Watch Helen Keller & Teacher Annie Sullivan Demonstrate How Helen Learned to Speak (1930)

in Education, History, Life | October 17th, 2016

Know­ing the trans­for­ma­tive effect an inspired teacher can have on an “unreach­able” stu­dent, one can only hope that geog­ra­phy and luck will con­spire to bring the two togeth­er at an ear­ly point in the child’s devel­op­ment.

Helen Keller, author, activist, and poster girl for sur­mount­ing near-impos­si­ble odds, cer­tain­ly lucked out in the teacher depart­ment. Ren­dered deaf and blind by a fever con­tract­ed at 19 months, Keller earned a rep­u­ta­tion as a holy ter­ror in a fam­i­ly ill-equipped to under­stand what her wild rages might sig­ni­fy.

Her well-con­nect­ed par­ents con­sult­ed var­i­ous experts, includ­ing soon-to-be-friend, inven­tor Alexan­der Gra­ham Bell, a trail that ulti­mate­ly led to the Perkins School for the Blind and the 20-year-old Annie Sul­li­van.

With­in a few short months of her arrival at the Keller fam­i­ly home, Sul­li­van led the near­ly-sev­en-year-old Keller to her famous break­through at the water pump.

In a more con­ven­tion­al arrange­ment, the stu­dent would even­tu­al­ly leave her teacher for fur­ther edu­ca­tion­al pur­suits, but Keller depend­ed on Sul­li­van to trans­late oth­er teach­ers’ lec­tures and class­room inter­ac­tions. Sul­li­van accom­pa­nied her to Perkins School for the Blind, the Wright-Huma­son School for the Deaf, the Cam­bridge School for Young Ladies, and final­ly Rad­cliffe Col­lege, where Keller earned her BA.

The unusu­al bound­aries of their teacher-stu­dent bond meant Keller lived with Sul­li­van and her hus­band in their For­est Hills home, a move that has­tened the marriage’s unof­fi­cial but per­ma­nent end, accord­ing to Sullivan’s biog­ra­ph­er, Kim Nielsen. It like­ly thwart­ed Keller’s sin­gle attempt at romance, with her tem­po­rary sec­re­tary, writer Peter Fagan, too.

For bet­ter and worse, their lives were for­ev­er entwined, each made more extra­or­di­nary by the pres­ence of the oth­er.

Their appear­ance in the 1930 Vita­phone news­reel, above, high­lights the manda­to­ry phys­i­cal close­ness they shared, as they demon­strate the process by which Keller learned to speak. Hav­ing learned to com­mu­ni­cate via let­ters Sul­li­van fin­ger spelled into her palm, Keller placed her fin­gers against Sullivan’s lips, throat and nose, to feel­ing the vibra­tions made when these famil­iar let­ters were spo­ken aloud.

Sul­li­van died six years after the news­reel was filmed, at which point, Pol­ly Thom­son, orig­i­nal­ly engaged as the ladies’ house­keep­er, took over, serv­ing as Keller’s inter­preter and trav­el­ing com­pan­ion for the next twen­ty years.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Helen Keller Had Impec­ca­ble Hand­writ­ing: See a Col­lec­tion of Her Child­hood Let­ters

Helen Keller Speaks About Her Great­est Regret — Nev­er Mas­ter­ing Speech

Mark Twain & Helen Keller’s Spe­cial Friend­ship: He Treat­ed Me Not as a Freak, But as a Per­son Deal­ing with Great Dif­fi­cul­ties

“A Glo­ri­ous Hour”: Helen Keller Describes The Ecsta­sy of Feel­ing Beethoven’s Ninth Played on the Radio (1924)

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

in Art, Creativity, Education, Life | October 12th, 2016

Nev­er meet your idols, they say. It can put a cramp in your appre­ci­a­tion of their work. There are always excep­tions, but maybe Bill Mur­ray proves the rule. On the oth­er hand, you should always learn from your idols. There’s a rea­son you admire them, after all. Find out what it is and what they have to teach you. In the series we fea­ture here, Advice to the Young, many an idol of many an aspir­ing artist and musi­cian offers some broad, exis­ten­tial advice—ways to absorb a lit­tle of their process.

