How Joni Mitchell’s Song of Heartbreak, “River,” Became a Christmas Classic

in Music | December 21st, 2020

From Elvis’ “Blue Christ­mas” to Tom Waits’ “Christ­mas Card from a Hook­er in Min­neapo­lis” to the Pogues’ “Fairy­tale of New York,” the most hon­est Christ­mas songs freely acknowl­edge the holiday’s dark under­bel­ly. There are always those for whom the hol­i­days are times of heart­break, which, as we know, makes for bet­ter song­writ­ing than tin­sel, elves, and stock­ings. Near the top of any list of mis­er­able Christ­mas songs sits Joni Mitchell’s hol­i­day clas­sic “Riv­er,” in which she laments los­ing “the best baby I ever had” over the sea­son.

“Riv­er” is not real­ly a Christ­mas song; it just hap­pens to be set dur­ing the hol­i­days: “It’s com­ing on Christ­mas, they’re cut­ting down trees,” Joni sings, “They’re putting up rein­deer, singing songs of joy and peace.” This tran­quil scene pro­vides a trag­ic foil for the song’s true sub­ject. “Ulti­mate­ly,” writes J. Free­dom du Lac at The Wash­ing­ton Post, “‘Riv­er’ is a bereft song about a bro­ken romance and a woman who des­per­ate­ly wants to escape her heart­break, say­ing repeat­ed­ly: ‘I wish I had a riv­er I could skate away on.’”

Mitchell’s “despair­ing dra­ma” has “long been a pop­u­lar cov­er among musi­cians, hun­dreds of whom have record­ed it for com­mer­cial release.” (Accord­ing to her web­site, it has been record­ed 763 times, sec­ond only to “Both Sides Now” at almost twice that num­ber.) Last year Ellie Goulding’s cov­er rose to No. 1 in Europe. First released on Mitchel­l’s 1971 clas­sic Blue, the song delib­er­ate­ly evokes the hol­i­days with strains of “Jin­gle Bells” in its open­ing bars before descend­ing into its deeply melan­choly melody.

“Riv­er” did not enter mod­ern Christ­mas sin­ga­longs until the 1990s. In the Poly­phon­ic video at the top, “Joni Mitchell and the Melan­choly of Christ­mas,” we begin all the way back in the 1880s, with the first record­ings of “Jin­gle Bells.” The his­to­ry frames Mitchell’s use of the melody, almost a form of sam­pling, as rad­i­cal protest of a tune that has become “syn­ony­mous with Christ­mas joy.” It has been record­ed by vir­tu­al­ly every­one, and was even broad­cast from space in 1965 “when astro­nauts aboard NASA’s Gem­i­ni 6 played it as part of a Christ­mas prank.”

No, says Mitchell, there are real peo­ple with real prob­lems down here, and some­times Christ­mas sucks. There’ll be no dash­ing through the snow: “It don’t snow here / Stays pret­ty green.” The sto­ry behind the song is well-known: Mitchell end­ed her two-year rela­tion­ship with Gra­ham Nash in 1970, then “skat­ed away” to Europe to escape the “crazy scene.” While in Crete, “she sent Nash a telegram to tell him their rela­tion­ship was over,” notes Tom Eames. No one should try to force a hap­py hol­i­day in such times. If you’re crav­ing a lit­tle real­ness with your cheer, con­sid­er adding “Riv­er” to your playlist.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Joni Mitchell Wrote “Wood­stock,” the Song that Defined the Leg­endary Music Fes­ti­val, Even Though She Wasn’t There (1969)

Watch Joni Mitchell Sing an Immac­u­late Ver­sion of Her Song “Coy­ote,” with Bob Dylan, Roger McGuinn & Gor­don Light­foot (1975)

The Expan­sive Vocal Range of Joni Mitchell: From the Ear­ly to Lat­er Years

The Sto­ry of The Pogues’ “Fairy­tale of New York,” the Boozy Bal­lad That Has Become One of the Most Beloved Christ­mas Songs of All Time

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

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The Blob Opera Lets You Create Festive Music with Ease: An Interactive Experiment Powered by Machine Learning

in Google, K-12, Music, Opera, Technology | December 21st, 2020

Tis the sea­son when we’re nev­er more than one sin­ga­long Mes­si­ah away from wish­ing we had a bet­ter voice.

