Watch the Opening Credits of an Imaginary 70s Cop Show Starring Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beck­ett: avant-garde drama­tist, brood­ing Nobel Prize win­ner, poet, and…gritty tele­vi­sion detec­tive?

Sad­ly, no, but he had the mak­ings of a great one, at least as cut togeth­er by play­wright Dan­ny Thomp­son, cofounder of Chicago’s The­ater Oobleck.

Some 35 years after Beckett’s death, Thompson—whose cred­its include the Com­plete Lost Works of Samuel Beck­ett as Found in a Dust­bin in Paris in an Enve­lope (Par­tial­ly Burned) Labeled: Nev­er to Be Per­formed. Nev­er. Ever. Ever! Or I’ll Sue! I’ll Sue From the Grave!!!-repur­posed Rosa Veim and Daniel Schmid’s footage of the moody genius wan­der­ing around 1969 Berlin into the open­ing cred­its of a nonex­is­tent, 70s era Quinn Mar­tin police pro­ce­dur­al.

The title sequence hits all the right peri­od notes, from the jazzy graph­ics to the pre­sen­ta­tion of its sup­port­ing cast: Andre the Giant, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Jean “Hug­gy Bear” Cocteau. (Did you know that Beck­ett drove a young Andre the Giant to school in real life?)

Thomp­son ups the verisimil­i­tude by cop­ping Pat Williams’ theme for The Streets of San Fran­cis­co and nam­ing the imag­i­nary pilot episode after a col­lec­tion of Beckett’s short sto­ries.

He also jok­ing­ly notes that a DVD release of the first, only and, again, entire­ly non-exis­tent sea­son has been held up by the Beck­ett estate. Alas.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Samuel Beck­ett Walk the Streets of Berlin Like a Boss, 1969

The Books That Samuel Beck­ett Read and Real­ly Liked (1941–1956)

Hear Samuel Beckett’s Avant-Garde Radio Plays: All That FallEmbers, and More

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Samuel Beck­ett, Absur­dist Play­wright, Nov­el­ist & Poet

When Samuel Beck­ett Drove Young André the Giant to School: A True Sto­ry

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

The Longest Drivable Distance in the World: Discover the Ultimate Road Trip

No mat­ter what coun­try we live in, we’ve all fan­ta­sized about tak­ing our own great Amer­i­can road trip, con­sid­er­ing a vari­ety of the infi­nite­ly many pos­si­ble routes. The most obvi­ous would be dri­ving between Los Ange­les and New York, a dis­tance of 2,800 miles that would take a bit over 40 hours straight through. I myself once took a more souther­ly route, road-trip­ping from Los Ange­les to Raleigh, North Car­oli­na over a week or two; these days, I dream of an east-coast jour­ney from Maine all the way down to Key West, a rel­a­tive­ly man­age­able 1,900 miles. But if you take your road-trip­ping seri­ous­ly, you’ve got to go to anoth­er con­ti­nent entire­ly.

Such is the con­clu­sion to be drawn from the Half as Inter­est­ing video above, which finds the longest dri­vable dis­tance on Earth. “The North Amer­i­can road sys­tem goes as far as Prud­hoe Bay in Canada’s Cana­da, Alas­ka, and as far south as Yav­iza in Pana­ma,” says the video’s cre­ator Sam Den­by, “but this only clocks in at 7,500 miles.”

That may require six straight days of dri­ving, but it does­n’t set any records. A route from south­ern Africa and east Asia may seem promis­ing, but they can’t be dri­ven with­out pass­ing through west­ern Europe. That requires pas­sage across the Mediter­ranean on a fer­ry, which — for the true road-trip­per — taints the puri­ty of the endeav­or.

Start­ing in Europe, then, you should begin in Sagres, Por­tu­gal, “the most extreme point on the con­tigu­ous road net­work.” From there, you can dri­ve as far east as “the banks of the Aldan Riv­er in Rus­sia,” a dis­tance of 8,437 miles. But wait, there’s longer: you could keep going to Khasan, “the only Russ­ian town to bor­der North Korea,” and bring the mileage up to 8,726, thus com­plet­ing “the longest direct dri­ving route in the world.” If you go ped­al-to-the-met­al (to the extent pos­si­ble while observ­ing local speed lim­its, any­way) it will take six days and 19 hours — book­end­ed, ide­al­ly, by one meal of cat­a­plana and anoth­er of Khasan oys­ters.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Com­put­er Sci­en­tists Fig­ure Out What’s the Longest Dis­tance You Could Sail at Sea With­out Hit­ting Land

Col­or­ful Maps from 1914 and 2016 Show How Planes & Trains Have Made the World Small­er and Trav­el Times Quick­er

Ani­mat­ed Maps Reveal the True Size of Coun­tries (and Show How Tra­di­tion­al Maps Dis­tort Our World)

Why Route 66 Became America’s Most Famous Road

12 Clas­sic Lit­er­ary Road Trips in One Handy Inter­ac­tive Map

A Brief His­to­ry of the Great Amer­i­can Road Trip

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

John Waters’ RISD Graduation Speech: Real Wealth Is Life Without A*Holes

John Waters’ rol­lick­ing com­mence­ment speech at The Rhode Island School of Design offered up some good one-lin­ers and a few pearls of wis­dom, though phrased, quite nat­u­ral­ly, in an irrev­er­ent way. Ready for some sage advice on what real­ly counts as wealth? And what career choic­es will make you tru­ly wealthy? Mr. Waters has this to say:

Uh, don’t hate all rich peo­ple. They’re not all awful. Believe me, I know some evil poor peo­ple, too. We need some rich peo­ple: Who else is going to back our movies or buy our art? I’m rich! I don’t mean mon­ey-wise. I mean that I have fig­ured out how to nev­er be around ass­holes at any time in my per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al life. That’s rich. And not being around ass­holes should be the goal of every grad­u­ate here today.