Lau­rie Ander­son, above, tells us to “be loose.” Widen our bound­aries, “make it vague,” because “there are so many forces that are try­ing to push us in cer­tain direc­tions, and they’re traps…. Don’t be caught in that trap of def­i­n­i­tion. It’s a cor­po­rate trap…. Be flex­i­ble.” Good advice, if you’re as eclec­tic and loose as Lau­rie Ander­son, or if you seek artis­tic lib­er­a­tion ahead of sales. “I became an artist because I want to be free,” she says.

Just above, Daniel Lanois, super­star slide gui­tarist and pro­duc­er of Bob Dylan, Neil Young, U2, Peter Gabriel, and Emmy­lou Har­ris, tells us what he learned from work­ing with Bri­an Eno. His advice is impres­sion­is­tic, allud­ing to the impor­tance of atmos­phere and envi­ron­ment, as one might expect. It’s about appre­ci­at­ing the process, he sug­gests. He does get con­crete about a dif­fi­cul­ty near­ly every artist faces: “if you have a finan­cial lim­i­ta­tion, that might be okay. You don’t have to have every­thing that the oth­er peo­ple have. I think a finan­cial lim­i­ta­tion or a tech­no­log­i­cal lim­i­ta­tion may free up the imag­i­na­tion.” In an age of home stu­dios, that’s always wel­come news.

David Byrne has always told it straight, in his cul­tur­al crit­i­cism and song­writ­ing, and in his seg­ment, above, he steers hope­ful musi­cians and artists away from the dream of Jay Z‑level fame. “Often the artists who are very suc­cess­ful that way” he says, “they don’t have much flex­i­bil­i­ty. In achiev­ing suc­cess, they lose a lit­tle bit of their cre­ative free­dom. They have to keep mak­ing the same thing over and over again.” Byrne’s advice solid­ly under­lines Ander­son­’s. If you want cre­ative free­dom, be pre­pared to fly under the radar and make much less mon­ey than the stars. End­ing on a stark­ly real­ist note, Byrne admits that in any case, you’ll prob­a­bly need a day job: “it’s very, very hard to make mon­ey in the music busi­ness.”

Nov­el­ist Umber­to Eco also brings us down to earth in his inter­view, say­ing “not to think you are inspired,” then sly­ly drop­ping a cliché: “genius is 10% inspi­ra­tion and 90% per­spi­ra­tion.” The old wis­dom is truest, I sup­pose. He also urges writ­ers to take their time with a book. “I can­not under­stand those nov­el­ists who pub­lish a book every year. They lose this plea­sure of spend­ing six, sev­en, eight years to tell a sto­ry.” Eco’s advice: rise through the ranks, “go step by step, don’t pre­tend imme­di­ate­ly to receive the Nobel prize, because that kills a lit­er­ary career.”

Pat­ti Smith, com­fort­ably address­ing an audi­ence from an out­door stage, urges them to “just keep doing your work” whether anyone’s lis­ten­ing, read­ing, etc. To those peo­ple who crit­i­cize her suc­cess as sell­ing out her punk rock roots, Smith says, to laughs, “fuck you.” She then trans­mits some advice she received from William S. Bur­roughs: “build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don’t’ make com­pro­mis­es, don’t wor­ry about mak­ing a lot of mon­ey or being suc­cess­ful; be con­cerned with doing good work.”

Easy per­haps for Bur­roughs the adding machine-heir to say, but good advice nonethe­less, and con­sis­tent with what each artist above tells us: do it your way, don’t get pigeon­holed, work with what you have, don’t wor­ry about suc­cess or mon­ey, keep your expec­ta­tions real­is­tic.

