The Japanese Traditions of Sashiko & Boro: The Centuries-Old Craft That Mends Clothes in a Sustainable, Artistic Way

in Art, Fashion, History, How to Learn for Free, Life, Philosophy | October 26th, 2020

The state of our trou­bled plan­et dic­tates that dis­pos­ables are out.

Reusables are in.

And any­one who’s taught them­selves how to mend and main­tain their stuff has earned the right to flaunt it!

A quick scroll through Insta­gram reveals loads of vis­i­ble mend­ing projects that high­light rather than dis­guise the area of repair, draw­ing the eye to con­trast­ing threads rein­forc­ing a thread­bare knee, frayed cuff, ragged rip, or moth hole.

While some prac­ti­tion­ers take a freeform approach, the most pleas­ing stitch­es tend to be in the sashiko tra­di­tion.

Sashiko—fre­quent­ly trans­lat­ed as “lit­tle stabs”—was born in Edo peri­od Japan (1603–1868), when rur­al women attempt­ed to pro­long the life of their fam­i­lies’ tat­tered gar­ments and bed­ding, giv­ing rise to a hum­ble form of white-on-indi­go patch­work known as boro.

While sashiko can at times be seen serv­ing a pure­ly dec­o­ra­tive func­tion, such as on a very well pre­served Mei­ji peri­od jack­et in the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art’s col­lec­tion, its pri­ma­ry use was always one born of neces­si­ty.

As Austin Bryant notes on Hed­dels, a news and edu­ca­tion web­site ded­i­cat­ed to sus­tain­able goods:

Over gen­er­a­tions of fam­i­lies, these tex­tiles would acquire more and more patch­es, almost to the point of the com­mon observ­er being unable to rec­og­nize where the orig­i­nal fab­ric began. As they recov­ered after the end of World War II, to some the boro tex­tiles remind­ed the Japan­ese of their impov­er­ished rur­al past.

Keiko & Atsushi Futat­suya are a moth­er-and-son arti­san team whose posts on sashiko and boro go beyond straight­for­ward how-tos to delve into cul­tur­al his­to­ry.

Accord­ing to them, the goal of sashiko should not be aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing rows of uni­form stitch­es, but rather “enjoy­ing the dia­logue” with the fab­ric.

As Atsushi explains in an Insta­gram post, view­ers see­ing their work with a West­ern per­spec­tive may respond dif­fer­ent­ly than those who have grown up with the ele­ments in play:

This is a pho­to of a “Boro-to-be Jack­et” in the process. This is the back (hid­ing) side of the jack­et and many non-Japan­ese would say this should be the front and should show to the pub­lic. The Japan­ese would under­stand why it is a back­side nat­u­ral­ly, but I would need to “explain” to the non-Japan­ese who do not share the same val­ue (why we) pur­pose­ful­ly make this side as “hid­ing” side. That’s why, I keep shar­ing in words. One pic­ture may be worth a thou­sand words, but the thou­sand words may be com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent based on their (free) inter­pre­ta­tion. In shar­ing the cul­ture, some “actu­al words” would be also very impor­tant.

To try your hand at sashiko, you will need a long nee­dle, such as a cot­ton darn­ing nee­dle, white embroi­dery thread, and—for boro—an aging tex­tile in need of some atten­tion.

Should you find your­self slid­ing into a full blown obses­sion, you may want to order sashiko nee­dles and thread, and a palm thim­ble to help you push through sev­er­al weights of fab­ric simul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

You’ll find many pat­terns, tips, and tuto­ri­als on the Futat­suya family’s Sashi.co YouTube chan­nel.

via Vox

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

20 Mes­mer­iz­ing Videos of Japan­ese Arti­sans Cre­at­ing Tra­di­tion­al Hand­i­crafts

See How Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Car­pen­ters Can Build a Whole Build­ing Using No Nails or Screws

Explore the Beau­ti­ful Pages of the 1902 Japan­ese Design Mag­a­zine Shin-Bijut­sukai: Euro­pean Mod­ernism Meets Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Design

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

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How to Speak: Watch the Lecture on Effective Communication That Became an MIT Tradition for Over 40 Years

in Education, Language, MIT | October 26th, 2020

In his leg­endary MIT lec­ture “How to Speak,” pro­fes­sor Patrick Win­ston opens with a sto­ry about see­ing Olympic gym­nast Mary Lou Ret­ton at a Celebri­ty Ski Week­end. It was imme­di­ate­ly clear to him that he was the bet­ter ski­er, but not because he had more innate ath­let­ic abil­i­ty than an Olympic gold medal­ist, but because he had more knowl­edge and prac­tice. These, Win­ston says, are the key qual­i­ties we need to become bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tors. Inher­ent tal­ent helps, he says, but “notice that the T is very small. What real­ly mat­ters is what you know.”