It’s OK to hate the poor, too, but only the poor of spir­it, not wealth. A poor per­son to me can have a big bank bal­ance but is stu­pid by choice – uncu­ri­ous, judg­men­tal, iso­lat­ed and unavail­able to change.

I’m also sor­ry to report there’s no such thing as kar­ma. So many of my tal­ent­ed great friends are dead and so many of the fools I’ve met and loathed are still alive. It’s not fair, and it nev­er will be.

Like I said, irrev­er­ent­ly phrased. But when stripped down to their basics, some very good prin­ci­ples to live by.

Watch the speech above; read the com­plete tran­script here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Waters Takes You on a Com­i­cal Tour of His Apart­ment (1986)

John Waters’ Hand-Made, Odd­ball Christ­mas Cards: 1964-Present

An Anti, Anti-Smok­ing Announce­ment from John Waters

John Waters’ Com­i­cal & Inspir­ing Com­mence­ment Speech: “You Too Can Fail Upwards” (2022)

How the Hugely Acclaimed Shōgun TV Series Makes Translation Interesting

Many of us grew up see­ing hard­back copies of Shō­gun on var­i­ous domes­tic book­shelves. Whether their own­ers ever actu­al­ly got through James Clavel­l’s famous­ly hefty nov­el of sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry Japan is open to ques­tion, but they may well have seen the first tele­vi­sion adap­ta­tion, which aired on NBC in 1980. Star­ring Richard Cham­ber­lain and Toshi­ro Mifu­ne (and nar­rat­ed by Orson Welles), that ten-hour minis­eries offered an unprece­dent­ed­ly cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence to the home view­ers of Amer­i­ca, pre­sent­ing them with things they’d nev­er before seen on tele­vi­sion — and things they’d nev­er heard on tele­vi­sion, not least numer­ous lines deliv­ered in untrans­lat­ed Japan­ese.

The idea, accord­ing to screen­writer Eric Bercovi­ci, was to put the view­ers in the shoes of Cham­ber­lain’s pro­tag­o­nist John Black­thorne, an Eng­lish ship pilot marooned in Japan with no knowl­edge of the local lan­guage. Dur­ing the show’s run, news­pa­pers print­ed glos­saries of the Japan­ese words most impor­tant to the sto­ry. The sec­ond adap­ta­tion of Shō­gun, which aired ear­li­er this year on FX, does things dif­fer­ent­ly. For one thing, it makes use of those help­ful devices known as sub­ti­tles, which over the past four and a half decades have become not just accept­ed but demand­ed by West­ern audi­ences (even for pro­duc­tions in their own lan­guage).

This choice, as Evan “Nerd­writer” Puschak says in his video on the new Shō­gun, “lets us into the minds and con­ver­sa­tions of the Japan­ese char­ac­ters,” much like the omni­scient nar­ra­tion of Clavel­l’s nov­el. Puschak high­lights how the series “uses the act of trans­la­tion to explore the pos­si­bil­i­ties and lim­i­ta­tions of com­mu­ni­ca­tion across cul­tures and com­mu­ni­ca­tion, peri­od.” One notable exam­ple is its por­tray­al of the var­i­ous bilin­gual char­ac­ters who inter­pret for Black­thorne, each of whom does so dif­fer­ent­ly accord­ing to his or her moti­va­tions. The 1980 Shō­gun also had a few such scenes, but their dra­mat­ic irony was inac­ces­si­ble to mono­lin­gual view­ers.

Even if you speak both Eng­lish and Japan­ese, you know how lit­tle pro­tec­tion that real­ly offers against cul­tur­al mis­un­der­stand­ings. The new Shō­gun’s drama­ti­za­tion of that truth has sure­ly done its part to win the show more Emmy awards than any oth­er sin­gle sea­son of tele­vi­sion. A com­par­i­son to the 1980 adap­ta­tion, which rep­re­sent­ed the height of dra­mat­ic tele­vi­sion in its day, reveals the ways in which our expec­ta­tions of the form have changed over time. Nev­er­the­less, even the 2024 Shō­gun takes its lib­er­ties, the most brazen being the use of Eng­lish instead of Por­tuguese, the real lan­guage of first con­tact between Japan and the West. Clear­ly, Por­tu­gal has its work cut out: to raise a gen­er­a­tion of actors ready to star in the next adap­ta­tion by the late twen­ty-six­ties. がんば っ て and boa sorte.

Relat­ed con­tent:

16th-Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese His­to­ri­ans Describe the Odd­ness of Meet­ing the First Euro­peans They Ever Saw

The 17th-Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Samu­rai Who Sailed to Europe, Met the Pope & Became a Roman Cit­i­zen

The His­to­ry of Ancient Japan: The Sto­ry of How Japan Began, Told by Those Who Wit­nessed It (297‑1274)

Meet Yasuke, Japan’s First Black Samu­rai War­rior

Let’s Learn Japan­ese: Two Clas­sic Video Series to Get You Start­ed in the Lan­guage

The Entire His­to­ry of Japan in 9 Quirky Min­utes

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Moebius Gives 18 Wisdom-Filled Tips to Aspiring Artists

MoebiusGondola

Jean Giraud, aka Moe­bius, was a com­ic book artist who com­bined blind­ing speed with bound­less imag­i­na­tion. He shaped the look of Alien, Empire Strikes Back and The Fifth Ele­ment. He reimag­ined the Sil­ver Surfer for Stan Lee. And he is an acknowl­edged influ­ence on every­one from Japan­ese ani­mat­ing great Hayao Miyaza­ki to sci-fi writer William Gib­son.

