David Bowie Offers Advice for Aspiring Artists: “Go a Little Out of Your Depth,” “Never Fulfill Other People’s Expectations”

in Life, Music | January 10th, 2017

Jan­u­ary 10th, 2017–David Bowie died one year ago today. Revis­it­ing my own mem­o­ries of him, it so often seemed impos­si­ble that he could grow old, much less pass away, even as we all watched him age over the decades. He did it much bet­ter than most, that’s for sure, and grew into the role of elder states­man with incred­i­ble poise and grace, though he also didn’t let that role be his last one.

What else should we have expect­ed from the artist who wrote “Changes”—the defin­i­tive cre­ative state­ment on fac­ing time and mortality—at the age of 24, before he’d even achieved the inter­na­tion­al super­star­dom that Zig­gy Star­dust brought him? Bowie was always an old soul. “It’s not age itself,” he told the BBC in 2002. “Age doesn’t both­er me. So many of my heroes were old­er guys.… I embrace that aspect of it.” And so, in his lat­er years, he became an old­er guy hero to mil­lions.

In 1997, after his drum and bass-inspired Earth­ling, Bowie gave an inter­view in which he offered the time­less wis­dom to younger artists in the clip above:

Nev­er play to the gallery.… Nev­er work for oth­er peo­ple in what you do. Always remem­ber that the rea­son that you ini­tial­ly start­ed work­ing was that there was some­thing inside your­self that you felt that if you could man­i­fest in some way, you would under­stand more about your­self and how you co-exist with the rest of soci­ety.… I think it’s ter­ri­bly dan­ger­ous for an artist to ful­fill oth­er people’s expec­ta­tions.

It’s advice we’ve like­ly heard some ver­sion of before—perhaps even from one of Bowie’s own old­er-guy heroes, William S. Bur­roughs (here by way of Pat­ti Smith). But I’ve nev­er heard it stat­ed so suc­cinct­ly and with so much con­vic­tion and feel­ing. We nat­u­ral­ly asso­ciate David Bowie with art­ful inau­then­tic­i­ty, with a suc­ces­sion of masks. He encour­aged that impres­sion at every turn, even telling a grad­u­at­ing Berklee Col­lege of Music class in 1999, “it seemed that authen­tic­i­ty and the nat­ur­al form of expres­sion wasn’t going to be my forte.”

But in hind­sight, and espe­cial­ly in the rapt, posthu­mous atten­tion paid to Bowie’s final work, Black­star, it can seem that his embrace of pos­es was often itself a pose. Bowie has always been can­did, in var­i­ous moments of self-reflec­tion, about his mis­steps and excess­es. But not to have tak­en the risks he did, not to have placed him­self in uncom­fort­able sit­u­a­tions, would have meant impov­er­ish­ing his work. “The oth­er thing I would say,” he goes on, “is that if you feel safe in the area you’re work­ing in, you’re not work­ing in the right area. Always go a lit­tle fur­ther into the water than you feel you are capa­ble of being in. Go a lit­tle bit out of your depth. When you don’t feel that your feet are quite touch­ing the bot­tom, you’re just about in the right place to do some­thing excit­ing.”

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Gives Grad­u­a­tion Speech At Berklee Col­lege of Music: “Music Has Been My Door­way of Per­cep­tion” (1999)

The Sto­ry of Zig­gy Star­dust: How David Bowie Cre­at­ed the Char­ac­ter that Made Him Famous

Pat­ti Smith Shares William S. Bur­roughs’ Advice for Writ­ers and Artists

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

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Inside the Creepy, “Abandoned” Wizard of Oz Theme Park: Scenes of Beautiful Decay

in Film, Life, Travel | January 6th, 2017

The roman­tic allure of the ghost­ly, aban­doned theme park is dif­fi­cult to resist. Case in point: The Land of Oz, above, a not-entire­ly-defunct attrac­tion nes­tled atop North Carolina’s Beech Moun­tain.

Deb­bie Reynolds, accom­pa­nied by her 13-year-old daugh­ter, Car­rie Fish­er, cut the rib­bon on the park’s open­ing day in 1970.

Its road was far from smooth, even before urban explor­ers began filch­ing its 44,000 cus­tom-glazed yel­low bricks, even­tu­al­ly forc­ing man­age­ment to repave with paint­ed stand issue mod­els.