What some of us know about com­mu­ni­cat­ing effec­tive­ly could fill a greet­ing card, but it’s hard­ly our fault, says Win­ston. Schools that send stu­dents into the world with­out the abil­i­ty to speak and write well are as crim­i­nal­ly liable as offi­cers who send sol­diers into bat­tle with­out weapons. For over 40 years, Win­ston has been try­ing to rem­e­dy the sit­u­a­tion with his “How to Speak” lec­ture, offered every Jan­u­ary,” notes MIT, “usu­al­ly to over­flow crowds.” It became “so pop­u­lar, in fact, that the annu­al talk had to be lim­it­ed to the first 300 par­tic­i­pants.”

Now it’s avail­able online, in both video and tran­script form, in the talk’s final form from 2018 (it evolved quite a bit over the decades). Pro­fes­sor Win­ston passed away last year, but his wis­dom lives on. Rather than present us with a dry the­o­ry of rhetoric and com­po­si­tion, the one­time direc­tor of the MIT’s Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Lab­o­ra­to­ry offers “a few heuris­tic rules” dis­tilled from “prax­is in com­mu­ni­ca­tion approach­es that incor­po­rate Neu­rolin­guis­tics, Lin­guis­tics, Pale­oan­thro­pol­o­gy, Cog­ni­tive Sci­ence and Com­put­er Sci­ence,” writes Min­nie Kasyoka.

Winston’s research on “cre­at­ing machines with the same thought pat­terns as humans” led him to the fol­low­ing con­clu­sions about effec­tive speak­ing and writing—observations that have borne them­selves out in the careers of thou­sands of pub­lic speak­ers, job seek­ers, and pro­fes­sion­als of every kind. Many of his heuris­tics con­tra­dict decades of folk opin­ion on pub­lic speak­ing, as well as con­tem­po­rary tech­no­log­i­cal trends. For one thing, he says, avoid open­ing with a joke.

Peo­ple still set­tling into their seats will be too dis­tract­ed to pay atten­tion and you won’t get the laugh. Instead, open with an anal­o­gy or a sto­ry, like his Mary Lou Ret­ton gam­bit, then tell peo­ple, direct­ly, what they’re going to get from your talk. Then tell them again. And again. “It’s a good idea to cycle on the sub­ject,” says Win­ston. “Go around it. Go round it again. Go round it again.” It’s not that we should assume our audi­ence is unin­tel­li­gent, but rather that “at any giv­en moment, about 20%” of them “will be fogged out no mat­ter what the lec­ture is.” It’s just how the human mind works, shift­ing atten­tion all over the place.

Like all great works on effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Winston’s talk illus­trates his meth­ods as it explains them: he fills the lec­ture with mem­o­rable images—like “build­ing a fence” around his idea to dis­tin­guish it from oth­er sim­i­lar ideas. He con­tin­ues to use inter­est­ing lit­tle sto­ries to make things con­crete, like an anec­dote about a Ser­bian nun who was offend­ed by him putting his hands behind his back. This is offered in ser­vice of his lengthy defense of the black­board, con­tra Pow­er­Point, as the ulti­mate visu­al aid. “Now, you have some­thing to do with your hands.”

The talk is relaxed, humor­ous, and infor­ma­tive, and not a step-by-step method. As Win­ston says, you can dip in and out of the copi­ous advice he presents, tak­ing rules you think might work best for your par­tic­u­lar style of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and your com­mu­ni­ca­tion needs. We should all, he empha­sizes, hone our own way of speak­ing and writ­ing. But, “while he nev­er explic­it­ly stress­es the ulti­mate need for rhetor­i­cal devices,” Kasyoka points out, he demon­strates that they are imper­a­tive.

