Meta Star Wars: All Six Films in One

in Film, Random | June 19th, 2015

We’ve shown our fair share of Star Wars mashups and fan films over the years. I cite for exam­ple:

The lat­est and maybe not great­est fan rework­ing of Star Wars (now avail­able on YouTube) lets you watch all six Star Wars films online. At once. With one film lay­ered upon the oth­er.

Is there some cul­tur­al val­ue to this lay­er­ing of films? Maybe only inso­far as it gives the keen observ­er the chance to find some meta trends run­ning through the films. One YouTu­ber com­ment­ed, “The real­ly inter­est­ing part is that they’re sim­i­lar­ly paced. If you skip around you’ll almost always find all talk­ing scenes lined up and all action scenes lined up. Just shows how for­mu­la­ic movies are (or at least how for­mu­la­ic George Lucas is).”

Feel free to drop your own obser­va­tions in the com­ments sec­tion below. And, by the way, the per­son who cre­at­ed this mashup has also made avail­able a full gallery of HD still frames on imgur here.

via Twit­ter

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Umberto Eco’s Advice to Aspiring Writers

in Life, Writing | June 18th, 2015

Umber­to Eco, now 83 years old, has some advice to pass along to the young.

In March, the Ital­ian semi­oti­cian, philoso­pher, lit­er­ary crit­ic, and nov­el­ist — and, of course, author of Fou­cault’s Pen­du­lum — pub­lished How to Write a The­sis. It’s a wit­ty, irrev­er­ent and prac­ti­cal guide for the stu­dent labor­ing over a the­sis or dis­ser­ta­tion. Josh Jones has more on that here.

Now, in a new­ly-released video from The Louisiana Chan­nel (a media out­let based in Den­mark), Eco turns his atten­tion toward aspir­ing writ­ers. And his wise coun­sel comes down to this: Keep your ego in check, make sure your ambi­tions are real­is­tic, put in the time and the hard work, and don’t shoot for the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture straight out of the gate. That, Eco says, kills every lit­er­ary career. He’ll also tell you that writ­ing is “10% inspi­ra­tion and 90% per­spi­ra­tion.” They’re tru­isms — you dis­cov­er when you’re an octo­ge­nar­i­an — that turn out to be true.

Find more tips for aspir­ing writ­ers below.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

Ernest Hem­ing­way Cre­ates a Read­ing List for a Young Writer, 1934

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

Toni Mor­ri­son Dis­pens­es Writ­ing Wis­dom in 1993 Paris Review Inter­view

John Steinbeck’s Six Tips for the Aspir­ing Writer and His Nobel Prize Speech

Stephen King Cre­ates a List of 96 Books for Aspir­ing Writ­ers to Read

Kurt Von­negut Gives Advice to Aspir­ing Writ­ers in a 1991 TV Inter­view

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Free: Read 9 Travel Books Online by Monty Python’s Michael Palin

in Television, Travel | June 18th, 2015


Image cour­tesy of Chipps
Most of us come to Michael Palin through his work as a com­ic actor (in the role of dead par­rot sales­man or oth­er­wise), but at this point almost as many know him sec­ond as a found­ing mem­ber of Mon­ty Python, and first as an affa­ble glo­be­trot­ter. That part of his career began in 1988, when he host­ed the Earth-cir­cum­nav­i­gat­ing BBC trav­el series Around the World in 80 Days. (See an episode here.) Its suc­cess has led him, over the sub­se­quent 27 years, onto fur­ther (and far­ther-flung) tele­vised jour­neys: from the North Pole to the South, around the Pacif­ic Rim, in the adven­tur­ous foot­steps of Ernest Hem­ing­way, across the Sahara, up the Himalayas, across the “new” cen­tral and east­ern Europe, around the world again, and most recent­ly through Brazil.