One of its two founders died of can­cer six months before open­ing, and lat­er a fire destroyed the Emer­ald City and a col­lec­tion of mem­o­ra­bil­ia from the 1939 MGM film.

Crip­pled by the gas cri­sis and insur­mount­able com­pe­ti­tion from Dis­ney World and its ilk, the Land of Oz closed in 1980, thus spar­ing it the indig­ni­ties of Yelp reviews and dis­cern­ing child vis­i­tors whose expec­ta­tions have been formed by CGI.

Its shut­ter­ing attract­ed anoth­er kind of tourist: the cam­era-tot­ing, fence hop­ping con­nois­seurs of what is now known as “ruin porn.”

An iso­lat­ed, aban­doned theme park based on the Wiz­ard of Oz? Could there be a holi­er grail?

Only trou­ble is…the Land of Oz didn’t stay shut­tered. Local real estate devel­op­ers cleaned it up a bit, lur­ing overnight vis­i­tors with rentals of Dorothy’s house. They start­ed a tra­di­tion of reopen­ing the whole park for one week­end every Octo­ber, and demand was such that June is now Land of Oz Fam­i­ly Fun Month. The Inter­na­tion­al Wiz­ard of Oz Club held its annu­al con­ven­tion there in 2011. How aban­doned can it be?

And yet, unof­fi­cial vis­i­tors, sneak­ing onto the grounds off-sea­son, insist that it is. I get it. The quest of adven­ture, the desire for beau­ti­ful decay, the brag­ging rights… After pho­tograph­ing the invari­ably leaf strewn Yel­low Brick Road, they turn their lens­es to the lumpy-faced trees of the Enchant­ed For­est.

Yes, they’re creepy, but it’s less from “aban­don­ment” than a low-bud­get approx­i­ma­tion by the hands of artists less expert than those of the orig­i­nal.

It’s safe to pre­sume that any leaves and weeds lit­ter­ing the premis­es are mere­ly evi­dence of chang­ing sea­sons, rather than total neglect.

What I want to know is, where’s the sex, drugs & rock’n’roll evi­dence of local teens’ off-sea­son blowouts—no spray paint­ed f‑bombs? No dead sol­diers? Secu­ri­ty must be pret­ty tight.

If creepy’s what the per­pet­u­a­tors of the aban­don­ment myth crave, they could con­tent them­selves with the ama­teur footage above, shot by a vis­it­ing dad in 1970.

Those cos­tumes! The scare­crow and the tin man in par­tic­u­lar… Buz­zfeed would love ’em, but it’s hard to imag­ine a mil­len­ni­al tot going for that mess. Their Hal­loween cos­tumes were 1000 times more accu­rate.

(In inter­views, the one gen­er­a­tion who can remem­ber the Land of Oz in its prime is a loy­al bunch, recall­ing only their long ago sense of won­der and excite­ment. Ah, life before Beta­max…)

The doc­u­men­tary video below should set­tle the aban­don­ment myth once and for all. It opens not in Kansas, but New York City, as a car­load of young per­form­ers heads off for their annu­al gig at the Land of Oz. They’re con­ver­sant in jazz hands and cer­tain Friends of Dorothy tropes, sure­ly more so than the local play­ers who orig­i­nal­ly staffed the park. Clear­ly, these ringers were hired to turn in cred­i­ble imper­son­ations of the char­ac­ters immor­tal­ized by Ray Bol­ger, Burt Lahr, and Judy Gar­land. Pre­sum­ably, their updat­ed cos­tumes also passed muster with Autumn at Oz’s savvy child atten­dees.

Still crav­ing that ruin porn? Busi­ness Insid­er pub­lished Seph Law­less’ pho­tos of “the crum­bling park” here.

If you’d pre­fer to rub­ber­neck at a tru­ly aban­doned theme park, check out the Carpetbagger’s video tour of Cave City, Kentucky’s Fun­town Moun­tain. (Though be fore­warned. It was sold at auc­tion in April 2016 and plans are afoot to reengi­neer it as as “an epic play­ground of won­der, imag­i­na­tion, and dreams.”)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Dis­ney­land 1957: A Lit­tle Stroll Down Mem­o­ry Lane

Juras­sic Park Tells You Every­thing You Need to Know About the Dan­gers of Glob­al Cap­i­tal­ism

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch the First Surf Movie Ever Made: A 1906 Thomas Edison Film Shot in Hawaii

in History, Life, Sports | December 27th, 2016

Above you can watch what was arguably the first surf movie ever made–the very begin­ning of a long cin­e­mat­ic tra­di­tion that gave us Gid­get in 1959, and The End­less Sum­mer in 1966. And lest you think the surf movie reached its zenith dur­ing those hal­cy­on days, some would argue that the best surf films were lat­er pro­duced dur­ing the aughts–Thick­er Than Water (2000), Blue Crush (2002), Step Into Liq­uid (2003), Rid­ing Giants (2004), etc. And don’t for­get this great lit­tle short, “Dark Side of the Lens.”