MoebiusJourney

In 1996, the Mex­i­can news­pa­per La Jor­na­da pub­lished a lec­ture giv­en by Moe­bius called “Breve man­u­al para his­to­ri­etis­tas”  – a brief man­u­al for car­toon­ists – which con­sists of 18 tips for aspir­ing artists. If your Span­ish isn’t up to snuff – mine cer­tain­ly isn’t – then there are a cou­ple trans­la­tions out there. Some­one called Xurxo g Penal­ta cranked out a direct ver­sion in Eng­lish, but to get the true nuances of Moe­bius’ wise words, famed illus­tra­tor William Stout’s excel­lent anno­tat­ed ver­sion is best.

For instance, Moebius’s first tip is “When you draw, you must first cleanse your­self of deep feel­ings, like hate, hap­pi­ness, ambi­tion, etc.”

Stout ampli­fies this with the fol­low­ing:

These feel­ings are typ­i­cal­ly emo­tion­al prej­u­dices that func­tion as a block to cre­ativ­i­ty.

This was some­thing I learned from draw­ing and hang­ing out with anoth­er French­man, the bril­liant car­toon­ist-illus­tra­tor (and reg­u­lar Atlantic Month­ly con­trib­u­tor) Guy Bill­out, when we were trav­el­ing togeth­er in Antarc­ti­ca and Patag­o­nia back in 1989. Until I spent time with Guy, I had no idea how many pre-con­ceived notions and assump­tions I held with­in me regard­ing peo­ple and sit­u­a­tions and what a block they were to the flow of my cre­ativ­i­ty.

Divorc­ing your­self from such emo­tion­al­ly blind­ing pre-con­cep­tions allows you to see things with fresh eyes. Solu­tions and ideas then flow with much greater ease. I have noticed with all the cre­ative genius­es I have met that they all share a child­like delight with what­ev­er or whomev­er they encounter in life (they can even find amuse­ment in life’s vil­lains). For them, all cre­ative bar­ri­ers are down; life and cre­ative prob­lem solv­ing for them is like con­stant­ly play­ing. They gush great ideas all day long like a foun­tain.

All of Stout’s anno­ta­tions are like this. It should be required read­ing for any­one even vague­ly inter­est­ed in visu­al sto­ry­telling. Below are Moe­bius’ orig­i­nal obser­va­tions. Stout’s thoughts on Moe­bius can be found here.

1) When you draw, you must first cleanse your­self of deep feel­ings, like hate, hap­pi­ness, ambi­tion, etc.

2) It’s very impor­tant to edu­cate your hand. Make it achieve a lev­el of high obe­di­ence so that it will be able to prop­er­ly and ful­ly express your ideas. But be very care­ful of try­ing to obtain too much per­fec­tion, as well as too much speed as an artist. Per­fec­tion and speed are dan­ger­ous — as are their oppo­sites. When you pro­duce draw­ings that are too quick or too loose, besides mak­ing mis­takes, you run the risk of cre­at­ing an enti­ty with­out soul or spir­it.

3) Knowl­edge of per­spec­tive is of supreme impor­tance. Its laws pro­vide a good, pos­i­tive way to manip­u­late or hyp­no­tize your read­ers.

4) Anoth­er thing to embrace with affec­tion is the study of [the] human body — it’s anato­my, posi­tions, body types, expres­sions, con­struc­tion, and the dif­fer­ences between peo­ple.

Draw­ing a man is very dif­fer­ent from draw­ing a woman. With males, you can be loos­er and less pre­cise in their depic­tion; small imper­fec­tions can often add char­ac­ter. Your draw­ing of a woman, how­ev­er, must be per­fect; a sin­gle ill-placed line can dra­mat­i­cal­ly age her or make her seem annoy­ing or ugly. Then, no one buys your com­ic!

For the read­er to believe your sto­ry, your char­ac­ters must feel as if they have a life and per­son­al­i­ty of their own.

Their phys­i­cal ges­tures should seem to emanate from their character’s strengths, weak­ness­es and infir­mi­ties. The body becomes trans­formed when it is brought to life; there is a mes­sage in its struc­ture, in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of its fat, in each mus­cle and in every wrin­kle, crease or fold of the face and body. It becomes a study of life.

5) When you cre­ate a sto­ry, you can begin it with­out know­ing every­thing, but you should make notes as you go along regard­ing the par­tic­u­lars of the world depict­ed in your sto­ry. Such detail will pro­vide your read­ers with rec­og­niz­able char­ac­ter­is­tics that will pique their inter­est.

When a char­ac­ter dies in a sto­ry, unless the char­ac­ter has had his per­son­al sto­ry expressed some way in the draw­ing of his face, body and attire, the read­er will not care; your read­er won’t have any emo­tion­al con­nec­tion.

Your pub­lish­er might say, “Your sto­ry has no val­ue; there’s only one dead guy — I need twen­ty or thir­ty dead guys for this to work.” But that is not true; if the read­er feels the dead guy or wound­ed guys or hurt guys or whomev­er you have in trou­ble have a real per­son­al­i­ty result­ing from your own deep stud­ies of human nature — with an artist’s capac­i­ty for such obser­va­tion — emo­tions will surge.