You can watch more inter­views with Mari­na Abramović,  Wim Wen­ders, Jonas Mekas, and many more on this Advice to the Young playlist assem­bled by The Louisiana Chan­nel. All 21 talks in the series can be viewed below:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ray Brad­bury Gives 12 Pieces of Writ­ing Advice to Young Authors (2001)

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

Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Advice to Aspir­ing Film­mak­ers: Write, Write, Write and Read

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

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Alejandro Jodorowsky Explains How Tarot Cards Can Give You Creative Inspiration

in Creativity, Film, Life | October 11th, 2016

The prac­tice of car­toman­cy, or div­ina­tion with cards, dates back sev­er­al hun­dred years to at least 14th cen­tu­ry Europe, per­haps by way of Turkey. But the spe­cif­ic form we know of, the tarot, like­ly emerged in the 17th cen­tu­ry, and the deck we’re all most famil­iar with—the Rid­er-Waite Tarot—didn’t appear until 1909. Pop­u­lar main­ly with occultists like Aleis­ter Crow­ley and Madame Blavatsky in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry, the tarot explod­ed into pop­u­lar cul­ture in the new age 70s with books like Stu­art Kaplan’s Tarot Cards for Fun and For­tune Telling, and by way of cult film­mak­ers like Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky.

Since its rel­a­tive­ly recent pop­u­lar­iza­tion, “fun” and “for­tune telling” have more or less defined most people’s atti­tude to the tarot, whether they approve or dis­ap­prove of either one. But for artists and poets like William But­ler Yeats, T.S. Eliot, and sur­re­al­ist direc­tor Jodorowsky—whose film nar­ra­tion is per­haps the most poet­ic in mod­ern cinema—the tarot has always meant some­thing much more mys­te­ri­ous and inspir­ing. “The tarot,” says Jodor­owsky in the short film above, “will teach you how to cre­ate a soul.”

After study­ing the Major and Minor Arcana and the suits, and puz­zling over the sym­bols on each card, Jodor­owsky dis­cov­ered that “all 78 cards could be joined in a man­dala, in just one image.” Learn­ing to see the deck thus, “You must not talk about the future. The future is a con. The tarot is a lan­guage that talks about the present. If you use it to see the future, you become a con­man.” Like oth­er mys­ti­cal poets, Jodorowsky’s study of the tarot did not lead him to the super­nat­ur­al but to the cre­ative act.

And like many a poet before him, Jodor­owsky explored the jour­ney of the Fool in his 1973 film The Holy Moun­tain, a “daz­zling, ram­bling, often inco­her­ent satire,” writes Matt Zoller Seitz, that “unfurls like a hal­lu­cino­genic day­dream.” Jodorowsky’s cin­e­mat­ic dream log­ic comes not only from his work as a “shaman­ic psy­chother­a­pist.” He also cred­its the tarot for his psy­chomag­i­cal real­ism. “For me,” says Jodor­owsky in the video at the top, “the tarot was some­thing more seri­ous. It was a deep psy­cho­log­i­cal search.” The result of that search—Jodorowsky’s sin­gu­lar and total­ly unfor­get­table body of work—speaks to us of the val­ue of such an under­tak­ing, what­ev­er means one uses to get there.

Or as Jodor­owsky says in one of his mys­ti­cal pro­nounce­ments, “If you set your spir­it to some­thing, that phe­nom­e­non will hap­pen.” If that sounds like mag­i­cal think­ing, that’s exact­ly what it is. Jodor­owsky shows us how to read the tarot as he does, for psy­cho­log­i­cal insight and cre­ative inspi­ra­tion, in the video above, addressed to a fan named John Bish­op. Span­ish speak­ers will have no trou­ble under­stand­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion, as he quick­ly slides almost ful­ly into his native lan­guage through lack of con­fi­dence in his facil­i­ty with Eng­lish. (The video belongs to a series on Jodorowsky’s YouTube chan­nel, most of them ful­ly in Span­ish with­out sub­ti­tles.) Select­ing a trans­la­tion on YouTube yields rather gar­bled results.

Nev­er­the­less, for Eng­lish speak­ers, the sub­ti­tled video at the top offers a sur­pris­ing­ly dense les­son on the Chilean mystic’s inter­pre­ta­tion of the tarot’s sup­posed wis­dom as a sym­bol­ic sys­tem, and a way of telling the present.

