A New Christmas Commercial Takes You on a Sentimental Journey Through Elton John’s Rich Musical Life

in Life, Music, Television | November 19th, 2018

The Bitch is Back…or is he?

Yes, Elton John is spend­ing the next cou­ple of years bid­ding adieu to fans on his Good­bye Yel­low Brick Road world tour.

And yes, there’s a soon-to-be released biopic, Rock­et­man.

On the oth­er hand, there’s the ridicu­lous­ly pneu­mat­ic two-minute tele­vi­sion com­mer­cial above, upscale depart­ment store John Lewis’s attempt to best rivals Sainsbury’s and Marks & Spencer in the unof­fi­cial British hol­i­day advert bowl.

These annu­al pro­duc­tions are as hot­ly antic­i­pat­ed as Super­bowl ads, but this year’s entry, in which view­ers trav­el back­wards in time near­ly 70 years to the three-year-old Elton (née Regi­nald Dwight) receiv­ing a (SPOILER!) piano from his granny, has proved a bit of a mis­fire.

View­ers are flock­ing to social media to lam­bast the ad for inad­ver­tent­ly sug­gest­ing that Elton John is the rea­son for the sea­son. (Pop­u­lar sub­jects from Christ­mases past include Padding­ton Bear, pen­guins, and box­er dogs.)

There’s also a bit of cyn­i­cism sur­round­ing the fact that John Lewis hus­tled to add dig­i­tal key­boards to its inven­to­ry pri­or to the release of “The Boy And The Piano”…

And then there’s the rumor that Sir Elton took home £5 mil­lion for his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the four day shoot.

Sev­er­al of the star’s most out­ré looks have been faith­ful­ly recre­at­ed, but, Christ­mas aside, it’s hard not to feel that this por­trait is rather too san­i­tized. You won’t find any friends rolling ‘round the base­ment floor here. His dad, an RAF offi­cer with whom he had a thorny rela­tion­ship is sim­i­lar­ly strick­en from the record. There’s nary a whis­per of drugs or diva-esque behav­ior.


As colum­nist Stu­art Her­itage notes in The Guardian before offer­ing a hilar­i­ous allit­er­a­tive script in which Sir Elton screams pro­fan­i­ties, flings vas­es, and bad­mouths Madon­na:

Elton John isn’t a great pop star because he sings songs about lit­tle dancers, croc­o­diles that rock, and being able to stand up. No, Elton John is a great pop star because he is knot­ty and com­pli­cat­ed and, well, a bit of a dick some­times.

A num­ber of spoofs have already cropped up, and nat­u­ral­ly there’s a Mak­ing Of, below—also set to “Your Song”—wherein the young actors who embod­ied Sir Elton at var­i­ous stages of his life and career, some­times with the help of pros­thet­ics, hold forth.

Also… while we don’t dis­miss out of hand the pos­si­bil­i­ty that sen­ti­men­tal attach­ment could have caused Sir Elton to hold on to his child­hood piano, we’ll eat our plat­form boots if that’s what con­sti­tutes his Christ­mas tree.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Elton John Sings His Clas­sic Hit ‘Your Song’ Through the Years

Enjoy a Blue­grass Per­for­mance of Elton John’s 1972 Hit, “Rock­et Man”

Elton John Proves He Can Turn any Text into a Song: Watch Him Impro­vise with Lines from Hen­rik Ibsen’s Play, Peer Gynt

Sell & Spin: The His­to­ry of Adver­tis­ing, Nar­rat­ed by Dick Cavett (1999)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC this Decem­ber for the 10th anniver­sary pro­duc­tion of Greg Kotis’ apoc­a­lyp­tic hol­i­day tale, The Truth About San­ta, and the next month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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British Doctors To Prescribe Arts & Culture to Patients: “The Arts Are Essential to our Health and Wellbeing”

in Art, Health, Life | November 12th, 2018

Pho­to by Adam Jones, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

The arts and human­i­ties are after­thoughts in many Amer­i­can schools, rarely giv­en pri­or­i­ty as part of a com­pre­hen­sive edu­ca­tion, though they formed the basis of one for thou­sands of years else­where. One might say some­thing sim­i­lar of pre­ven­ta­tive med­i­cine in the U.S. health­care sys­tem. It’s tempt­ing to ide­al­ize the pri­or­i­ties of oth­er wealthy coun­tries. The Japan­ese invest­ment in “for­est bathing,” for exam­ple, comes to mind, or Finnish pub­lic schools and France’s fund­ing of an Alzheimer’s vil­lage.