By such stud­ies you will devel­op and gain atten­tion from oth­ers, as well as a com­pas­sion and a love for human­i­ty.

This is very impor­tant for the devel­op­ment of an artist. If he wants to func­tion as a mir­ror of soci­ety and human­i­ty, this mir­ror of his must con­tain the con­scious­ness of the entire world; it must be a mir­ror that sees every­thing.

6) Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky says I don’t like draw­ing dead hors­es. Well, it is very dif­fi­cult.

It’s also very dif­fi­cult to draw a sleep­ing body or some­one who has been aban­doned, because in most comics it’s always action that is being stud­ied. It’s much eas­i­er to draw peo­ple fight­ing — that’s why Amer­i­cans near­ly always draw super­heroes. It’s much more dif­fi­cult to draw peo­ple that are talk­ing, because that’s a series of very small move­ments — small, yet with real sig­nif­i­cance.

His counts for more because of our human need for love or the atten­tion of oth­ers. It’s these lit­tle things that speak of per­son­al­i­ty, of life. Most super­heroes don’t have any per­son­al­i­ty; they all use the same ges­tures and move­ments.

7) Equal­ly impor­tant is the cloth­ing of your char­ac­ters and the state of the mate­r­i­al from which it was made.

These tex­tures cre­ate a vision of your char­ac­ters’ expe­ri­ences, their lives, and their role in your adven­ture in a way where much can be said with­out words. In a dress there are a thou­sand folds; you need to choose just two or three — don’t draw them all. Just make sure you choose the two or three good ones.

8) The style, styl­is­tic con­ti­nu­ity of an artist and its pub­lic pre­sen­ta­tion are full of sym­bols; they can be read just like a Tarot deck. I chose my name “Moe­bius” as a joke when I was twen­ty-two years old — but, in truth, the name came to res­onate with mean­ing. If you arrive wear­ing a T‑shirt of Don Quixote, that tells me who you are. In my case, mak­ing a draw­ing of rel­a­tive sim­plic­i­ty and sub­tle indi­ca­tions is impor­tant to me.

9) When an artist, a real work­ing artist, goes out on the street, he does not see things the same way as “nor­mal” peo­ple. His unique vision is cru­cial to doc­u­ment­ing a way of life and the peo­ple who live it.

10) Anoth­er impor­tant ele­ment is com­po­si­tion. The com­po­si­tions in our sto­ries should be stud­ied because a page or a paint­ing or a pan­el is a face that looks at the read­er and speaks to him. A page is not just a suc­ces­sion of insignif­i­cant pan­els. There are pan­els that are full. Some that are emp­ty. Oth­ers are ver­ti­cal. Some hor­i­zon­tal. All are indi­ca­tions of the artist’s inten­tions. Ver­ti­cal pan­els excite the read­er. Hor­i­zon­tals calm him. For us in the West­ern world, motion in a pan­el that goes from left to right rep­re­sents action head­ing toward the future. Mov­ing from right to left directs action toward the past. The direc­tions we indi­cate rep­re­sent a dis­per­sion of ener­gy. An object or char­ac­ter placed in the cen­ter of a pan­el focus­es and con­cen­trates ener­gy and atten­tion. These are basic read­ing sym­bols and forms that evoke in the read­er a fas­ci­na­tion, a kind of hyp­no­sis. You must be con­scious of rhythm and set traps for the read­er to fall into so that, when he falls, he gets lost, allow­ing you to manip­u­late and move him inside your world with greater ease and plea­sure. That’s because what you have cre­at­ed is a sense of life. You must study the great painters, espe­cial­ly those who speak with their paint­ings. Their indi­vid­ual paint­ing schools or gen­res or time peri­ods should not mat­ter. Their pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with phys­i­cal as well as emo­tion­al com­po­si­tion must be stud­ied so that you learn how their com­bi­na­tion of lines works to touch us direct­ly with­in our hearts.

11) The nar­ra­tion must har­mo­nize with the draw­ings. There must be a visu­al rhythm cre­at­ed by the place­ment of your text. The rhythm of your plot should be reflect­ed in your visu­al cadence and the way you com­press or expand time. Like a film­mak­er, you must be very care­ful in how you cast your char­ac­ters and in how you direct them. Use your char­ac­ters or “actors” like a direc­tor, study­ing and then select­ing from all of your char­ac­ters’ dif­fer­ent takes.

12) Beware of the dev­as­tat­ing influ­ence of North Amer­i­can com­ic books. The artists in Mex­i­co seem to only study their sur­face effects: a lit­tle bit of anato­my mixed with dynam­ic com­po­si­tions, mon­sters, fights, scream­ing and teeth. I like some of that stuff too, but there are many oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ties and expres­sions that are also wor­thy of explo­ration.

13) There is a con­nec­tion between music and draw­ing. The size of that con­nec­tion depends upon your per­son­al­i­ty and what’s going on at that moment. For the last ten years I’ve been work­ing in silence; for me, there is music in the rhythm of my lines. Draw­ing at times is a search for dis­cov­er­ies. A pre­cise, beau­ti­ful­ly exe­cut­ed line is like an orgasm!

14) Col­or is a lan­guage that the graph­ic artist uses to manip­u­late his reader’s atten­tion as well as to cre­ate beau­ty. There is objec­tive and sub­jec­tive col­or. The emo­tion­al states of the char­ac­ters can change or influ­ence the col­or from one pan­el to the next, as can place and time of day. Spe­cial study and atten­tion must be paid to the lan­guage of col­or.