David Li’s inter­ac­tive Blob Opera allows us to pre­tend.

The machine learn­ing exper­i­ment takes its cues from four opera singers—soprano Olivia Dout­ney, mez­zo-sopra­no Joan­na Gam­ble, tenor Chris­t­ian Joel, and bass Fred­die Tong—who pro­vid­ed it with 16 hours of record­ed mate­r­i­al.

The result is tru­ly an all-ages activ­i­ty that’s much eas­i­er on the ears than most dig­i­tal diver­sions.

Click and drag one of the gum­my-bod­ied blobs up and down to change its pitch.

Pull them for­wards and back­wards to vary their vow­el sounds.

Once all four are in posi­tion, the three you’re not active­ly con­trol­ling will har­mo­nize like a heav­en­ly host.

You can dis­able indi­vid­ual blobs’ audio to cre­ate solos, duets and trios with­in your com­po­si­tion.

Press record and you can share with the world.

The blobs don’t sing in any dis­cernible lan­guage, but they can do lega­to, stac­ca­to, and shoot up to incred­i­bly high notes with a min­i­mum of effort. Their eyes pin­wheel when they har­mo­nize.

As Li describes to co-pro­duc­er Google Arts & Cul­ture below, it’s not the orig­i­nal singers’ voic­es we’re chan­nel­ing, but rather the machine learn­ing model’s under­stand­ing of the oper­at­ic sound.

Click the pine tree icon and the blobs will ser­e­nade you with the most-searched Christ­mas car­ols.

Begin your col­lab­o­ra­tion with Blob Opera here.

If you find your­self want­i­ng more, have a go at the inter­ac­tive Choir Li cre­at­ed for Adult Swim.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Fry Hosts “The Sci­ence of Opera,” a Dis­cus­sion of How Music Moves Us Phys­i­cal­ly to Tears

The Met Opera Stream­ing Free Operas Online to Get You Through COVID-19

The Opera Data­base: Find Scores, Libret­ti & Syn­opses for Thou­sands of Operas Free Online

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She most recent­ly appeared as a French Cana­di­an bear who trav­els to New York City in search of food and mean­ing in Greg Kotis’ short film, L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Brian Cullman, Veteran NY Music Scenester/Journalist/Producer, Shares His Tunes and Musings About Death: Nakedly Examined Music Podcast #137

in Music, Podcasts | December 21st, 2020

Bri­an start­ed as a teen music enthu­si­ast and jour­nal­ist as ear­ly as 1970, run­ning into folks like Jim Mor­ri­son and Nico and mak­ing con­nec­tions with every musi­cian he could lay eyes on. He lever­aged this effort into find­ing vehi­cles for his songs, first with OK Savant (ca. 1990), a band that fre­quent­ed CBG­Bs and then broke up right as it was signed to a major label. After some false starts and life changes, he like­wise used his net­work to sup­port his cre­ation of three and half solo albums start­ing in 2008. He has also been an active pro­duc­er and col­lab­o­ra­tor for artists like Olla­belle, Lucin­da Williams & Taj Mahal, and sev­er­al inter­na­tion­al musi­cians.

Each episode of the Naked­ly Exam­ined Music pod­cast involves pick­ing three record­ings from an artist’s cat­a­log to play in full and dis­cuss in detail. Your host Mark Lin­sen­may­er here engages Bri­an about “Killing The Dead” (and we lis­ten to “Wrong Birth­day” at the end; see the video below) from Win­ter Clothes (2020, writ­ten with now-deceased Olla­belle gui­tarist Jimi Zhiva­go), “And She Said” from The Oppo­site of Time (2016), and “The Promise” from All Fires The Fire (2008). Intro: “The Book of Sleep” by OK Savant, record­ed live at CBG­Bs in 1990. For more, see briancullman.com.

Watch Bri­an live (with Jimi Zhiva­go and oth­ers) in 2016. Anoth­er new, col­or­ful­ly ani­mat­ed video is for the bluesy “Walk the Dog Before I Sleep.” One from his pre­vi­ous album is “Every­thing That Ris­es.” Hear the full, remas­tered record­ing of “The Book of Sleep.” Hear the song he wrong for Nick Drake (whom he opened for in 1970). Hear one of the tunes he did for Rua Das Pre­tas.

