp­ty cities not only as indica­tive of tem­porar­i­ly social dis­tanc­ing, but as images of the pos­si­ble near-future, maybe we’ll be far less inclined to come out of this sur­re­al expe­ri­ence and get right back to busi­ness-as-usu­al.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Venice (Its Streets, Plazas & Canals) with Google Street View

Google Lets You Take a 360-Degree Panoram­ic Tour of Street Art in Cities Across the World

Spring Break vs. COVID-19: Map­ping the Real Impact of Ignor­ing Social Dis­tanc­ing

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

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A 1665 Advertisement Promises a “Famous and Effectual” Cure for the Great Plague

in Current Affairs, History | April 7th, 2020

There is a lev­el of avarice and deprav­i­ty in defraud­ing vic­tims of an epi­dem­ic that should shock even the most jad­ed. But a look into the archives of his­to­ry con­firms that venal moun­te­banks and con artists have always fol­lowed dis­as­ter when it strikes. In 1665, the Black Death reap­peared in Lon­don, a dis­ease that had rav­aged medieval Europe for cen­turies and left an indeli­ble impres­sion on cul­tur­al mem­o­ry. After the rats began to spread dis­ease, ter­ror spread with it. Then came the adver­tise­ments for sure cures.

“Every­one dread­ed catch­ing the dis­ease,” notes the British Library. “Vic­tims were often nailed into their hous­es in an attempt to stop the spread… They usu­al­ly died with­in days, in agony and mad­ness from fevers and infect­ed swellings.” This grotesque scene of pan­ic and pain seemed like a growth mar­ket to “quack doc­tors sell­ing fake reme­dies. There were many dif­fer­ent pills and potions,” and they “were often very expen­sive to buy and claimed, false­ly, to have been suc­cess­ful­ly used in pre­vi­ous epi­demics.”

Sure­ly, there were many in the med­ical pro­fes­sion, such as it was, who gen­uine­ly want­ed to help, but no hon­est doc­tor could claim, as the broad­side above does, to have dis­cov­ered a “Famous and Effec­tu­al MEDICINE TO CURE THE PLAGUE.” So con­fi­dent is this ad that it lists the names and loca­tions of sev­er­al peo­ple sup­pos­ed­ly cured (and promis­es to have cured “above fifty more”). You can go look up “Andrew Baget, in St. Gile’s,” or “Mrs. Adkings. In Coven Gar­den,” or “Mary-Waight, in Bed­ford-Bury.” Ask them your­self! Only, that might be a lit­tle dif­fi­cult as you’ve cur­rent­ly got the plague…. (See a tran­scrip­tion of the adver­tise­ment here.)

This par­tic­u­lar exam­ple appears to have been a guild effort. At the bot­tom of the pam­phlet we find a list of mer­chants offer­ing the need­ed ingre­di­ents for the med­i­cine, which suf­fer­ers would pre­sum­ably mix them­selves, hav­ing first vis­it­ed the shops of Mr. Leonard Sow­ers­by, Mr. Hey­woods, Mr. Owens, Mr. Good­laks, a sec­ond Mr. Hey­woods, and Mrs. Eliz­a­beth Calverts (poten­tial­ly infect­ing oth­ers all the time.) Cus­tomers were clear­ly des­per­ate. They aren’t even giv­en the stamp of a physician’s approval, only the mer­chants’ promise that oth­ers have returned from the brink by means of an “infal­li­ble Pow­der” that also cures “Small-Pox, Fevers, Agues, and Sur­feits.” Chil­dren should take half a dose.

17th cen­tu­ry physi­cians fared lit­tle bet­ter against the plague than doc­tors had over 300 years ear­li­er when the dis­ease first made its appear­ance in Europe in 1347, trav­el­ing from Asia to Italy. They did what they could, as the BBC points out, rec­om­mend­ing “mus­tard, mint sauce, apple sauce and horse­rad­ish” as dietary aids. Oth­er attempt­ed 14th cen­tu­ry cures includ­ed “rub­bing onions, herbs or a chopped up snake (if avail­able) on the boils or cut­ting up a pigeon and rub­bing it over an infect­ed body.”

This sound­ed spe­cious to many peo­ple at the time. One 1380 source, Jean Froissart’s Chron­i­cles, stat­ed sar­cas­ti­cal­ly, “doc­tors need three qual­i­fi­ca­tions: to be able to lie and not get caught; to pre­tend to be hon­est; and to cause death with­out guilt.” Such qual­i­fi­ca­tions have always suit­ed those intent on careers in gov­ern­ment or finance, where times of trou­ble can be high­ly prof­itable. We are for­tu­nate, how­ev­er, for the advances of mod­ern med­i­cine, and for med­ical pro­fes­sion­als who risk their lives dai­ly for vic­tims of COVID-19, even if some oth­er human qual­i­ties haven’t changed since peo­ple tried to end pan­demics by march­ing through the streets whip­ping them­selves.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of the Plague: Every Major Epi­dem­ic in an Ani­mat­ed Map

Down­load Clas­sic Works of Plague Fic­tion: From Daniel Defoe & Mary Shel­ley, to Edgar Allan Poe

Why You Should Read The Plague, the Albert Camus Nov­el the Coro­n­avirus Has Made a Best­seller Again

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

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