Kurt Vonnegut’s Term Paper Assignment from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop Teaches You to Read Fiction Like a Writer

in Creativity, Education, Letters, Literature, Writing | October 24th, 2016

vonnegut drawing

Image by Daniele Prati, via Flickr Com­mons

I wish I’d had a teacher who framed his or her assign­ments as let­ters…

Which is real­ly just anoth­er way of say­ing I wish I’d been lucky enough to have tak­en a class with writ­ers Kurt Von­negut or Lyn­da Bar­ry.

There’s still hope of a class with Bar­ry, aka Pro­fes­sor Chew­bac­ca, Pro­fes­sor Old Skull, and most recent­ly, Pro­fes­sor Dro­go. Those of us who can’t get a seat at the Wis­con­sin Insti­tute for Dis­cov­ery, the Omega Insti­tute, or the Clar­i­on Sci­ence Fic­tion and Fan­ta­sy Writ­ers’ Work­shop can play along at home, using assign­ments she gen­er­ous­ly makes avail­able in her books and on her Near-Sight­ed Mon­key Tum­blr.

Von­negut fans long for this lev­el of access, which is why we are dou­bly grate­ful to writer Suzanne McConnell, who took Vonnegut’s “Form of Fic­tion” (aka “Sur­face Crit­i­cism” aka “How to Talk out of the Cor­ner of Your Mouth Like a Real Tough Pro”) course at the Iowa Writ­ers’ Work­shop in the mid-60s.

The goal was to exam­ine fic­tion from a writer’s per­spec­tive and McConnell (who is soon to pub­lish a book about Vonnegut’s advice to writ­ers) pre­served one of her old teacher’s term paper assign­ments—again in let­ter form. She lat­er had an epiphany that his assign­ments were “designed to teach some­thing much more than what­ev­er I thought then…  He was teach­ing us to do our own think­ing, to find out who we were, what we loved, abhorred, what set off our trip­wires, what tripped up our hearts.”

For the term paper, the eighty students—a group that includ­ed John Irv­ing, Gail God­win, and Andre Dubus II—were addressed as “Beloved” and charged with assign­ing a let­ter grade to each of the fif­teen sto­ries in Mas­ters of the Mod­ern Short Sto­ry (Har­court, Brace, 1955, W. Hav­ighurst, edi­tor).

(A decade and a half lat­er, Von­negut would sub­ject his own nov­els to the same treat­ment.)

A not­ed human­ist, Von­negut instruct­ed the class to read these sto­ries not in an over­ly ana­lyt­i­cal mind­set, but rather as if they had just con­sumed “two ounces of very good booze.”

The ensu­ing let­ter grades were meant to be “child­ish­ly self­ish and impu­dent mea­sures” of how much—or little—joy the sto­ries inspired in the read­er.

Next, stu­dents were instruct­ed to choose their three favorite and three least favorite sto­ries, then dis­guise them­selves as “minor but use­ful” lit mag edi­tors in order to advise their “wise, respect­ed, wit­ty and world-weary supe­ri­or” as to whether or not the select­ed sto­ries mer­it­ed pub­li­ca­tion.

Here’s the full assign­ment, which was pub­lished in Kurt Von­negut: Let­ters (Dela­corte Press, 2012). And also again in Slate.

Beloved:

This course began as Form and The­o­ry of Fic­tion, became Form of Fic­tion, then Form and Tex­ture of Fic­tion, then Sur­face Crit­i­cism, or How to Talk out of the Cor­ner of Your Mouth Like a Real Tough Pro. It will prob­a­bly be Ani­mal Hus­bandry 108 by the time Black Feb­ru­ary rolls around. As was said to me years ago by a dear, dear friend, “Keep your hat on. We may end up miles from here.”

As for your term papers, I should like them to be both cyn­i­cal and reli­gious. I want you to adore the Uni­verse, to be eas­i­ly delight­ed, but to be prompt as well with impa­tience with those artists who offend your own deep notions of what the Uni­verse is or should be. “This above all …”

I invite you to read the fif­teen tales in Mas­ters of the Mod­ern Short Sto­ry (W. Hav­ighurst, edi­tor, 1955, Har­court, Brace, $14.95 in paper­back). Read them for plea­sure and sat­is­fac­tion, begin­ning each as though, only sev­en min­utes before, you had swal­lowed two ounces of very good booze. “Except ye be as lit­tle chil­dren …”

Then repro­duce on a sin­gle sheet of clean, white paper the table of con­tents of the book, omit­ting the page num­bers, and sub­sti­tut­ing for each num­ber a grade from A to F. The grades should be child­ish­ly self­ish and impu­dent mea­sures of your own joy or lack of it. I don’t care what grades you give. I do insist that you like some sto­ries bet­ter than oth­ers.