The bass play­er on Bri­an’s albums is Byron Isaacs (also of Olla­belle), whom Naked­ly Exam­ined Music inter­viewed for episode #82.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion and anoth­er song, avail­able to Naked­ly Exam­ined Music Patre­on sup­port­ers.

Pho­to by Bill Flick­er.

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

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Hokusai’s Iconic Print, “The Great Wave off Kanagawa,” Recreated with 50,000 LEGO Bricks

in Architecture, Art, Creativity, Design | December 18th, 2020

For those with the time, skill, and dri­ve, LEGO is the per­fect medi­um for wild­ly impres­sive recre­ations of icon­ic struc­tures, like the Taj Mahal, Eif­fel Tow­er, the Titan­ic and now the Roman Colos­se­um.

But water? A wave?

And not just any wave, but Kat­sushi­ka Hoku­sai’s cel­e­brat­ed 19th-cen­tu­ry wood­block print, The Great Wave off Kana­gawa.

As Open Culture’s Col­in Mar­shall point­ed out ear­li­er, you might not know the title, but the image is instant­ly rec­og­niz­able.

Artist Jumpei Mit­sui, the world’s youngest LEGO Cer­ti­fied Pro­fes­sion­al, was unde­terred by the thought of tack­ling such a dynam­ic and well known sub­ject.

While oth­er LEGO enthu­si­asts have cre­at­ed excel­lent fac­sim­i­les of famous art­works, doing jus­tice to the curves and implied motion of The Great Wave seems a near­ly impos­si­ble feat.

Hav­ing spent his child­hood in a house by the sea, waves are a famil­iar pres­ence to Mit­sui. To get a bet­ter sense of how they work, he read sev­er­al sci­en­tif­ic papers and spent four hours study­ing wave videos on YouTube.

He made only one prepara­to­ry sketch before begin­ning the build, an effort that required 50,000 some LEGO pieces.

His biggest hur­dle was choos­ing which col­or bricks to use in the area indi­cat­ed by the red arrow in the pho­to below. Hoku­sai had tak­en advan­tage of the new­ly afford­able Berlin blue pig­ment in the orig­i­nal.

Mit­sui tweet­ed:

I tried a total of 7 col­ors includ­ing trans­par­ent parts, but in the end, I adopt­ed the same blue col­or as the waves. If you use oth­er col­ors, the lines will be overem­pha­sized and unnat­ur­al, but if you use blue, the shade will be cre­at­ed just by adjust­ing the light, and the nat­ur­al lines will appear nice­ly. It can be said that it was pos­si­ble because it was made three-dimen­sion­al.

Jumpei Mitsui’s wave is now on per­ma­nent view at Osaka’s Han­kyu Brick Muse­um.

via Spoon and Tam­a­go and Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Frank Lloyd Wright Lego Set

With 9,036 Pieces, the Roman Colos­se­um Is the Largest Lego Set Ever

Why Did LEGO Become a Media Empire? Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast #37

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She most recent­ly appeared as a French Cana­di­an bear who trav­els to New York City in search of food and mean­ing in Greg Kotis’ short film, L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How Do Vaccines (Including the COVID-19 Vaccines) Work?: Watch Animated Introductions

in Current Affairs, Health, Science | December 18th, 2020

The oth­er day, I found myself read­ing about what life is like in coun­tries that have suc­cess­ful­ly min­i­mized the pan­dem­ic: wor­ry free hol­i­days, meet­ing friends and fam­i­ly with­out the dan­ger of infec­tion, a gen­er­al air of nor­mal­cy thanks to a com­bi­na­tion of rig­or­ous pub­lic health efforts and pub­lic coop­er­a­tion. I live in the U.S., where the polit­i­cal par­ty cur­rent­ly in pow­er (and des­per­ate to keep it) con­vinced mil­lions of my fel­low cit­i­zens that the virus was a hoax, a scam, a polit­i­cal ploy. The real­i­ty of a virus-free exis­tence seems like a fairy tale.

