The Zen of Bill Murray: I Want to Be “Really Here, Really in It, Really Alive in the Moment”

in Life, Philosophy, Religion | December 19th, 2019

We all know, on the deep­est lev­el, what we have the poten­tial to achieve; once in a great while, we even catch glimpses of just what we could do if only we put our minds to it. But what, if any­thing, does it mean to “put our minds to it”? In break­ing down that cliché, we might look to the exam­ple of Bill Mur­ray, an actor for whom break­ing down clichés has become a method of not just work­ing but liv­ing. In the 2015 Char­lie Rose clip above, Mur­ray tells of receiv­ing a late-night phone call from a friend’s drunk­en sis­ter. “You have no idea how much you could do, Bill, if you could just — you can do so much,” the woman kept insist­ing. But to the still more or less asleep Mur­ray, her voice sound­ed like that of “a vision­ary speak­ing to you in the night and com­ing to you in your dream.”

Through her ine­bri­a­tion, this woman spoke direct­ly to a per­sis­tent desire of Mur­ray’s, one he describes when Rose asks him “what it is that you want that you don’t have.” Mur­ray replies that he’d “like to be more con­sis­tent­ly here,” that he’d like to “see how long I can last as being real­ly here — you know, real­ly in it, real­ly alive in the moment.” He’d like to see what he could do if he could stay off human auto-pilot, if he “were able to not get dis­tract­ed, to not change chan­nels in my mind and body, so I would just, you know, be my own chan­nel.” He grounds this poten­tial­ly spir­i­tu­al-sound­ing idea in phys­i­cal terms: “It is all con­tained in your body, every­thing you’ve got: your mind, your spir­it, your soul, your emo­tions, it is all con­tained in your body. All the prospects, all the chances you ever have.”

Mur­ray had spo­ken in even more detail of the body’s impor­tance at the pre­vi­ous year’s Toron­to Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val. “How much do you weigh?” he asked his audi­ence there, lead­ing them into an impromp­tu guid­ed med­i­ta­tion. “Try to feel that weight in your seat right now, in your bot­tom right now.” If you can “feel that weight in your body, if you can come back into the most per­son­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, a very per­son­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, which is: I am. This is me now. Here I am, right now. This is me now.” The idea is to be here now, to bor­row the words with which coun­ter­cul­tur­al icon Ram Dass titled his most pop­u­lar book. But Mur­ray approached it by read­ing some­thing quite dif­fer­ent: the writ­ings of Gre­co-Armen­ian Sufi mys­tic George Ivanovich Gur­d­ji­eff, whose con­tri­bu­tion to Mur­ray’s comedic per­sona we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture.

Gur­d­ji­eff believed that most of us live out our lives in a hyp­no­sis-like state of “wak­ing sleep,” nev­er touch­ing the state of high­er con­scious­ness that might allow us to more clear­ly per­ceive real­i­ty and more ful­ly real­ize our poten­tial. In recent years, Mur­ray has tak­en on some­thing like this role him­self, hav­ing “long bypassed mere celebri­ty sta­tus to become some­thing close to a spir­i­tu­al sym­bol, a guru of zen, and his fre­quent appear­ances among the mass­es (in a karaoke bar! In a couple’s engage­ment pho­to!) are report­ed on the inter­net with the excite­ment of sight­ings of the mes­si­ah.” So writes the Guardian’s Hadley Free­man in a Mur­ray pro­file from 2019, which quotes the actor-come­di­an-trick­ster-Ghost­buster-bod­hisatt­va return­ing to his wish to attain an ever-greater state of pres­ence. “If there’s life hap­pen­ing and you run from it, you’re not doing the world a favor,” he says. “You have to engage.” And if you do, you may dis­cov­er pos­si­bil­i­ties you’d nev­er even sus­pect­ed before.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Phi­los­o­phy of Bill Mur­ray: The Intel­lec­tu­al Foun­da­tions of His Comedic Per­sona

Lis­ten to Bill Mur­ray Lead a Guid­ed Medi­a­tion on How It Feels to Be Bill Mur­ray

An Ani­mat­ed Bill Mur­ray on the Advan­tages & Dis­ad­van­tages of Fame

Nine Tips from Bill Mur­ray & Cel­list Jan Vogler on How to Study Intense­ly and Opti­mize Your Learn­ing

What Is High­er Con­scious­ness?: How We Can Tran­scend Our Pet­ty, Day-to-Day Desires and Gain a Deep­er Wis­dom

97-Year-Old Philoso­pher Pon­ders the Mean­ing of Life: “What Is the Point of It All?”