Pro­ceed next to the hal­lu­ci­na­tion that you are a minor but use­ful edi­tor on a good lit­er­ary mag­a­zine not con­nect­ed with a uni­ver­si­ty. Take three sto­ries that please you most and three that please you least, six in all, and pre­tend that they have been offered for pub­li­ca­tion. Write a report on each to be sub­mit­ted to a wise, respect­ed, wit­ty and world-weary supe­ri­or.

Do not do so as an aca­d­e­m­ic crit­ic, nor as a per­son drunk on art, nor as a bar­bar­ian in the lit­er­ary mar­ket place. Do so as a sen­si­tive per­son who has a few prac­ti­cal hunch­es about how sto­ries can suc­ceed or fail. Praise or damn as you please, but do so rather flat­ly, prag­mat­i­cal­ly, with cun­ning atten­tion to annoy­ing or grat­i­fy­ing details. Be your­self. Be unique. Be a good edi­tor. The Uni­verse needs more good edi­tors, God knows.

Since there are eighty of you, and since I do not wish to go blind or kill some­body, about twen­ty pages from each of you should do neat­ly. Do not bub­ble. Do not spin your wheels. Use words I know.

poloniøus

McConnell sup­plied fur­ther details on the extra­or­di­nary expe­ri­ence of being Vonnegut’s stu­dent in an essay for the Brook­lyn Rail:

 Kurt taught a Chekhov sto­ry. I can’t remem­ber the name of it. I didn’t quite under­stand the point, since noth­ing much hap­pened. An ado­les­cent girl is in love with this boy and that boy and anoth­er; she points at a lit­tle dog, as I recall, or maybe some­thing else, and laughs. That’s all. There’s no con­flict, no dra­mat­ic turn­ing point or change. Kurt point­ed out that she has no words for the sheer joy of being young, ripe with life, her own juici­ness, and the promise of romance. Her inar­tic­u­late feel­ings spill into laugh­ter at some­thing innocu­ous. That’s what hap­pened in the sto­ry. His absolute delight in that girl’s joy of feel­ing her­self so alive was so encour­ag­ing of delight. Kurt’s enchant­ment taught me that such moments are noth­ing to sneeze at. They’re worth a sto­ry.             

via Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Von­negut Dia­grams the Shape of All Sto­ries in a Master’s The­sis Reject­ed by U. Chica­go

In 1988, Kurt Von­negut Writes a Let­ter to Peo­ple Liv­ing in 2088, Giv­ing 7 Pieces of Advice

Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry

Kurt Von­negut Urges Young Peo­ple to Make Art and “Make Your Soul Grow”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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21 Artists Give “Advice to the Young:” Vital Lessons from Laurie Anderson, David Byrne, Umberto Eco, Patti Smith & More

in Art, Creativity, Education, Life | October 12th, 2016

Nev­er meet your idols, they say. It can put a cramp in your appre­ci­a­tion of their work. There are always excep­tions, but maybe Bill Mur­ray proves the rule. On the oth­er hand, you should always learn from your idols. There’s a rea­son you admire them, after all. Find out what it is and what they have to teach you. In the series we fea­ture here, Advice to the Young, many an idol of many an aspir­ing artist and musi­cian offers some broad, exis­ten­tial advice—ways to absorb a lit­tle of their process.

Lau­rie Ander­son, above, tells us to “be loose.” Widen our bound­aries, “make it vague,” because “there are so many forces that are try­ing to push us in cer­tain direc­tions, and they’re traps…. Don’t be caught in that trap of def­i­n­i­tion. It’s a cor­po­rate trap…. Be flex­i­ble.” Good advice, if you’re as eclec­tic and loose as Lau­rie Ander­son, or if you seek artis­tic lib­er­a­tion ahead of sales. “I became an artist because I want to be free,” she says.

Just above, Daniel Lanois, super­star slide gui­tarist and pro­duc­er of Bob Dylan, Neil Young, U2, Peter Gabriel, and Emmy­lou Har­ris, tells us what he learned from work­ing with Bri­an Eno. His advice is impres­sion­is­tic, allud­ing to the impor­tance of atmos­phere and envi­ron­ment, as one might expect. It’s about appre­ci­at­ing the process, he sug­gests. He does get con­crete about a dif­fi­cul­ty near­ly every artist faces: “if you have a finan­cial lim­i­ta­tion, that might be okay. You don’t have to have every­thing that the oth­er peo­ple have. I think a finan­cial lim­i­ta­tion or a tech­no­log­i­cal lim­i­ta­tion may free up the imag­i­na­tion.” In an age of home stu­dios, that’s always wel­come news.