But every­place has its prob­lems, and no coun­try is an island, exempt from the glob­al pres­sures of cap­i­tal or hos­tile inter­fer­ence.

But if we con­sid­er such things as art, music, and dance as essential—not only to an edu­ca­tion, but to our gen­er­al well-being—we must com­mend the UK’s Health Sec­re­tary, Matt Han­cock, for his “social pre­scrib­ing” ini­tia­tive.

Han­cock wants “the country’s doc­tors to pre­scribe ther­a­peu­tic art- or hob­by-based treat­ments for ail­ments rang­ing from demen­tia to psy­chosis, lung con­di­tions and men­tal health issues,” reports Meilan Sol­ly at Smith­son­ian. The plan “could find patients enrolled in dance class­es and singing lessons, or per­haps enjoy­ing a per­son­al­ized music playlist.”

In a speech Han­cock deliv­ered on what hap­pened to be elec­tion day in the U.S., he referred to a quote from Con­fu­cius that rep­re­sents one par­tic­u­lar­ly ancient edu­ca­tion­al tra­di­tion: “Music pro­duces a kind of plea­sure, which human nature can­not do with­out.” (He also quotes the Rolling Stones’ “Sat­is­fac­tion.”) Hancock’s idea goes beyond aris­to­crat­ic tra­di­tions of old, pro­claim­ing a diet of the arts for every­one.

They’re not just a right in their own terms as the search for truth and expres­sion of the human con­di­tion. We shouldn’t only val­ue them for the role they play in bring­ing mean­ing and dig­ni­ty to our lives. We should val­ue the arts and social activ­i­ties because they’re essen­tial to our health and well­be­ing. And that’s not me as a for­mer Cul­ture Sec­re­tary say­ing it. It’s sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly proven. Access to the arts and social activ­i­ties improves people’s men­tal and phys­i­cal health.

We’ve like­ly all come across research on the tremen­dous health ben­e­fits of what Warnock calls “social activ­i­ties,” main­tain­ing friend­ships and get­ting out and about. But what does the research into art and health say? “The med­ical ben­e­fits of engag­ing with the arts are well-record­ed,” Sol­ly writes, cit­ing stud­ies of stroke sur­vivors mak­ing great strides after per­form­ing with the Roy­al Phil­har­mon­ic; dance lessons improv­ing clar­i­ty and con­cen­tra­tion among those with ear­ly psy­chosis; and those with lung con­di­tions improv­ing with singing lessons. Addi­tion­al­ly, many stud­ies have shown the emo­tion­al lift muse­um vis­its and oth­er cul­tur­al activ­i­ties of a social nature can give.

Sim­i­lar tri­als have tak­en place in Cana­da, but the UK project is “simul­ta­ne­ous­ly more com­pre­hen­sive and less fleshed-out,” aim­ing to encour­age every­thing from cook­ing class­es, play­ing bin­go, and gar­den­ing to “more cul­tur­al­ly focused ven­tures.” The pro­pos­al does not, how­ev­er, ful­ly address fund­ing or acces­si­bil­i­ty issues for the most at-risk patients. Hancock’s rhetoric also per­haps heed­less­ly pits “more pre­ven­tion and per­spi­ra­tion” against “pop­ping pills and Prozac,” a char­ac­ter­i­za­tion that seems to triv­i­al­ize drug ther­a­pies and cre­ate a false bina­ry where the two approach­es can work well hand-in-hand.