15) At the begin­ning of an artist’s career, he should prin­ci­pal­ly involve him­self in the cre­ation of very high qual­i­ty short sto­ries. He has a bet­ter chance (than with long for­mat sto­ries) of suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ing them, while main­tain­ing a high stan­dard of qual­i­ty. It will also be eas­i­er to place them in a book or sell them to a pub­lish­er.

16) There are times when we know­ing­ly head down a path of fail­ure, choos­ing the wrong theme or sub­ject for our capa­bil­i­ties, or choos­ing a project that is too large, or an unsuit­able tech­nique. If this hap­pens, you must not com­plain lat­er.

17) When new work has been sent to an edi­tor and it receives a rejec­tion, you should always ask for and try to dis­cov­er the rea­sons for the rejec­tion. By study­ing the rea­sons for our fail­ure, only then can we begin to learn. It is not about strug­gle with our lim­i­ta­tions, with the pub­lic or with the pub­lish­ers. One should treat it with more of an aiki­do approach. It is the very strength and pow­er of our adver­sary that is used as the key to his defeat.

18) Now it is pos­si­ble to expose our works to read­ers in every part of the plan­et. We must always keep aware of this. To begin with, draw­ing is a form of per­son­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion — but this does not mean that the artist should close him­self off inside a bub­ble. His com­mu­ni­ca­tion should be for those aes­thet­i­cal­ly, philo­soph­i­cal­ly and geo­graph­i­cal­ly close to him, as well as for him­self — but also for com­plete strangers. Draw­ing is a medi­um of com­mu­ni­ca­tion for the great fam­i­ly we have not met, for the pub­lic and for the world.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in March 2015.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Behold Moe­bius’ Many Psy­che­del­ic Illus­tra­tions of Jimi Hen­drix

Watch Ground­break­ing Com­ic Artist Mœbius Draw His Char­ac­ters in Real Time

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

Jonathan Crow is a writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow

The Real Reason Why Music Is Getting Worse: Rick Beato Explains

Ear­li­er this month, a North Car­oli­na man was charged with gen­er­at­ing songs using an arti­fi­cial-intel­li­gence sys­tem and con­fig­ur­ing bots to stream them auto­mat­i­cal­ly, thus rack­ing up some $10 mil­lion in ille­gal roy­al­ties. Though that amount no doubt star­tles many of us, in this age when legit­i­mate musi­cians pub­licly lament the pit­tance they earn through stream­ing plat­forms, such a case prob­a­bly comes as no sur­prise to Rick Beato. This past June, the promi­nent music YouTu­ber put out a video deal­ing with just that inter­sec­tion of cul­ture and tech­nol­o­gy, with the high­ly click­able title “The Real Rea­son Why Music Is Get­ting Worse.”

Con­sid­er the ques­tion of how we evoke one par­tic­u­lar cul­tur­al era rather than anoth­er. We can use its fash­ions, its slang, or its inte­ri­or dec­o­ra­tion, to name just a few pos­si­bil­i­ties, but noth­ing works as pow­er­ful­ly or imme­di­ate­ly as its music. Most of us grew up in a world where the sound of pop­u­lar songs changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly every decade or so. This hap­pened for many rea­sons, prac­ti­cal­ly all of them down­stream of devel­op­ments in tech­nol­o­gy. Blues­men elec­tri­fy­ing their gui­tars; Frank Sina­tra singing into micro­phones sen­si­tive enough to pick up his nuances; the Bea­t­les cre­at­ing com­plex, often strange minia­ture sound worlds in the stu­dio; rap­pers telling their sto­ries over looped frag­ments of dis­co records: all of it was made pos­si­ble by feats of engi­neer­ing.

Yet, in Beat­o’s view, tech­no­log­i­cal progress has late­ly back­fired on music, and both musi­cians and lis­ten­ers are feel­ing it. The con­ver­gence of com­put­ers and music pro­duc­tion is now com­plete, mak­ing any sound the­o­ret­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble at vir­tu­al­ly no cost. But “the cre­ative depen­dence on tech­nol­o­gy lim­its the abil­i­ty of peo­ple to inno­vate,” and “the over­re­liance on sim­i­lar tools” brings about “a lack of diver­si­ty” and a per­sis­tence of for­mu­la­ic trend-fol­low­ing. The ease of cre­ation has caused “an over­sat­u­ra­tion of music, mak­ing it hard­er to find real­ly excep­tion­al things.” This is tak­en to an extreme by the only-just-begin­ning avalanche of AI-gen­er­at­ed songs (and the storm of law­suits it has drawn).

Of course, if I’d known back when I was grow­ing up in the nine­teen-nineties that all the music I want­ed to lis­ten to would be made instant­ly avail­able at lit­tle or no cost, I’d have regard­ed it as the immi­nent arrival of heav­en on earth. Pre­sum­ably, the prospect would also have excit­ed the ado­les­cent Beato, bag­ging gro­ceries to save up the mon­ey to buy Led Zep­pelin and Pat Methe­ny albums in the sev­en­ties. Today, by con­trast, “music is not as val­ued by young peo­ple. There is no sweat equi­ty put into obtain­ing it, hav­ing it be part of your col­lec­tion, hav­ing it be a part of your iden­ti­ty, of who you are.”