David Byrne has always told it straight, in his cul­tur­al crit­i­cism and song­writ­ing, and in his seg­ment, above, he steers hope­ful musi­cians and artists away from the dream of Jay Z‑level fame. “Often the artists who are very suc­cess­ful that way” he says, “they don’t have much flex­i­bil­i­ty. In achiev­ing suc­cess, they lose a lit­tle bit of their cre­ative free­dom. They have to keep mak­ing the same thing over and over again.” Byrne’s advice solid­ly under­lines Ander­son­’s. If you want cre­ative free­dom, be pre­pared to fly under the radar and make much less mon­ey than the stars. End­ing on a stark­ly real­ist note, Byrne admits that in any case, you’ll prob­a­bly need a day job: “it’s very, very hard to make mon­ey in the music busi­ness.”

Nov­el­ist Umber­to Eco also brings us down to earth in his inter­view, say­ing “not to think you are inspired,” then sly­ly drop­ping a cliché: “genius is 10% inspi­ra­tion and 90% per­spi­ra­tion.” The old wis­dom is truest, I sup­pose. He also urges writ­ers to take their time with a book. “I can­not under­stand those nov­el­ists who pub­lish a book every year. They lose this plea­sure of spend­ing six, sev­en, eight years to tell a sto­ry.” Eco’s advice: rise through the ranks, “go step by step, don’t pre­tend imme­di­ate­ly to receive the Nobel prize, because that kills a lit­er­ary career.”

Pat­ti Smith, com­fort­ably address­ing an audi­ence from an out­door stage, urges them to “just keep doing your work” whether anyone’s lis­ten­ing, read­ing, etc. To those peo­ple who crit­i­cize her suc­cess as sell­ing out her punk rock roots, Smith says, to laughs, “fuck you.” She then trans­mits some advice she received from William S. Bur­roughs: “build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don’t’ make com­pro­mis­es, don’t wor­ry about mak­ing a lot of mon­ey or being suc­cess­ful; be con­cerned with doing good work.”

Easy per­haps for Bur­roughs the adding machine-heir to say, but good advice nonethe­less, and con­sis­tent with what each artist above tells us: do it your way, don’t get pigeon­holed, work with what you have, don’t wor­ry about suc­cess or mon­ey, keep your expec­ta­tions real­is­tic.

You can watch more inter­views with Mari­na Abramović,  Wim Wen­ders, Jonas Mekas, and many more on this Advice to the Young playlist assem­bled by The Louisiana Chan­nel. All 21 talks in the series can be viewed below:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

John Cleese’s Advice to Young Artists: “Steal Any­thing You Think Is Real­ly Good”

Walt Whit­man Gives Advice to Aspir­ing Young Writ­ers: “Don’t Write Poet­ry” & Oth­er Prac­ti­cal Tips (1888)

Ursu­la Le Guin Gives Insight­ful Writ­ing Advice in Her Free Online Work­shop

Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Advice to Aspir­ing Film­mak­ers: Write, Write, Write and Read

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

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How to Raise Creative Children Who Can Change the World: 3 Lessons from Wharton Professor Adam Grant

in Creativity, K-12 | October 11th, 2016

Adam Grant, a pro­fes­sor at The Whar­ton School of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, has been “rec­og­nized as Whar­ton’s top-rat­ed teacher for five straight years, and as one of the world’s 25 most influ­en­tial man­age­ment thinkers.” He’s also the author of the best­selling book Orig­i­nals: How Non-Con­formists Move the World, a study that exam­ines “what it takes to be cre­ative and cham­pi­on new ideas.”

Speak­ing at the 2016 Aspen Ideas Fes­ti­val ear­li­er this year, Grant asks the ques­tion: What do Nobel Prize-win­ning sci­en­tists do dif­fer­ent­ly than their more ordi­nary peers? The answer: They’re twice as like­ly to play musi­cal instru­ments. Sev­en times more like­ly to draw or paint. 12 times more like­ly to write fic­tion or poet­ry. And 22 times more like­ly to per­form as dancers, actors or magi­cians.

Case in point Ein­stein, who nev­er trav­eled with­out his beloved vio­lin and saw a direct cor­re­la­tion between his ground­break­ing work in physics and his musi­cal life.

For Grant, it’s nev­er too ear­ly to cul­ti­vate cre­ativ­i­ty. So above, he out­lines three things par­ents can do to encour­age their children’s cre­ative devel­op­ment.

1. Focus on val­ues over rules.
2. Praise their char­ac­ter, not their behav­ior. Get them to see them­selves as cre­ative at heart.
3. Help them draw cre­ative lessons from the books they read.

This all pre­sum­ably gets cov­ered in greater depth in Chap­ter 6 of Orig­i­nals: How Non-Con­formists Move the World. The chap­ter is enti­tled “Rebel with a Cause: How Sib­lings, Par­ents and Men­tors Nur­ture Orig­i­nal­i­ty.”