Pro­fes­sor Win­ston mas­ter­ful­ly uses per­sua­sive tech­niques to ham­mer on this point. For exam­ple, the use of anadiplo­sis, that is the rep­e­ti­tion of a clause in a sen­tence for empha­sis, is very man­i­fest in this snip­pet from his talk: “Your careers will be deter­mined large­ly by how well you speak, by how well you write, and by the qual­i­ty of your ideas… in that order.” 

How do we learn to use rhetoric as effec­tive­ly as Win­ston? We lis­ten to and read effec­tive rhetoric like his. Do so in the video lec­ture at the top and on the “How to Speak” course page, which has tran­scripts for down­load and addi­tion­al resources for fur­ther study.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lit­er­ary The­o­rist Stan­ley Fish Offers a Free Course on Rhetoric, or the Pow­er of Argu­ments

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

The Shape of A Sto­ry: Writ­ing Tips from Kurt Von­negut

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

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When Andy Warhol & Edie Sedgwick, the First Couple of Pop Art, Made an Odd Appearance on the Merv Griffin Show (1965)

in Art, Television | October 26th, 2020

Andy Warhol adored tele­vi­sion and, in a way, con­sid­ered it his most for­ma­tive influ­ence. While his paint­ings, silkscreens, and films, and the Vel­vet Under­ground, might be all the lega­cy he might need, Warhol, more than any­thing, longed to be a TV per­son­al­i­ty. He made his first con­cert­ed effort in 1979, launch­ing a New York pub­lic access inter­view show. In one of the show’s 42 episodes, Warhol sits in almost total silence while his friend Richard Berlin inter­views Frank Zap­pa.

But Warhol hat­ed Zap­pa, and hat­ed him even more after the inter­view. When he talked to and about sub­jects he liked, he could be par­tic­u­lar­ly chat­ty, in his dead­pan way: see, for exam­ple, his inter­view with Alfred Hitch­cock, whom he great­ly admired, or ear­ly eight­ies Sat­ur­day Night Live spots for NBC and lat­er eight­ies MTV vari­ety show. In Warhol’s much ear­li­er 1965 appear­ance on the Merv Grif­fin show, above, long before he made TV pre­sen­ter a pro­fes­sion, he appears with the stun­ning­ly charis­mat­ic Edie Sedg­wick, his beloved muse and orig­i­nal super­star, and he choos­es to say almost noth­ing at all.

Sedg­wick does the talk­ing, inform­ing the host that Andy, unused to mak­ing “real­ly pub­lic appear­ances,” would only whis­per his answers in her ear, and she would whis­per them to Grif­fin. It’s an act, of course, but the per­for­mance of a per­sona that hid an even more shy, retir­ing char­ac­ter. In a text­book irony, the artist who ush­ered in the age of self-pro­mot­ing influ­encers and invent­ed the super­star could be about as engag­ing as a house­plant. Sedg­wick, on the con­trary, is char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly enthralling.

Known as “girl of the year” in 1965, the Cal­i­for­nia socialite had defect­ed from her priv­i­leged sur­round­ings to live in Warhol’s world. The two “fell in love pla­ton­i­cal­ly but intense­ly,” Karen Lynch writes at Blast mag­a­zine, “and their mutu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial rela­tion­ship became the talk of the town.” Grif­fin intro­duces them as “the two lead­ing expo­nents of the new scene. No par­ty in New York is con­sid­ered a suc­cess unless they are there.” This was no hyper­bole, though the audi­ence doesn’t know who they are… yet.

Sedg­wick explains how they met at the Fac­to­ry, where she arrived the pre­vi­ous year with her trust fund to intro­duce her­self and join the scene. She more or less takes over the inter­view, sell­ing Warhol’s super­star myth with elo­quence and wit, and she seems so much more like today’s art stars than Warhol (who even­tu­al­ly gives a few one-word answers), and has arguably had as much or more influ­ence on Gen Y and Z cre­ators. Sedg­wick was “more than aspi­ra­tional stereo­types allow,” writes Lynch, and more than the fact of her untime­ly death at 28.