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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Blues Musician Plays a Soul-Stirring Version of “Amazing Grace” at His Mother’s Funeral

in Life, Music | December 16th, 2019


The Dust to Dig­i­tal Face­book page sets the scene: “Chri­s­tone ‘King­fish’ Ingram, play[s] an amaz­ing and touch­ing ver­sion of “Amaz­ing Grace” at the funer­al of his moth­er, Princess Pride, today. She was a great sup­port­er of her son, and would have turned 50 tomor­row.” Amaz­ing and touch­ing indeed. Make sure you play it all of the way through. And when you start the video, man­u­al­ly move up the vol­ume icon at the bot­tom right of the video.

In case it’s not already clear, King­fish is a pro­fes­sion­al blues musi­cian. You can catch his videos on Youtube, includ­ing this sweet ver­sion of “I Put A Spell On You.” Very sor­ry for your loss, King­fish…

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Traditional Inuit Thoat Singing and the Modern World Collide in This Astonishing Video

in Life, Music, Travel, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society | December 13th, 2019

Let’s just get this out of the way…

Musi­cal­ly speak­ing, Inu­it throat singing—or kata­j­jaq—is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea.

For all those who find this tra­di­tion­al form mes­mer­iz­ing, there are oth­ers who get antsy with no lyrics or eas­i­ly dis­cernible melody on which to hang their hat, or who expe­ri­ence the bleak sound of the Arc­tic wind cou­pled with the singers’ pre­lim­i­nary breath­ing as a hor­ror movie sound­track.

If, as a mem­ber of one of the lat­ter camps, you feel inclined to bail after a minute or so of Wapikoni Mobile’s Sun­dance-endorsed video above—you get it, it’s some­thing akin to Mon­go­lian or Tuvan throat-singing, it’s cir­cu­lar breath­ing, there’s a lot of pic­turesque snow up there—we beg you to recon­sid­er, on two counts.

1) In an era of auto­tuned “everyone’s‑a-star” per­fec­tion, Kata­j­jaq is a hearty hold-out, a com­mu­ni­ty-spir­it­ed singing game whose com­peti­tors seek nei­ther star­dom nor rich­es, but rather, to chal­lenge them­selves and amuse each oth­er with­out screens through­out the long win­ter nights.

Prac­ti­tion­er Evie Mark breaks it down thus­ly:

One very typ­i­cal exam­ple is when the hus­bands would go on hunt­ing trips.  The women would gath­er togeth­er when they have noth­ing to do, no more sewing to do, no more clean­ing to do, they would just have fun, and one of the ways of enter­tain­ing them­selves is throat-singing.

It goes like this. Two women face each oth­er very close­ly, and they would throat sing like this:

If I would be with my part­ner right now, I would say A, she would say A, I would say A, she would say A, I say C, she says C.  So she repeats after me.  It would be a sort of rolling of sounds.  And, once that hap­pens, you cre­ate a rhythm.  And the only way the rhythm would be bro­ken is when one of the two women starts laugh­ing or if one of them stops because she is tired.  It’s a kind of game.  We always say the first per­son to laugh or the first per­son to stop is the one to lose.  It’s noth­ing seri­ous.  Throat singing is way of hav­ing fun.  That’s the gen­er­al idea, it’s to have fun dur­ing gath­er­ings.  It is also a way to prove to your friends around you or your fam­i­ly that if you are a good throat-singer, you’re gonna win the game.