Music, in short, has become both too easy to pro­duce and too easy to con­sume. It would be easy for any­one under 30 to dis­miss Beat­o’s argu­ment as that of a mid­dle-aged man reflex­ive­ly insist­ing that things were bet­ter in his day, when we knew the val­ue of an album. But even the youngest gen­er­a­tion of music-lovers must, at times, feel a cer­tain dis­sat­is­fac­tion amid this end­less abun­dance. To them — and to all of us — Beato says this: “Vote with your atten­tion” by try­ing to lis­ten to music delib­er­ate­ly, with­out dis­trac­tion. Per­son­al­ly, I rec­om­mend lis­ten­ing to not just full albums but com­plete discogra­phies, which at the very least cul­ti­vates a cer­tain dis­cern­ment. And to cross the musi­cal land­scape ahead of us, we’ll need all the dis­cern­ment we can get.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Sur­pris­ing­ly Long His­to­ry of Auto-Tune, the Vocal-Pro­cess­ing Tech­nol­o­gy Music Crit­ics Love to Hate

Nick Cave Answers the Hot­ly Debat­ed Ques­tion: Will Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Ever Be Able to Write a Great Song?

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

David Bowie Songs Reimagined as Pulp Fiction Book Covers: Space Oddity, Heroes, Life on Mars & More

In the last year, screen­writer Todd Alcott’s hob­by has blown up into a legit side career.

This Etsy sell­er isn’t ped­dling kom­bucha SCOBYs, let­ter press­ing new baby announce­ments, or repur­pos­ing old barns for use as cut­ting boards.

No, Alcott’s crafty for­tunes fall square­ly at the inter­sec­tion of pulp fic­tion and rock and roll, with clas­sic song titles, lyrics, and oth­er cun­ning ref­er­ences replac­ing the cov­er text of pre-exist­ing vin­tage paper­backs.

David Bowie’s life­long fas­ci­na­tion with space trav­el, tor­tured anti heroes, and out­ra­geous fash­ion make him a nat­ur­al fit with Alcott’s ongo­ing project, which has lav­ished sim­i­lar atten­tion on such lumi­nar­ies as Bob Dylan, Radio­headTalk­ing Heads, and Elvis Costel­lo.

As Alcott, who con­ceives of his mash ups as trib­utes to his long time musi­cal favorites, told Open Cul­ture:

Bowie dressed as an androg­y­nous alien, went out onstage and told his audi­ence “You’re not alone, give me your hands,” I can’t think of a more encom­pass­ing ges­ture to a mis­fit. No mat­ter how weird you were in your com­mu­ni­ty, you would always find some­one like you at a Bowie con­cert. Dur­ing a time of my life when I felt incred­i­bly iso­lat­ed and alone, (Bowie was one of) the key artists who made me feel like I was part of a big­ger world, an artis­tic con­tin­u­um.

Mean­while, Alcott is tend­ing to anoth­er con­tin­u­um by posthu­mous­ly pair­ing such late greats as Bowie and Queen’s Fred­die Mer­cury (“co-author” of the deep sea-themed Under Pres­sure cov­er, above) with the sort of adven­tur­ous, occa­sion­al­ly steamy read­ing mate­r­i­al that were among the hall­marks of their 1950s’ boy­hoods.

Many of these items have found their way to used book and thrift stores, where, tat­tered and worn, they pro­vide a vast trove for some­one like Alcott, who brows­es with his favorite acts’ cat­a­logues deeply imprint­ed on his men­tal hard dri­ve.

It must’ve been a grand day when he hap­pened across the above 1970s sci fi cov­er. A few deft tweaks, and Life on Mars, a nonex­is­tent “new adven­ture from the author of Space Odd­i­ty,” was born.

(Hard­core fans, take note of the doc­tored pub­lish­er in the upper left cor­ner)

Heroes, which takes its inspi­ra­tion from the 1981 X‑Men com­ic Days of Future Past, is crammed full of such East­er eggs. Can you spot them all?

What a fit­ting trib­ute to the Starman’s endur­ing hold on the public’s imag­i­na­tion.

Browse Todd Alcott’s Bowie-themed pulp fic­tion col­lec­tion in his Etsy shop.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury & David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981

The Art Col­lec­tion of David Bowie: An Intro­duc­tion

Behold The Paint­ings of David Bowie: Neo-Expres­sion­ist Self Por­traits, Illus­tra­tions of Iggy Pop, and Much More

How a 16th-Century Explorer’s Sailing Ship Worked: An Animated Video Takes You on a Comprehensive Tour

These days, it feels as if you can’t go very long at all before scrolling past anoth­er announce­ment about some new tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment (real­ized or sched­uled) relat­ed to space explo­ration. Some react to this by won­der­ing what could pos­si­bly be out there in the uni­verse to jus­ti­fy such enor­mous­ly cap­i­tal- and research-inten­sive projects. Cen­turies ago, sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments were no doubt voiced about the more adven­tur­ous kinds of sea­far­ing. In the new Ani­ma­graffs video above, you can see all that went into the con­struc­tion and equip­ment of a six­teenth-cen­tu­ry explor­er’s sail­ing ship in great detail, from the keel to the fish davit.