One online artis­tic state­ment of this fact, Edie’s Farm, a site for “coun­ter­fac­tu­al cur­rent events,” sup­pos­es that Sedg­wick had sur­vived her drug addic­tion and anorex­ia and con­tin­ued mak­ing art (and giv­ing make­up tuto­ri­als) into the 21st cen­tu­ry, imag­in­ing her as her young self, not the woman in her 70s she would be. “Maybe no one’s ever had a year quite as amaz­ing as my 1965,” the fic­tion­al Sedg­wick says. “I loved Andy and his Fac­to­ry. But it was­n’t a sus­tain­able life for me”—a trag­ic irony impos­si­ble to ignore in watch­ing her oth­er­wise impos­si­bly charm­ing per­for­mance above.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Andy Warhol Hosts Frank Zap­pa on His Cable TV Show, and Lat­er Recalls, “I Hat­ed Him More Than Ever” After the Show

Andy Warhol’s 15 Min­utes: Dis­cov­er the Post­mod­ern MTV Vari­ety Show That Made Warhol a Star in the Tele­vi­sion Age (1985–87)

Andy Warhol’s 15 Min­utes: Dis­cov­er the Post­mod­ern MTV Vari­ety Show That Made Warhol a Star in the Tele­vi­sion Age (1985–87)

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

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Jazz-Zither-Piano-Man Laraaji Discusses His Decades of Meditative Improvisations: A Nakedly Examined Music Podcast Conversation (#134)

in Music, Podcasts | October 26th, 2020

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apUE3nAeszw&feature=emb_title

Jazz mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist Edward Lar­ry Gor­don Jr. became Laraa­ji around the same time he start­ed releas­ing med­i­ta­tive zither music in the late 70s and was then dis­cov­ered by Bri­an Eno, who pro­duced “The Dance No. 1” from  Ambi­ent 3: Day of Radi­ance (1980). Laraa­ji has since had around 40 releas­es of large­ly impro­vised music, and this inter­view (below) explores his approach toward impro­vi­sa­tion on numer­ous instru­ments, play­ing “func­tion­al” music intend­ed to aid med­i­ta­tion and reflec­tion, and the evo­lu­tion of Laraa­ji’s unique musi­cal vision.

Each episode of Naked­ly Exam­ined Music fea­tures full-length pre­sen­ta­tions of four record­ings dis­cussed by the artist with your host Mark Lin­sen­may­er. Here we present “Hold on to the Vision” and “Shenan­doah” from Laraa­ji’s lat­est release, Sun Piano (2020), the sin­gle edit of “Intro­spec­tion” from Bring On the Sun (2017), and “All of a Sud­den,” a 1986 vocal tune released on Vision Songs, Vol. 1 (2017). Get more infor­ma­tion at laraaji.blogspot.com.

Want more? Hear all of “The Dance No. 1.” Watch the live TV ver­sion of “All of a Sud­den” we dis­cuss, as well anoth­er episode of Celestrana fea­tur­ing Dr. Love the pup­pet. Watch a sim­i­lar, recent iso­la­tion stream also fea­tur­ing Dr. Love and much more. Lis­ten to the full glo­ry of “Intro­spec­tion” and the trip that is “Sun Gong.” Check out some live gong play­ing. Here’s a remix of “Intro­spec­tion” by Dntel.

Find the archive of song­writer inter­views at nakedlyexaminedmusic.com or get the ad-free feed at patreon.com/nakedlyexaminedmusic. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Naked­ly Exam­ined Music is a pod­cast. Mark Lin­sen­may­er also hosts The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast and Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast, and releas­es music under the name Mark Lint.

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Daisugi, the 600-Year-Old Japanese Technique of Growing Trees Out of Other Trees, Creating Perfectly Straight Lumber

in Architecture, History, Nature | October 23rd, 2020

Image by Wrath of Gnon

We’ve all admired the ele­gance of Japan’s tra­di­tion­al styles of archi­tec­ture. Their devel­op­ment required the kind of ded­i­cat­ed crafts­man­ship that takes gen­er­a­tions to cul­ti­vate — but also, more prac­ti­cal­ly speak­ing, no small amount of wood. By the 15th cen­tu­ry, Japan already faced a short­age of seedlings, as well as land on which to prop­er­ly cul­ti­vate the trees in the first place. Neces­si­ty being the moth­er of inven­tion, this led to the cre­ation of an inge­nious solu­tion: daisu­gi, the grow­ing of addi­tion­al trees, in effect, out of exist­ing trees — cre­at­ing, in oth­er words, a kind of giant bon­sai.