Throat-singing is a very accu­rate tech­nique in a sense that when you are singing fast, the per­son who is fol­low­ing the leader has to go in every lit­tle gap the leader leaves for her to fill in.  For instance, if I was to say 1 + 1 + 1 + 1, the ones being what I sing and the plus­es the gaps, she would go in-between the ones, singing on the plus­es.  Then, if I change my rhythm, this woman has to fol­low that change of rhythm and fill in the gaps of that new rhythm.  She has to be very accu­rate.  She has to have a very good ear and she has to fol­low visu­al­ly what I am doing.

Throat singing is not exact­ly easy on your diaphragm.  You are using a lot of your mus­cles in your diaphragm for breath­ing in and breath­ing out.  I have to find a space between sounds to breath in in order for me to throat-sing for 20 min­utes or more.  20 min­utes has been my max­i­mum length of time to throat-sing.  You have to focus on your lungs or your diaphragm.  If you throat-sing using main­ly breath­ing, you are gonna hyper­ven­ti­late, you’re gonna get dizzy and dam­age your throat.

2) The video, star­ring Eva Kaukai and Manon Cham­ber­land from Kan­gir­suk in north­ern Québec (pop­u­la­tion: 394), deflates con­ven­tion­al notions of tra­di­tion­al prac­tices as the prove­nance of some­where quaint, exot­ic, taxi­der­mied…

Begin­ning around the 90-sec­ond mark, the singers are joined by a drone that sur­veys the sur­round­ing area. View­ers get a glimpse of what their Arc­tic home­land looks like in the warm sea­son, as well as some hunters flay­ing their kill pri­or to load­ing it into a late mod­el pick up, pre­sum­ably bound for a build­ing in a whol­ly sub­ur­ban seem­ing neigh­bor­hood, com­plete with tele­phone poles, satel­lite dish­es, and—gasp—elec­tric light.

Via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Hu, a New Break­through Band from Mon­go­lia, Plays Heavy Met­al with Tra­di­tion­al Folk Instru­ments and Throat Singing

An MRI Shows How a Singer Sings Two Tones at Once (With the Music of Mozart and Bri­an Eno)

How to Sing Two Notes At Once (aka Poly­phon­ic Over­tone Singing): Lessons from Singer Anna-Maria Hefele

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC for the new sea­son of her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

 

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“Don’t Try”: The Philosophy of the Hardworking Charles Bukowski

in Creativity, Life, Literature | December 13th, 2019

If Charles Bukows­ki were alive today, what would you ask him? Best to avoid the stan­dard ques­tions put to writ­ers about how or why they chose to become writ­ers — not just because Bukows­ki would sure­ly respond with a few col­or­ful­ly choice words of dis­missal, but because he embod­ied the lack of choice that char­ac­ter­izes the life of every seri­ous cre­ator. Accord­ing to the Pur­suit of Won­der video essay above, Bukows­ki dropped out of col­lege halfway through in order to write. After a peri­od spent “bounc­ing around the Unit­ed States, doing short-term blue-col­lar jobs while writ­ing hun­dred of short sto­ries,” none of which broke him into the lit­er­ary big time, came a high­ly unpro­duc­tive peri­od of blue-col­lar jobs with­out the accom­pa­ny­ing writ­ing.

At the end of a writ­ing-free decade, Bukows­ki “near­ly died from a seri­ous bleed­ing ulcer.” This got him back on track, as brush­es with mor­tal­i­ty tend to do: he sub­se­quent­ly quit his job at the post office and returned to writ­ing full-time. It was only a few years before he went back to work at the post office, but this time he kept writ­ing, putting in the real work at the type­writer before each shift at the day job. He did so with­out the prospect of suc­cess any­where in the off­ing, at least not before he reached mid­dle age. “It took Bukows­ki years and years of writ­ing and toil­ing and try­ing to final­ly have cir­cum­stances work out in his favor so he could gain trac­tion and find suc­cess as a writer,” says the video’s nar­ra­tor. And yet, as we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly not­ed here at Open Cul­ture, into Bukowski’s grave­stone are chis­eled these words: “Don’t try.”