Below you can watch Grant’s TED Talk, “The sur­pris­ing habits of orig­i­nal thinkers.” The video above was shot by The Atlantic.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Albert Ein­stein Tells His Son The Key to Learn­ing & Hap­pi­ness is Los­ing Your­self in Cre­ativ­i­ty (or “Find­ing Flow”)

The Musi­cal Mind of Albert Ein­stein: Great Physi­cist, Ama­teur Vio­lin­ist and Devo­tee of Mozart

The Long Game of Cre­ativ­i­ty: If You Haven’t Cre­at­ed a Mas­ter­piece at 30, You’re Not a Fail­ure

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Periodic Table Battleship!: A Fun Way To Learn the Elements

in Chemistry, Creativity, Games, K-12, Science | October 10th, 2016

periodic-table-battleship

Nitro­gen.

Phos­pho­rous.

Arsenic.

Aw, you sunk my bat­tle­ship!

Mil­ton Bradley’s clas­sic board game, Bat­tle­ship, can now be added to the ros­ter of fun, cre­ative ways to com­mit the Peri­od­ic Table of Ele­ments to mem­o­ry.

Karyn Tripp, a home­school­ing moth­er of four, was inspired by her eldest’s love of sci­ence to cre­ate Peri­od­ic Table Bat­tle­ship. I might sug­gest that the game is of even greater val­ue to those who don’t nat­u­ral­ly grav­i­tate toward the sub­ject.

Faced with the option of learn­ing the ele­ments via show­er cur­tain or cof­fee mug osmo­sis, I think I’d pre­fer to take out an opponent’s sub­ma­rine.

Rules of engage­ment are very sim­i­lar to the orig­i­nal. Rather than call­ing out posi­tions on a grid, play­ers set their tor­pe­does for spe­cif­ic ele­ment names, abbre­vi­a­tions or coor­di­nates. Advanced play­ers might go for the atom­ic num­ber. the lin­go is the same: “hit,” “miss” and—say it with me—“you sunk my bat­tle­ship!”

The win­ner is the play­er who wipes out the other’s fleet, though I might toss the los­er a cou­ple of rein­force­ment ves­sels, should he or she demon­strate pass­ing famil­iar­i­ty with var­i­ous met­als, halo­gens, and noble gas­es.

To make your own Peri­od­ic Table Bat­tle­ship set you will need:

4 copies of the Peri­od­ic Table (lam­i­nate them for reuse)

2 file fold­ers

paper clips, tape or glue

2 mark­ers (dry erase mark­ers if play­ing with lam­i­nat­ed tables

To Assem­ble and Play:

As you know, the Peri­od­ic Table is already num­bered along the top. Label each of the four tables’  ver­ti­cal rows alpha­bet­i­cal­ly (to help younger play­ers and those inclined to fruit­less search­ing for the ele­ments des­ig­nat­ed by their oppo­nent)

Fas­ten two Peri­od­ic Tables to each fold­er, fac­ing the same direc­tion.

Uses mark­ers to cir­cle the posi­tion of your ships on the low­er Table:

5 con­sec­u­tive spaces: air­craft car­ri­er

4 con­sec­u­tive spaces: bat­tle­ship

3 con­sec­u­tive spaces: destroy­er or sub­ma­rine

2 con­sec­u­tive spaces: patrol boat

Prop the fold­ers up with books or some oth­er method to pre­vent oppo­nents from sneak­ing peeks at your mar­itime strat­e­gy.

Take turns call­ing out coor­di­nates, ele­ment names, abbre­vi­a­tions or atom­ic num­bers:

When a turn results in a miss, put an X on the cor­re­spond­ing spot on the upper table.

When a turn results in a hit, cir­cle the cor­re­spond­ing spot on the upper table.

Con­tin­ue play until the bat­tle is won.

Repeat until the Table of Ele­ments is mas­tered.

Sup­ple­ment lib­er­al­ly with Tom Lehrer’s Ele­ments song.

Those not inclined toward arts and crafts can pur­chase a pre-made  Peri­od­ic Table Bat­tle­ship set from Tripp’s Etsy shop.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn to Write Through a Video Game Inspired by the Roman­tic Poets: Shel­ley, Byron, Keats

Play Mark Twain’s “Mem­o­ry-Builder,” His Game for Remem­ber­ing His­tor­i­cal Facts & Dates

200 Free Kids Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Web­sites & More 

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er, sec­u­lar home­school­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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David Byrne & Neil deGrasse Tyson Explain the Importance of an Arts Education (and How It Strengthens Science & Civilization)

in Art, Creativity, Education, Science | September 23rd, 2016

Unless you’re a pol­i­cy geek or an edu­ca­tor, you may nev­er have heard of the “STEM vs. STEAM” debate. STEM, of course, stands for the for­mu­la of “sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, engi­neer­ing, and math­e­mat­ics” as a base­line for edu­ca­tion­al cur­ricu­lum. STEAM argues for the neces­si­ty of the arts, which in pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary edu­ca­tion have waxed and waned depend­ing on pre­vail­ing the­o­ry and, per­haps more impor­tant­ly, polit­i­cal will. Andrew Carnegie may have donat­ed hand­some­ly to high­er edu­ca­tion, but he frowned on the study of “dead lan­guages” and oth­er use­less pur­suits. Indus­tri­al­ist Richard Teller Crane opined in 1911 that no one with “a taste for lit­er­a­ture has the right to be hap­py” because “the only men enti­tled to hap­pi­ness… are those who are use­ful.”