Nonethe­less, a shift away from “over-med­ical­is­ing” and toward pre­ven­ta­tive and holis­tic approach­es has the poten­tial to address not only chron­ic symp­toms of dis­ease, but the non-med­ical causes—including stress, iso­la­tion, and sadness—that con­tribute to and wors­en ill­ness. The plan may require a rig­or­ous­ly indi­vid­u­al­ized imple­men­ta­tion by physi­cians and it will “start at a dis­ad­van­tage,” with 4% cuts per year to the NHS bud­get until 2021, as Roy­al Col­lege of Nurs­ing pub­lic health expert Helen Dono­van points out.

Those chal­lenges aside, giv­en all we know about the impor­tance of emo­tion­al well-being to phys­i­cal health, it’s hard to argue with Hancock’s premise. “Access to the arts improves people’s men­tal and phys­i­cal health,” he tweet­ed dur­ing his Novem­ber 6th roll-out of the ini­tia­tive. “It makes us hap­pi­er and health­i­er.” Art is not a lux­u­ry, but a nec­es­sary ingre­di­ent in human flour­ish­ing, and yet “the arts do not tend to be thought of in med­ical terms,” writes pro­fes­sor of health human­i­ties Paul Craw­ford, though they con­sti­tute a “shad­ow health ser­vice,” bring­ing us a kind of hap­pi­ness, I’d argue with Con­fu­cius, that we sim­ply can­not find any­where else.

via The Smith­son­ian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Japan­ese Prac­tice of “For­est Bathing”—Or Just Hang­ing Out in the Woods—Can Low­er Stress Lev­els and Fight Dis­ease

How Fin­land Cre­at­ed One of the Best Edu­ca­tion­al Sys­tems in the World (by Doing the Oppo­site of U.S.)

The French Vil­lage Designed to Pro­mote the Well-Being of Alzheimer’s Patients: A Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to the Pio­neer­ing Exper­i­ment

Med­i­ta­tion is Replac­ing Deten­tion in Baltimore’s Pub­lic Schools, and the Stu­dents Are Thriv­ing

On the Pow­er of Teach­ing Phi­los­o­phy in Pris­ons

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

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Bette Davis Divorced: “She Read Too Much,” Says Husband (1938)

in Life | November 5th, 2018

On Decem­ber 7, 1938, The New York Times report­ed on the dis­so­lu­tion of Bette Davis’ mar­riage with Har­mon “Oscar” Nel­son. The stat­ed rea­son for the divorce? The actress read too much. The report goes on to say: Har­mon “usu­al­ly just sat there while his wife read ‘to an unnec­es­sary degree.” “She thought her work was more impor­tant than her mar­riage.” “She even insist­ed on read­ing books or man­u­scripts when [Har­mon] had guests. It was all very upset­ting.”

Davis lat­er dis­cussed the emo­tion­al gulf that had sep­a­rat­ed the hus­band and wife. She also addressed an affair with busi­ness mag­nate Howard Hughes–something that appar­ent­ly got men­tioned in the divorce pro­ceed­ings but not the pages of The New York Times itself.

via @Tom DC Roberts

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Albert Ein­stein Impos­es on His First Wife a Cru­el List of Mar­i­tal Demands

The Irre­press­ible Bette Davis Recalls Her Good and Bad Days Kiss­ing in the Movies

1933 Arti­cle on Fri­da Kahlo: “Wife of the Mas­ter Mur­al Painter Glee­ful­ly Dab­bles in Works of Art”

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36 Artists Give Advice to Young Creators: Wim Wenders, Jonathan Franzen, Lydia Davis, Patti Smith, David Byrne, Umberto Eco & More

in Art, Creativity, Education, Life | October 31st, 2018

“What­ev­er you do, nobody else can do that bet­ter than you. You have to find what you can do bet­ter than any­one else, what you have in your­self that nobody else has in them. Don’t do any­thing that you know, deep in your heart, that some­body else can do bet­ter, but do what nobody else can do except for you.” That sounds like fine advice, but when receiv­ing advice we should always con­sid­er the source. In this case we could hard­ly do bet­ter: the source is Wim Wen­ders, direc­tor of Alice in the Cities, Paris, Texas, Wings of Desire, and many oth­er films besides, an auteur sel­dom accused of mak­ing movies any­one else could make.