“How could a man who became suc­cess­ful in ful­fill­ing his idea of him­self — a man who, although it took a while, found immense respect and recog­ni­tion for his craft, all because of his relent­less try­ing — how could this man leave the words don’t try as his final offer­ing?” We might inter­pret them in light of a let­ter from Bukows­ki to a friend, the writer and pub­lish­er William Packard. “Too many writ­ers write for the wrong rea­sons,” declared Bukows­ki. “They want to get famous or they want to get rich or they want to get laid by the girls with the blue­bells in their hair… When every­thing goes best, it’s not because you chose writ­ing, but because writ­ing chose you.” Bukows­ki did­n’t decide to be a writer; nobody actu­al­ly ded­i­cat­ed to a pur­suit ever had to decide which pur­suit it would be.

“We work too hard. We try too hard,” Bukows­ki writes to Packard. “Don’t try. Don’t work. It’s there. Look­ing right at us, aching to kick out of the closed womb.” He may have meant, as the video’s nar­ra­tor puts it, that “if you have to try to try, if you have to try to care about some­thing or have to try to want some­thing, per­haps you don’t care about it, and per­haps you don’t want it.” And “if the thought of not doing the thing hurts more than the thought of poten­tial­ly suf­fer­ing through the process, if the thought of a life with­out it or nev­er hav­ing tried it at all ter­ri­fies you, if it comes to you, through you, out of you, almost as if you’re not try­ing, per­haps Bukows­ki might say here, try, and ‘if you’re going to try, go all the way.’ ” That quote comes from Bukowski’s nov­el Fac­to­tum — the sto­ry of a writer in search of blue-col­lar work that won’t get in the way of his one true craft — and we might do well to take it one sen­tence fur­ther: “Oth­er­wise, don’t even start.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Don’t Try”: Charles Bukowski’s Con­cise Phi­los­o­phy of Art and Life

Inspi­ra­tion from Charles Bukows­ki: You Might Be Old, Your Life May Be “Crap­py,” But You Can Still Make Good Art

Charles Bukows­ki Explains What Good Writ­ing and the Good Life Have in Com­mon

Is Charles Bukows­ki a Self-Help Guru? Hear Five of His Bru­tal­ly Hon­est, Yet Odd­ly Inspir­ing, Poems and Decide for Your­self

Charles Bukows­ki Explains How to Beat Depres­sion: Spend 3–4 Days in Bed and You’ll Get the Juices Flow­ing Again (NSFW)

Charles Bukows­ki Reads His Poem “The Secret of My Endurance” 

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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Radical Tea Towels Offer a Graphic Crash Course in Progressive American History

in History, Life, Literature, Philosophy, Politics | December 6th, 2019

Those of us who are deeply dis­ap­point­ed to learn we won’t be see­ing Har­ri­et Tubman’s face on a redesigned $20 bill any time soon can dry our eyes on a Tub­man tea tow­el… or could if the revered abo­li­tion­ist and activist wasn’t one of the fam­i­ly-owned Rad­i­cal Tea Towel’s hottest sell­ing items.

The pop­u­lar design, based on one of Charles Ross’ murals in Cam­bridge, Maryland’s Har­ri­et Tub­man Memo­r­i­al Gar­den is cur­rent­ly out of stock.

For­tu­nate­ly, the com­pa­ny has immor­tal­ized plen­ty of oth­er inspi­ra­tional fem­i­nists, activists, civ­il rights lead­ers, authors, and thinkers on cot­ton rec­tan­gles, suit­able for all your dish dry­ing and gift giv­ing needs.

Or wave them at a demon­stra­tion, on the cre­ators’ sug­ges­tion.

The need for rad­i­cal tea tow­els was hatched as one of the company’s Welsh co-founder’s was search­ing in vain for a prac­ti­cal birth­day present that would reflect her 92-year-old father’s pro­gres­sive val­ues.

Five years lat­er, bom­bard­ed with dis­tress­ing post-elec­tion mes­sages from the States, they decid­ed to expand across the pond, to high­light the achieve­ments of “amaz­ing Amer­i­cans who’ve fought the cause of free­dom and equal­i­ty over the years.”