Should you wish to know more, you can find it in Jodorowsky’s book The Way of Tarot: The Spir­i­tu­al Teacher in the Cards, and prac­tice on your very own deck of Jodor­owsky-designed tarot cards.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ale­jan­dro Jodorowsky’s 82 Com­mand­ments For Liv­ing

Mœbius & Jodorowsky’s Sci-Fi Mas­ter­piece, The Incal, Brought to Life in a Tan­ta­liz­ing Ani­ma­tion

Aleis­ter Crow­ley & William But­ler Yeats Get into an Occult Bat­tle, Pit­ting White Mag­ic Against Black Mag­ic (1900)      

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

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Helen Keller Had Impeccable Handwriting: See a Collection of Her Childhood Letters

in Education, History, Letters, Life | October 3rd, 2016

keller-handwriting

Image by Flickr, cour­tesy of Perkins School for the Blind

The inspi­ra­tional blind and deaf activist and edu­ca­tor Helen Keller learned to speak aloud, but, to her great regret, nev­er clear­ly.

Her care­ful pen­man­ship, above, is anoth­er mat­ter. Her impec­ca­bly ren­dered upright hand puts that of a great many sight­ed peo­ple—not all of them physi­cians—to shame.

Keller learned to write—and read—with the help of embossed books as a stu­dent at Perkins School for the Blind. The Unit­ed States didn’t adopt Stan­dard Braille as its offi­cial sys­tem for blind read­ers and writ­ers until 1918, when Keller was in her late 30’s. Pri­or to that blind read­ers and writ­ers were sub­ject­ed to a num­ber of com­pet­ing sys­tems, a sit­u­a­tion she decried as “absurd.”

Some of these sys­tems had their basis in the Roman alpha­bet, includ­ing Boston Line Type, the brain­child of Perkins’ Found­ing Direc­tor, Samuel Gri­d­ley Howe, an oppo­nent of Braille. Stu­dents may have pre­ferred dot-based sys­tems for tak­ing notes and writ­ing let­ters, but Boston Line Type remained Perkins’ approved print­ing sys­tem until 1908.

There’s more than an echo of Boston Line Type in Keller’s blocky char­ac­ters, as well as her spac­ing. Devi­at­ing from pen­man­ship forms learned at school is a lux­u­ry exclu­sive to the sight­ed. Until for­ma­tion became instinc­tu­al, Keller relied on a grooved board to help her size her char­ac­ters cor­rect­ly, an exhaust­ing process. Small won­der that she end­ed many of her ear­ly let­ters with “I am too tired to write more.”

Perkins has pub­lished a Flickr album of let­ters Keller wrote between the ages of 8 and 11 to then-direc­tor Michael Anag­nos, includ­ing 3 pages in French. Leaf­ing through them, I mar­veled less at her abil­i­ty and deter­mi­na­tion than my (sight­ed) 16-year-old son’s lack of inter­est in devel­op­ing a respectable-look­ing hand.

Keller’s hand­writ­ing is so above reproach that it quick­ly fades to the back­ground, upstaged by her charm­ing man­ners and girl­ish pre­oc­cu­pa­tions. A sam­ple:

If you go to Rou­ma­nia, please ask the good queen Eliz­a­beth about her lit­tle invalid broth­er and tell her that I am very sor­ry that her dar­ling lit­tle girl died. I should like to send a kiss to Vit­to­rio, the lit­tle prince of Naples, but teacher says she is afraid you will not remem­ber so many mes­sages.

Browse Perkins’ col­lec­tion of Keller’s hand­writ­ten let­ters to Michael Anag­nos here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Helen Keller Speaks About Her Great­est Regret — Nev­er Mas­ter­ing Speech

Mark Twain & Helen Keller’s Spe­cial Friend­ship: He Treat­ed Me Not as a Freak, But as a Per­son Deal­ing with Great Dif­fi­cul­ties

“A Glo­ri­ous Hour”: Helen Keller Describes The Ecsta­sy of Feel­ing Beethoven’s Ninth Played on the Radio (1924)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and wine­mak­er who played Annie Sul­li­van in her high school’s pro­duc­tion of The Mir­a­cle Work­er. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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When an Octopus Caused the Great Staten Island Ferry Disaster (November 22, 1963)

in Art, Comedy, History, Life | September 30th, 2016

Where were you on Novem­ber 22, 1963?