In 1906, smack in the mid­dle of the aughts of last cen­tu­ry, Thomas Edi­son sent the pio­neer­ing cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Robert K. Bonine to shoot an ‘Actu­al­i­ty’ doc­u­men­tary about life in the Poly­ne­sian islands. The blurb accom­pa­ny­ing this video describes the scene above: “The first mov­ing pic­tures of surfers rid­ing waves — Surf Rid­ers, Waiki­ki Beach, Hon­olu­lu — shows a minute of about a dozen surfers on ala­ia boards in head-high, off­shore surf at what is prob­a­bly Canoes. These surfers are shot too far away to detail what they were wear­ing, but they all appear to be in tanksuits.”

If you’re inter­est­ed in tak­ing a deep dive into Hawai­i’s surf­ing scene, I’d def­i­nite­ly rec­om­mend pick­up up a copy of Bar­bar­ian Days: A Surf­ing Life, the mem­oir by New York­er writer William Finnegan. It won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Thomas Edison’s Silent Film of the “Fartiste” Who Delight­ed Crowds at Le Moulin Rouge (1900)

Dark Side of the Lens: A Poet­ic Short Film by Surf Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Mick­ey Smith

Watch the Very First Fea­ture Doc­u­men­tary: Nanook of the North by Robert J. Fla­her­ty (1922)

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Slavoj Žižek Answers the Question “Should We Teach Children to Believe in Santa Claus?”

in Life, Philosophy | December 16th, 2016

Local par­ent tells oth­er local par­ent how to raise their chil­dren: this sce­nario has pro­voked many a neigh­bor­hood list­serv flame­war, and maybe a street brawl or three. Unkempt and inflam­ma­to­ry philoso­pher Slavoj Žižek telling par­ents how to raise their chil­dren? Well… maybe a few hun­dred eye­rolls.

I exag­ger­ate. Žižek only address­es one small aspect of parenting—a benign, cul­tur­al­ly spe­cif­ic one at that, which ranks far beneath, say, health and edu­ca­tion and falls in line with whether one should pre­tend to be a noc­tur­nal crea­ture who lives on children’s teeth, or to see a giant rab­bit in the spring.

We’re talk­ing about San­ta Claus, and to lie or not to lie to your kids is the ques­tion posed to Žižek by stu­dents at SUNY Brock­port in the low-qual­i­ty video above. If you can adjust to the audio/video, you’ll hear the cul­tur­al the­o­rist give an inter­est­ing answer. I can’t vouch for its con­so­nance with child psy­chol­o­gy, but as a par­ent, I can say my tiny demo­graph­ic con­firms the insight.

Though he’s near­ly inaudi­ble at first, we even­tu­al­ly hear Žižek say­ing, “No… they will absolute­ly take it as this cyn­i­cal [rea­son?] of ‘let’s pre­tend that it’s real,’ no mat­ter how much you insist that you mean it lit­er­al­ly.” For those who might ago­nize over the ques­tion, it may be most kids aren’t near­ly as gullible as we imag­ine, just good sports who don’t want to let us down.

This would not be a Žižek answer if it did not veer into claims far more ambi­tious, or grandiose, than the ques­tion seems to war­rant. Sens­ing per­haps he’s on shaky ground with the whole par­ent­ing advice thing, he quick­ly moves on to the sub­ject of “what does it mean, real­ly, to believe?” Belief, says Žižek—in the sense of indi­vid­ual, inward assent to meta­phys­i­cal propositions—is a mod­ern inven­tion.

In attempt­ing to make Saint Nicholas believ­able to chil­dren, we’ve para­dox­i­cal­ly turned him into a car­toon char­ac­ter (and in the U.S. and else­where ban­ished his lov­able demon side­kick, Kram­pus). Kids see right through it, says Žižek in anoth­er inter­view above. And so, “You have a belief which is nobody’s belief! Nobody believes in the first per­son.”