The descrip­tion of each tow­el’s sub­ject speaks to the pas­sion for his­to­ry, edu­ca­tion  and jus­tice the founders—a moth­er, father, and adult son—bring to the project. Here, for exam­ple, is their write up on Muham­mad Ali, above:

He was born Cas­sius Clay and changed his name to Muham­mad Ali, but the name the world knew him by was sim­ply, ‘The Great­est.’ Through his remark­able box­ing career, Ali is wide­ly regard­ed as one of the most sig­nif­i­cant and cel­e­brat­ed sports fig­ures of the 20th cen­tu­ry and was an inspir­ing, con­tro­ver­sial and polar­is­ing fig­ure both inside and out­side the ring. 

Ali start­ed box­ing as a 12-year-old because he want­ed to take revenge on the boy who stole his bike, and at 25, he lost his box­ing licence for refus­ing to fight in Viet­nam. (‘Why should they ask me to put on a uni­form and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bul­lets on brown peo­ple in Viet­nam when so-called Negro peo­ple in Louisville are treat­ed like dogs and denied sim­ple human rights?’ He demand­ed.) It was per­haps the only time he sur­ren­dered: mil­lions of dol­lars, the love of his nation, his career… but it was for what he believed in. And although his views on race were often con­fused, this was just exam­ple of his Civ­il Rights activism.

Ali became a light­ning rod for dis­sent, set­ting an exam­ple of racial pride for African Amer­i­cans and resis­tance to white dom­i­na­tion dur­ing the Civ­il Rights Move­ment. And he took no punch lying down – nei­ther inside the box­ing ring nor in the fight for equal­i­ty: after being refused ser­vice in a whites-only restau­rant in his home­town of Louisville, Ken­tucky, he report­ed­ly threw the Olympic gold medal he had just won in Rome into the Ohio Riv­er. So, here’s an empow­er­ing gift cel­e­brat­ing the man who nev­er threw in the (tea) tow­el.

The Rad­i­cal Tea Tow­el blog is such stuff as will bring a grate­ful tear to an AP US His­to­ry teacher’s eye. The Fore­bears We Share: Learn­ing from Rad­i­cal His­to­ry is a good place to start. Oth­er top­ics include Abi­gail Adam’s Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion advo­ca­cy, the bridge designs of rev­o­lu­tion­ary philoso­pher Thomas Paine, and Bruce Springsteen’s love of protest songs.

(The Rad­i­cal Tea Tow­el design team has yet to pay trib­ute to The Boss, but until they do, we can rest easy know­ing author John Steinbeck’s tow­el embod­ies Springsteen’s sen­ti­ment. )

Lest our edu­ca­tion­al dish­cloths lull us into think­ing we know more about our coun­try than we actu­al­ly do, the company’s web­site has a rad­i­cal his­to­ry quiz, mod­eled on the US his­to­ry and gov­ern­ment nat­u­ral­iza­tion test which would-be Amer­i­cans must pass with a score of at least 60%. This one is, unsur­pris­ing­ly, geared toward pro­gres­sive his­to­ry. Test your knowl­edge to earn a tea tow­el dis­count code.

Begin your Rad­i­cal Tea Tow­el explo­rations here, and don’t neglect to take in all the rad designs cel­e­brat­ing the upcom­ing cen­ten­ni­al of wom­en’s suf­frage.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

2,200 Rad­i­cal Polit­i­cal Posters Dig­i­tized: A New Archive

11 Essen­tial Fem­i­nist Books: A New Read­ing List by The New York Pub­lic Library

Down­load 834 Rad­i­cal Zines From a Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Online Archive: Glob­al­iza­tion, Punk Music, the Indus­tri­al Prison Com­plex & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Decem­ber 9 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Dennison’s Christ­mas Book (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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You Can Sleep in an Edward Hopper Painting at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts: Is This the Next New Museum Trend?

in Art, Design, Life, Museums, Travel | December 2nd, 2019

Let’s pre­tend our Fairy Art Moth­er is grant­i­ng one wish—to spend the night inside the paint­ing of your choice.

