A Beatboxing Buddhist Monk Creates Music for Meditation

Most of us assume Japan­ese Bud­dhist monks to be silent types. In their per­son­al lives they may well be, but if they want to go viral, they’ve got to log onto the inter­net and make some noise. This is the les­son one draws from some of the Bud­dhist fig­ures pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture: Kos­san, he of the Bea­t­les and Ramones cov­ers, or Gyōsen Asaku­ra, the priest who per­forms psy­che­del­ic ser­vices sound­tracked with elec­tron­ic dance music. Depend­ing on your taste in music, their per­for­mances may or may not induce the men­tal qui­et one asso­ciates with Bud­dhist prac­tice, and the music of Yoget­su Akasa­ka, the lat­est Japan­ese Bud­dhist monk to attain inter­net fame, may at first sound equal­ly untra­di­tion­al. But lis­ten and you may well find your­self in a med­i­ta­tive state with­out even try­ing.

“The 37-year-old went viral in May, after post­ing his ‘Heart Sutra Live Loop­ing Remix,’ a video that’s relax­ing like ASMR, and engross­ing like a DJ set,” writes Vice’s Miran Miyano. “With the loop machine, he lay­ers sounds and chants all com­ing from one instru­ment — his voice.” A musi­cian since his teens and a beat­box­er since his ear­ly twen­ties, the Tokyo-based Akasa­ka became a monk five years ago, fol­low­ing the path tak­en by his father, an abbott at a tem­ple in rur­al Iwate Pre­fec­ture.

“Before he was ordained in 2015, he belonged to a the­atre com­pa­ny formed in Fukushi­ma pre­fec­ture, north­east Japan, after the region was dev­as­tat­ed by the 2011 Tohoku earth­quake and tsuna­mi,” writes Richard Lord in the South Chi­na Morn­ing Post. “He has also been a full-time busker in coun­tries includ­ing the Unit­ed States and Aus­tralia.”

A busker Akasa­ka remains, in a sense, albeit one who, from the cor­ner of YouTube he’s made his own, can be heard across the globe. In addi­tion to record­ings like his hit ver­sion of the Heart Sutra, he’s also been live stream­ing per­for­mances for the past two months. Last­ing up to near­ly two hours, these streams pro­vide Akasa­ka an oppor­tu­ni­ty to vary his musi­cal as well as spir­i­tu­al themes, bring dif­fer­ent instru­ments into the mix, and respond to fans who send him mes­sages from all over the world, most­ly out­side his home­land. “I think in Japan, peo­ple often asso­ciate Bud­dhism with funer­als, and the sutra has a lit­tle bit of a neg­a­tive and sad image,” he says to Vice. Indeed, as the say­ing goes, the mod­ern Japan­ese is born Shin­to, mar­ries Chris­t­ian, and dies Bud­dhist. But as Akasa­ka shows us, his tra­di­tion has some­thing to offer all of us, no mat­ter our nation­al­i­ty, in life as well.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Japan­ese Bud­dhist Monk Cov­ers Ramones’ “Teenage Lobot­o­my,” “Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” Bea­t­les’ “Yel­low Sub­ma­rine” & More

Bud­dhist Monk Cov­ers Judas Priest’s “Break­ing the Law,” Then Breaks Into Med­i­ta­tion

Japan­ese Priest Tries to Revive Bud­dhism by Bring­ing Tech­no Music into the Tem­ple: Attend a Psy­che­del­ic 23-Minute Ser­vice

Beat­box­ing Bach’s Gold­berg Vari­a­tions

What Beat­box­ing and Opera Singing Look Like Inside an MRI Machine

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

Icons of Art Wearing Masks: Frida Kahlo, Mona Lisa, Girl with the Pearl Earring & More

We hear the phrase “unprece­dent­ed times” every day now, but the truth is few calami­ties in human his­to­ry are more prece­dent­ed than plagues and pesti­lences. In West­ern his­to­ry, at least, dis­ease epi­demics seem always to have been fol­lowed by Machi­avel­lian oppor­tunism and cultish con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries that only made things worse.

Dur­ing the 14th cen­tu­ry, almost six hun­dred years before Nao­mi Klein defined the shock doc­trine, the Black Death “strength­ened the pow­er of the state and accel­er­at­ed the dom­i­na­tion of key mar­kets by a hand­ful of large com­pa­nies,” write Eleanor Rus­sell and Mar­tin Park­er at The Con­ver­sa­tion (hel­lo, Ama­zon). In their argu­ment, dis­as­ter cap­i­tal­ism may have pre­ced­ed actu­al cap­i­tal­ism, and it start­ed with the plague.