It’s a long way from think­ing of poets as “the unac­knowl­edged leg­is­la­tors of the world,” as Per­cy Shel­ley wrote in his “Defence of Poet­ry” 90 years ear­li­er, but Shelley’s essay shows that even then the arts need­ed defend­ing. By the time we get to STEM think­ing, the arts have dis­ap­peared entire­ly from the con­ver­sa­tion, become an after­thought, as ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists, rather than wealthy indus­tri­al­ists, decide to trim them away from pub­lic pol­i­cy and pri­vate invest­ment. The sit­u­a­tion may be improv­ing, as more edu­ca­tors embrace STEAM, but “there’s ten­sion,” as Neil DeGrasse Tyson says in the excerpt above from his StarTalk inter­view show on Nat Geo. In the kinds of fund­ing crises most school dis­tricts find them­selves in, “school boards are won­der­ing, do we cut the art, do we keep the sci­ence?”

The choice is a false one, argues for­mer Talk­ing Heads front­man and some­times Cas­san­dra-like cul­tur­al the­o­rist David Byrne. “In order to real­ly suc­ceed in what­ev­er… math and the sci­ences and engi­neer­ing and things like that,” Byrne tells Tyson above, “you have to be able to think out­side the box, and do cre­ative prob­lem solv­ing… the cre­ative think­ing is in the arts. A cer­tain amount of arts edu­ca­tion…” will help you “suc­ceed more and bring more to the world… bring­ing dif­fer­ent worlds togeth­er has def­i­nite tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits. To kind of cut one, or sep­a­rate them, is to injure them and crip­ple them.”

The idea goes back to Aris­to­tle, and to the cre­ation of uni­ver­si­ties, when medieval thinkers tout­ed the Lib­er­al Arts—the Triv­i­um (gram­mar, rhetoric, and log­ic) and Quadriv­i­um (arith­metic, geom­e­try, music, and astronomy)—as mod­els for a bal­anced edu­ca­tion. Tyson agrees that the arts and sci­ences should not be sev­ered: “Sup­pose they did that back in Renais­sance Europe? What would Europe be with­out the sup­port and inter­est in art?” He goes even fur­ther, say­ing, “We mea­sure the suc­cess of a civ­i­liza­tion by how well they treat their cre­ative peo­ple.”

It’s a bold state­ment that emerges from a longer con­ver­sa­tion Tyson has with Byrne, which you can hear in the StarTalk Radio pod­cast above. Tyson is joined by co-host Maeve Hig­gins and neu­ro­sci­en­tist and con­cert pianist Dr. Móni­ca López-González—and lat­er by Pro­fes­sor David Cope, who taught a com­put­er to write music, and Bill Nye. Byrne makes his case for the equal val­ue of the arts and sci­ences with per­son­al exam­ples from his ear­ly years in grade school and art col­lege, and by build­ing con­cep­tu­al bridges between the two ways of think­ing. One theme he returns to is the inter­re­la­tion­ship between archi­tec­ture and music as an exam­ple of how art and engi­neer­ing co-evolve (a sub­ject on which he pre­vi­ous­ly deliv­ered a fas­ci­nat­ing TED talk).

You won’t find much debate here among the par­tic­i­pants. Every­one seems to read­i­ly agree with each oth­er, and I can’t say I’m sur­prised. Speak­ing anec­do­tal­ly, all of the sci­en­tists I know affirm the val­ue of the arts, and a high per­cent­age have a cre­ative avo­ca­tion. Like­wise, I’ve rarely met an artist who doesn’t val­ue sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy.  We find exam­ple after exam­ple of scientist-artists—from Albert Ein­stein to astro­physi­cist Stephon Alexan­der, who sees physics in Coltrane. The cen­tral ques­tion may not be whether artists and sci­en­tists can mutu­al­ly appre­ci­ate each other—they gen­er­al­ly already do—but whether school boards, politi­cians, vot­ers, and investors can see things their way.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

An Ani­mat­ed Neil deGrasse Tyson Gives an Elo­quent Defense of Sci­ence in 272 Words, the Same Length as The Get­tys­burg Address

The Secret Link Between Jazz and Physics: How Ein­stein & Coltrane Shared Impro­vi­sa­tion and Intu­ition in Com­mon