But per­haps, after a year of death, suf­fer­ing, and luna­cy, we will begin to see the tide turn once enough peo­ple get vac­ci­nat­ed…  if we can over­come the mas­sive wave of anti-sci­ence bias and dis­in­for­ma­tion about vac­cines…. “The anti-vac­ci­na­tion move­ment is going to make Covid-19 more dif­fi­cult to get under con­trol,” says Scott Ratzan, dis­tin­guished lec­tur­er at the CUNY Grad­u­ate School of Pub­lic Health and Health Pol­i­cy.

Long before the vac­cine arrived, Kather­ine O’Brien, a direc­tor at WHO, not­ed there was already a promi­nent “anti-vac­ci­na­tion voice” on social media. “We have to take this seri­ous­ly,” she told The BMJ. “Vac­ci­na­tion isn’t just an indi­vid­ual choice; it pro­tects those who can’t be vac­ci­nat­ed.” We’ve seen the term “herd immu­ni­ty”  mis­used a lot late­ly. What it essen­tial­ly means is that a small num­ber of peo­ple can be shield­ed from the virus if the vast major­i­ty get vac­ci­nat­ed. Or as WHO puts it, “herd immu­ni­ty is achieved by pro­tect­ing peo­ple from a virus, not by expos­ing them to it.”

All of this means there will like­ly nev­er be a more crit­i­cal moment to edu­cate our­selves and oth­ers on the sci­ence of vac­cines. We may not sway those faith­ful to a cer­tain nar­ra­tive, but it can help shift the con­ver­sa­tion from fears of the unknown to the long his­to­ry of the known when it comes to erad­i­cat­ing high­ly infec­tious, dead­ly dis­eases. A great way to start is with the basics, which you’ll find in the videos above from TED-Ed, Mech­a­nisms of Med­i­cine, and PBS. Watch them your­self, share them on social media, and keep the con­ver­sa­tion about vac­cines’ effi­ca­cy going.

In the TED-Ed les­son just above, we learn some more spe­cif­ic infor­ma­tion about the key phas­es of devel­op­ing a new vac­cine: explorato­ry research, clin­i­cal test­ing, and man­u­fac­tur­ing. You’ll find much more detailed infor­ma­tion on the his­to­ry of vac­cines, spu­ri­ous anti-vac­ci­na­tion claims, and the coro­n­avirus vac­cines now on the mar­ket and cur­rent­ly ship­ping around the world, at the award-win­ning site, The His­to­ry of Vac­cines, from the Col­lege of Physi­cians of Philadel­phia.

The COVID-19 vac­cine is a spe­cial kind of vac­cine (mRNA) that works dif­fer­ent­ly from most, and you can learn about how it works here. A quick primer on herd immu­ni­ty appears at the bot­tom.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

What Does the Unit­ed States’ Coro­n­avirus Response Look Like Abroad?: Watch the Rest of the World Stare Aghast at Our Han­dling of COVID-19

Inter­ac­tive Web Site Tracks the Glob­al Spread of the Coro­n­avirus: Cre­at­ed and Sup­port­ed by Johns Hop­kins

19th Cen­tu­ry Maps Visu­al­ize Measles in Amer­i­ca Before the Mir­a­cle of Vac­cines

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

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When Martin Scorsese Directed Michael Jackson in the 18-Minute “Bad” Music Video & Paid Cinematic Tribute to West Side Story (1986)

in Film | December 18th, 2020

In 1983, Michael Jackson’s Thriller was the biggest album in the world, and he was the biggest pop star. And then he was expect­ed to top it. But could he? The mount­ing pres­sures of fame and mon­ey, his falling out with his fam­i­ly over the Jack­sons tour, and his per­fec­tion­ist sta­tus as a musi­cian meant the fol­low-up album kept being pushed back fur­ther and fur­ther. He became more reclu­sive and strange-look­ing, and went from being a sex sym­bol to being the butt of jokes. And in the back­ground of all that was his increas­ing addic­tion to pain killers, which had start­ed after a mal­func­tion­ing pyrotech­nic burned his scalp to the bone.