Not con­tent to set a high water­mark for trav­el tele­vi­sion, Palin has also writ­ten a com­pan­ion book for each series, lav­ish­ly col­lect­ing maps, pic­tures, and his own trav­el diaries. Those last reveal a more nuanced side of “the nicest chap in Britain,” whose famous­ly easy­go­ing, def­er­en­tial, and unsur­pris­ing­ly good-humored per­sona place him so well to deal with the world’s stag­ger­ing vari­ety of peo­ple, places, and incon­ve­niences. “I can sum­mon up noth­ing but res­ig­na­tion at the thought of cook­ing with the locals all morn­ing, then hav­ing to lis­ten to music and songs I don’t under­stand for the rest of the after­noon,” he writes after wak­ing up on yet anoth­er island, in an entry excerpt­ed in last year’s Trav­el­ling to Work, the lat­est pub­lished vol­ume of his life’s diaries. “And, worst of all, hav­ing to look as if I’m enjoy­ing it.”

But these books also reveal that most of the time, Palin real­ly is enjoy­ing it. His insa­tiable curios­i­ty (not to men­tion his inex­orable pro­duc­tion sched­ule) dri­ves him con­tin­u­ous­ly ahead, a curios­i­ty in which you, too can share now that he’s made all these books free to read online at palinstravels.co.uk. Click on the links/titles below, and then look for the prompts that say “Dis­cov­er the Series Here” and, below that, “Start Read­ing the Book.”

And if you make a free account at the site, it will even allow you to you keep vir­tu­al “book­marks” in as many of the books as you like, guar­an­tee­ing that you won’t get lost amidst this wealth of trav­el con­tent. But if you choose to fol­low Pal­in’s exam­ple and actu­al­ly get out there into every cor­ner of the world, well, no such anti-lost­ness guar­an­tees exist — but as every fan of Pal­in’s Trav­els knows, those very com­pli­ca­tions make it worth­while. As least you won’t have a five-man crew trail­ing behind.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Trains and the Brits Who Love Them: Mon­ty Python’s Michael Palin on Great Rail­way Jour­neys

Michael Palin’s Tour of the Best Loved Mon­ty Python Sketch Loca­tions

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Metropolis II: Discover the Amazing, Fritz Lang-Inspired Kinetic Sculpture by Chris Burden

in Art | June 18th, 2015

Recent­ly deceased artist Chris Bur­den had a long his­to­ry of work­ing with auto­mo­biles in his art. In his ear­ly days he cru­ci­fied him­self to the top of a VW Bee­tle (a piece called Trans Fixed). He set about design­ing and build­ing a 100 mph and 100 mpg auto­mo­bile based on intu­ition called the B‑Car. In Big Wheel he used a motor­cy­cle to power…a big wheel. And in Porsche with Mete­orite he sus­pend­ed the two objects above the muse­um floor on each end of a gigan­tic scale.

metropolis ii

But his mas­sive kinet­ic sculp­ture Metrop­o­lis II is some­thing else: a child’s fever dream of a Hot Wheels-scale city, with 1,100 cars dri­ving end­less­ly on 18 road­ways, with two ramps that are 12 feet high and three con­vey­or sys­tems that feed the cars back into the loop. The met­al and the elec­tric­i­ty need­ed to run the sculp­ture means that the thing is not just a sight to behold, but it’s stag­ger­ing­ly loud.

The title of the kinet­ic sculp­ture gives away its ref­er­ence, that of Fritz Lang’s 1927 Metrop­o­lis (watch it online) and its imag­i­nary city scapes of ele­vat­ed free­ways and train tracks and peo­ple movers and planes that fly in between:

Burden’s work has its own struc­tures too, some of which are made from build­ing blocks, Lego, and Lin­coln Logs, turned into hous­es and sky­scrap­ers. Don’t expect sen­si­ble urban plan­ning in this city: seen from above, Metrop­o­lis II is a chaos of roads, and closed sys­tems from which there is no escape.

There was a tri­al run of the sculp­ture called Metrop­o­lis I, a small­er ver­sion that was soon sold to a Japan­ese col­lec­tor and tak­en out of the pub­lic view.

For the sequel, Bur­den went big­ger, enlist­ing eight peo­ple full time for five and a half years to build the piece. Said the artist:

“We want­ed to expand it and make it tru­ly over­whelm­ing — the noise and lev­el of activ­i­ty are both mes­mer­iz­ing and anx­i­ety pro­vok­ing.”