Why, then, not just admit we’re all pre­tend­ing, and say “we’re enjoy­ing a sto­ry togeth­er”? We do it every night with chil­dren, this one just involves food, lights, fam­i­ly, gifts, sweaters, uncom­fort­able trav­el and maybe reli­gious cer­e­monies of your tra­di­tion. You can often hear Žižek opine on those kinds of beliefs as well. My only com­ment on the mat­ter is to say, sin­cere­ly, Hap­py Hol­i­days.

via Crit­i­cal The­o­ry

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In His Lat­est Film, Slavoj Žižek Claims “The Only Way to Be an Athe­ist is Through Chris­tian­i­ty”

Slavoj Žižek: What Ful­fils You Cre­ative­ly Isn’t What Makes You Hap­py

Hermeneu­tics of Toi­lets by Slavoj Žižek: An Ani­ma­tion About Find­ing Ide­ol­o­gy in Unlike­ly Places

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

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Watch Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Characters Enter the Real World

in Animation, Film, Life | December 16th, 2016

Beau­ti­ful back­grounds are a sta­ple of direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki’s ani­mat­ed fea­tures. Whether depict­ing a whim­si­cal Euro­pean vil­lage, a mas­sive tra­di­tion­al bath­house com­plex pop­u­lat­ed by ghosts, or a rainy bus stop in sub­ur­ban Tokyo, they come to the fore in the qui­et moments for which this direc­tor is also deserved­ly cel­e­brat­ed.

Giv­en the rev­er­ence this old-fash­ioned artistry has inspired, it was par­tic­u­lar­ly auda­cious of Kore­an film­mak­er Kojer to sep­a­rate some of Miyazaki’s best known char­ac­ters from their hand-paint­ed habi­tats, via a painstak­ing Roto­scop­ing pro­ce­dure.

Their lib­er­a­tion was short lived, giv­en that Kojer’s inter­est lay in trans­pos­ing them onto live action approx­i­ma­tions of the Stu­dio Ghi­b­li orig­i­nals.

Shot pri­mar­i­ly in South Korea, the new set­tings, above, are uncan­ny dop­pel­gängers, fol­low­ing some vig­or­ous Pho­to­shop­ping. One won­ders if Kojer expe­ri­enced any regret, sev­er­al hun­dred hours into this masochis­tic assign­ment. So many challenges—from shad­ows to light­ing to cloudy skies in need of alter­ing, frame by painstak­ing frame. The obsta­cles posed by semi-trans­par­ent char­ac­ters such as Spir­it­ed Away’s No Face sound pos­i­tive­ly unearth­ly.

Clear­ly a labor of love from an artist whose most high pro­file work seems to be a web­series star­ring his own hand. His quest took him to Provence Vil­lage in Paju, South Korea and Seoul’s Olympic Park. He rode the #4 line sub­way to the end of the line and the #2 to Seok­chon Lake where the Amer­i­can art col­lec­tive FriendswithYou’s Super Moon project float­ed ear­li­er this year.

The result—some of it some shot out a car win­dow and cor­rect­ed in Adobe’s Warp Stabilizer—is set to the tune of “One Sum­mer’s Day” from Spir­it­ed Away.

Love­ly.

via Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Build Your Own Minia­ture Sets from Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Films: My Neigh­bor Totoro, Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice & More

Soft­ware Used by Hayao Miyazaki’s Ani­ma­tion Stu­dio Becomes Open Source & Free to Down­load

The Simp­sons Pay Won­der­ful Trib­ute to the Ani­me of Hayao Miyaza­ki

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Medieval Doodler Draws a “Rockstar Lady” in a Manuscript of Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy (Circa 1500)

in History, Life, Philosophy | December 13th, 2016

Sloane 554 f 53

By the ear­ly 6th cen­tu­ry, the West­ern Roman Empire had effec­tive­ly come to an end after the depo­si­tion of the final emper­or and the instal­la­tion of Ger­man­ic kings. Under the sec­ond such ruler, Theodor­ic the Great, emerged one of the most influ­en­tial works of lit­er­a­ture of the Euro­pean Mid­dle Ages: The Con­so­la­tion of Phi­los­o­phy. Its author, sen­a­tor and philoso­pher Boethius, wrote the text while impris­oned and await­ing exe­cu­tion.