“Writ­ten as 台杉 and lit­er­al­ly mean­ing plat­form cedar, the tech­nique result­ed in a tree that resem­bled an open palm with mul­ti­ple trees grow­ing out if it, per­fect­ly ver­ti­cal,” writes Spoon and Tam­ago’s John­ny Wald­man. “Done right, the tech­nique can pre­vent defor­esta­tion and result in per­fect­ly round and straight tim­ber known as taru­ki, which are used in the roofs of Japan­ese tea­hous­es.”

These tea­hous­es are still promi­nent in Kyoto, a city still known for its tra­di­tion­al cul­tur­al her­itage, and not coin­ci­den­tal­ly where daisu­gi first devel­oped. “It’s said that it was Kyoto’s pre­em­i­nent tea mas­ter, Sen-no-rikyu, who demand­ed per­fec­tion in the Kitaya­ma cedar dur­ing the 16th cen­tu­ry,” writes My Mod­ern Met’s Jes­si­ca Stew­art.

At the time “a form of very straight and styl­ized sukiya-zukuri archi­tec­ture was high fash­ion, but there sim­ply weren’t near­ly enough raw mate­ri­als to build these homes for every noble or samu­rai who want­ed one,” says a thread by Twit­ter account Wrath of Gnon, which includes these and oth­er pho­tos of daisu­gi in action. “Hence this clever solu­tion of using bon­sai tech­niques on trees.” Aes­thet­ics aside — as far aside as they ever get in Japan, at any rate — “the lum­ber pro­duced in this method is 140% as flex­i­ble as stan­dard cedar and 200% as dense/strong,” mak­ing it “absolute­ly per­fect for rafters and roof tim­ber.” And not only is daisu­gi’s prod­uct straight, slen­der, and typhoon-resis­tant, it’s mar­veled at around the world 600 years lat­er. Of how many forestry tech­niques can we say the same?

via Spoon and Tam­a­go

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art & Phi­los­o­phy of Bon­sai

This 392-Year-Old Bon­sai Tree Sur­vived the Hiroshi­ma Atom­ic Blast & Still Flour­ish­es Today: The Pow­er of Resilience

The Philo­soph­i­cal Appre­ci­a­tion of Rocks in Chi­na & Japan: A Short Intro­duc­tion to an Ancient Tra­di­tion

The Secret Lan­guage of Trees: A Charm­ing Ani­mat­ed Les­son Explains How Trees Share Infor­ma­tion with Each Oth­er

The Social Lives of Trees: Sci­ence Reveals How Trees Mys­te­ri­ous­ly Talk to Each Oth­er, Work Togeth­er & Form Nur­tur­ing Fam­i­lies

A Dig­i­tal Ani­ma­tion Com­pares the Size of Trees: From the 3‑Inch Bon­sai, to the 300-Foot Sequoia

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.

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Recipes from the Kitchen of Georgia O’Keeffe

in Art, Food & Drink, Libraries | October 23rd, 2020

What shall we read before bed?

Geor­gia O’Keeffe was a fan of cook­books, telling her young assis­tant Mar­garet Wood that they were “enjoy­able night­time com­pa­ny, pro­vid­ing brief and pleas­ant read­ing.”

Among the culi­nary vol­umes in her Abiquiu, New Mex­i­co ranch home were The Fan­ny Farmer Boston Cook­ing School Cook­book, The Joy of Cook­ing, Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit and Cook Right, Live Longer.

Also Pick­ups and Cheerups from the War­ing Blender, a 21-page pam­phlet fea­tur­ing blend­ed cock­tails, that now rests in Yale University’s Bei­necke Library, along with the rest of the con­tents of O’Keeffe’s recipe box, acquired the night before it was due to be auc­tioned at Sotheby’s. (Some of the images on this page come cour­tesy of Sothe­by’s.)