Mean­while his clos­est com­peti­tor, Prince, had been releas­ing an album a year since 1999. And, in 1986, as this Spin pro­file men­tions, the two met for an odd, most­ly-silent “sum­mit.” What­ev­er was said, it spurred Jack­son to final­ly fin­ish his next album.

Jack­son had worked with John Lan­dis on the “Thriller” video, and then with Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la for Cap­tain EO, but for the title track off of his come­back album, he hired Mar­tin Scors­ese to direct, work­ing from a script by Richard Price. Scors­ese and Price had just worked togeth­er on The Col­or of Mon­ey, and the latter’s script was orig­i­nal­ly about a pri­vate school kid who gets killed in a Harlem shootout. A lot of that is still there in the fin­ished full video, although the mur­der is not. Instead, Jack­son turns the “Bad” music video into some­thing mul­ti­lay­ered.

For Scors­ese it allowed him to mix the street real­ism of his clas­sic New York City tales, and to indulge in a musi­cal num­ber with its sev­er­al nods to West Side Sto­ry. Scorsese’s orig­i­nal film clocks in at over 18 min­utes and it takes until half-way for the music video to begin, when the black’n’white real­ism gives way to col­or, and typ­i­cal NYC win­ter wear turns into b‑boy dance attire, includ­ing Jackson’s black buck­le jack­et. Chore­o­graphed by Jack­son along­side Gregg Burge and Jef­frey Daniel, with input from Geron ‘Caszper’ Can­di­date, the team cre­at­ed a per­for­mance that is a col­lage of styles, from Jerome Rob­bins’ musi­cal the­ater dance to moves from the days of Soul Train (Daniel and Burge had both been fea­tured per­form­ers), to Jackson’s own idio­syn­crat­ic moves. Scors­ese was there to cap­ture it all with his always-mov­ing cam­era.

Also of note is the debut of Wes­ley Snipes, play­ing the antag­o­nist Mini Max. There are few actors who can take a sec­ondary role in a music video and make it stand out, but Snipes’ per­for­mance was so pow­er­ful, audi­ences and cast­ing direc­tors took notice.

And while most broad­casts of the video end with the final line of the song, the orig­i­nal film ends with a most amaz­ing sequence. Jack­son sings a capel­la, while his back­up dancers repeat his impro­vi­sa­tion, a call and response straight out of gospel music, caught on three cam­eras in one take. This scene, even more than the sur­round­ing video, is Jack­son plac­ing him­self in the his­to­ry of Black enter­tain­ment, call­ing up the pow­er of James Brown and Mavis Sta­ples (from whom he got “sha­mone”) and numer­ous oth­er singers. It was the rawest he had even been, and you can see all the ten­sion of those four pre­vi­ous years spill out. He wasn’t a freak show or an oddity—he was part of a tra­di­tion that reached back through the 20th cen­tu­ry, a lin­eage that the doc­u­men­tary makes clear.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” Video Changed Pop Cul­ture For­ev­er: Revis­it the 13-Minute Short Film Direct­ed by John Lan­dis

How Michael Jack­son Wrote a Song: A Close Look at How the King of Pop Craft­ed “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough”

The Ori­gins of Michael Jackson’s Moon­walk: Vin­tage Footage of Cab Cal­loway, Sam­my Davis Jr., Fred Astaire & More

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.

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Three Amateur Cryptographers Finally Decrypted the Zodiac Killer’s Letters: A Look Inside How They Solved a Half Century-Old Mystery

in History, Math | December 18th, 2020

If we envi­sion ser­i­al killers as fig­ures who taunt law enforce­ment with cryp­tic mes­sages sent to the media, we do so in large part because of the Zodi­ac Killer, who ter­ror­ized north­ern Cal­i­for­nia in the late 1960s and ear­ly 70s. Though he seems to have stopped killing more than half a cen­tu­ry ago, he remains an object of great fas­ci­na­tion (and even became the sub­ject of David Fincher’s acclaimed film Zodi­ac in 2007). As thor­ough­ly as the case has been inves­ti­gat­ed, much remains unknown — not least what he actu­al­ly said in some of his cod­ed let­ters. But just this month, a team of three cryp­tog­ra­phy enthu­si­asts man­aged to break one of the Zodi­ac’s ciphers, final­ly reveal­ing the con­tents of a 51-year old let­ter.