The Musi­cal Mind of Albert Ein­stein: Great Physi­cist, Ama­teur Vio­lin­ist and Devo­tee of Mozart

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

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Build Your Own Miniature Sets from Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Films: My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service & More

in Creativity, Film | September 22nd, 2016

In the Shin­to­ism from which Hayao Miyazaki’s films lib­er­al­ly draw, the worlds of nature and spir­it are not mutu­al­ly exclu­sive. “Shrine Shin­to,” write James Boyd and Tet­suya Nishimu­ra at The Jour­nal of Reli­gion and Film, “under­stands the whole of life, includ­ing both humans and nature, as cre­ative and life giv­ing. A gen­er­a­tive, imma­nent force har­mo­nious­ly per­vades the whole phe­nom­e­nal world.” But to expe­ri­ence this pow­er “requires an aes­thet­i­cal­ly pure and cheer­ful heart/mind, an emo­tion­al, men­tal and voli­tion­al con­di­tion that is not eas­i­ly attained.” In My Neigh­bor Totoro, for exam­ple, Miyaza­ki helps to induce this state in us with long slice-of-life pas­sages that move like gen­tle breezes through tall grass­es and trees. In the apoc­a­lyp­tic sci-fi Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind, the title char­ac­ter her­self takes on the task of har­mo­nious­ly rec­on­cil­ing man, nature, and mutant insect.

I would argue that Miyazaki’s films are not sole­ly enter­tain­ments, but means by which we can expe­ri­ence “an aes­thet­i­cal­ly pure and cheer­ful” heart and mind. And although he has retired, we can relive those films “over and over again,” as The Creator’s Project writes, not only by watch­ing them, but by build­ing minia­ture sets from them, as you see rep­re­sent­ed here. See My Neigh­bor Totoro’s old, rus­tic house in the for­est—where Sat­su­ki and Mei come to terms with their mother’s ill­ness while befriend­ing the local nature spirits—get assem­bled at the top of the post. And just above, see the town of Koriko from Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice take shape, a place that becomes trans­formed by mag­ic, just as Kiki does by her sor­ties into the for­est.

These kits, made by the Japan­ese paper craft com­pa­ny Sankei, are “ready to be assem­bled and glued togeth­er, cre­at­ing your own mini movie set,” The Creator’s Project notes. Pre­vi­ous mod­els include Totoro and his two small com­pan­ions, above, and the bak­ery from Kiki; anoth­er kit recre­ates the desert­ed mag­i­cal town Chi­hi­ro and her par­ents stum­ble upon in Spir­it­ed Away. The kits don’t come cheap—each one costs around $100—and they take time and skill to assem­ble, as you see in these videos. But like so many of the impor­tant acts in Miyazaki’s films—and like the act of watch­ing those films themselves—we might think of assem­bling these mod­els as rit­u­als of patience and devo­tion to aes­thet­ic habits of mind that slow us down and gen­tly nudge us to seek har­mo­ny and con­nec­tion.

via The Creator’s Project

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Simp­sons Pay Won­der­ful Trib­ute to the Ani­me of Hayao Miyaza­ki

Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Char­ac­ters Reimag­ined in the Style of 19th-Cen­tu­ry Wood­block Prints

Soft­ware Used by Hayao Miyazaki’s Ani­ma­tion Stu­dio Becomes Open Source & Free to Down­load

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

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Gene Wilder Recalls the Beginnings of His Creative Life in Two Hilarious, Poignant Stories

in Comedy, Creativity, Film | August 30th, 2016

We’d grown accus­tomed to his face—that wry, dis­tinc­tive mug, smirk­ing at us from beneath his Willy Won­ka pur­ple top hat in mil­lions of pro­lif­er­at­ing Con­de­scend­ing Won­ka memes, the epit­o­me of arch­ness and smug con­de­scen­sion. Apolo­gies to John­ny Depp, but no one else could have so per­fect­ly inhab­it­ed Roald Dahl’s mer­cu­r­ial can­dy­man like Gene Wilder, who passed away yes­ter­day from Alzheimer’s at the age of 83. Wilder’s Won­ka may casu­al­ly tor­ture his spoiled child guests, but we remem­ber him as a sadist with a heart of gold.

Willy Won­ka and the Choco­late Fac­to­ry, like Pee Wee’s Big Adven­ture, is one of those rare films beloved both by chil­dren and adults (or at least I remem­ber them that way); many future gen­er­a­tions will dis­cov­er Wilder’s man­ic bril­liance in his col­lab­o­ra­tions with Mel Brooks—Blaz­ing Sad­dles, Young Franken­stein, The Pro­duc­ers—and with Richard Pry­or, his friend and fre­quent com­ic foil. And those who lived through the 80s will also remem­ber Wilder for one of the great romances of the decade.