In addi­tion to recipes—inscribed by the artist’s own hand in ink from a foun­tain pen, typed by assis­tants, clipped from mag­a­zines and news­pa­pers, or in pro­mo­tion­al book­lets such as the one pub­lished by the War­ing Prod­ucts Company—the box housed man­u­als for O’Keeffe’s kitchen appli­ances.

The book­let that came with her pres­sure cook­er includes a spat­tered page devot­ed to cook­ing fresh veg­gies, a tes­ta­ment to her abid­ing inter­est in eat­ing health­ful­ly.

O’Keeffe had a high regard for sal­ads, gar­den fresh herbs, and sim­ple, local­ly sourced food.

Today’s bud­dha bowl craze is, how­ev­er, “the oppo­site of what she would enjoy” accord­ing to Wood, author of the books Remem­ber­ing Miss O’Ke­effe: Sto­ries from Abiquiu and A Painter’s Kitchen: Recipes from the Kitchen of Geor­gia O’Keeffe.

Wood, who was some 66 years younger than her employ­er, recent­ly vis­it­ed The Spork­ful pod­cast to recall her first days on the job :

…she said, “Do you like to cook?” 

And I said, “Yes, I cer­tain­ly do.” 

So she said, “Well, let’s give it a try.” 

And after two days of my hip­pie health food, she said, “My dear, let me show you how I like my food.” My first way of try­ing to cook for us was a lot of brown rice and chopped veg­eta­bles with chick­en added. And that was not what she liked. 

An exam­ple of what she did like: Roast­ed lemon chick­en with fried pota­toes, a green sal­ad fea­tur­ing let­tuce and herbs from her gar­den, and steamed broc­coli.

Also yogurt made with the milk of local goats, whole wheat flour ground on the premis­es, water­cress plucked from local streams, and home can­ning.

Most of these labor-inten­sive tasks fell to her staff, but she main­tained a keen inter­est in the pro­ceed­ings.

Not for noth­ing did the friend who referred Wood for the job warn her it would “require a lot of patience because Miss O’Ke­effe was extreme­ly par­tic­u­lar.”

The jot­tings from the recipe box don’t real­ly con­vey this exact­ing nature.

Those accus­tomed to the extreme­ly spe­cif­ic instruc­tions accom­pa­ny­ing even the sim­plest recipes to be found on the Inter­net may be shocked by O’Ke­ef­fe’s brevi­ty.

 

Per­haps we should assume that she sta­tioned her­self close by the first time any new hire pre­pared a recipe from one of her cards, know­ing she would have to ver­bal­ly cor­rect and redi­rect.

(O’Keeffe insist­ed that Wood stir accord­ing to her method—don’t scrape the sides, dig down and lift up.)

The box also con­tained recipes that were like­ly rar­i­ties on O’Keeffe’s table, giv­en her dietary pref­er­ences, though they are cer­tain­ly evoca­tive of the peri­od: toma­to aspic, Mary­land fried chick­en, Float­ing Islands, and a cock­tail she may have first sipped in a San­ta Fe hotel bar.

The Bei­necke plans to dig­i­tize its new­ly acquired col­lec­tion. This gives us hope that one day, the Geor­gia O’Keeffe Muse­um may fol­low suit with the red recipe binder Wood men­tions in A Painter’s Kitchen:

This was affec­tion­ate­ly referred to as “Mary’s Book,” named after a pre­vi­ous staff mem­ber who had com­piled it. That note­book was con­tin­u­al­ly con­sult­ed, and revised to include new recipes or to improve on old­er ones…. As she had col­lect­ed a num­ber of healthy and fla­vor­ful recipes, she would occa­sion­al­ly laugh and com­ment, “We should write a cook­book.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Explore 1,100 Works of Art by Geor­gia O’Keeffe: They’re Now Dig­i­tized and Free to View Online

Geor­gia O’Keeffe: A Life in Art, a Short Doc­u­men­tary on the Painter Nar­rat­ed by Gene Hack­man

The Art & Cook­ing of Fri­da Kahlo, Sal­vador Dali, Geor­gia O’Keeffe, Vin­cent Van Gogh & More

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

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Glenn Gould Explains Why Mozart Was a Bad Composer in a Controversial Public TV Show (1968)

in Music | October 22nd, 2020

No mat­ter how eccen­tric Glenn Gould’s inter­pre­ta­tions of major com­posers might have been, his friend and pro­mot­er Leonard Bern­stein found them wor­thy of per­for­mance, even if he didn’t quite agree. In “The Truth About a Leg­end,” his trib­ute essay to Gould after the pianist’s death, Bern­stein wrote, “Any dis­cov­ery of Glenn’s was wel­comed by me because I wor­shipped the way he played: I admired his intel­lec­tu­al approach, his ‘guts’ approach.”