A con­ver­sa­tion the despon­dent author has with his muse, Lady Phi­los­o­phy, the book seeks the nature of hap­pi­ness and the nature of God, in the midst of great loss, dis­grace, and tyran­ny. The Con­so­la­tion of Phi­los­o­phy belongs to a long tra­di­tion of prison lit­er­a­ture that extends to Don Quixote, “Civ­il Dis­obe­di­ence,” and “Let­ter from a Birm­ing­ham Jail.” Almost a thou­sand years after Boethius’s 524 exe­cu­tion, one late Medieval read­er of his book—perhaps inspired by the text, or not—left the draw­ing you see above on the last page of a 15th cen­tu­ry Eng­lish illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­script.

medieval-rocker-2

Such doo­dling was com­mon prac­tice at the time, notes Medieval book his­to­ri­an Erik Kwakkel. Blank pages in man­u­scripts “often filled up with pen tri­als, notes, doo­dles, or draw­ings.” But this par­tic­u­lar doo­dle “is not what you’d expect: a full-on draw­ing of a maid­en play­ing the lute, which she holds just like a gui­tar.” Boethius may have dis­missed poet­ry in his search for hap­pi­ness in the midst of despair, but his lit­er­ary efforts might put us in mind of poet Berthold Brecht, who famous­ly wrote while in exile from Ger­many in the 1930s, “In the dark times/Will there also be singing? Yes, there will also be singing/About the dark times.”

As if to remind us of the neces­si­ty not only of phi­los­o­phy, but also of song in dark times, our anony­mous read­er drew a “rock­star lady,” whose pose con­notes noth­ing but pure joy. We could jux­ta­pose her with the joy­ful gui­tar pos­es of any num­ber of mod­ern blues and rock stars, who have played through any num­ber of dark times. The draw­ing appears in a trans­la­tion by John Wal­ton dat­ing from between 1410 and 1500, a cen­tu­ry in Europe with no short­age of its own polit­i­cal crises and tyran­ni­cal rulers. “Even in the dark­est of times,” wrote Han­nah Arendt in her essay col­lec­tion pro­fil­ing artists and writ­ers like Boethius and Brecht, “we have the right to expect some illu­mi­na­tion,” whether from phi­los­o­phy or poet­ry. We also have the right—the medieval doo­dler in Boethius’ book seemed to sug­gest some 500-odd years ago—to rock out.

via Erik Kwakkel

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wear­able Books: In Medieval Times, They Took Old Man­u­scripts & Turned Them into Clothes

Medieval Cats Behav­ing Bad­ly: Kit­ties That Left Paw Prints … and Peed … on 15th Cen­tu­ry Man­u­scripts

Won­der­ful­ly Weird & Inge­nious Medieval Books

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

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200,000 Years of Staggering Human Population Growth Shown in an Animated Map

in Health, History, Life, Science | December 9th, 2016

Last night, dur­ing a talk on his new book Rais­ing the Floor, long­time labor leader and cur­rent senior fel­low at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Andy Stern told the sto­ry of a king and a chess­mas­ter engaged in pitched bat­tle. “If you win,” said the over­con­fi­dent king, “you may have any­thing you desire.” Lo, the chess­mas­ter wins the game, but being a hum­ble man asks the king only to pro­vide him with some rice. The king smug­ly agrees to his eccen­tric con­di­tions: he must place a grain of rice on the first square of the chess­board, then dou­ble the amount of each suc­ces­sive square. Once he reach­es the mid­dle, the king stops and has the chess­mas­ter exe­cut­ed. The request would have cost him his entire king­dom and more.

Stern used the sto­ry to illus­trate the expo­nen­tial growth of tech­nol­o­gy, which now advances at a rate we can nei­ther con­fi­dent­ly pre­dict nor con­trol. Some­thing very sim­i­lar has hap­pened to the human pop­u­la­tion in the past two-hun­dred years, as you can see illus­trat­ed in the video above from the Amer­i­can Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry.

Evolv­ing some 200,000 years ago in Sub-Saha­ran Africa, and migrat­ing across the globe some 100,000 years ago, mod­ern humans remained rel­a­tive­ly few in num­ber for sev­er­al thou­sand years. That is, until the tech­no­log­i­cal break­through of agri­cul­ture. “By AD 1,” the video text tells us, “world pop­u­la­tion reached approx­i­mate­ly 170 mil­lion peo­ple.”

