The Best Music to Write By: Give Us Your Recommendations

in Books, Literature, Music, Writing | November 16th, 2012

Writ­ing is hard. It’s hard to begin, hard to con­tin­ue, hard to fin­ish. To write suc­cess­ful­ly and con­sis­tent­ly requires an alchem­i­cal com­bi­na­tion of dis­ci­pline and inspi­ra­tion so per­son­al that read­ing advice on the sub­ject amounts to watch­ing some­one else die to learn how it’s done. And while it often feels enlight­en­ing to read about the habits of, say, Stein­beck or Austen, their meth­ods are non-trans­fer­able. You’ve got to find your own way. So it is with writ­ing to music. It’s always there in the back­ground, goad­ing you on qui­et­ly. Not every­one writes to music; not every­one can. But a good many do, includ­ing Wired con­trib­u­tor Steve Sil­ber­man who calls the prac­tice one of many rit­u­als writ­ers use “to evoke that elu­sive flow of inspi­ra­tion.”

Sil­ber­man just wrote a piece for Neu­roTribes in which he sur­veyed ten authors on their favorite music to write by. One of Silberman’s own choic­es, Miles Davis’s In a Silent Way (above), is one I’m steal­ing. With its bril­liant assem­blage of musi­cians and haunt­ing mood­i­ness it sets the per­fect tone for my process. Also, there’s no singing. Like Sil­ber­man, I can’t com­pete with a wise, wit­ty lyri­cist (he men­tions Elvis Costel­lo, I pre­fer Mor­ris­sey). In Sil­ber­man’s piece, John Schwartz, a New York Times reporter, lis­tens to noth­ing. Jane Hirschfield, a chan­cel­lor of the Acad­e­my of Amer­i­can Poets, likes David Byrne, Dylan’s Mod­ern Times, and Gillians Welch’s The Har­row and the Har­vest. Wired con­tribut­ing edi­tor David Wol­man makes a playlist of most­ly indie-pop songs enti­tled “Write the Book!” His main cri­te­ri­on for the songs he choos­es: DO NOT BE BORING! My default writ­ing music is exem­pli­fied by Aus­tralian three-piece instru­men­tal rock band Dirty Three (below).

So now it’s your turn, read­ers. Do you write to music? If so, what is it? What artists/composers/albums help you find your rhythm and why? Can you stand lyrics in the music you write by or no? Leave your selec­tions in the com­ments. On Mon­day, we’ll com­pile them in an arti­cle and leave you with a great Open Cul­ture playlist. Whether you find some­thing you can steal or not, it should be a fun exer­cise.

*See our fol­low-up post with a list of your favorites here

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Hitchcock (Anthony Hopkins) Pitches Janet Leigh (Scarlett Johansson) on the Famous Shower Scene

in Film | November 16th, 2012

First we have a film, the 1960 piece — some would say pin­na­cle — of psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror, Psy­cho. Then we have a man, Alfred Hitch­cock, Psy­cho’s direc­tor, the famous­ly man­nered but seem­ing­ly trou­bled mas­ter crafts­man of mid­cen­tu­ry cin­e­mat­ic sus­pense. Then we have a book, Stephen Rebel­lo’s Alfred Hitch­cock and the Mak­ing of Psy­cho, which Antho­ny Perkins, who played the psy­cho, called “required read­ing not only for Psy­cho-files, but for any­one inter­est­ed in the back­stage world of movie-cre­ation.” And, next week, we’ll have a new peri­od dra­ma, set dur­ing the pro­duc­tion of the film, based on the book, and cen­tered on the man. It’s impos­si­ble to imag­ine the afi­ciona­do of twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry motion pic­tures who would­n’t want to watch Antho­ny Hop­kins take on Hitch­cock’s title role. Behold the brief clip above, where­in Hop­kins-as-Hitch­cock explains to young Janet Leigh how, exact­ly, he plans to shoot the show­er scene, as his wife Alma looks ner­vous­ly on.

You’ll notice, in the roles of Janet Leigh and Alma Reville, two more well-respect­ed per­form­ers, Scar­lett Johans­son and Helen Mir­ren. Indeed, the list of actors involved in Hitchock and that of char­ac­ters they play look equal­ly inter­est­ing: A Seri­ous Man star Michael Stuhlbarg as tal­ent agent Lew Wasser­man, Karate Kid Ralph Mac­chio as screen­writer Joseph Ste­fano, Wal­lace Lang­ham as graph­ic artist and title design­er Saul Bass, and Michael Win­cott as real-life ser­i­al killer Ed Gein. In the clip just above, watch Hitch­cock explain to Alma his insis­tence upon self-financ­ing Psy­cho’s pro­duc­tion after get­ting turned down by Para­mount: “Do you remem­ber the fun we had when we start­ed out, all those years ago?” he asks. “We did­n’t have any mon­ey then, did we? We did­n’t have any time, either, but we took risks, do you remem­ber? We exper­i­ment­ed. We invent­ed new ways of mak­ing pic­tures, because we had to. I just want to feel that kind of free­dom again.” Before see­ing exact­ly how he enjoyed that free­dom again when Hitch­cock comes out on Novem­ber 23rd, be sure to revis­it our posts fea­tur­ing Psy­cho’s tan­ta­liz­ing orig­i­nal trail­er, and the film­mak­er’s own rules for watch­ing the movie.