Are these con­tra­dic­tions? Glenn Gould was a com­pli­cat­ed man, a bril­liant­ly abstract thinker who threw his full phys­i­cal being into his play­ing. When Gould slowed a Brahms con­cer­to to a crawl, so slow that “it was very tir­ing” for the orches­tra to play, he was con­vinced he had dis­cov­ered a secret key to the tem­po with­in the piece itself. Bern­stein had pro­found doubts, tried sev­er­al times to dis­suade Gould, and warned the orches­tra, “Now don’t give up, because this is a great man, whom we have to take very seri­ous­ly.”

Not all of Gould’s admir­ers were as tol­er­ant of Gould’s unortho­dox views. In 1968, Gould pre­sent­ed a seg­ment of the week­ly pub­lic tele­vi­sion series Pub­lic Broad­cast Library. His top­ic was “How Mozart Became a Bad Com­pos­er.” This was, per­haps suf­fice to say, a very unpop­u­lar opin­ion. “The pro­gram out­raged view­ers in both the Unit­ed States and Cana­da, includ­ing for­mer­ly sym­pa­thet­ic fans and crit­ics,” Kevin Baz­zana writes in Won­drous Strange: The Life and Art of Glenn Gould. It would nev­er again air any­where and was only recent­ly dig­i­tized from 2‑inch tape found in the Library of Con­gress Nation­al Audio-Visu­al Con­ser­va­tion Cen­ter.

Gould opens the show with a selec­tion from Mozart’s Piano Con­cer­to in C Minor, then in his crit­i­cal com­men­tary, alleges the piece “has had a rather bet­ter press than it deserves, I think. Despite it’s gen­tly swoon­ing melodies, its metic­u­lous­ly bal­anced cadences, despite its sta­ble and archi­tec­tural­ly unex­cep­tion­able form, I’m going to sub­mit it as a good exam­ple of why I think Mozart, espe­cial­ly in his lat­er years, was not a very good com­pos­er.” Then Gould real­ly digs in, casu­al­ly com­par­ing Mozart’s “depend­able” crafts­man­ship to “the way that an accounts exec­u­tive dis­patch­es an interof­fice memo.”

It is a shock­ing thing to say, and Gould, of course, knows it. Is this hubris, or is he delib­er­ate­ly pro­vok­ing his audi­ence? “Glenn had strong ele­ments of sports­man­ship and teas­ing,” Bern­stein writes, “the kind of dar­ing which accounts for his fresh­ness.” His con­trari­ness might have inspired at least a few view­ers to lis­ten crit­i­cal­ly and care­ful­ly to Mozart for the first time, with­out hun­dreds of years of received opin­ion medi­at­ing the expe­ri­ence. This is the spir­it in which we should view Gould’s eru­dite icon­o­clasm, says Library of Con­gress Music Ref­er­ence Spe­cial­ist James Win­tle: to learn to lis­ten with new ears, “as a child,” to a com­pos­er we have “been con­di­tioned to revere.”

Gould’s unpop­u­lar opin­ions “did not always take a turn toward the neg­a­tive,” Win­tle writes. He cham­pi­oned the works of less-than-pop­u­lar com­posers like Paul Hin­demith and Jean Sibelius. And his “great sense of inquiry,” Bern­stein wrote, “made him sud­den­ly under­stand Schoen­berg and Liszt in the same cat­e­go­ry, or Pur­cell and Brahms, or Orlan­do Gib­bons and Petu­la Clark. He would sud­den­ly bring an unlike­ly pair of musi­cians togeth­er in some kind of star­tling com­par­a­tive essay.” Gould’s musi­cal inven­tive­ness, taste, and judg­ment were unpar­al­leled, Bern­stein main­tained, and for that rea­son, we should always be inclined to hear him out.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Glenn Gould’s Eccen­tric­i­ties Became Essen­tial to His Play­ing & Per­son­al Style: From Hum­ming Aloud While Play­ing to Per­form­ing with His Child­hood Piano Chair