Wilder and Gil­da Rad­ner were a com­e­dy pow­er cou­ple whose mar­riage end­ed trag­i­cal­ly with her death from ovar­i­an can­cer in 1989. That same year he received a diag­no­sis of non-Hodgkin’s lym­phoma. “Wilder was dev­as­tat­ed by Radner’s death,” writes Vari­ety, “and only worked inter­mit­tent­ly after that.” But he nev­er lost his sharp, mad­cap sense of humor and deep well of gen­uine vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty as his career shift­ed into low­er gears in the ensu­ing decades. (He won an Emmy in 2003 for a guest role on Will & Grace and pub­lished a nov­el in 2007).

Wilder was always hap­py to share his cre­ative insights and sto­ries with fans, giv­ing fre­quent inter­views in the last few years and appear­ing on pan­els like that above, a 1999 forum on “The Won­ders of Cre­ativ­i­ty” with Jane Alexan­der, Dan­ny Glover, and oth­ers. Wilder shares a hilar­i­ous­ly irrev­er­ent sto­ry from his child­hood about how he learned to con­scious­ly make oth­er peo­ple laugh by prac­tic­ing on his moth­er after she’d had a heart attack.

This anec­dote gives way to anoth­er, both laugh out loud fun­ny and heart­break­ing at once, of young, 1st-grade Gene (then Jer­ry Sil­ber­man) fac­ing rejec­tion from a teacher (“That stu­pid lady”) who told him his art­work wasn’t good enough to hang on the wall. The hurt stayed with him, so that in 1984, he tells us, “I began paint­ing. Now I try to paint every day of my life.” Wilder com­mu­ni­cates his cre­ative phi­los­o­phy through per­son­al vignettes like these, col­or­ful­ly illus­trat­ing how he became an actor Pauline Kael called “a superb tech­ni­cian… [and] an inspired orig­i­nal.”

In the ani­mat­ed Blank on Blank inter­view clip above—taken from his 2007 con­ver­sa­tion with Let­ty Cot­tin Pogre­bin at the 92nd Street Y after the debut of his novel—Wilder opens with anoth­er ver­sion of the sto­ry about his moth­er, the source, he says of his con­fi­dence as an actor. He began his career in the the­ater in the ear­ly six­ties, and says he “felt on stage, or in the movies, I could do what­ev­er I want­ed to. I was free.” He also talks about actors’ mys­te­ri­ous moti­va­tions:

If you ask an actor, “Why do you want to act?,” I don’t think most of them know the real rea­sons. After sev­en and a half years of analy­sis, I have a fair­ly good idea why. My ana­lyst said, “Well, it’s bet­ter than run­ning around naked in Cen­tral Park, isn’t it?”

Wilder then tells the sto­ry of how he sug­gest­ed Willy Wonka’s dra­mat­ic entrance to the film’s director—insisted on it, in fact, as a con­di­tion for tak­ing the part. “From that time on,” he said of the character’s first moments on screen, “no one will know if I’m lying or telling the truth.” That was the comedic genius of Gene Wilder, may it live for­ev­er in some of the most sweet­ly hys­ter­i­cal and wicked­ly fun­ny char­ac­ters in film his­to­ry. Learn more about Wilder’s life and long career in the ret­ro­spec­tive doc­u­men­tary below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Anne Ban­croft and Mel Brooks Sing “Sweet Geor­gia Brown” Live…and in Pol­ish

John Cleese’s Phi­los­o­phy of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Cre­at­ing Oases for Child­like Play

Richard Pry­or Does Ear­ly Stand-Up Com­e­dy Rou­tine in New York, 1964

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

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Mashup Weaves Together 57 Famous Classical Pieces by 33 Composers: From Bach to Wagner

in Creativity, Music | August 15th, 2016

Musi­cal mash up artist Grant Woolard has found a per­fect­ly eth­i­cal way to side­step copy­right issues. Sam­ple the great­est hits of long dead clas­si­cal com­posers.

The prag­mat­i­cal­ly titled “Clas­si­cal Music Mashup,” above, weaves 57 melodies by Mozart, Beethoven, Ver­di, and 30 oth­er greats into one six minute com­po­si­tion.

Woolard invites lis­ten­ers to sep­a­rate out the strands, most of which will sound famil­iar, even if you are unable to name that tune.

(One sharp-eared lis­ten­er not only accept­ed the chal­lenge, but post­ed a com­plete list­ing of all the com­posers and com­po­si­tions in chrono­log­i­cal order with time stamps. Those who don’t mind SPOILERS can view it at the end of this post.)

Those who crave an even more inter­ac­tive assign­ment can down­load the sheet music (for a small fee), then recruit two more pianists to per­form the six-hand­ed piece.

You can also buy an audio track of the com­po­si­tion here.