Wen­ders’ inter­view clip and the oth­ers here come from “Advice to the Young,” a video series cre­at­ed by the Louisiana Muse­um in Den­mark (which has quite an impres­sive gift shop, inci­den­tal­ly, if you hap­pen to need advice on gift-shop­ping). Jonathan Franzen, author of nov­els like The Cor­rec­tions, Free­dom, and Puri­ty, admits to feel­ing embar­rass­ment about “giv­ing advice to the young writer,” but he still has valu­able words for cre­ators in any domain: “The most impor­tant advice I have is to have fun, to try to cre­ate some­thing that is fun to work on.”

And by fun he means fun like you have on a ten­nis court, where “you’re not just mess­ing around, you’re not just hit­ting the ball wher­ev­er you want — you are focused on hav­ing a game, and once you are in it you are hav­ing fun. That’s the kind of focused fun I’m talk­ing about, and if you are hav­ing that kind of focused fun, there’s a good chance that the read­er will too.”

The range of writ­ers from which Louisiana Muse­um has sought advice also includes Lydia Davis, whose sen­si­bil­i­ty may dif­fer from Franzen’s but who has gar­nered an equal (or even greater) degree of respect from her read­er­ship. “You learn from mod­els and you ana­lyze them, you study them, you ana­lyze them very close­ly, one thing at a time,” she says, begin­ning her more expan­sive advice based on her own method. “You don’t just sort of read the para­graph and say, ‘Oh, that real­ly flows, you know? That’s good.’ You say, ‘What kind of adjec­tives? How many? What kind of nouns? How long are the sen­tences? What’s the rhythm?’ You know, you pick it apart, and that’s very help­ful.” Her oth­er sug­ges­tions include to “be very patient, even patient with chaos” and to keep a note­book (“it takes some of the ten­sion and the wor­ry away, because if you write it down, it may just be a note. It does­n’t have to be the begin­ning of any­thing”).

“Do what you want to do,” Davis con­cludes, “and don’t wor­ry if it’s a lit­tle odd or does­n’t fit the mar­ket.” That bit of guid­ance seems to have worked for her, and in the great vari­ety of forms it can take seems to have worked for seem­ing­ly every oth­er artist. Take Ed Ruscha, for instance, whose can­vass­es of gas sta­tions, cor­po­rate sig­nage, and oth­er icons of Amer­i­can blank­ness must hard­ly have seemed geared toward any par­tic­u­lar “mar­ket” when first he paint­ed them. For the young he has only one piece of advice, received sec­ond-hand and briefly deliv­ered: “No one could ever beat this thing that Max Ernst said. They asked him what a young artist should do, and he said, ‘cut off an ear.’ That’s good advice to fol­low. You can’t beat that.”

Oth­er artists fea­tured in the video playlist include Lau­rie Ander­son, David Byrne, Umber­to Eco, Pat­ti Smith & more.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

21 Artists Give “Advice to the Young:” Vital Lessons from Lau­rie Ander­son, David Byrne, Umber­to Eco, Pat­ti Smith & More

Bri­an Eno’s Advice for Those Who Want to Do Their Best Cre­ative Work: Don’t Get a Job

To Make Great Films, You Must Read, Read, Read and Write, Write, Write, Say Aki­ra Kuro­sawa and Wern­er Her­zog

John Cleese’s Advice to Young Artists: “Steal Any­thing You Think Is Real­ly Good”

Walt Whit­man Gives Advice to Aspir­ing Young Writ­ers: “Don’t Write Poet­ry” & Oth­er Prac­ti­cal Tips (1888)

Ursu­la Le Guin Gives Insight­ful Writ­ing Advice in Her Free Online Work­shop

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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RIP Todd Bol, Founder of the Little Free Library Movement: He Leaves Behind 75,000 Small Libraries That Promote Reading Worldwide

in Books, K-12, Libraries, Life, Literature | October 29th, 2018

“The Lit­tle Free Library: Bil­lions and bil­lions read.”

In the 2013 Ted‑X talk above, Todd Bol, founder of the Lit­tle Free Library move­ment, expressed the desire that one day, he might be able to boast that his labor of love had sur­passed McDon­alds with regard to the num­ber of cus­tomers’ served.