What paint­ing will we each choose, and why?

Will you sleep out in the open, undis­turbed by lions, a la Rousseau’s The Sleep­ing Gyp­sy?

Or expe­ri­ence the volup­tuous dreams of Fred­er­ic Leighton’s Flam­ing June?

Paul Gauguin’s por­trait of his son, Clo­vis presents a tan­ta­liz­ing prospect for those of us who haven’t slept like a baby in decades…

The Night­mare by Herny Fuseli should chime with Goth­ic sen­si­bil­i­ties…

And it’s a fair­ly safe bet that some of us will select Edward Hop­per’s West­ern Motel, at the top of this post, if only because we heard the Vir­ginia Muse­um of Fine Arts was accept­ing dou­ble occu­pan­cy book­ings for an extreme­ly faith­ful fac­sim­i­le, as part of its Edward Hop­per and the Amer­i­can Hotel exhi­bi­tion.

Alas, if unsur­pris­ing­ly, the Hop­per Hotel Expe­ri­ence, with mini golf and a curat­ed tour, sold out quick­ly, with prices rang­ing from $150 to $500 for an off-hours stay.

Tick­et-hold­ing vis­i­tors can still peer in at the room any time the exhib­it is open to the pub­lic, but it’s after hours when the Insta­gram­ming kicks into high gear.

What guest could resist the temp­ta­tion to strike a pose amid the vin­tage lug­gage and (blue­tooth-enabled) wood pan­eled radio, fill­ing in for the 1957 painting’s lone fig­ure, an icon­ic Hop­per woman in a bur­gundy dress?

The Art Insti­tute of Chica­go notes that she is sin­gu­lar among Hopper’s sub­jects, in that she appears to be gaz­ing direct­ly at the view­er.

But as per the Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Art Gallery, from which West­ern Motel is on loan:

The woman star­ing across the room does not seem to see us; the pen­sive­ness of her stare and her tense pos­ture accen­tu­ate the sense of some impend­ing event. She appears to be wait­ing: the lug­gage is packed, the room is devoid of per­son­al objects, the bed is made, and a car is parked out­side the win­dow.

Hope­ful­ly, those lucky enough to have secured a book­ing will have per­fect­ed the pose in the mir­ror at home pri­or to arrival. This “motel” is a bit of a stage set, in that guests must leave the paint­ing to access the pub­lic bath­room that con­sti­tutes the facil­i­ties.

(No word on whether the theme extends to a paper “san­i­tized for your pro­tec­tion” band across the toi­let, but there’s no show­er and a secu­ri­ty offi­cer is sta­tioned out­side the room for the dura­tion of each stay.)

The pop­u­lar­i­ty of this once-in-a-life­time exhib­it tie-in may spark oth­er muse­ums to fol­low suit.

The Art Insti­tute of Chica­go start­ed the trend in 2016 with a painstak­ing recre­ation of Vin­cent Van Gogh’s room at Arles, which it list­ed on Air BnB for $10/night.

Think of all the fun we could have if the bed­rooms of art his­to­ry opened to us…

Dog lovers could get cozy in Andrew Wyeth’s Mas­ter Bed­room.

Delacroix’s The Death of Sar­dana­palus (1827) would require some­thing more than dou­ble occu­pan­cy for prop­er Insta­gram­ming.

Piero del­la Francesca’s The Dream of Con­stan­tine might elic­it impres­sive mes­sages from the sub-con­science…

Tuber­cu­lo­sis noth­with­stand­ing, Aubrey Beardsley’s Self Por­trait in Bed is rife with pos­si­bil­i­ties.

Or skip the cul­tur­al fore­play and head straight for the NSFW plea­sures of The French Bed, a la Rembrandt’s etch­ing.