The par­tic­u­lar ship you see bro­ken down into its con­stituent parts in this video nev­er actu­al­ly exist­ed. But it may look famil­iar, espe­cial­ly if you’ve seen the recon­struc­tion in Lon­don of Gold­en Hind, the galleon in which Fran­cis Drake cir­cum­nav­i­gat­ed the world in the fif­teen-sev­en­ties. The video’s cre­ator Jacob O’Neal drew a good deal of inspi­ra­tion from that par­tic­u­lar ship, but also incor­po­rat­ed oth­er char­ac­ter­is­tics bor­rowed from the Mary Rose, the Mayflower, Swe­den’s Vas­sa, and var­i­ous Span­ish galleons of what we now regard as “the ear­ly age of sail, when ships began to cross the globe instead of mere­ly fol­low­ing coast­lines or cross­ing inter­nal bod­ies of water.”

How­ev­er advanced a mod­el it would’ve been in its day, this ship could only make a long transocean­ic jour­ney so com­fort­able for its crew of 80 or so, most of whom would’ve been sleep­ing on mats, sub­sist­ing pri­mar­i­ly on bread and beer (rationed at one gal­lon per man per day), and using rudi­men­ta­ry out­door toi­lets. Pre­sum­ably, few would have signed up for such a tri­al if not for the promise of bring­ing rich­es back from dis­tant lands — sup­ple­ment­ed, in the par­tic­u­lar case of the Gold­en Hind, by “unof­fi­cial­ly sanc­tioned pira­cy of Span­ish galleons.” We have here, in oth­er words, a vari­ety of pirate ship, the vehi­cle for swash­buck­ling adven­tures fan­ta­sized about by gen­er­a­tions upon gen­er­a­tions of young­sters.

I myself nev­er dreamed of pira­cy, but I do remem­ber the rap­tur­ous gid­di­ness with which my first-grade class react­ed to learn­ing about the sail­ing ship’s “poop deck.” O’Neal does­n’t neglect that com­po­nent, but nor does he dwell on it, hav­ing many more impor­tant parts to explain and con­tex­tu­al­ize in 40 min­utes. To get an idea of how dra­mat­i­cal­ly ships evolved as the age of sail pro­gressed, have a look at his hit video on the eigh­teenth-cen­tu­ry HMS Vic­to­ry just above. Though the age of space explo­ration seems to have yet to begin in earnest, some of us are no doubt already psych­ing our­selves up to climb into the mod­ern equiv­a­lent of the Gold­en Hind for the 34-month trip to Mars.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See the Well-Pre­served Wreck­age of Ernest Shackleton’s Ship Endurance Found in Antarc­ti­ca

Watch the Sink­ing of the Lusi­ta­nia Ani­mat­ed in Real Time (1915)

16th-Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese His­to­ri­ans Describe the Odd­ness of Meet­ing the First Euro­peans They Ever Saw

How an Ancient Roman Ship­wreck Could Explain the Uni­verse

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

 

Stanford Continuing Studies Offering an Online Course Exploring the Music of the Grateful Dead

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

A quick heads up: On Octo­ber 3rd, Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies will kick off an 8‑week online course called Did It Mat­ter? Does It Now? The Music and Cul­ture of the Grate­ful Dead. Led by David Gans (author of Play­ing in the Band: An Oral and Visu­al Por­trait of the Grate­ful Dead), the course will fea­ture a num­ber of spe­cial guests, includ­ing Jesse Jarnow (host of The Good Ol’ Grate­ful Dead­cast), Den­nis McNal­ly (author of A Long Strange Trip: The Inside His­to­ry of the Grate­ful Dead) and David Lemieux (Grate­ful Dead Archivist). Open to any adult, the course descrip­tion reads:

The Grate­ful Dead’s ground­break­ing fusion of music, coun­ter­cul­ture, and com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment forged an endur­ing lega­cy that tran­scends gen­er­a­tions while shap­ing the evo­lu­tion of music and cul­tur­al expres­sion. Near­ly 30 years after the band played its last show, Grate­ful Dead music is more pop­u­lar than ever—in both live and record­ed form. This course invites stu­dents to delve into the phe­nom­e­non that is the Grate­ful Dead through a cap­ti­vat­ing explo­ration of the band’s his­to­ry, music, and cul­tur­al impact.

The course will fea­ture a col­lec­tion of sto­ries and con­ver­sa­tions with schol­ars and his­to­ri­ans, each offer­ing facts and per­son­al per­spec­tives illu­mi­nat­ing every aspect of the Grate­ful Dead cul­ture. Togeth­er, we will take a guid­ed tour of the music in the form of focused excerpts from live and stu­dio per­for­mances to learn what makes the Dead’s music-mak­ing unique and explore the broad musi­cal uni­verse the band cre­at­ed in its 30-year his­to­ry.

Final­ly, we’ll exam­ine the Dead’s impact on soci­ety, div­ing into the band’s influ­ence on art, lit­er­a­ture, and social change, as well as its unique fan cul­ture and the phe­nom­e­non of the Dead­head. By the end of the course, stu­dents will have a well-round­ed appre­ci­a­tion for the roots, strug­gles, and mile­stones that shaped the Grate­ful Dead’s tra­jec­to­ry, an under­stand­ing of their pro­found impact on music and cul­ture, and insight into a lega­cy that still res­onates deeply today.

Again, the course starts on Thurs­day, Octo­ber 3rd. Tuition is $465. You can enroll here.

Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies also offers many oth­er cours­es online, across many dis­ci­plines, at a rea­son­able price. Check out the cat­a­logue here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Stream a Mas­sive Archive of Grate­ful Dead Con­certs from 1965–1995

The Grate­ful Dead’s “Rip­ple” Played By Musi­cians Around the World (with Cameos by David Cros­by, Jim­my Buf­fett & Bill Kreutz­mann)

When the Grate­ful Dead Played at the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids, in the Shad­ow of the Sphinx (1978)

The Grate­ful Dead Movie: Watch It Free Online

How the Grate­ful Dead’s “Wall of Sound”–a Mon­ster, 600-Speak­er Sound System–Changed Rock Con­certs & Live Music For­ev­er

How Audrey Hepburn Risked Death to Help the Dutch Resistance in World War II

Audrey Hep­burn may not have had the most pro­lif­ic Hol­ly­wood career, but a fair few of her char­ac­ters still feel today like roles she was born to play. Per­haps the same could have been true of the part of Anne Frank, had she not refused to take it up. When Anne’s father Otto Frank inquired about it, one might imag­ine that Hep­burn felt like she did­n’t have the right expe­ri­ence to play that young woman, now long regard­ed as the embod­i­ment of the vic­tims of the Holo­caust. In fact, for the actress who would be remem­bered as Princess Ann and Hol­ly Golight­ly, it was too close to home: Hep­burn could remem­ber all too well her own har­row­ing wartime expe­ri­ence in the Nether­lands, com­ing to the point of star­va­tion while hid­ing from the Nazis.

Born in Bel­gium, the young Hep­burn went to board­ing school in Eng­land in the mid-nine­teen-thir­ties. At the end of that decade, with the out­break of the war, she went with her moth­er to live in the Nether­lands. A stu­dent of bal­let, she danced for audi­ences that includ­ed Nazi par­ty mem­bers — an unavoid­able fact of which much has been made — but she also danced, secret­ly, for the resis­tance. As biog­ra­ph­er Robert Matzen writes, “Audrey’s celebri­ty as a bal­le­ri­na for near­ly four years at the Arn­hem city the­ater made her tal­ents valu­able to Dr. Viss­er ’t Hooft,” one of that move­men­t’s lead­ers, who put on “ille­gal musi­cal per­for­mances at var­i­ous by-invi­ta­tion-only loca­tions” meant to earn artists mon­ey “after they had been forced out of the Dutch main­stream by the Nazi union of artists, the Kul­tu­urkamer.”

Hep­burn her­self dis­cuss­es this peri­od in the inter­view clip at the top of the post. As time went on, Matzen writes, “Dr. Viss­er ’t Hooft sent her at one point dur­ing this peri­od to take a mes­sage, and per­haps food, to one of the downed fliers. Her qual­i­fi­ca­tions were sim­ple: She spoke Eng­lish flu­ent­ly where­as oth­er young peo­ple with­in easy reach in the vil­lage did not.”

In the autumn of 1944, “she and her fam­i­ly kept a British para­troop­er in their base­ment, the lat­est act in a series of defi­ances,” writes Den of Geek’s David Crow. “By the fol­low­ing win­ter, they too would be liv­ing down there, wary to even crawl out of ‘bed’ as the bombs fell on their small Dutch vil­lage of Velp.” Even­tu­al­ly, “after what was left of their food was deplet­ed, they ate tulip bulbs. When those were gone, they ate the weeds.”

Endured at such a young age, this ordeal had last­ing effects. “The depri­va­tions would haunt Audrey the rest of her days, inform­ing her svelte frame and, Matzen argues, pos­si­bly her ear­ly death from appen­diceal can­cer.” No won­der, then, that she remained fair­ly tac­i­turn about her war even after becom­ing an inter­na­tion­al­ly famous actress (an alter­na­tive to her first dream of danc­ing). Hence the for­mi­da­ble chal­lenge laid before Matzen in the research that went into what became Dutch Girl: Audrey Hep­burn and World War II, which you can hear him dis­cuss in the Sto­ry­tellers’ Stu­dio video just above. Her sto­ry turned out dif­fer­ent­ly from Anne Frank’s — which itself, as Matzen argues, beset her with a kind of “sur­vivor’s guilt” — but now, both of them live on as icons of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry at its light­est and dark­est.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Audrey Hepburn’s Mov­ing Screen Test for Roman Hol­i­day (1953)

How Two Teenage Dutch Sis­ters End­ed Up Join­ing the Resis­tance and Assas­si­nat­ing Nazis Dur­ing World War II

Albert Camus, Edi­tor of the French Resis­tance News­pa­per Com­bat, Writes Mov­ing­ly About Life, Pol­i­tics & War (1944–47)

Col­or Footage of the Lib­er­a­tion of Paris, Shot by Hol­ly­wood Direc­tor George Stevens (1944)

Cha­rade, the Best Hitch­cock Film Hitch­cock Nev­er Made. Stars Cary Grant & Audrey Hep­burn

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Why You Can Never Tune a Piano

Grab a cup of cof­fee, put on your think­ing cap, and start work­ing through this video from Minute Physics, which explains why gui­tars, vio­lins and oth­er instru­ments can be tuned to a tee. But when it comes to pianos, it’s an entire­ly dif­fer­ent sto­ry, a math­e­mat­i­cal impos­si­bil­i­ty. Pianos are slight­ly but nec­es­sar­i­ly out of tune.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

How the Clavi­chord & Harp­si­chord Became the Mod­ern Piano: The Evo­lu­tion of Key­board Instru­ments, Explained

What Does the World’s Old­est Sur­viv­ing Piano Sound Like? Watch Pianist Give a Per­for­mance on a 1720 Cristo­fori Piano

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 8 ) |


  • Great Lectures

  • Sign up for Newsletter

  • About Us

    Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. We find the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & educational videos you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.


    Advertise With Us

  • Archives

  • Search

  • Quantcast
    Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.