I had yet to be born, but am giv­en to under­stand that the events of that day helped shape a gen­er­a­tion.

Doc­u­men­tar­i­an Melanie Juliano knows this too, though she’s still a few months shy of the legal drink­ing age. The 2014 recip­i­ent of the New Jer­sey Film­mak­ers of Tomor­row Fes­ti­val’s James Gan­dolfi­ni Best of Fest Award uses pri­ma­ry sources and archival footage to bring an imme­di­a­cy to this dark day in Amer­i­can his­to­ry, the day a giant octopus—“a giant fuckin’ octo­pus” in the words of mar­itime expert Joey Fazzino—took down the Cor­nelius G. Kolff and all 400 hun­dred souls aboard.

What did you think I was talk­ing about, the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion?

octopus-boat

Image via the Face­book page of the Stat­en Island Fer­ry Octo­pus Dis­as­ter Memo­r­i­al Muse­um

Those who would ques­tion this tragedy’s authen­tic­i­ty need look no fur­ther than a recent­ly ded­i­cat­ed bronze memo­r­i­al in Low­er Manhattan’s Bat­tery Park. To require more proof than that is unseem­ly, nay, cru­el. If an esti­mat­ed 90% of tourists stum­bling across the site are will­ing to believe that a giant octo­pus laid waste to a Man­hat­tan-bound Stat­en Island fer­ry sev­er­al hours before John F. Kennedy was shot, who are you to ques­tion?

The memorial’s artist, Joe Reginel­la, of the Stat­en Island-based Super Fun Com­pa­ny, is find­ing it hard to dis­en­gage from a dis­as­ter of this mag­ni­tude. Instead the crafts­man, whose pre­vi­ous work includes a JAWS trib­ute infant crib, lingers near­by, not­ing vis­i­tors’ reac­tions and hand­ing out lit­er­a­ture for the (non-exis­tent) Stat­en Island Fer­ry Dis­as­ter Memo­r­i­al Muse­um.

(New York 1 reports that an actu­al muse­um across the street from the address list­ed on Reginella’s brochures is not amused, though atten­dance is up.)

A Stat­en Island Octo­pus Dis­as­ter web­site is there for the edi­fi­ca­tion of those unable to vis­it in per­son. Spend time con­tem­plat­ing this hor­rif­ic event and you may come away inspired to learn more about the Gen­er­al Slocum dis­as­ter of 1904, a real life New York City fer­ry boat tragedy, that time has vir­tu­al­ly erased from the pub­lic con­scious­ness.

(The memo­r­i­al for that one is locat­ed in an out of the way sec­tion of Tomp­kins Square Park.)

H/T to read­er Scott Her­mes/via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dancer on the Stat­en Island Fer­ry

“Moon Hoax Not”: Short Film Explains Why It Was Impos­si­ble to Fake the Moon Land­ing

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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Oscar-Winning Filmmaker Errol Morris Creates a Commercial for Depend Adult Diapers

in Life, Psychology, Television | September 5th, 2016

There’s a gen­der assump­tion for every stage of life these days. From gen­der-cod­ed Lego play sets and teen mag­a­zines, we progress to light­weight, pink tool sets or their more tra­di­tion­al, appar­ent­ly “mas­cu­line” coun­ter­part.

After that?

Adult dia­pers.

Phys­i­cal­ly, it makes sense that the lat­ter would divide along assigned gen­der lines. Biol­o­gy may not be the trump card it was once con­sid­ered to be, but, in gen­er­al, it con­tin­ues to vis­it wider hips on those born female organs than those rock­ing the frank n’ beans.  

(That said, as the moth­er of babies, I always appre­ci­at­ed when a reli­able brand went the extra mile with uni­sex pat­terns on the tapes or waist band.)

Film­mak­er Errol Mor­ris chose to widen the gen­der divide in 2009, when he was hired to direct a Depend spot, fea­tur­ing the company’s new line of gen­der-spe­cif­ic adult dia­pers, above.

In the end, the prod­uct itself was wait­ing in the wings, so a cou­ple of cute midlife inter­vie­wees could take turns describ­ing their impres­sions of a sin­gle Rorschach blot. 