But instead of a night­mare com­men­tary, Bur­den want­ed the piece to be utopi­an. The cars are mov­ing at 240 mph, accord­ing to scale, and there’s no grid­lock. He was look­ing ahead to a future of dri­ver­less cars, as he shared a hatred like many Ange­lenos of end­less traf­fic jams.

The 30 foot wide sculp­ture was bought for an undis­closed sum by bil­lion­aire busi­ness­man Nicholas Berggre­un, who also sits on LACMA’s board. He’s loaned it to the muse­um until 2022 and it is cur­rent­ly now sit­u­at­ed in a spe­cial wing where vis­i­tors can see it both at ground lev­el and from above. It takes one assis­tant to keep it free of hic­cups and it only runs for a few hours at a time, and only on week­ends.

How­ev­er, LACMA’s entry­way is also home to a Bur­den piece one can see 24/7, the icon­ic Urban Light.

via Coudal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Chris Bur­den Get Shot for the Sake of Art (1971)

LA Coun­ty Muse­um Makes 20,000 Artis­tic Images Avail­able for Free Down­load

Chris Bur­den (R.I.P.) Turns Late-Night TV Com­mer­cials Into Con­cep­tu­al Art

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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A Proportional Visualization of the World’s Most Popular Languages

in Language Lessons | June 17th, 2015

languages-of-the-world-big

Click to view in a big, high-res for­mat
Last week we high­light­ed for you a beau­ti­ful Tree of Lan­guages info­graph­ic, cre­at­ed by Min­na Sund­berg using data from ethnologue.com. This week, we present anoth­er visu­al­iza­tion of world lan­guages, this one pro­duced by Alber­to Lucas Lopéz, on behalf of the South Chi­na Morn­ing Post. And, once again, the under­ly­ing data comes from ethnologue.com, a research project that cat­a­logues all of the world’s known liv­ing lan­guages.

Today’s graph­ic — click here to view it in a large for­mat — takes the world’s 23 most pop­u­lar lan­guages, and then gives you a visu­al sense of how many peo­ple actu­al­ly speak those lan­guages over­all, and where geo­graph­i­cal­ly those lan­guages are spo­ken. The more a lan­guage is spo­ken, the more space it gets in the visu­al.

When you view the orig­i­nal graph­ic, you’ll note that Chi­nese speak­ers out­num­ber Eng­lish speak­ers by a fac­tor of four. And yet Eng­lish is spo­ken in 110 coun­tries, as com­pared to 33 for Chi­nese. And the num­ber of peo­ple learn­ing Eng­lish world­wide dwarfs the num­ber learn­ing Man­darin.

As you look through Lopéz’s visu­al, you’ll want to keep one thing in mind: Although the 23 lan­guages visu­al­ized above are col­lec­tive­ly spo­ken by 4.1 bil­lion peo­ple, there are at least anoth­er 6700 known lan­guages alive in the world today. Some­one has to cook up a pro­por­tion­al visu­al­iza­tion of those. Any tak­ers?

Speak­ing of learn­ing pop­u­lar lan­guages, don’t miss our col­lec­tion: Learn 48 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More.

via Men­tal Floss

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and  share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Tree of Lan­guages Illus­trat­ed in a Big, Beau­ti­ful Info­graph­ic

The His­to­ry of the Eng­lish Lan­guage in Ten Ani­mat­ed Min­utes

Noam Chom­sky Talks About How Kids Acquire Lan­guage & Ideas in an Ani­mat­ed Video by Michel Gondry

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Ralph Steadman’s Warped Illustrations of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland on the Story’s 150th Anniversary

in Art, Literature | June 17th, 2015

alice11

This year, read­ers world­wide cel­e­brate the 150th anniver­sary of the pub­li­ca­tion of Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land. (Click to see the orig­i­nal man­u­script, hand­writ­ten & illus­trat­ed by Lewis Car­roll.) Car­rol­l’s fan­tas­ti­cal, unex­pect­ed­ly psy­cho­log­i­cal and intel­lec­tu­al chil­dren’s tale has inspired writ­ers, artists, and oth­er cre­ators of all ages since it first came out in 1865. New edi­tions and adap­ta­tions have kept appear­ing, each reflect­ing the spir­it of their own time through the askew prism of Alice’s sen­si­bil­i­ty. And which liv­ing illus­tra­tor could pro­vide more askew imagery than Ralph Stead­man?