It’s clos­ing in…

Bol, who passed away ear­li­er this month, was inspired by Andrew Carnegie’s mis­sion of repay­ing his own good for­tune by estab­lish­ing 2,509 free pub­lic libraries.

The Lit­tle Free Libraries are vast­ly more numer­ous if less impos­ing than Carnegie’s state­ly edi­fices.

Some, like the pro­to­type Bol craft­ed with lum­ber sal­vaged from a garage door in his late mother’s hon­or, resem­ble doll hous­es.

One in Detroit is a dead ringer for Doc­tor Who’s TARDIS.

There’s a bright yel­low one embla­zoned with char­ac­ters from The Simp­sons, auto­graphed by series cre­ator Matt Groen­ing.

Oth­ers are housed in repur­posed suit­cas­es, stor­age cab­i­nets, or news­pa­per hon­or box­es.

While the non-prof­it Lit­tle Free Library store sells sev­er­al stur­dy, weath­er­proof mod­els and its web­site hosts a healthy col­lec­tion of blue­prints and tips for DIY­ers, Bol was nev­er doc­tri­naire about the aes­thet­ics, pre­fer­ring to leave that up to each vol­un­teer stew­ard.

He seemed proud­est of the libraries’ com­mu­ni­ty build­ing effect (though he was also pret­ty chuffed when Read­er’s Digest ranked the project above Bruce Spring­steen in its 2013 fea­ture ”50 Sur­pris­ing Rea­sons We Love Amer­i­ca.” )

While not entire­ly devoid of naysay­ers, the good­will sur­round­ing the Lit­tle Free Library move­ment can­not be under­es­ti­mat­ed.

A stew­ard who post­ed news of his dog’s death on the side of his library received sym­pa­thy cards from neigh­bors both known and unknown to him.

A stew­ard who spe­cial­izes in giv­ing away cook­books, and invites patrons to snip herbs from an adja­cent gar­den, fre­quent­ly wakes to find home­made quiche and oth­er good­ies on the doorstep.

And when an arson­ist torched a Lit­tle Free Library in Indi­anapo­lis, the com­mu­ni­ty ral­lied, vow­ing to get enough dona­tions to replace it with 100 more.

To date, stew­ards have reg­is­tered over 75,000, in 85 coun­tries, in ser­vice of Bol’s “Take a book, Leave a book” phi­los­o­phy.

Find a Lit­tle Free Library near you, learn how to become a stew­ard, or make a dona­tion on the project’s web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The New York Pub­lic Library Lets Patrons Check Out Ties, Brief­cas­es & Hand­bags for Job Inter­views

The Rise and Fall of the Great Library of Alexan­dria: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

Down­load 150 Free Col­or­ing Books from Great Libraries, Muse­ums & Cul­tur­al Insti­tu­tions: The British Library, Smith­son­ian, Carnegie Hall & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Novem­ber 12 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The CIA’s Former Chief of Disguise Show How Spies Use Costumes in Undercover Operations

in Life, Politics, Theatre, Wikipedia | October 26th, 2018

Think on this as you ready your Hal­loween fin­ery. Some­times it’s not a case of win­ning a cos­tume con­test, or impress­ing your friends with your wit­ty take on cur­rent events or pop cul­ture.

Some­times, mas­quer­ade is a thin line between life and death.

The CIA’s for­mer Chief of Dis­guise, Jon­na Mendez, rose up through the ranks, hav­ing signed on as recep­tion­ist short­ly after her fiancé revealed—three days before the wedding—that he was actu­al­ly an under­cov­er agent.

As Chief of Dis­guise, her mis­sion was to pro­tect case offi­cers in dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions, as well as for­eign sources who rou­tine­ly put their lives at risk by meet­ing with Amer­i­can oper­a­tives.

Trans­form­ing their appear­ance was an addi­tive proposition—while it’s dif­fi­cult to make some­one short­er, slim­mer, or younger, it’s not dif­fi­cult to ren­der them taller, heav­ier, old­er…

In her expe­ri­ence, women are eas­i­ly dis­guised as men. (She shared with The New York Times’ Matthew Rosen­berg how she her­self passed unde­tect­ed in male mufti, thanks pri­mar­i­ly to a lit cig­ar.)