Watch a 27-Year-Old Glenn Gould Play Bach & Put His Musi­cal Genius on Dis­play (1959)

Glenn Gould’s Heav­i­ly Marked-Up Score for the Gold­berg Vari­a­tions Sur­faces, Let­ting Us Look Inside His Cre­ative Process

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

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“The Dark Side of the Moon” and Other Pink Floyd Songs Gloriously Performed by Irish & German Orchestras

in Music | October 22nd, 2020

The idea of an orches­tra per­form­ing 1970s pro­gres­sive rock sounds at first like the stuff of purest nov­el­ty. And while the excess­es of that move­ment bent on the artis­tic “ele­va­tion” of rock-and-roll quick­ly became easy tar­gets, its music has unde­ni­able res­o­nances with the clas­si­cal canon, broad­ly defined. In a piece on the mod­ern reeval­u­a­tion of “prog-rock,” The New York­er’s Kele­fa San­neh quotes a Rolling Stone crit­ic label­ing the ambi­tious new sound “jazz-influ­enced clas­si­cal-rock” in a 1972 review of the debut album of Emer­son, Lake and Palmer, who lat­er “reached the Top Ten, in both Britain and Amer­i­ca, with a live album based on its bom­bas­tic ren­di­tion of Mussorgsky’s Pic­tures at an Exhi­bi­tion.”

King Crim­son, anoth­er pil­lar of the sub­genre, once played a “fero­cious set” that end­ed with “Mars, the Bringer of War,” from Gus­tav Hol­st’s The Plan­ets suite — as an open­er for the Rolling Stones. But no band to rise out of the prog-rock fer­ment has made more of an impact, or more fans, than Pink Floyd.

Their 1973 release The Dark Side of the Moon remains, as of this writ­ing, the fourth best-sell­ing album of all time (to say noth­ing of its T‑shirts and dorm-room posters), and though its ten songs fair­ly demand trib­ute, pay­ing prop­er homage to their elab­o­rate com­po­si­tion and pro­duc­tion is eas­i­er said than done. Enter the Uni­ver­si­ty of Dublin’s stu­dent-run Trin­i­ty Orches­tra, who take it on in the video above, filmed at Christ Church Cathe­dral dur­ing 2012’s 10 Days in Dublin fes­ti­val.

“Time,” the best-known of The Dark Side of the Moon’s album tracks, is here rearranged for a full orches­tra, band, and singers, and going by sound alone, you might believe you’re lis­ten­ing to one of the Floy­d’s more rich­ly instru­ment­ed live shows (not that they were known to skimp in that depart­ment). But there’s no mis­tak­ing this orches­tral ver­sion of “Wish You Were Here” (from their epony­mous fol­low-up album) for the gen­uine arti­cle, cer­tain­ly not because of inad­e­quate musi­cian­ship, but because most of the musi­cians are play­ing man­dolins. Con­duct­ed by Boris Björn Bag­ger, these Ger­man play­ers include not just man­dolin­ists but the late Michael Rüber front and cen­ter on elec­tric gui­tar — an all-impor­tant instru­ment, it seems, no mat­ter how far rock pro­gress­es.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dark Side of the Moon Project: Watch the First of an 8‑Part Video Essay on Pink Floyd’s Clas­sic Album

Pink Floyd Stream­ing Free Clas­sic Con­cert Films, Start­ing with 1994’s Pulse, the First Live Per­for­mance of The Dark Side of the Moon in Full

A Live Stu­dio Cov­er of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, Played from Start to Fin­ish

Watch Doc­u­men­taries on the Mak­ing of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here

Three Pink Floyd Songs Played on the Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Gayageum: “Com­fort­ably Numb,” “Anoth­er Brick in the Wall” & “Great Gig in the Sky”

Hear Pink Floyd’s “Great Gig in the Sky” Played on the Theremin

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.

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