Don’t wor­ry. It’s got noth­ing to do with absorben­cy.

The female sub­ject imme­di­ate­ly begins to spin a fan­ci­ful tale involv­ing two cute birds, while the male hems and haws, appar­ent­ly the vic­tim of some trag­ic gen­der-based lack of imag­i­na­tion. I bet he doesn’t like stop­ping to ask for direc­tions either.

Giv­en this director’s track record of grip­ping doc­u­men­taries, I think I’d have pre­ferred a more straight­for­ward approach. I’d be up for a full-length doc­u­men­tary about the expe­ri­ence of actu­al­ly wear­ing those things, espe­cial­ly if Mor­ris used his Inter­ro­tron to elic­it frank eye con­tact, as he does above. 

It’s an uncom­fort­able sub­ject for sure, but I’d like to hear how adult dia­pers impact an indi­vid­u­al’s sense of attrac­tive­ness and self-worth. I would­n’t want Mor­ris to gen­er­al­ize, but by and large, is it a rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence for men than it is for women?

Per­haps the riff­ing pair in the com­mer­cial spot have more famil­iar­i­ty with the prod­uct than they were allowed to let on? If so, I’d imag­ine it’s from car­ing for an elder­ly rel­a­tive, but I could be wrong. Either way, those would be sto­ries I’d like to hear.

Per­haps this is a top­ic best tack­led by Wern­er Her­zog…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“They Were There” — Errol Mor­ris Final­ly Directs a Film for IBM

Bob Geld­of Talks About the Great­est Day of His Life, Step­ping on the Stage of Live Aid, in a Short Doc by Errol Mor­ris

Her­mann Rorschach’s Orig­i­nal Rorschach Test: What Do You See? (1921)

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her lat­est script, Fawn­book, is avail­able in a dig­i­tal edi­tion from Indie The­ater Now.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Poetry of Mining Beautiful White Italian Marble Captured in a Short Film

in Art, Film, Life | September 2nd, 2016

Did any­one ever tru­ly want to be a coal min­er? The work was dirty, dan­ger­ous, and poor­ly com­pen­sat­ed, the work­ers exploit­ed and their unions blocked by cal­low employ­ers.

Coal pro­duc­tion is in a state of ter­mi­nal decline, but the old phrase “it’s not min­ing coal” endures.

How­ev­er hard your job may be, it’s not coal min­ing.

It’s prob­a­bly not con­tem­po­rary mar­ble min­ing either. This may strike you as a pity, after view­ing excerpts from Il Capo, film­mak­er Yuri Ancar­ani’s dreamy 15-minute doc­u­men­tary, set in the Bet­togli quar­ry in Tus­cany.

As cap­tured above, the shirt­less quar­ry boss’s silent instruc­tions to work­ers pry­ing enor­mous slabs of mar­ble from the bar­ren white land­scape with indus­tri­al exca­va­tors are unbe­liev­ably lyri­cal.

Con­sid­er your­self lucky if your job is even a frac­tion as poet­ic.

Mar­ble min­ing seems as though it might also be a secret to stay­ing fit—and tan—well into mid­dle age.

I do won­der if van­i­ty caused our mid­dle aged hero to doff his noise-can­cel­ing head­phones while the cam­era rolled. These mas­sive slabs do not go down light­ly, thus the neces­si­ty of non-ver­bal com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

The film­mak­er states that he was with the del­i­ca­cy of his subject’s “light, pre­cise and deter­mined” move­ments. The quar­ry crew might not find their boss’ phys­i­cal­i­ty rem­i­nis­cent of a con­duc­tor guid­ing an orches­tra through a par­tic­u­lar­ly sen­si­tive move­ment, but those who caught the film at one of the many gal­leries, fes­ti­vals, and muse­ums where it has screened report­ed­ly do.