In his his­to­ry of the Great Plague of 1665, Daniel Defoe described how “every­one behaved bad­ly, though the rich behaved the worst,” as Jill Lep­ore writes at The New York­er, forc­ing their ser­vants to put their lives at risk to pro­vi­sion the great hous­es. “This Neces­si­ty…,” writes Defoe, “was in a great Mea­sure the Ruin of the whole City,” though few in Lon­don then under­stood how to slow trans­mis­sion of the dis­ease.

That was not the case when the Influen­za epi­dem­ic took the lives of hun­dreds of mil­lions around the world between 1918 and 1920. Doc­tors under­stood how the flu spread and rec­om­mend­ed that every­one wear a mask in pub­lic. Cities passed ordi­nances and imme­di­ate­ly resis­tance sprang up, lead­ing to orga­ni­za­tions like San Francisco’s Anti-Mask League, whose rhetoric sounds like that of anti-mask pro­tes­tors of today.

The times may be unique—for the speed at which COVID-19 spread around the world, for instance, along with the disinformation—but humans have lived through many ver­sions of pan­dem­ic, and many dis­as­trous­ly self­ish, oppor­tunis­tic, and short-sight­ed respons­es to it. We may con­tem­plate these his­tor­i­cal rep­e­ti­tions as we admire the Insta­gram cre­ations of artist Genevieve Blais, who has been post­ing images of famous paint­ings, stat­ues, and pho­tographs with their sub­jects wear­ing masks.

More than nov­el­ty memes or high­brow pub­lic ser­vice announce­ments, Blais’ cre­ations are part-whim­si­cal/­part-sober­ing reminders of the per­sis­tence of plagues through­out history—their influ­ence on the rise and fall of dynas­ties and pow­er­ful patrons, and the igno­rance and fol­ly that led to so much pre­ventable death. Tech­no­log­i­cal­ly speak­ing, humans are bet­ter posi­tioned than ever before to com­bat epi­demics of dis­ease. But it’s worth remem­ber­ing the prece­dents for our cur­rent con­di­tions. Plagues have shaped human his­to­ry. We don’t always have to respond to them the same way. See all of Blais’s masked fine art images at her Plague His­to­ry Insta­gram page. If you DM her, she will make you a print.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Hap­pened When Amer­i­cans Had to Wear Masks Dur­ing the 1918 Flu Pan­dem­ic

Vin­tage Sci­ence Face Masks: Con­quer the Pan­dem­ic with Sci­ence, Cour­tesy of Maria Popova’s Brain­Pick­ings

Down­load Clas­sic Works of Plague Fic­tion: From Daniel Defoe & Mary Shel­ley, to Edgar Allan Poe

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

Dr. Fauci Reads an Undergrad’s Entire Thesis, Then Follows Up with an Encouraging Letter

Pho­to via the Nation­al Insti­tute of Aller­gy and Infec­tious Dis­eases 

What are some qual­i­ties to look for in a leader?

  • A thirst for knowl­edge
  • A sense of duty
  • The scru­ples to give cred­it where cred­it is due
  • A calm, clear com­mu­ni­ca­tion style
  • Humil­i­ty

Dr. Antho­ny Fau­ci brings these qual­i­ties to bear as Direc­tor of the Nation­al Insti­tute of Aller­gy and Infec­tious Dis­eases at the Nation­al Insti­tute of Health.

They’re also on dis­play in his mes­sage to then-under­grad Luke Mes­sac, now an emer­gency med­i­cine res­i­dent at Brown Uni­ver­si­ty, whose research focus­es on the his­to­ries of health pol­i­cy in south­ern Africa and the US, and who recent­ly tweet­ed:

13 years ago, I emailed Dr. Fau­ci out of the blue to ask if I might inter­view him for my under­grad the­sis. He invit­ed me to his office, where he answered all my ques­tions. When I sent him the the­sis, HE READ THE WHOLE THING (see his over­ly effu­sive review below). Who does that?!

Here’s what Fau­ci had to say to the young sci­en­tist:

It cer­tain­ly reads like the work of a class act.

In addi­tion to serv­ing as one of the COVID-19 pandemic’s most rec­og­niz­able faces, Dr. Fau­ci has acquired anoth­er duty—that of scape­goat for Don­ald Trump, the 6th pres­i­dent he has answered to in his long career.

He seems to be tak­ing the administration’s pot­shots with a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly cool head, though com­pared to the furi­ous crit­i­cisms AIDS activists direct­ed his way in the 80s and 90s, he’s unlike­ly to find much of edu­ca­tion­al val­ue in them.