Men have a tougher time pass­ing as women. Fans of RuPaul’s Drag Race might take excep­tion to this posi­tion, were it not for the asser­tion that blend­ing in is key.

The goal is to be for­get­table, not fab­u­lous.

For Amer­i­cans abroad, this pos­es cer­tain cul­tur­al chal­lenges.

Mendez stress­es that dis­guise is much more than a sim­ple facial trans­for­ma­tion, involv­ing make­up, false hair, and pros­thet­ics.

It’s dress, car­riage, gait, jew­el­ry, scent…

The biggest Amer­i­can give­away is our shoes. An Ital­ian civil­ian can peg ‘em with one swift glance.

Pass­ing requires fur­ther behav­ioral mod­i­fi­ca­tions in the realms of table man­ners, gait, and even hang­ing out. (Euro­peans dis­trib­ute their weight even­ly, where­as Amer­i­cans lean.)

To fly beneath the radar, the dis­guised oper­a­tive must shoot to trans­form every aspect of their appear­ance. Imag­ine a sur­vey where­in the par­tic­i­pant recalls every phys­i­cal aspect of some­one they’ve just encoun­tered. The goal is to nudge that par­tic­i­pant into answer­ing every ques­tion incor­rect­ly.

What col­or are your eyes? Your hair? How much do you weigh? How tall are you? How old?  How would you describe your nose? Your voice? Your cloth­ing?

Change it.

Change it all.

You can do so by low tech meth­ods, using what­ev­er is on hand. Mendez once maneu­vered an agent out of a tight spot on the Sub-Con­ti­nent, by impro­vis­ing a quick change with Dr. Scholl’s pow­der and cos­met­ics col­lect­ed from local CIA wives.

She cred­its her own sec­ond hus­band, CIA “mas­ter of dis­guise” Tony Mendez (the inspi­ra­tion for Ben Affleck’s char­ac­ter in Argo) with many trade secrets she put into reg­u­lar prac­tice: den­tal facades, speech-alter­ing arti­fi­cial palettes, pros­thet­ics…

At the high end is the mask she wore to brief for­mer CIA Chief, Pres­i­dent George HW Bush, on devel­op­ments with­in the dis­guise pro­gram. The Pres­i­dent was none the wis­er.

Mean­while, a masked Amer­i­can agent chucked his mask under a Moscow rock when dan­ger com­pelled him to scup­per his mis­sion mid­way through. That mask now resides in the KGB muse­um where Mendez can­not vis­it it.

Check out the Mendezes’ book Spy­dust for more infor­ma­tion on their adven­tures in the field.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read the CIA’s Sim­ple Sab­o­tage Field Man­u­al: A Time­less Guide to Sub­vert­ing Any Orga­ni­za­tion with “Pur­pose­ful Stu­pid­i­ty” (1944)

The CIA Assess­es the Pow­er of French Post-Mod­ern Philoso­phers: Read a New­ly Declas­si­fied CIA Report from 1985

Declas­si­fied CIA Doc­u­ment Reveals That Ben Franklin (and His Big Ego) Put U.S. Nation­al Secu­ri­ty at Risk

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Novem­ber 12 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How Do You Help a Grieving Friend? Acknowledge Their Pain and Skip the Platitudes & Facile Advice

in Life, Psychology | October 16th, 2018

“What does it mean to protest suf­fer­ing, as dis­tinct from acknowl­edg­ing it?” writes Susan Son­tag in Regard­ing the Pain of Oth­ers. Acknowl­edg­ment, the recog­ni­tion of unimag­in­able pain and loss, is cen­tral, it turns out, to heal­ing. Grief expert Alan Wolfelt lists “acknowl­edg­ing the full real­i­ty of the loss” as the first in his “Six Needs of Mourn­ing.” But he also notes what so many in his field are quick to point out about con­tem­po­rary cul­ture: “Nor­mal thoughts and feel­ings con­nect­ed to loss are typ­i­cal­ly seen as unnec­es­sary and even shame­ful.”