Relat­ed con­tent:

22 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

Mar­tin Scors­ese Brings “Lost” Hitch­cock Film to Screen in Short Faux Doc­u­men­tary

François Truffaut’s Big Inter­view with Alfred Hitch­cock (Free Audio)

Hitch­cock on Hap­pi­ness

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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How to Operate Your Brain: A User Manual by Timothy Leary (1993)

in Harvard, Philosophy, Psychology | November 16th, 2012

Speak­ing at the Human Be-In in Jan­u­ary 1967, Tim­o­thy Leary uttered the famous phrase bor­rowed from Mar­shall McLuhan, “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” It was short­hand for say­ing exper­i­ment with psy­che­delics and achieve new lev­els of con­scious­ness.

Almost 30 years lat­er, Leary had­n’t lost his mis­sion­ary zeal. In 1993 (and only a few years before his death), the for­mer Har­vard psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor record­ed “a pub­lic ser­vice video” called How to Oper­ate Your Brain. Here, Leary nar­rates an almost epilep­tic seizure-induc­ing video, pro­vid­ing what some con­sid­er “a guid­ed med­i­ta­tion” of sorts. I’d pre­fer to call it an unortho­dox “user man­u­al” that tries to impart Leary’s unique sense of enlight­en­ment:

The aim of human life is to know thy­self. Think for your­self. Ques­tion author­i­ty. Think with your friends. Cre­ate, cre­ate new real­i­ties. Phi­los­o­phy is a team sport. Phi­los­o­phy is the ulti­mate, the ulti­mate aphro­disi­ac plea­sure. Learn­ing how to oper­ate your brain, learn­ing how to oper­ate your mind, learn­ing how to redesign chaos.

As you get deep­er into the med­i­ta­tion, you’ll real­ize one thing. Three decades may have passed since Leary pop­u­lar­ized the catch­phrase of the coun­ter­cul­ture. But he’s still get­ting his ideas from McLuhan. If you fol­low the video (or tran­script) to the end, you’ll dis­cov­er that ones and zeros have basi­cal­ly tak­en the place of LSD. Leary says:

Now we have dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tion. We can cre­ate our fan­tasies. We can cre­ate our rhythms, design on screen.… Any­one in any cul­ture watch­ing this screen will get the gen­er­al pic­ture. It’s one glob­al vil­lage. It’s one glob­al human spir­it, one glob­al human race. As we link up through screens, linked by elec­trons and pho­tons, we will cre­ate for the first time a glob­al human­i­ty, not sep­a­rat­ed by words or minds or nation­al­i­ties or reli­gious bias­es.

You can find McLuhan med­i­tat­ing on the con­cept of an Elec­tron­ic Glob­al Vil­lage in anoth­er vin­tage clip.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Beyond Tim­o­thy Leary: 2002 Film Revis­its His­to­ry of LSD

This is What Oliv­er Sacks Learned on LSD and Amphet­a­mines

Aldous Huxley’s LSD Death Trip

McLuhan Said “The Medi­um Is The Mes­sage”; Two Pieces Of Media Decode the Famous Phrase

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Louis CK Plays Abraham Lincoln, America’s 16th President and (Yes) Stand-Up Comedian Too

in Comedy, History, Television | November 16th, 2012

Abra­ham Lin­coln fret­ted over the tim­ing of eman­ci­pa­tion, Gen­er­al George McClel­lan’s reluc­tance to take deci­sive action, North-South reuni­fi­ca­tion, and his wife’s men­tal insta­bil­i­ty.

Louis CK wor­ries about sex, his kids, and the decline of his flab­by, mid­dle-aged body.

The ten­den­cy to dwell on weighty mat­ters makes CK a fit­ting choice to embody our 16th pres­i­dent  on the small screen. (A dis­tinc­tion shared by such lumi­nar­ies as Lance Hen­rik­sen and Sam Water­ston, though not at the behest of Sat­ur­day Night Live). Movie star Daniel Day-Lewis’ cur­rent­ly run­ning por­tray­al may net him a Best Actor Triple Crown come awards sea­son, but CK’s the one who takes Abe to anoth­er dimen­sion, tai­lor­ing the Great Empan­ci­pa­tor to fit the estab­lished tem­plate of his own crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed sit­com.