Last March, The Body Pro, a newslet­ter for work­ers on the front lines of HIV edu­ca­tion, pre­ven­tion, care, and ser­vices quot­ed ACT UP NY’s Jim Eigo on the doctor’s response to a let­ter demand­ing par­al­lel track­ing, a pol­i­cy revi­sion that would put poten­tial­ly life-sav­ing drugs in the hands of those who test­ed pos­i­tive far ear­li­er than the exist­ing clin­i­cal tri­al require­ments’ sched­ule would have allowed:

Lo and behold, he read the let­ter and liked it, and the fol­low­ing year he start­ed pro­mot­ing the idea of a par­al­lel track for AIDS drugs to the FDA. Had he not helped us push that through, we couldn’t have got­ten a lot of the cousin drugs to AZT, such as ddC and ddI, approved so fast. They were prob­lem­at­ic drugs, but with­out them, we couldn’t have kept so many peo­ple alive. 

Fau­ci, despite being straight and Catholic, was not only not homo­pho­bic, which much of med­ical prac­tice still was in the late 1980s, he also wouldn’t tol­er­ate homo­pho­bia among his col­leagues. He knew there was no place for that in a pub­lic-health cri­sis.

Speak­ing of cor­re­spon­dence, Dr Mes­sac seems to have tak­en the “per­pet­u­al stu­dent” con­cept Dr. Fau­ci impressed upon him back in 2007 to heart, as evi­denced by a recent tweet, regard­ing a les­son gleaned from Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger in Pump­ing Iron, a 1977 doc­u­men­tary about body­builders:

Schwarzeneg­ger explained how he would fig­ure out what to work out every day by look­ing in a mir­ror and find­ing his weak­est mus­cles. It’s pret­ty good advice for study­ing dur­ing res­i­den­cy. Every shift reveals a weak­ness, and greats nev­er stop look­ing for their own.

In writ­ing to Mes­sac, Dr. Fau­ci allud­ed to his com­mence­ment speech­es, so we thought it appro­pri­ate to leave you with one of his most recent ones, a vir­tu­al address to the grad­u­at­ing class of his alma mater, Col­lege of the Holy Cross:

“Now is the time, if ever there was one” he tells the Class of 2020, “to care self­less­ly about one anoth­er… Stay safe, and I look for­ward to the good work you will con­tribute in the years ahead.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Real Women Talk About Their Careers in Sci­ence

Richard Feynman’s Tech­nique for Learn­ing Some­thing New: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

Nov­el­ist Cor­mac McCarthy Gives Writ­ing Advice to Sci­en­tists … and Any­one Who Wants to Write Clear, Com­pelling Prose

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

Dr. Wise on Influenza: Rare Silent Film Shows How They Tried to Educate the Public About the Spanish Flu a Century Ago (1919)

“Pics or it didn’t hap­pen,” says the Inter­net, a phrase typ­i­cal­ly “used in jest,” writes Erin Ratelle at Space and Cul­ture, as “a counter to an out­ra­geous claim of events. How­ev­er, its root is pred­i­cat­ed on the notion that media is inte­gral to being or exis­tence,” that we must record every­thing. Such implic­it under­stand­ing was only in its infan­cy in 1918, when the influen­za out­break known as the Span­ish Flu began, which per­haps goes some way toward explain­ing why a viral pan­dem­ic that killed mil­lions around the world—far more than World War I—is so under­rep­re­sent­ed in the his­tor­i­cal record.

These days if a Utah coun­ty com­mis­sion meet­ing about masks for chil­dren gets thronged by unmasked pro­test­ers, we get almost-instant video at The Wash­ing­ton Post. Images fil­ter out through Twit­ter and Face­book, or move in the oth­er direc­tion, and mil­lions see them with­in hours. Dur­ing the 1918 flu pan­dem­ic, unmasked pro­test­ers against mask laws also abound­ed, but cov­er­age of their stunts took months to move from local papers to nation­al out­lets, who even­tu­al­ly cov­ered the San Fran­cis­co Anti-Mask League’s stri­dent refusals. The dev­as­tat­ing epi­dem­ic, how­ev­er, esti­mat­ed to have infect­ed one third of the world, was almost entire­ly absent from silent film at the time.