A Mad Tea Party

We all know that Alice’s dream­like jour­ney begins in earnest when she drinks from a bot­tle labeled “DRINK ME” and eats a cake labeled “EAT ME.” See what metaphors you will, but to my mind, this alone makes the sto­ry obvi­ous Stead­man mate­r­i­al: many of us dis­cov­er his art through its appear­ance in Hunter S. Thomp­son’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a col­lab­o­ra­tion that qual­i­fies Stead­man as no stranger at all to visu­al­iz­ing unre­al cir­cum­stances height­ened, or induced, by one ingest­ed sub­stance or anoth­er.

alice12

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas appeared in book form in 1972; Alice in Won­der­land Illus­trat­ed by Ralph Stead­man appeared the next year, and went on to win the Fran­cis Williams Book Illus­tra­tion Award.

His ver­sion, writes io9’s Cyr­i­aque Lamar, “has gone through var­i­ous print runs through­out the decades, and he mod­eled sev­er­al of the char­ac­ters on decid­ed­ly mod­ern per­son­al­i­ties. For exam­ple, the Cheshire Cat is a tele­vi­sion talk­ing head, the Cater­pil­lar is a grass-smok­ing pedant, the Mad Hat­ter is a bark­ing quiz­mas­ter, and the King and Queen of Hearts are a melt­ing mass of polit­i­cal author­i­ty.”

Alice13

See more of Stead­man’s pieces by pick­ing up your own copy of the book, or vis­it Brain Pick­ings, where Maria Popo­va describes them as bring­ing “to Carroll’s clas­sic the per­fect kind of semi-sen­si­cal visu­al genius, blend­ing the irrev­er­ent with the sub­lime.” Though by all avail­able evi­dence thor­ough­ly sane him­self, Stead­man’s illus­tra­tions have, over his fifty-year career, lent just the right notes of Eng­lish insan­i­ty to a vari­ety of sub­jects, from wine to dogs to psy­cho­geog­ra­phy. Only nat­ur­al, then, to see them accom­pa­ny the insan­i­ty — which, sen­tence by sen­tence and page by page, comes to seem like san­i­ty by oth­er means — of a clas­sic Eng­lish tale like Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See the Orig­i­nal Alice In Won­der­land Man­u­script, Hand­writ­ten & Illus­trat­ed By Lewis Car­roll (1864)

See Sal­vador Dali’s Illus­tra­tions for the 1969 Edi­tion of Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land

Lewis Carroll’s Pho­tographs of Alice Lid­dell, the Inspi­ra­tion for Alice in Won­der­land

When Aldous Hux­ley Wrote a Script for Disney’s Alice in Won­der­land

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch the New Trailer for the Stanford Prison Experiment Film, Soon in Theaters Near You

in Psychology | June 17th, 2015

In 1971, Stan­ford psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor Philip Zim­bar­do under­took a study to deter­mine whether sit­u­a­tions deter­mine behav­ior or whether a person’s dis­po­si­tion leads to behav­ior regard­less of their sit­u­a­tion. As seen in the above trail­er for the Stan­ford Prison Exper­i­ment, a new film adap­ta­tion of Zimbardo’s con­tro­ver­sial study, it was explained thus­ly: peo­ple act­ed like prisoners–lashing out at author­i­ty, angry, maladjusted–purely by dint of being put in pris­ons. And peo­ple abused their author­i­ty when put in the posi­tion of author­i­ty. The hypoth­e­sis had its basis in the past: the action of Nazi guards at the con­cen­tra­tion camps. The results have ram­i­fi­ca­tions through to the present: wit­ness the con­fes­sions of the guards who tor­tured inmates in Abu Ghraib.