Edward Hop­per and the Amer­i­can Hotel will be trav­el­ing to the Indi­anapo­lis Muse­um of Art at New­fields in June 2020.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Jour­ney Inside Vin­cent Van Gogh’s Paint­ings with a New Dig­i­tal Exhi­bi­tion

How Edward Hop­per “Sto­ry­board­ed” His Icon­ic Paint­ing Nighthawks

60-Sec­ond Intro­duc­tions to 12 Ground­break­ing Artists: Matisse, Dalí, Duchamp, Hop­per, Pol­lock, Rothko & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Decem­ber 9 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Dennison’s Christ­mas Book (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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A New Online Archive Lets You Listen to 40 Years Worth of Terry Gross’ Fresh Air Interviews: Stream 22,000 Segment Online

in Life, Radio | November 29th, 2019

As the weath­er grows cold­er, we look for rea­sons to stay inside, snug­gled up under a blan­ket, steamy mug in hand.

Or some­times we look for an incen­tive to bun­dle up and go for a long freez­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al.

Either way, 40 years’ worth of Fresh Air, Peabody award-win­ning radio jour­nal­ist Ter­ry Gross’ inter­view show, is just the tick­et.

A com­plete dig­i­tal data­base of over 22,000 seg­ments is now avail­able for your lis­ten­ing plea­sure.

Feel­ing over­whelmed?

Scroll down on the home page to delve into a recent episode.

Or dial it back to one of the ear­li­est extant install­ments.

(In the first decade of the show’s his­to­ry, many episodes went untaped or got record­ed over.)

The mas­sive data­base, cre­at­ed with help from library sci­en­tists at Drex­el Uni­ver­si­ty, is also search­able by guest and top­ic.

If you feel like hand­ing over the con­trols, home sta­tion WHYY in Philadel­phia has some sug­gest­ed col­lec­tions—Jazz Leg­ends, Sat­ur­day Night Live, How the Brain Works…

If you’re open to any­thing, try the wild card option at the bot­tom of the screen. Click play for a ran­dom episode.

Or try typ­ing one of your inter­ests into the search bar.

“Cats” yield­ed 1713 results, from a chat with author John Brad­shaw on the evo­lu­tion of house cats to an inter­view with zool­o­gist Alan Rabi­nowitz on endan­gered large cats to some train­ing tips, cour­tesy of feline behav­ior spe­cial­ist Sarah Ellis.

Of less direct rel­e­vance, but of no less inter­est, are:

A review of Iran­ian direc­tor Bah­man Ghobadi’s film No One Knows about Per­sian Cats, which net­ted the 2009 Spe­cial Jury Prize at Cannes.

A review of Mar­garet Atwood’s 1989 nov­el Cat’s Eye.

A His­to­ry of Catskills resorts.

A post-mortem with come­di­an (and avowed cat per­son) Mark Maron fol­low­ing then-Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s 2015 appear­ance on his WTF pod­cast (an occa­sion which required Maron’s house cats to be cor­ralled in his bed­room).

The Coen Broth­ers on writ­ing The Big Lebows­ki and the dif­fi­cul­ties of wran­gling Inside Llewyn Davis’s feline per­former:

Gross: So how do you cast a cat for your film?

One Coen broth­er: Ooh, that was hor­ri­ble. We just used on the advice of the trainer—the ani­mal train­er, kind of an orange, kind of a mar­malade tab­by cat, just because they are, you know, com­mon, and so easy to dou­ble, triple, quadru­ple. There were, you know, many cats play­ing the one cat and, you know, the whole thing is actu­al­ly pret­ty, it comes across well in the movie, but the whole exer­cise of shoot­ing a cat is pret­ty night­mar­ish because they don’t care about any­thing; they don’t want to do what you want them to do. As the ani­mal train­er said to us, a dog wants to please you; a cat only wants to please itself. It was just long, painstak­ing, frus­trat­ing days shoot­ing the cat.

Oth­er Coen broth­er: What you have to do is basi­cal­ly find the cat that’s pre­dis­posed to doing what­ev­er par­tic­u­lar piece of action it is that you have to film. So you find the cat that can—isn’t afraid to run down a fire escape or this, you know, the cat that’s very docile and will let the actor just hold them for extend­ed peri­ods of time with­out being fid­gety. And then you want the fid­gety cat—the squir­re­ly cat—for when you want the cat to run away and you just keep swap­ping them out—depending on what the task at hand is.