Cin­e­ma of all kinds avoid­ed the sub­ject, writes Bry­ony Dixon at the British Film Insti­tute (BFI): “It’s aston­ish­ing to think how invis­i­ble the first pan­dem­ic in the time of cin­e­ma is from the film record. Apart from one infor­ma­tion­al film, which sur­vives in the BFI Nation­al Archive, the influen­za pan­dem­ic of 1918/1919 doesn’t appear in British film at all. There were no news­reel reports, and no fic­tion films were made that even men­tioned the three waves of the pan­dem­ic that struck the coun­try in the final year of the First World War and would kill 200,000 peo­ple” in the UK and 500 mil­lion world­wide.

This does not mean there are no films about plague and pesti­lence from the time. But the present seemed to have been too painful. Film­mak­ers looked back to Boc­cac­cio, one of whose Decameron sto­ries was adapt­ed for the screen. “It must cer­tain­ly have been eas­i­er,” Dixon writes, “for silent era audi­ences to con­tem­plate pan­dem­ic with­in the moral frame­work of the medieval peri­od.” Edgar Allan Poe’s Masque of the Red Death was adapt­ed by Fritz Lang in a screen­play for Otto Rippert’s 1919 The Plague in Flo­rence. F.W. Murnau’s 1922 Nos­fer­atu is, arguably, about dis­ease, as is its source, Bram Stoker’s Drac­u­la. But fic­tion and doc­u­men­tary most­ly stayed mum about the dead­ly flu pan­dem­ic.

In 1918, the War had near­ly every Euro­pean nation (and the U.S. at that point) pre­oc­cu­pied. Gov­ern­ment con­trol over major media out­lets cen­sored cov­er­age of the dis­ease, osten­si­bly to avoid a pan­ic. The stag­ger­ing death tolls of war and infec­tion were over­whelm­ing. A polit­i­cal nar­ra­tive took shape to sug­gest a cul­prit, Spain, which was neu­tral dur­ing WWI, and the first coun­try to begin cov­er­ing the dis­ease in their press (hence the “Span­ish Flu,” which did not orig­i­nate in Spain). The one excep­tion to the black­out in the BFI archive is the short infor­ma­tion­al film at the top, Dr. Wise on Influen­za.

Pro­duced under the aus­pices of Sir Arthur New­sholme, the Chief Med­ical Offi­cer of the Local Gov­ern­ment Board (LGB), the film arrived a lit­tle too late to do much good after the sec­ond wave of infec­tions began in 1919, and it was not wide­ly dis­trib­uted. The short film pro­motes wear­ing masks, and it tells a very famil­iar sto­ry, as Dixon explains:

The ‘doc­tor’ uses the device of a fic­tion­al sto­ry in which a rather dim Mr Brown coughs and sneezes over col­leagues in the office and the street, before going on to infect 100 peo­ple at a the­atre (we see a rare ear­ly glimpse of the Empire Leices­ter Square, which was show­ing a musi­cal, The Lilac Domi­no).

It doesn’t end well for Mr Brown, and an on-screen title lists the grim totals of deaths in British cities, just as we’ve become used to see­ing today. Oth­er par­al­lels with the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion are spooky: the prime min­is­ter, Lloyd George, like Boris John­son, was hos­pi­talised for days with the virus, and an anx­ious nation was told it was ‘touch and go’ for a while.

His­to­ry has been rhyming all over the place late­ly, maybe the most poet­ic thing about the ugly times we’re liv­ing in. As much as we might have believed that the world, or our par­tic­u­lar cor­ner of it, had changed, we’re find­ing out how lit­tle progress we’ve actu­al­ly made. Iron­i­cal­ly, one of the most remark­able dif­fer­ences between the ear­ly 21st cen­tu­ry and every­thing that came before—the omnipres­ence of cam­eras and video—has accel­er­at­ed these real­iza­tions. We can now wit­ness, in ways no one pos­si­bly could have in 1919, just how much of the past we’re drag­ging along behind us.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Hap­pened When Amer­i­cans Had to Wear Masks Dur­ing the 1918 Flu Pan­dem­ic

The His­to­ry of the 1918 Flu Pan­dem­ic, “The Dead­liest Epi­dem­ic of All Time”: Three Free Lec­tures from The Great Cours­es

Japan­ese Health Man­u­al Cre­at­ed Dur­ing the 1918 Span­ish Flu Pan­dem­ic Offers Time­less Wis­dom: Stay Away from Oth­ers, Cov­er Your Mouth & Nose, and More

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

29 Free Short Stories from Some of Today’s Most Acclaimed Writers: Margaret Atwood, David Mitchell & More

Let us call your atten­tion to 29 free short sto­ries, writ­ten by some of today’s most acclaimed writ­ers. They come cour­tesy of The New York Times’ Decameron Project. They write:

Inspired by Gio­van­ni Boccaccio’s “The Decameron,” a 14th-cen­tu­ry col­lec­tion of tales told by a group of 10 char­ac­ters tak­ing shel­ter in an Ital­ian vil­la dur­ing the Black Plague, this [col­lec­tion] fea­tures sto­ries from Mar­garet Atwood, David Mitchell, Téa Obre­ht, Karen Rus­sell, Tom­my Orange, Yiyun Li and oth­ers. The so-called Decameron Project is the first time in the magazine’s mod­ern his­to­ry that an entire issue is devot­ed to new fic­tion.