Clear­ly, Ancar­ani has an attrac­tion to work tran­spir­ing in unusu­al land­scapes. Il Capo is a part of his Mal­a­dy of Iron tril­o­gy, which also doc­u­ments time spent with divers oper­at­ing from a sub­ma­rine deep below the ocean’s sur­face and a sur­gi­cal robot whose move­ments inside the human body are con­trolled via joy­stick.

via Now­ness

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids Were Built: A New The­o­ry in 3D Ani­ma­tion

The Mak­ing of a Stein­way Grand Piano, From Start to Fin­ish

Elec­tric Gui­tars Made from the Detri­tus of Detroit

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her lat­est script, Fawn­book, is avail­able in a dig­i­tal edi­tion from Indie The­ater Now.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Oliver Sacks’ Final Interview: A First Look

in Biology, Life, Neuroscience | August 22nd, 2016

It’s been near­ly a year since the poet lau­re­ate of med­i­cine, author and neu­rol­o­gist Oliv­er Sacks, took his final bow as a sen­tient being on this beau­ti­ful plan­et, suc­cumb­ing, at 82, to metas­tases of ocu­lar melanoma which spread to his liv­er.

The New York­er marks the occa­sion by pub­lish­ing Sacks’ fel­low neu­rol­o­gist and author Dr. Orrin Devin­sky’s rec­ol­lec­tion of their long­stand­ing friend­ship. Devin­sky paints a vivid pic­ture of an excep­tion­al­ly com­pas­sion­ate man, who felt a kin­ship not only with starfish, jel­ly­fish, and octopi, but also humans in both finan­cial and emo­tion­al need.

The piece becomes even more pow­er­ful in light of Sacks’ final inter­view, above, part of film­mak­er Ric Burns’ upcom­ing doc­u­men­tary, Oliv­er Sacks: His Own Life.

Sacks pep­pers his remarks with aston­ish­ing bio­log­i­cal tid­bits, a com­pul­sion that delight­ed his friend Devin­sky on their fre­quent ear­ly morn­ing bike rides along New York City’s west side.

(Palatal myoclonus—or rhyth­mic pulsing—in the palate, eardrum and strap mus­cles are ves­ti­gial evi­dence that humans once had gills!)

(The dandelion’s name evolved from dent de lion, French for lion’s tooth, a struc­ture the spikes on its ser­rat­ed leaves could be said to resem­ble. Also, cer­tain dan­de­lion species repro­duce asex­u­al­ly, and Sacks had no fear about eat­ing an unwashed spec­i­men he plucked from the ques­tion­ably san­i­tary grounds of River­side Park!)

The mus­ings that war­rant the melan­choly piano and strings accom­pa­ny­ing Burns’ excerpt are of a more per­son­al nature. Sacks’ was total­ly immersed in his cho­sen sub­ject. His moth­er was a com­par­a­tive anatomist and sur­geon, and his boy­ish inter­est in the hard sci­ences is what led him to biol­o­gy. A life­time of sci­en­tif­ic obser­va­tion and clin­i­cal inter­ac­tion only add to the poet­ry of his thoughts on death:

My gen­er­a­tion is on the way out, and each death I have felt as an abrup­tion, a tear­ing away of part of myself. There will be nobody like us when we are gone, but then there is nobody like any­body ever. When peo­ple die they can­not be replaced. They leave holes that can­not be filled. It is the fate, the genet­ic and neur­al fate of every human being to be a unique indi­vid­ual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death. Even so, I am shocked and sad­dened at the sen­tence of death, and I can­not pre­tend I am with­out fear. But my pre­dom­i­nant feel­ing is one of grat­i­tude. I have loved and been loved. I have been giv­en much and I have giv­en some­thing in return. I have read and trav­eled and thought and writ­ten. I have had an inter­course with the world, the spe­cial inter­course of writ­ers and read­ers. Above all, I have been a sen­tient being, a think­ing ani­mal on this beau­ti­ful plan­et, and this in itself has been an enor­mous priv­i­lege and adven­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Oliv­er Sacks Explains the Biol­o­gy of Hal­lu­ci­na­tions: “We See with the Eyes, But with the Brain as Well”

A Fas­ci­nat­ing Case Study by Oliv­er Sacks Inspires a Short Ani­mat­ed Film, The Lost Mariner

Oliv­er Sacks’ Last Tweet Shows Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Mov­ing­ly Flash­mobbed in Spain

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her lat­est com­ic con­trasts the birth of her sec­ond child with the uncen­sored gore of Game of Thrones. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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