The trail­er plays like a psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller, but so far it looks true to the record. Prof. Zim­bar­do–hav­ing just earned tenure at Stan­ford (and played in the film by Bil­ly Crudup)–chose 24 healthy stu­dent sub­jects and ran­dom­ly assigned them either the role of guard or of pris­on­er. The Psy­chol­o­gy Depart­ment’s base­ment was turned into a mock prison, with hold­ing cells, guard rooms, soli­tary con­fine­ment, and an exer­cise yard. Cam­eras record­ed all that went on, observed by Zim­bar­do and his crew. The “guards” could come and go accord­ing to shifts, but the “pris­on­ers” could not. While the “guards” could not use phys­i­cal force on the “pris­on­ers,” they could use as many psy­cho­log­i­cal tac­tics as pos­si­ble to break the will of their fel­low stu­dents. How­ev­er, the “pris­on­ers” were not told exact­ly what would hap­pen to them. When, on the first day, the “pris­on­ers” were “arrest­ed” in the morn­ing, stripped, searched, shaved and deloused, they were already in a state of shock. An ear­ly doc­u­men­tary exists on the exper­i­ment and its results here:

Suf­fice it to say (and you may have seen this com­ing) the stu­dent guards real­ly got into their roles, and the “pris­on­ers” rebelled. All the while Prof. Zim­bar­do want­ed to keep going for the planned one to two weeks. Only because of the objec­tions of Christi­na Maslach, a grad­u­ate stu­dent and Prof. Zimbardo’s girl­friend, did the group aban­don the study after six increas­ing­ly fright­en­ing days. (Prov­ing as well that Prof. Zim­bar­do was affect­ed by the exper­i­ment in ways sim­i­lar to his sub­jects, as he was unable to ini­tial­ly stop some­thing out of con­trol.)

The study was fund­ed by the U.S. Office of Naval Research to “study anti­so­cial behav­ior.” The stu­dent sub­jects were paid $15 a day for their help and half quit the exper­i­ment before it was fin­ished. All of the guards stayed on. As detailed in the offi­cial FAQ on the study, none of the stu­dents showed any last­ing trau­ma, though Prof. Zim­bar­do said:

“I was guilty of the sin of omis­sion — the evil of inac­tion — of not pro­vid­ing ade­quate over­sight and sur­veil­lance when it was required… the find­ings came at the expense of human suf­fer­ing. I am sor­ry for that and to this day apol­o­gize for con­tribut­ing to this inhu­man­i­ty.”

The exper­i­ment is now used in psy­chol­o­gy text­books as an exam­ple of the “psy­chol­o­gy of impris­on­ment.” Prof. Zim­bar­do turned his sci­ence to help­ing peo­ple, look­ing at pro­mot­ing hero­ism in dai­ly life, help­ing vet­er­ans nor­mal­ize into social life, work­ing with shy peo­ple, and, com­ing full cir­cle, tes­ti­fy­ing dur­ing the court mar­tial of Sgt. Ivan “Chip” Fred­er­ick, who was charged with crimes dur­ing his time at Abu Ghraib. Zim­bar­do has since retired and recent­ly advised on the upcom­ing film. Christi­na Maslach lat­er mar­ried Prof. Zim­bar­do and is cur­rent­ly Vice Provost for Under­grad­u­ate Edu­ca­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley.

And if Prof. Zimbardo’s exper­i­ment sounds a bit like Stan­ley Mil­gram’s 1961 exper­i­ment in obe­di­ence to author­i­ty, well, it’s no coin­ci­dence. Stan­ley Mil­gram and Philip Zim­bar­do were high school friends.