You can read the sto­ries online here. And if you pre­fer audio, hear two sto­ries read aloud by Tom­my Orange and Edwidge Dan­ti­cat 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:

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Audi­ble Pro­vid­ing Free Audio Books to Kids & Teens: Intro­duc­ing the New Ser­vice, Audi­ble Sto­ries

Read 9 Sto­ries By Haru­ki Muraka­mi Free Online

10 Free Sto­ries by George Saun­ders, Author of Tenth of Decem­ber, “The Best Book You’ll Read This Year”

 

Modern English Performs Their 1982 Hit, “I Melt With You,” in Quarantine

Near­ly 40 years after they released their New Wave clas­sic, Mod­ern Eng­lish is back, per­form­ing togeth­er in iso­la­tion, to get us through the pan­dem­ic. Find more social­ly-dis­tanced per­for­mances by Roger Waters, the Rolling Stones and the Doo­bie Broth­ers below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Doo­bie Broth­ers Sing Their 1974 Clas­sic, “Black Water,” Live, in Iso­la­tion

Watch the Rolling Stones Play “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” While Social Dis­tanc­ing in Quar­an­tine

Roger Waters Per­forms a Social­ly-Dis­tanced Ver­sion of Pink Floyd’s “Moth­er”

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Everything You Need To Know About Viruses: A Quick Visual Explanation of Viruses in 9 Images

It’s a great time to tune in to what sci­en­tists are try­ing to tell us.

It’s true that we’ve received a lot of con­flict­ing infor­ma­tion over the last four months with regard to how to best pro­tect our­selves and oth­ers from COVID-19.

Sci­en­tists and health care pro­fes­sion­als have a learn­ing curve, too.

Their bul­letins evolve as their under­stand­ing of the nov­el coro­n­avirus grows, through research and hands-on expe­ri­ence.

There are still a lot of unknowns.

Some peo­ple take any evi­dence-based mes­sag­ing updates regard­ing masks and re-open­ing as proof that sci­en­tists don’t know their ass­es from their elbows.

To which we might counter, “If that’s the case, please take a minute from berat­ing the poor gro­cery store employ­ee who asked you to fol­low clear­ly post­ed state man­dat­ed pub­lic health prac­tices to edu­cate us. For­get the econ­o­my. For­get the elec­tion. Blind us with some sci­ence. Pre­tend we don’t know any­thing and hit us with some hard­core facts about virus­es. We’re lis­ten­ing.”

(Crick­ets…)

Sci­ence writer Dominic Wal­li­man, founder of the Domain of Sci­ence Youtube  chan­nel, may have a PhD in quan­tum device physics, but he also had the humil­i­ty to real­ize, ear­li­er in the pan­dem­ic, that he didn’t know much about virus­es:

So I did a load of research and have sum­ma­rized what I learned in… nine images. This video (above) explains the key aspects of virus­es: how big they are, how they infect and enter and exit cells, how virus­es are clas­si­fied, how they repli­cate, and sub­jects involv­ing viral infec­tions like how they spread from per­son to per­son, how our immune sys­tem detects and destroys them and how vac­cines and anti-viral drugs work.

Wal­li­man ani­mates his 10-minute overview with the same bright info­graph­ics he uses to help stu­dents and laypeo­ple wrap their heads around com­put­er sci­ence, biol­o­gy, chem­istry, physics, and math.

The virus video has been fact-checked by immu­nol­o­gist Michael Bramhall and biol­o­gist Christoph von Arx.

And how refresh­ing to see trans­paren­cy with regard to human error, pub­lished as a cor­rec­tive:

In slide 9 tox­in vac­cines are for bac­te­r­i­al infec­tions like tetanus, not virus­es. 

For those who’d like to learn more, Wal­li­man has tacked a whop­ping 15 links onto the episode’s descrip­tion, from sources such as Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­canNatureStan­ford Medicine’s Scope blog, and the Nation­al Cen­ter for Biotech­nol­o­gy Infor­ma­tion.