The impor­tant work of griev­ing gets bypassed not only by our own inter­nal­ized shame, but by the unhelp­ful inter­ven­tions of oth­ers. Megan Devine—author of It’s OK That You’re Not OK: Meet­ing Grief and Loss in a Cul­ture That Doesn’t Under­stand—explains the cen­tral role of acknowl­edg­ment, sim­ply being with oth­ers in the full scope of their pain, in the short ani­mat­ed video above. Many of us are taught to do any­thing but, to throw out advice and plat­i­tudes instead. (Illus­trat­ed here by an ani­mat­ed bun­ny toss­ing out rain­bows.)

Our motives may not be “nefar­i­ous,” she says, but—to use Sontag’s phrase—trying to fix someone’s suf­fer­ing amounts to a form of protest against it. And it only makes things worse. Devine is a psy­chother­a­pist and bereaved per­son her­self. Her book, notes Jane Brody at The New York Times, “grew out of the trag­ic loss of her beloved part­ner, who drowned at age 39 while the cou­ple was on vaca­tion.” She speaks not in the jar­gon of a clin­i­cian but in the frank lan­guage of a fel­low suf­fer­er and sur­vivor.

“You don’t need plat­i­tudes,” she writes on her web­site, “You don’t need cheer­lead­ing. You don’t need to be told this all hap­pened for a rea­son. You cer­tain­ly don’t need to be told that you need­ed your pain in order to learn some­thing about life. Some things can­not be fixed. They can only be car­ried.”

Being with some­one in their grief is “a rad­i­cal act,” says Devine. “In order to real­ly sup­port you, I have to acknowl­edge that things real­ly are as bad as they feel to you.” Offers of cheer or advice cre­ate defen­sive bar­ri­ers. Turn­ing toward someone’s suf­fer­ing gives them what they need the most: “Being heard helps. It’s the best med­i­cine we have. It makes things bet­ter, even when they can’t be made right.”

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Depres­sion & Melan­choly: Ani­mat­ed Videos Explain the Cru­cial Dif­fer­ence Between Every­day Sad­ness and Clin­i­cal Depres­sion

Stephen Fry on Cop­ing with Depres­sion: It’s Rain­ing, But the Sun Will Come Out Again

How Stress Can Change Your Brain: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

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

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Banksy Shreds His $1.4 Million Painting at Auction, Taking a Tradition of Artists Destroying Art to New Heights

in Art, Comedy, Life | October 8th, 2018

The first time van­dals defaced his sculp­ture, Dirty Cor­ner, at Ver­sailles, artist Anish Kapoor wrote an essay in which he con­sid­ered his options:

Should the paint that has been thrown all over the sculp­ture be removed? Or should it remain and be part of the work? Does the polit­i­cal vio­lence of the van­dal­ism make Dirty Cor­ner “dirt­i­er”? Does this dirty polit­i­cal act reflect the dirty pol­i­tics of exclu­sion, mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion, elit­ism, racism, Islam­o­pho­bia?

The ques­tion I ask of myself is: can I, the artist, trans­form this crass act of polit­i­cal van­dal­ism and vio­lence into a cre­ative act? Would this not be the best revenge?

Some­times artists are the ones behind the van­dal­ism.

Ai Wei­wei starred in a 1995 black-and-white pho­to trip­tych that doc­u­ments his inten­tion­al destruc­tion of a Han Dynasty urn from his pri­vate col­lec­tion.

Broth­ers Jake and Dinos Chap­man pur­chased a mint con­di­tion set of Goya’s The Dis­as­ters of War, painstak­ing­ly re-ren­dered the vic­tims’ heads as grotesque­ly cute, col­or­ful car­toons, and exhib­it­ed the altered etch­ings under the title Insult to Injury.

Robert Rauschen­berg sought and received per­mis­sion to erase a draw­ing that his fel­low Abstract Expres­sion­ist Willem de Koon­ing had giv­en him, at his request.

Cer­tain­ly, artists of all stripes have been known to erad­i­cate their own work in fits of pique, pas­sion, and self-reproach.