How­ev­er, there’s some inter­est­ing dif­fer­ences. For one, the “vic­tims” of Mil­gram’s exper­i­ment were act­ing the elec­tric shocks they sup­pos­ed­ly received. Despite that lev­el of fak­ery, Mil­gram was denied tenure at Har­vard. The City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York Grad­u­ate Cen­ter, on the oth­er hand, knew a psy­chol­o­gy super­star when they saw one and gave him tenure.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Footage from the Psy­chol­o­gy Exper­i­ment That Shocked the World: Milgram’s Obe­di­ence Study (1961)

The Lit­tle Albert Exper­i­ment: The Per­verse 1920 Study That Made a Baby Afraid of San­ta Claus & Bun­nies

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es

How To Think Like a Psy­chol­o­gist: A Free Online Course from Stan­ford

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

 

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Alan Watts Explains Why Death is an Art, Adventure and Creative Act

in Philosophy, Religion | June 17th, 2015

Many of us in the West live in some of the most frag­ment­ed reli­gious land­scapes in the world, but in the midst of deep­en­ing lev­els of con­flict over poli­cies of birth and death, these two issues that divide us also join us togeth­er. More than at any time in his­to­ry, peo­ple live in expec­ta­tion of sim­i­lar spans of life; we all lament the loss of loved ones who die at any age; and most of us live with some fear of death, or at least vio­lent, untime­ly death like the kind Alan Watts describes above.

Watts, Eng­lish Zen guru of sorts (though he would not like the label) lec­tured more on death than per­haps any oth­er philo­soph­i­cal or reli­gious teacher since the Bud­dha, but he did so in a way that illu­mi­nates our ideas about the inevitable end, even if it should come upon us all of the sud­den.

You heard a bomb com­ing at you, you could hear it whis­tle and you knew it was right above you and head­ing straight at you, and that you were fin­ished. 

This is no abstract thought exper­i­ment, of course, but the his­tor­i­cal expe­ri­ence of mil­lions of peo­ple, from Dres­den to Iraq. But despite the ter­ri­fy­ing exam­ple, Watts describes achiev­ing in that moment absolute clar­i­ty and uni­ver­sal­i­ty. The dread­ed bomb whis­tles toward you, “and you accept­ed it,” he says.

How exact­ly does one achieve that accep­tance? With­out dog­ma­tiz­ing or mys­ti­cism, Watts offers some wis­dom in anoth­er excerpt from a lec­ture above. This video’s use of melo­dra­mat­ic film clips and cin­e­mat­ic music may be a lit­tle schmaltzy, but his mat­ter of fact talk isn’t less­ened by it. Though not every­one pass­es on their genes to a next gen­er­a­tion, an exam­ple he dis­cuss­es in both excerpts, we do all leave the plan­et to make room for new peo­ple, wher­ev­er they come from, and this, he says, “is an hon­or­able thing…. It’s a far more amus­ing arrange­ment for nature to con­tin­ue the process of life through dif­fer­ent indi­vid­u­als than it is through the same indi­vid­ual.”

Watts was not at all doc­tri­naire about death, par­tic­u­lar­ly in his lat­er years. In a con­ver­sa­tion with Aldous Huxley’s wife Lau­ra in 1968, he called dying “an art,” though not quite like Sylvia Plath did: “It is also,” he said, “an adven­ture.” He con­sid­ered Aldous Hux­ley’s unortho­dox death—on an LSD trip while Lau­ra read to him from the Tibetan Bar­do Thodol—a “high­ly intel­li­gent form of dying.” Nonethe­less, Watts, an Epis­co­pal priest become an explain­er of Zen Bud­dhism in Amer­i­ca, also had a great deal to say about more for­mal reli­gious ideas of death.

In the lec­ture above, from a 1959 Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion pro­gram, Watts explains a par­tic­u­lar Bud­dhist con­cept of rein­car­na­tion and rebirth through var­i­ous realms. It’s a pic­ture as fan­tas­tic and pic­turesque as Dante’s, and like his cre­ative act, one that can be read with some lit­er­al and much pro­found­ly philo­soph­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance. These con­cep­tions help demon­strate that far from fear­ful, our puz­zling over the inevitabil­i­ty and mys­tery of death can be, as it was for Watts, “one of the most cre­ative thoughts I ever thought in my life.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Zen Mas­ter Alan Watts Dis­cov­ers the Secrets of Aldous Hux­ley and His Art of Dying

The Wis­dom of Alan Watts in Four Thought-Pro­vok­ing Ani­ma­tions

The Zen Teach­ings of Alan Watts: A Free Audio Archive of His Enlight­en­ing Lec­tures

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

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