Down­load a free poster of Domain of Science’s Virus­es Explained in 9 Images here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Spring Break vs. COVID-19: Map­ping the Real Impact of Ignor­ing Social Dis­tanc­ing

A Chill­ing Time-Lapse Video Doc­u­ments Every COVID-19 Death on a Glob­al Map: From Jan­u­ary to June 2020

The Case for a Uni­ver­sal Basic Income in the Time of COVID-19

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her lat­est project is an ani­ma­tion and a series of free down­load­able posters relat­ed to COVID-19 pub­lic health Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Sunken Films: Watch a Cinematic Meditation on Films Found on the Ocean’s Floor

Bill Mor­ri­son has been entranced by the beau­ty of decay­ing nitrate film for decades, cre­at­ing art out of unsal­vage­able cel­lu­loid. His 2002 film Deca­sia equat­ed the fad­ing of mem­o­ry and time with the chem­i­cal dis­so­lu­tion of silent films, where audi­ences are teased with char­ac­ters and maybe a hint of a sto­ry only to have the images destroyed by nitrates. He’s returned to this theme again and again, cre­at­ing a fil­mog­ra­phy of melan­choly and sad­ness.

In his lat­est short, Sunken Films, Mor­ri­son riffs on sto­ries of films found at the bot­tom of the sea, using the sink­ing of the Lusi­ta­nia as an entry into the ghosts of cin­e­ma past.

The RMS Lusi­ta­nia was the ill-fat­ed British lux­u­ry lin­er that Ger­man U‑boats tor­pe­doed off the coast of Ire­land on May 7, 1915. It had left New York six days before, and the Ger­mans claimed the com­mer­cial lin­er was secret­ly trans­port­ing muni­tions to Britain for the Great War, a war that Amer­i­ca was try­ing not to join. (Divers nev­er found evi­dence of muni­tions in the wreck­age.)

The attack killed 1,198 pas­sen­gers, and the great ship sunk in under 20 min­utes, an unfor­giv­ing speed. The sink­ing would be one of the rea­sons Amer­i­ca final­ly decid­ed to fight along­side the British. Mor­ri­son edits in Win­sor McCay’s ani­mat­ed ver­sion of the tragedy to show how the boat went down, and there’s some­thing sur­re­al in his ren­der­ing of all the peo­ple, only their heads above water, bob­bing in the ocean.

Morrison’s film also uses footage shot at the time and cap­tions to move the action along. The sound­track is silent save for the nos­tal­gic sound of a film pro­jec­tor. There is only one sur­viv­ing film of the ship leav­ing New York har­bor. Mor­ri­son points out the author Elbert Hub­bard and his wife Alice Moore wav­ing to the camera–Hubbard wrote elo­quent­ly a few years before about those who died on board the Titan­ic.

The Lusi­ta­nia had a cin­e­ma on board, and Mor­ri­son med­i­tates on the films that sunk to the ocean floor, includ­ing one that was sal­vaged: one reel of Col­in Campbell’s The Car­pet from Bagh­dad, now archived at the British Film Insti­tute. It is the only exist­ing reel of this lost fea­ture.

If you think Mor­ri­son then shows the film, you’ll be dis­ap­point­ed. Instead Mor­ri­son heads off in anoth­er direc­tion, dis­cov­er­ing oth­er films that have been lost at sea, and some that have been found, like footage of Vladimir Lenin speak­ing to the pub­lic and more impor­tant­ly snug­gling up with his pet cat. (This rev­o­lu­tion-adja­cent cat’s name has been lost to time unfor­tu­nate­ly.) Caught in a fish­ing net, the weath­ered film is a mys­te­ri­ous object–though not nec­es­sar­i­ly a rare one, the footage is avail­able else­where. Instead Mor­ri­son hopes to leave us with images of under­sea cin­e­ma, reels of kelp-like film, only on view to pass­ing fish.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Evoca­tive­ness of Decom­pos­ing Film: Watch the 1926 Hol­ly­wood Movie The Bells Become the Exper­i­men­tal 2004 Short Film, Light Is Call­ing

A Mes­mer­iz­ing Trip Across the Brook­lyn Bridge: Watch Footage from 1899

Win­sor McCay Ani­mates the Sink­ing of the Lusi­ta­nia in a Beau­ti­ful Pro­pa­gan­da Film (1918)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

You Can Play the New Samurai Video Game Ghost of Tsushima in “Kurosawa Mode:” An Homage to the Japanese Master