His­to­ry comes alive in a whole new way as the stovepipe-hat­ted, pudgi­er-than-nor­mal Lin­coln trudges up from the sub­way, chok­ing down an anony­mous West Vil­lage slice to get him through a set at the Com­e­dy Cel­lar. Abe’s rou­tine on slave own­er­ship has def­i­nite echoes of Louis’ Sea­son One mus­ings on bes­tial­i­ty, a there-but-for-the-grace-of-god-go‑I flir­ta­tion res­cued by pro­fan­i­ty-laced moral out­rage.

No dis­re­spect to Day-Lewis’ First Lady Sal­ly Field, but there’s sim­i­lar fresh­ness to be found in Sat­ur­day Night Live reg­u­lar Aidy Bryant’s inter­pre­ta­tion of Mary Todd Lin­coln. Par­tic­u­lar­ly  when one fac­tors in a Direc­tor’s Cut that restores the pet­ti­coat peel­ing mate­r­i­al cut from the late night broad­cast.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Teach­es Louis C.K. How to Host The David Let­ter­man Show

How the Great George Car­lin Showed Louis CK the Way to Suc­cess (NSFW)

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The Ten Best American Essays Since 1950, According to Robert Atwan

in Books, Literature | November 15th, 2012

Robert Atwan’s favorite lit­er­ary genre is the essay. As edi­tor and founder of The Best Amer­i­can Essays series, Atwan has read thou­sands of exam­ples of the remark­ably flex­i­ble form.

“Essays can be lots of things, maybe too many things,” writes Atwan in his fore­ward to the 2012 install­ment in the Best Amer­i­can series, “but at the core of the genre is an unmis­tak­able recep­tiv­i­ty to the ever-shift­ing process­es of our minds and moods. If there is any essen­tial char­ac­ter­is­tic we can attribute to the essay, it may be this: that the truest exam­ples of the form enact that ever-shift­ing process, and in that enact­ment we can find the basis for the essay’s qual­i­fi­ca­tion to be regard­ed seri­ous­ly as imag­i­na­tive lit­er­a­ture and the essay­ist’s claim to be tak­en seri­ous­ly as a cre­ative writer.”

In 2001 Atwan and Joyce Car­ol Oates took on the daunt­ing task of trac­ing that ever-shift­ing process through the pre­vi­ous 100 years for The Best Amer­i­can Essays of the Cen­tu­ry. Recent­ly Atwan returned with a more focused selec­tion for Pub­lish­ers Week­ly: “The Top 10 Essays Since 1950.” To pare it all down to such a small num­ber, Atwan decid­ed to reserve the “New Jour­nal­ism” cat­e­go­ry, with its many mem­o­rable works by Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Michael Herr and oth­ers, for some future list. He also made a point of select­ing the best essays, as opposed to exam­ples from the best essay­ists. “A list of the top ten essay­ists since 1950 would fea­ture some dif­fer­ent writ­ers.”

We were inter­est­ed to see that six of the ten best essays are avail­able for free read­ing online. Here is Atwan’s list, along with links to those essays that are on the Web:

  • James Bald­win, “Notes of a Native Son,” 1955 (Read it here.)
  • Nor­man Mail­er, “The White Negro,” 1957 (Read it here.)
  • Susan Son­tag, “Notes on ‘Camp,’ ” 1964 (Read it here.)
  • John McPhee, “The Search for Mar­vin Gar­dens,” 1972 (Read it here with a sub­scrip­tion.)
  • Joan Did­ion, “The White Album,” 1979
  • Annie Dil­lard, “Total Eclipse,” 1982
  • Phillip Lopate, “Against Joie de Vivre,” 1986 (Read it here.)
  • Edward Hoagland, “Heav­en and Nature,” 1988
  • Jo Ann Beard, “The Fourth State of Mat­ter,” 1996 (Read it here.)
  • David Fos­ter Wal­lace, “Con­sid­er the Lob­ster,” 2004 (Read it here in a ver­sion dif­fer­ent from the one pub­lished in his 2005 book of the same name.)

“To my mind,” writes Atwan in his arti­cle, “the best essays are deeply per­son­al (that does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal) and deeply engaged with issues and ideas. And the best essays show that the name of the genre is also a verb, so they demon­strate a mind in process–reflecting, try­ing-out, essay­ing.”

To read more of Atwan’s com­men­tary, see his arti­cle in Pub­lish­ers Week­ly.