But until last week, no artist had ever van­dal­ized their own work with such a dis­pas­sion­ate, pre-med­i­tat­ed sense of fun as Banksy, the anony­mous clown prince of street art and mas­sive scale pranks.

As you’ve like­ly heard by now, with­in sec­onds of his icon­ic Girl With Bal­loon (2006) sell­ing at Sotheby’s for £1,042,000—$1.4 million—the paint­ing began to self-destruct, thanks to a cus­tom-built shred­der the artist had pre-loaded into its frame.

No one seemed par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­tressed about it.

Auc­tion atten­dees quick­ly scram­bled to cap­ture the moment with their cell phones.

Auc­tion­eer Oliv­er Bark­er looks on in admirably mild con­fu­sion.

No self-appoint­ed hero rushed for­ward to jam the works with an umbrel­la or broom han­dle.

The as-yet-uniden­ti­fied buy­er was not in the room, no doubt to their ever-last­ing regret. Imag­ine los­ing out on those brag­ging rights!

While Sotheby’s and the buy­er ham­mer out their unprece­dent­ed next steps, some art experts have stat­ed that it would be pos­si­ble, giv­en the clean geom­e­try of the cuts, to restore the can­vas.

Though who would want to, giv­en the spec­u­la­tion that this stunt imme­di­ate­ly increased the val­ue of the work, any­where from 50% to near dou­ble the pur­chase price?

Per­haps the buy­er will choose to fin­ish the job and sell it off strip-by-strip.

Office sup­ply stores will see an uptick in shred­der sales to ven­dors sell­ing Banksy knock-offs sten­cilled on sub­way maps.

Sotheby’s senior direc­tor, Alex Branczik, insist­ed that no one there was in on the joke, but The New York Times smells a rat:

The frame would pre­sum­ably have been rather heavy and thick for its size, some­thing an auc­tion house spe­cial­ist or art han­dler might have noticed. Detailed con­di­tion reports are rou­tine­ly request­ed by the would-be buy­ers of high-val­ue art­works. Unusu­al­ly, this rel­a­tive­ly small Banksy had been hung on a wall, rather than placed by porters on a podi­um for the moment of sale. 

The fact that Girl with Bal­loon was the final item on the block is either a great piece of luck, or a bit of can­ny stage man­age­ment on the auc­tion house’s part. Recap­tur­ing the atten­dees’ atten­tion after that stunt would be an uphill bat­tle.

It’s doubt­ful that buy­ers will shy away from Sotheby’s as a place where high­ly val­ued art­work starts to devour itself the moment the gav­el comes down. That kind of light­ning strikes but once.

What may cir­cle back to bite the ven­er­a­ble firm in its well padded rear is the ease with which some­one in the crowd was able to acti­vate the may­hem, using a device con­cealed in his bag. What’s worse, lax secu­ri­ty or maybe lying about fore­knowl­edge of the prank? It’s hard not to raise those as pos­si­bil­i­ties.

The man with the bag was escort­ed out. Not even the con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists are peg­ging him as Banksy.

As for the steady-hand­ed fel­low anoth­er attendee caught calm­ly zoom­ing in on his phone from the per­fect angle… well, let’s just say the tabloids have picked up on his resem­blance to Robin Gun­ning­ham, oft thought to be Clark Kent to Banksy’s Super­man.

Banksy’s post-mortem, unlike Kapoor’s, does not sug­gest a man tor­tured by unre­solved ques­tions.

“A few years ago I secret­ly built a shred­der into a paint­ing, in case it was ever put up for auc­tion,” he wrote on his Insta­gram. “Going, going, gone.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When Robert Rauschen­berg Asked Willem De Koon­ing for One of His Paint­ings … So That He Could Erase It

Watch Dis­ma­land — The Offi­cial Unof­fi­cial Film, A Cin­e­mat­ic Jour­ney Through Banksy’s Apoc­a­lyp­tic Theme Park

Pat­ti Smith Presents Top Web­by Award to Banksy; He Accepts with Self-Mock­ing Video

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Octo­ber 15 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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