Video games are start­ing to look and feel like movies: even those of us who haven’t gamed seri­ous­ly in decades have tak­en notice. Nor has the con­ver­gence between the art forms — if, unlike the late Roger Ebert, you con­sid­er video games an art form in the first place — been lost on game devel­op­ers them­selves. While the most ambi­tious cre­ators in the indus­try looked for inspi­ra­tion from cin­e­ma even when they were work­ing with rel­a­tive­ly prim­i­tive dig­i­tal tools, they can now pay prac­ti­cal­ly direct homage to their aes­thet­ic sources. Take Suck­er Punch Pro­duc­tions’ Ghost of Tsushi­ma, released this week for the Playsta­tion 4, which fea­tures a selec­table audio­vi­su­al mode “inspired by the movies of leg­endary film­mak­er Aki­ra Kuro­sawa.”

An ambi­tious pro­duc­tion set on the tit­u­lar Japan­ese island dur­ing a 13th-cen­tu­ry Mon­gol inva­sion, Ghost of Tsushi­ma casts the play­er in the role of a young samu­rai named Jin Sakai. “All the aes­thet­ic and the­mat­ic con­ven­tions of samu­rai films are present and cor­rect,” writes The Guardian’s Keza Mac­Don­ald, includ­ing “a sto­ry cen­tered on hon­or and self-mas­tery; dra­mat­ic weath­er that sweeps across Japan’s spell­bind­ing land­scapes; stand­offs against back­drops of falling leaves and desert­ed towns; screen wipe and axi­al cuts; quick, lethal katana com­bat that ends with ene­mies stag­ger­ing and spurt­ing blood before top­pling like felled trees.” Kuro­sawa Mode presents the game’s hyp­not­i­cal­ly lav­ish visu­als in a “grainy black-and-white,” and its dia­logue in Eng­lish-sub­ti­tled Japan­ese — just how many of us remem­ber pic­tures like Sev­en Samu­raiThrone of Blood, and Yojim­bo.

Of course, some of us had no choice but to first encounter the work of Kuro­sawa and oth­er 20th-cen­tu­ry Japan­ese auteurs in ver­sions dubbed into Eng­lish. In an uncan­ny rever­sal of that awk­ward­ness, the Amer­i­can-made Ghost of Tsushi­ma’s Japan­ese-lan­guage dia­logue comes out of mouths clear­ly syn­chro­nized to an Eng­lish-lan­guage script. West­ern crit­ics have tak­en the devel­op­ers to task for that short­com­ing, but Japan­ese crit­ics have proven com­par­a­tive­ly unre­strained in express­ing their admi­ra­tion. Accord­ing to Kotaku’s Bri­an Ashcraft, not only did pop­u­lar gam­ing site Denge­ki Online “praise the game for its under­stand­ing of the peri­od (as well as his­tor­i­cal Japan­ese movies), it also laud­ed the game for how it brought the land­scape and scenery to life.”

While Mac­Don­ald calls pro­tag­o­nist Jin Sakai “stiff even by sto­ical samu­rai stan­dards,” Ashcraft points to a review in Japan­ese pop-cul­ture site Aki­ba Souken which calls him not “the typ­i­cal samu­rai of for­eign cre­ation, but rather, a real Japan­ese 侍 (samu­rai),” using “both the Eng­lish ‘samu­rai’ and the word’s kan­ji to high­light this dis­tinc­tion.” Any Kuro­sawa fan will have a sense of the dif­fer­ence, and of the impor­tance of one thing the game does­n’t get right. In a review head­lined “There Is No Sense Of Dis­com­fort In This For­eign-Made Japan­ese World,” gam­ing mag­a­zine Week­ly Famit­su does note the game’s lack of “paus­es in con­ver­sa­tion that are typ­i­cal of peri­od pieces. That pause and that silence are key; in Japan, what isn’t said is just as impor­tant as what is.” Suck­er Punch’s Ghost of Tsushi­ma team must already know they should retain Kuro­sawa Mode for the inevitable sequel; all they need to work on is the unspo­ken.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Sev­en Samu­rai Per­fect­ed the Cin­e­mat­ic Action Scene: A New Video Essay

How Did Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Make Such Pow­er­ful & Endur­ing Films? A Wealth of Video Essays Break Down His Cin­e­mat­ic Genius

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Paint­ed the Sto­ry­boards For Scenes in His Epic Films: Com­pare Can­vas to Cel­lu­loid

The Gold­en Age of Ancient Greece Gets Faith­ful­ly Recre­at­ed in the New Video Game Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mas­ter­piece Stalk­er Gets Adapt­ed into a Video Game

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

Make Your Own Krispy Kreme Face Shield: A Primer for Making Your Own Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)

Magi­cian Andy Clock­wise shows you how you can make “your very own Krispy Kreme face shield using just the lid from a 12 box of Krispy Kreme dough­nuts, some sticky tape and a pair of scis­sors.”