The pho­to above of Susan Son­tag was tak­en by Peter Hujar in 1966.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web

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The History of Film — 2000 Movies Across 100 Years — Presented in One Big Zoomable Graphic

in Film | November 15th, 2012

Hats off to Lar­ry Gorm­ley, who spent the bet­ter part of five years cre­at­ing a zoomable graph­ic that “chron­i­cles the his­to­ry of fea­ture films from the ori­gins in the 1910s until the present day.” 2000 films, across 20 gen­res and 100 years, all pre­sent­ed in one art­ful dis­play. Nice­ly done.

You can pur­chase a print copy, or sim­ply enjoy the visu­al dis­play online. Enjoy.

via @coudal

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After a Tour of Slavoj Žižek’s Pad, You’ll Never See Interior Design in the Same Way

in Life, Philosophy | November 15th, 2012

How to react to celebri­ty aca­d­e­m­ic Slavoj Žižek? You could see him as a wild-eyed vision­ary and grow infat­u­at­ed with his pow­er­ful-sound­ing ideas about pow­er, vio­lence, cin­e­ma, psy­cho­analy­sis, and per­ver­sion. Or you could see him as a Pied Piper for delu­sion­al grad­u­ate stu­dents and grow enraged at his per­pet­u­a­tion of fash­ion­able non­sense. But you’d do best, I would argue, to take him sim­ply as a source of enter­tain­ment. How could you do oth­er­wise, watch­ing the above clip from Astra Tay­lor’s doc­u­men­tary Žižek! (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured on Open Cul­ture here)? In these three min­utes, the sweat­ing Sub­lime Object of Ide­ol­o­gy author gives us a tour of his pad, spend­ing much time and excite­ment on his kitchen repur­posed as a clos­et: clothes and sheets in the cup­boards, socks in the draw­ers. “I am a nar­cis­sist. I keep every­thing,” he pro­nounces, hav­ing moved onto the shelves and shelves of his own work, from the pam­phlets of his “dis­si­dent days” to his lat­est books in Japan­ese trans­la­tion.

But it’s his poster of Josef Stal­in that real­ly draws your atten­tion — just as Žižek meant it to. If he did­n’t, he would­n’t have hung it in his entry­way, mak­ing it the first sight every guest gets of his home. Here he describes it not as a procla­ma­tion of Stal­in­ism, exact­ly, but as — in line with every­thing else he does — a provo­ca­tion. “This is just for peo­ple who come to be shocked and hope­ful­ly to get out,” he explains. “My big wor­ry is not to be ignored, but to be accept­ed. Of course, it’s not that I’m sim­ply a Stal­in­ist. That would be crazy, taste­less, and so on. But obvi­ous­ly there is some­thing in it that it’s not sim­ply a joke. When I say the only change is that the left appro­pri­ates fas­cism and so on, it’s not a cheap joke. The point is to avoid the trap of stan­dard lib­er­al oppo­si­tions: free­dom ver­sus total­i­tar­i­an order, and so on, to reha­bil­i­tate notions of dis­ci­pline, col­lec­tive order, sub­or­di­na­tion, sac­ri­fice, all that. I don’t think this is inher­ent­ly fas­cist.”

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed con­tent:

Žižek!: 2005 Doc­u­men­tary Reveals the “Aca­d­e­m­ic Rock Star” and “Mon­ster” of a Man

Exam­ined Life Drops Aca­d­e­m­ic Celebri­ties Into the Real World (2008)

Der­ri­da: A 2002 Doc­u­men­tary on the Abstract Philoso­pher and the Every­day Man

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Skeptic Michael Shermer Shows You How to Bend Spoons with Your Mind

in Philosophy, Random | November 15th, 2012

Ever want to know how to bend spoons like Uri Geller? There are quite a few ways, appar­ent­ly. But accord­ing to Geller’s arch-neme­sis, skep­tic and magi­cian James Ran­di, “if Geller bends spoons with divine pow­ers, then he’s doing it the hard way.” In the video above, edi­tor-in-chief of Skep­tic mag­a­zine, Michael Sher­mer, shows us how to do it the easy way, and still make it look like mag­ic. While “psy­chics” like Geller have dined out on their sup­posed pow­ers for as long as there have been peo­ple will­ing to pick up the tab, skep­tics like Ran­di and Sher­mer have prob­a­bly been around as long, using log­ic and a healthy dose of dis­be­lief. Randi’s expo­sure of Geller on the John­ny Car­son show is the stuff of leg­end. For a less­er-known debunk­ing, check out the video below from Thames Tele­vi­sion. Geller, like so many self-pro­claimed psy­chics, can be per­sua­sive, but most phe­nom­e­na are bet­ter explained by sci­ence than by mag­i­cal think­ing.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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