After a very rapid expan­sion, the num­bers rose and fell slow­ly in the ensu­ing cen­turies as wars, dis­ease, and famines dec­i­mat­ed pop­u­la­tions. World pop­u­la­tion reached only 180 mil­lion by the year 200 AD, then dwin­dled through the Mid­dle Ages, only pick­ing up again slow­ly around 700. Through­out this his­to­ri­o­graph­ic mod­el of pop­u­la­tion growth, the video info­graph­ic pro­vides help­ful sym­bols and leg­ends that chart his­toric cen­ters like the Roman Empire and Han Dynasty, and show major world events like the Bubon­ic plague.

Then we reach the world-shak­ing dis­rup­tions that were the birth of Cap­i­tal­ism, the Atlantic slave trade, and the Sci­en­tif­ic and Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tions, when “mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy and med­i­cine bring faster growth.”

That’s quite the under­state­ment. The growth, like the grains of rice on the chess­board, pro­ceed­ed expo­nen­tial­ly, reach­ing 1 bil­lion peo­ple around 1800, then explod­ing to over 7 bil­lion today. As the yel­low dots—each rep­re­sent­ing a node of 1 mil­lion people—take over the map, the video quick­ly becomes an alarm­ing call to action. While the num­bers are lev­el­ing off, and fer­til­i­ty has dropped, “if cur­rent trends con­tin­ue,” we’re told, “glob­al pop­u­la­tion will peak at 11 bil­lion around 2100.” Peak num­bers could be low­er, or sub­stan­tial­ly high­er, depend­ing on the pre­dic­tive val­ue of the mod­els and any num­ber of unknow­able vari­ables.

Andy Stern’s research has focused on how we build economies that sup­port our mas­sive glob­al population—as machines stand poised in the next decade or so to edge mil­lions of blue and white col­lar work­ers out of an already pre­car­i­ous labor mar­ket. The Amer­i­can Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry asks some dif­fer­ent, but no less urgent ques­tions that take us even far­ther into the future. How can the planet’s finite, and dwin­dling, resources, with our cur­rent abuse and mis­use of them, sup­port such large and grow­ing num­bers of peo­ple?

It may take anoth­er tech­no­log­i­cal break­through to mit­i­gate the dam­age caused by pre­vi­ous tech­no­log­i­cal break­throughs. Or it may take an enor­mous, rev­o­lu­tion­ary polit­i­cal shift. In either case, the “choic­es we make today” about fam­i­ly plan­ning, con­sump­tion, envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tion, and con­ser­va­tion “affect the future of our species—and all life on Earth.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Crowd­ed House: How the World’s Pop­u­la­tion Grew to 7 Bil­lion Peo­ple

Hans Rosling Uses Ikea Props to Explain World of 7 Bil­lion Peo­ple

The Birth Con­trol Hand­book: The Under­ground Stu­dent Pub­li­ca­tion That Let Women Take Con­trol of Their Bod­ies (1968)

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

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Organization Guru Marie Kondo’s Tips for Dealing with Your Massive Piles of Unread Books (or What They Call in Japan “Tsundoku”)

in Books, Life | December 9th, 2016

“Eats, Shoots, and Leaves is Britain’s num­ber-one best sell­er at the moment, and it’s about punc­tu­a­tion, and no, I don’t get it either,” writes Nick Horn­by in his Feb­ru­ary 2004 “Stuff I’ve Been Read­ing” col­umn for the Believ­er. What explains how Lynne Truss’ guide to the prop­er use of com­mas, semi­colons, and dash­es became such a pub­lish­ing phe­nom­e­non those thir­teen hol­i­day sea­sons ago? Horn­by the­o­rizes that every­one had some­one in mind to give a copy, whether a punc­tu­a­tion pedant them­selves or some­one whose skills in the area could use a sharp­en­ing, ulti­mate­ly pre­dict­ing that “in the end the book will sell a quar­ter-mil­lion copies, but only two hun­dred peo­ple will own them.”

Some­thing sim­i­lar may have hap­pened with Marie Kon­do’s book The Life-Chang­ing Mag­ic of Tidy­ing Up, first pub­lished in Japan in 2011 and in Eng­lish in 2014. Now peo­ple all over the world have read it to learn the sim­ple secrets of Kon­do’s “Kon­Mari method” of declut­ter­ing — or have giv­en it to friends and rel­a­tives they see as bad­ly in need of such a method. Still, all but the most ascetic of us occa­sion­al­ly bend to the hoard­er’s instinct in cer­tain areas of life, and it would sure­ly sur­prise none of us to find out that Open Cul­ture read­ers have, on occa­sion, been known to let their book­shelves run over.