And now, the list of Woolard’s raw ingre­di­ents, com­pli­ments of youtube com­menter, Yifeng Huang:

1. Mozart Eine Kleine Nacht­musik K525 0:01

2. Haydn Sym­pho­ny 94 “Sur­prise” II 0:01

3. Beethoven Sym­pho­ny 9 IV (Ode to Joy) 0:06

4. Mendelssohn Wed­ding March in Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream, sec­ond theme 0:06

5. Dvo­rak Humoresque No.7 0:13

6. Wag­n­er Lohen­gerin, Bridal Cho­rus 0:13

7. Tchaikovsky Piano Con­cer­to 1 0:19

8. Saint-Saens Car­ni­val of Ani­mals: Swan 0:19

9. Bach Well Tem­pered Clavier Book 1 Pre­lude 1 0:19

10. Tchaikovsky 1812 Over­ture 0:29

11. Bach Cel­lo Suite No. 1 0:32

12. Mendelssohn Song with­out Words “Spring” 0:33

13. Schu­bert Ave Maria 0:40

14. Schu­bert Sym­pho­ny 8 “Unfin­ished” 0:46

15. Ver­di “La Don­na è Mobile” in Rigo­let­to 0:51

16. Boc­cheri­ni String Quar­tet in E, Op.11 No.5, III. Min­uet­to 0:55

17. Beethoven für Elise 1:03

18. CPE Bach Solfeg­gi­et­to 1:04

19. Pagani­ni Capric­cio 24 1:11

20. Mozart Piano Sonata No.11 III (Turk­ish March) 1:15

21. Grieg Piano Con­cer­to 1:22

22. Mozart Requiem Lac­rimosa 1:26

23. Schu­bert Ser­e­nade 1:30

24. Chopin Pre­lude in C minor 1:35

25. Strauss II Over­ture from Die Fle­d­er­maus (Bat) 1:46

26. Brahms 5 Lieder Op.49, IV. Wiegen­lied (Lul­la­by) 1:46

27. Satie Gymno­pe­die 1:56

28. Debussy Arabesque 2:00

29. Holst Plan­ets, Jupiter 2:05

30. Schu­bert Trout 2:14

31. Liszt Hun­gar­i­an Rhap­sody No.2 2:28

32. Mozart Vari­a­tion on Twin­kle Twin­kle Lit­tle Star 2:41

33. Schu­mann Op.68, No.10 Mer­ry Peas­ant 2:47

34. Schu­bert Mil­i­tary March in D 2:54

35. Bach* (could be Pet­zold) Min­uet in G 3:00

36. Mozart Piano Sonata No.16 in C, K545 3:07

37. Offen­bach Can-can in “Orpheus in the under­world” 3:08

38. Beethoven Piano Sonata No.8 “Pathe­tique” II 3:18

39. Mozart Die Zauber­flöte Over­ture 3:24

40. Tchaikovsky Romeo and Juli­et Over­ture 3:31

18′. CPE Bach Solfeg­gi­et­to 3:44

41. Beethoven Sym­pho­ny 5 “Fate” 3:47

6′. Wag­n­er Wed­ding March 3:52

42. Rach­mani­noff Pre­lude Op.3 No.2 in C# minor 3:53

18′. CPE Bach Solfeg­gi­et­to 3:56

43. Chopin Piano Sonata No. 2 III. Funer­al March 4:11

44. Williams Impe­r­i­al March in Star War 4:19

45. Tchaikovsky Marche Slave 4:25

46. Smetana Ma Vlast II. Moldau 4:38

47. Tchaikovsky Nut­crack­er — Flower Waltz (not the main theme!) 4:45

48. Borodin Polovt­sian Dances 4:45

49. Strauss II Blue Danube 4:58

50. Vival­di Four Sea­sons I. Spring 5:03

51. Han­del Mes­si­ah, Hal­lelu­jah 5:03

52. Han­del The Entrance of the Queen of She­ba 5:08

53. Elgar Pomp and Cir­cum­stance March­es No. 1 5:15

54. Pachel­bel Canon in D 5:21

55. Mozart Sym­pho­ny No. 35 in D major (Haffn­er) K. 385, IV. Finale, Presto 5:27

56. Chopin Etude Op.25 No.9 in G flat, “But­ter­fly” 5:34

57. Bach Gavotte from French Suite No. 5 in G Major, BWV 816 5:42

 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The World Con­cert Hall: Lis­ten To The Best Live Clas­si­cal Music Con­certs for Free

1200 Years of Women Com­posers: A Free 78-Hour Music Playlist That Takes You From Medieval Times to Now

Debussy’s Clair de lune: The Clas­si­cal Music Visu­al­iza­tion with 21 Mil­lion Views

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her lat­est script, Fawn­book, is avail­able in a dig­i­tal edi­tion from Indie The­ater Now.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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