The Zodi­ac wrote this par­tic­u­lar com­mu­niqué in a trans­po­si­tion cipher, which, as Ars Tech­ni­ca’s Dan Good­in writes, uses “rules to rearrange the char­ac­ters or groups of char­ac­ters in the mes­sage.” In the case of the 340, named for the num­ber of sym­bols, the con­tent “was prob­a­bly rearranged by manip­u­lat­ing tri­an­gu­lar sec­tions cut from mes­sages writ­ten into rec­tan­gles.” For the past half-cen­tu­ry, nobody could suc­cess­ful­ly return the text to its orig­i­nal arrange­ment, but in 2020, there’s an app for that. Or rather, a soft­ware engi­neer named David Oran­chak, a math­e­mati­cian named Sam Blake, and a pro­gram­mer named Jarl Van Eycke made an app for that. Good­in quotes Oran­chak as say­ing the three had been “work­ing on and off on solv­ing the 340 since 2006.”

You can see Oran­chak explain how he and his col­lab­o­ra­tors final­ly cracked the 340’s cipher in the video at the top of the post, the final episode of his five-part series Let’s Crack the Zodi­ac. This was­n’t a mat­ter of sim­ply whip­ping up the right piece of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and let­ting it rip: they had to gen­er­ate hun­dreds of thou­sands of per­mu­ta­tions of the mes­sage as well as attempts at decryp­tions of those mes­sages. And even when rec­og­niz­able words and phras­es began to emerge in the results — “TRYING TO CATCH ME,” “THE GAS CHAMBER” — quite a bit of tri­al, error, and thought, remained to be done. It helped that Oran­chak knew his Zodi­ac his­to­ry, such as that some­one claim­ing to be the killer men­tioned not want­i­ng to be sent to the gas cham­ber when he called in to a local tele­vi­sion show on Octo­ber 20, 1969, two weeks before the 340 was received.

Was it real­ly him? The 340, when final­ly decod­ed — a process com­pli­cat­ed by the mis­takes the Zodi­ac made, not just in spelling but in exe­cut­ing his labo­ri­ous, ful­ly ana­log encryp­tion process — seems to pro­vide the answer:

I HOPE YOU ARE HAVING LOTS OF FUN IN TRYING TO CATCH ME
THAT WASNT ME ON THE TV SHOW
WHICH BRINGS UP A POINT ABOUT ME
I AM NOT AFRAID OF THE GAS CHAMBER
BECAUSE IT WILL SEND ME TO PARADICE ALL THE SOONER
BECAUSE I NOW HAVE ENOUGH SLAVES TO WORK FOR ME
WHERE EVERYONE ELSE HAS NOTHING WHEN THEY REACH PARADICE
SO THEY ARE AFRAID OF DEATH
I AM NOT AFRAID BECAUSE I KNOW THAT MY NEW LIFE IS
LIFE WILL BE AN EASY ONE IN PARADICE DEATH

“The mes­sage does­n’t real­ly say a whole lot,” admits Oran­chak. “It’s more of the same atten­tion-seek­ing junk from Zodi­ac. We were dis­ap­point­ed that he did­n’t put any per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fy­ing infor­ma­tion in the mes­sage, but we did­n’t expect him to.” The Zodi­ac Killer remains uniden­ti­fied, and indeed remains one of recent his­to­ry’s more com­pelling vil­lains, not just to those with an inter­est in true crime, but to those with an inter­est in cryp­tog­ra­phy as well. For two more mes­sages still remain to be decod­ed, and in one of them he offers a short cipher that, he writes, con­tains his name — but then, if there’s any cor­re­spon­dent we should­n’t rush to take at his word, it’s this one.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence May Have Cracked the Code of the Voyn­ich Man­u­script: Has Mod­ern Tech­nol­o­gy Final­ly Solved a Medieval Mys­tery?