If you need to impro­vise, you know what to do…

Hear an Enchanted Medieval Cover of Dolly Parton’s Classic Ode to Jealousy, “Jolene”

Dol­ly Parton’s “Jolene” is an end­less­ly renew­able resource of beau­ti­ful sad­ness, and many a mod­ern-day bard has a “Jolene” in their quiver. The White Stripes turned it into garage rock, Olivia New­ton John did it as dis­co, and Norah Jones as cabaret jazz. There is the oblig­a­tory house remix. Slow it down to 33rpm and Dolly’s gen­der begins to blur, while her voice los­es none of its plain­tive mys­tique. “Jolene” set a stan­dard for melan­choly few, if any, tunes can meet. So, you know, there’s a bard­core cov­er of “Jolene.”

Bard­core (also called “tav­ern­wave”), has “tak­en over pop music,” kind of, as you might have learned from Ayun Halliday’s post on bard­core artist Hilde­gard von Blin­gin’ here a few weeks back. The short version—bardcore artists make cov­ers of pop songs with medieval instru­men­ta­tion and vocal stylings. Lyrics are rewrit­ten with archaisms like “I want thine ugly, I want thy disease/Take aught from thee shall I if it can be free,” which are not lyrics to “Jolene,” let’s move on.

What does “Jolene” sound like as bard­core? In a word, spell­bind­ing. And I don’t mean to be cheeky—this is enchant­i­ng, not least because, medieval­ized, the song sounds at times like it could be com­ing from a tor­tured nun on the edge of leav­ing the clois­ter in the dead of night to run off with a woman named Jolene, whose attrib­ut­es she lov­ing­ly, poet­i­cal­ly lays out.

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
I beg of thee, pray take not my lord
Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
I fear, from thee, ‘twould take naught but a word

Thy beau­ty is beyond com­pare
With flam­ing locks of auburn hair
With ivory skin and eyes of emer­ald green
Thy smile is like a breath of Spring
Thy voice is soft like Sum­mer rain
And I can­not com­pete with thee
Jolene

An ode to jeal­ousy hints at a poten­tial­ly spicy tale of for­bid­den romance and bro­ken vows, fur­ther trib­ute to Parton’s skill as a song­writer (and the sex­u­al ambi­gu­i­ty inher­ent in the song). Hilde­gard von Blin­gin’ is not jok­ing, nov­el­ty names aside. She has a love­ly voice and has invest­ed her medieval cov­ers with high pro­duc­tion val­ues and peri­od-cor­rect illu­mi­nat­ed music videos.

Every­one lis­tens to house music in Hol­ly­wood sci-fi futures, but maybe it’s bard­core they’ll play on the inter­stel­lar cruise ships. “’Tis a ver­i­ta­ble phe­nom­e­non on t’internet,” says bard­core cre­ator Cor­nelius Link (which means it could go the way of vapor­wave). For years, medieval memes have been hot online cur­ren­cy, for rea­sons we need not get too pop-soci­o­log­i­cal about. They’re fun and weird and alien and WTF and remind us that it could be worse, I guess. They appeal to Gen Z’s “exis­ten­tial humour.” They were Games of Thrones-y. They’re cool­er than Har­ry Pot­ter.

For most of medieval times, plague was on everyone’s mind. “The pan­dem­ic is thought to be sig­nif­i­cant,” says Link, “with a new Black Death hov­er­ing over us all.” But if we’re talk­ing about “Jolene,” we’re talk­ing about a song that “reg­is­ters with the basest of bit­ter­ness we’ve all felt,” hith­er and thith­er, shut up in con­vents or locked down in our hous­es. Explore more not-“Jolene” bard­core jams here.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Medieval Cov­ers of “Creep,” “Pumped Up Kicks,” “Bad Romance” & More by Hilde­gard von Blin­gin’

Dol­ly Parton’s “Jolene” Slowed Down to 33RPM Sounds Great and Takes on New, Unex­pect­ed Mean­ings

With Medieval Instru­ments, Band Per­forms Clas­sic Songs by The Bea­t­les, Red Hot Chili Pep­pers, Metal­li­ca & Deep Pur­ple

Pink Floyd’s “Anoth­er Brick in the Wall” Played with Medieval Instru­ments, and Kick­start More Medieval Cov­ers

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


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