Hence the pop­u­lar­i­ty of Jonathan Crow’s post on tsun­doku, the Japan­ese word for the unread books that pile up unread in our homes. Japan, a land of small domes­tic spaces but a great deal of stuff, has paid spe­cial atten­tion to the prob­lem of hoard­ers and the gomi yashi­ki (or “trash man­sions”) in which they some­times end up. Some observers, like pho­tog­ra­ph­er Kyoichi Tsuzu­ki, cel­e­brate the ever-present threat of total dis­or­der; oth­ers, like Kon­do, go on not just to attain guru sta­tus by sell­ing books, but then to show fans how to tidy up all those books they’ve accu­mu­lat­ed.

“Many peo­ple say that books are one thing they just can’t part with regard­less of whether they are avid read­ers or not,” Kon­do writes, “but the real prob­lem is actu­al­ly the way in which they part with them.” The way she offers requires adher­ence to cer­tain prac­tices and beliefs, includ­ing the fol­low­ing:

Take your books off the shelves. Kon­do recommends–often against the objec­tions of her clients–first de-shelv­ing all their books and pil­ing them on the floor (that is, the books that haven’t spent their entire lives in such a state). “Like clothes or any oth­er belong­ings, books that have been left untouched on the shelf for a long time are dor­mant. Or per­haps I should say that they’re ‘invis­i­ble.’ ” Pos­si­bly draw­ing on what she learned from five years spent as an atten­dant maid­en at a Shin­to shrine, she ren­ders them vis­i­ble again, as you can see in the video above, “by phys­i­cal­ly mov­ing them, expos­ing them to air and mak­ing them ‘con­scious.’ ”

Make sure to touch each one. Only with your books con­scious can you “take them in your hand one by one and decide whether you want to keep or dis­card each one. The cri­te­ri­on is, of course, whether or not it gives you a thrill of plea­sure when you touch it.” Not when you read it (start­ing to read or even open­ing any of them can, she warns, derail the entire project) but when you touch it.

“Some­time” means “nev­er.” We all own books we tell our­selves we’ll get around to one day (a habit which must have led Horn­by to rig­or­ous­ly sep­a­rate “Books Read” from mere “Books Bought” in his col­umn), but Kon­do sug­gests that the accu­mu­la­tion of books with only an intent to read them in the non-imme­di­ate future lessens the impact of the books you do read. “Tim­ing is every­thing,” she writes. “The moment you first encounter a book is the right time to read it. To avoid miss­ing that moment, I rec­om­mend you keep your col­lec­tion small.”

Lithub’s Sum­mer Bren­nan recent­ly wrote up her own expe­ri­ence of weed­ing out her per­son­al library the Kon­Mari way. Bren­nan breaks the do-not-open rule and finds let­ters, lists, tick­ets (both flight and traf­fic), pho­tos, bills, receipts, and even a high-school hall pass stuffed between their pages. Con­tra Kon­do, she argues that our books “are not imper­son­al units of knowl­edge, inter­change­able and replace­able, but rather recep­ta­cles for the moments of our lives, whose pages have sopped up morn­ing hopes and late-night sor­rows, car­ried in hon­ey­moon suit­cas­es or clutched to bro­ken hearts. They are memen­tos, which [Kon­do] cau­tions read­ers not to even attempt to con­tem­plate get­ting rid of until the very last.”

Some of the books we own may spark joy, in oth­er words, but almost all of them spark a range of oth­er feel­ings besides. Even so, the hol­i­day sea­son hav­ing come upon us again, we’ve got no choice but to make at least a lit­tle room on our shelves — or our floors — to accom­mo­date the new books we’ll no doubt receive as gifts. Farewell, then, to all those extra copies of best­selling punc­tu­a­tion guides. Only after they’ve gone will we see about breath­ing some life into the vol­umes to which we’ve grown more deeply attached. After all, a year’s end, as many a writer knows, pro­vides the ide­al time for reflec­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Tsun­doku,” the Japan­ese Word for the New Books That Pile Up on Our Shelves, Should Enter the Eng­lish Lan­guage

Change Your Life! Learn the Japan­ese Art of Declut­ter­ing, Orga­niz­ing & Tidy­ing Things Up

7 Tips for Read­ing More Books in a Year

What’s the Fastest Way to Alpha­bet­ize Your Book­shelf?

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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