The Enig­ma Machine: How Alan Tur­ing Helped Break the Unbreak­able Nazi Code

How British Code­break­ers Built the First Elec­tron­ic Com­put­er

The Ser­i­al Killer Who Loved Jazz: The Infa­mous Sto­ry of the Axe­man of New Orleans (1919)

The Grue­some Doll­house Death Scenes That Rein­vent­ed Mur­der Inves­ti­ga­tions

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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160,000+ Medieval Manuscripts Online: Where to Find Them

in Books, History | December 17th, 2020

“Man­u­scripts are the most impor­tant medi­um writ­ing has ever had,” declares the Cen­tre for the Study of Man­u­script Cul­tures at the Uni­ver­sität Ham­burg. Under the influ­ence of a cer­tain pre­sen­tist bias, this can be hard to believe. We are con­di­tioned by what Mar­shall McLuhan described as The Guten­berg Galaxy: each of us is in some way what he called (in gen­dered lan­guage) a “Guten­berg Man.” From this point of view, “man­u­script tech­nol­o­gy,” as he wrote in 1962, does “not have the inten­si­ty or pow­er of exten­sion to cre­ate publics on a nation­al scale.” It seems quaint, archa­ic, too rar­i­fied to have much influ­ence.

It may be the case, as McLuhan writes, that the print­ing press and the mod­ern nation state arose togeth­er, but this is not nec­es­sar­i­ly an unqual­i­fied mea­sure of progress. Print has had a few hun­dred years—however, “for thou­sands of years,” Uni­ver­sität Ham­burg reminds us, “man­u­scripts have had a deter­min­ing influ­ence on all cul­tures that were shaped by them.” McLuhan him­self was a dis­tin­guished schol­ar and a devot­ed Catholic who no doubt under­stood this very well. One sus­pects less­er writ­ers might avoid the man­u­script, in its incred­i­ble com­plex­i­ty, because it’s not only a dif­fer­ent kind, it is a dif­fer­ent species of media alto­geth­er.

Man­u­script cul­ture is its own field of study for good rea­son. We are gen­er­al­ly talk­ing about texts writ­ten on parch­ment or vel­lum, which are, after all, treat­ed ani­mal skins. Paper is eas­i­er to repro­duce, but has a much short­er shelf life. No two man­u­scripts are the same, some dif­fer from each oth­er wild­ly: vari­ants, inter­po­la­tions, redac­tions, era­sures, palimpses­ts, etc. are stan­dard, requir­ing spe­cial train­ing in edi­to­r­i­al meth­ods. Then there’s the lan­guages and the hand­writ­ing…. It can be for­bid­ding, but there are oth­er, more sur­mount­able rea­sons this field has been so her­met­ic until the recent past.

The pri­ma­ry sources have been inac­ces­si­ble, hid­den away in spe­cial col­lec­tions, and the schol­ar­ship and ped­a­gogy have been clois­tered behind uni­ver­si­ty walls. Open access dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing and free online cours­es and mate­ri­als have changed the sit­u­a­tion rad­i­cal­ly. And it is rapid­ly becom­ing the case that most man­u­script libraries have major, and expand­ing, online col­lec­tions, often scanned in high res­o­lu­tion, some­times with tran­scrip­tions, and usu­al­ly with addi­tion­al resources explain­ing prove­nance and oth­er such impor­tant details.

Indeed, there are thou­sands of man­u­script pages online from well over a thou­sand years, and you’ll find them dig­i­tized at the links to sev­er­al ven­er­a­ble insti­tu­tions of preser­va­tion and high­er learn­ing below. There is, of course, no rea­son we can­not appre­ci­ate this long his­tor­i­cal tra­di­tion for pure­ly aes­thet­ic rea­sons. So many Medieval man­u­scripts are works of art in their own right. But if we want to get into the grit­ty details, we can start by learn­ing how such illu­mi­nat­ed medieval man­u­scripts were made: a lost art, but not, thanks to the dura­bil­i­ty of parch­ment, a lost tra­di­tion.

Learn even more at the links below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Were Made: A Step-by-Step Look at this Beau­ti­ful, Cen­turies-Old Craft

How to Make a Medieval Man­u­script: An Intro­duc­tion in 7 Videos

How the Bril­liant Col­ors of Medieval Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­scripts Were Made with Alche­my

Behold the Beau­ti­ful Pages from a Medieval Monk’s Sketch­book: A Win­dow Into How Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­scripts Were Made (1494)

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

 

 

 

 

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