If some­thing real­ly catch­es your fan­cy, you can add it to a playlist to share via social media or email.

Read­ers, what would you have us add to ours?

Begin your explo­ration of Fresh Air’s archive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Hap­pens When a Ter­ry Gross/Fresh Air Inter­view Ends: A Com­ic Look

Mau­rice Sendak’s Emo­tion­al Last Inter­view with NPR’s Ter­ry Gross, Ani­mat­ed by Christoph Nie­mann

Lis­ten to Ira Glass’ 10 Favorite Episodes of This Amer­i­can Life

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Decem­ber 9 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Dennison’s Christ­mas Book (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How to Behave in a British Pub: A World War II Training Film from 1943, Featuring Burgess Meredith

in Film, History, Life, Travel | November 25th, 2019

Fore­warned is fore­armed, so in 1943, the Unit­ed States Office of War Infor­ma­tion cre­at­ed a train­ing film to pre­vent sol­diers bound for Great Britain from earn­ing their Ugly Amer­i­can stripes.

The excerpt above con­cen­trates on pub eti­quette, cast­ing actor and Army Air Corps cap­tain Burgess Mered­ith in the role of a dis­creet mil­i­tary Vir­gil, explain­ing in hushed tones the British pen­chant for non-chilled beer and smok­ing or read­ing the paper unmo­lest­ed.

He also cau­tions incom­ing GIs against throw­ing their mon­ey around or mak­ing fun of kilt-wear­ing Scotsmen—commonsense advice that still applies.

To ensure the mes­sage sticks, he con­jures a cringe­wor­thy, semi-sloshed bad apple, who struts around in uni­form, bray­ing insults at the locals, until he dis­ap­pears in a puff of smoke.

No won­der the reception’s a bit frosty, when Mered­ith, ven­tures forth, also in uni­form. But unlike the brash bad­die who went before, Mered­ith has vet­ted his hosts, approach­ing as one might a skit­tish ani­mal. He offers cig­a­rettes, enjoys a game of darts as a spec­ta­tor, and buys his new friends drinks, being care­ful to choose some­thing in their price range, know­ing that they will insist on rec­i­p­ro­cat­ing in kind.

The film is pri­mar­i­ly con­cerned with teach­ing restraint.

In anoth­er sec­tion of the not-quite-38-minute film offi­cial­ly called A Wel­come to Britain (see below), Mered­ith cau­tions young recruits to take small por­tions of food, know­ing how restrict­ed their hosts’ rations are.

The most uncom­fort­able teach­able moment comes when an elder­ly Eng­lish­woman spon­ta­neous­ly invites a black GI to tea, after thank­ing him for his ser­vice:

Now look men, you heard that con­ver­sa­tion, that’s not unusu­al here. It’s the sort of thing that hap­pens quite a lot. Now let’s be frank about it, there are col­ored sol­diers as well as white here, and there are less social restric­tions in this coun­try. An Eng­lish woman ask­ing a col­ored boy to tea, he was polite about it, and she was polite about it. Now, that might not hap­pen at home, but the point is, we’re not at home, and the point is too, if we bring a lot of prej­u­dices here, what are we going to do about them?

(No advice to young black sol­diers on whether they’re hon­or bound to accept, should an elder­ly Eng­lish­woman invite them to tea, when they were per­haps en route to the pub.)

Watch the entire­ty of A Wel­come to Britain, includ­ing a cameo by Bob Hope at the 30 minute mark, here.

For an updat­ed guide to British pub eti­quette, check out the Amer­i­can expats of Post­mod­ern Fam­i­ly reac­tion video here.

via Daniel Hol­land

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: British Pathé Puts Over 85,000 His­tor­i­cal Films on YouTube

1,000,000 Min­utes of News­reel Footage by AP & British Movi­etone Released on YouTube

How the Fences & Rail­ings Adorn­ing London’s Build­ings Dou­bled (by Design) as Civil­ian Stretch­ers in World War II

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Decem­ber 9 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Dennison’s Christ­mas Book (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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