How to Actually Cook Salvador Dali’s Surrealist Recipes: Crayfish, Prawns, and Spitted Eggs

in Art, Creativity, Food & Drink | February 18th, 2022

The sen­su­al intel­li­gence housed in the taber­na­cle of my palate beck­ons me to pay the great­est atten­tion to food. — Sal­vador Dali

Look­ing for an easy, low-cost recipe for a quick week­night sup­per?

Sal­vador Dali’s Bush of Cray­fish in Viking Herb is not that recipe.

It’s pre­sen­ta­tion may be Sur­re­al, but it’s not an entire­ly unre­al­is­tic thing to pre­pare as The Art Assign­men­t’s Sarah Urist Green dis­cov­ers, above.

The recipe, pub­lished in Les Din­ers de Gala, Dali’s over-the-top cult cook­ery book from 1973, has pedi­gree.

Dali got it off a chef at Paris’ fabled Tour d’Argent, who lat­er had sec­ond thoughts about giv­ing away trade secrets, and balked at shar­ing exact mea­sure­ments for the dish:

Bush of Craw­fish in Viking Herbs

In order to real­ize this dish, it is nec­es­sary to have craw­fish of 2 ounces each. Pre­pare the fol­low­ing ingre­di­ents for a broth: ‘fumet’ (scent­ed reduced bul­lion) of fish, of con­som­mé, of white wine, Ver­mouth, Cognac, salt, pep­per, sug­ar and dill (aro­mat­ic herb). Poach the craw­fish in this broth for 20 min­utes. Let it cool for 24 hours and arrange the craw­fish in a dome. Strain the broth and serve in cups.

Green, the Indi­anapo­lis Muse­um of Art’s for­mer cura­tor of con­tem­po­rary art, sol­diers ahead with  a Sty­ro­foam top­i­ary cone and a box­ful of Fed-Ex’ed Louisiana cray­fish, mask­ing their demise with insets of Dali works such as 1929’s Some­times I Spit with Plea­sure on the Por­trait of my Moth­er (The Sacred Heart).

Green, well aware that some view­ers may have trou­ble with the “bru­tal real­i­ties” of cook­ing live crus­taceans, namechecks Con­sid­er the Lob­ster, the heav­i­ly foot­not­ed essay where­in author David Fos­ter Wal­lace rumi­nates over ethics at the Maine Lob­ster Fes­ti­val.

Green may seek repen­tance for the sin of poach­ing lob­sters’ fresh­wa­ter cousins, but Dali, who blamed his sex-relat­ed guilt on his Catholic upbring­ing, was uncon­flict­ed about enjoy­ing the “deli­cious lit­tle mar­tyrs”:

If I hate that detestable degrad­ing veg­etable called spinach, it is because it is shape­less, like Lib­er­ty. I attribute cap­i­tal esthet­ic and moral val­ues to food in gen­er­al, and to spinach in par­tic­u­lar. The oppo­site of shape­less spinach, is armor. I love eat­ing suits of arms, in fact I love all shell fish… food that only a bat­tle to peel makes it vul­ner­a­ble to the con­quest of our palate.

If your scru­ples, sched­ule or sav­ings keep you from attempt­ing Dal­i’s Sur­re­al shell­fish tow­er, you might try enliven­ing a less aspi­ra­tional dish with Green’s whole­some, home­made fish stock:

Devin Lytle and Jared Nunn, test dri­ving Dali’s Cas­sano­va cock­tail and Eggs on a Spit for His­to­ry Bites on Buz­zfeed’s Tasty chan­nel, seem less sure­foot­ed than Green in both the kitchen and the realm of art his­to­ry, but they’re total­ly down to spec­u­late as to whether or not Dali and his wife, Gala, had a “healthy rela­tion­ship.”

If you can stom­ach their snarky, self-ref­er­en­tial asides, you might get a bang out of hear­ing them dish on Dali’s revul­sion at being touched, Gala’s alleged pen­chant for bed­ding younger artists, and their high­ly uncon­ven­tion­al mar­riage.

Despite some squea­mish­ness about the eggs’ vis­cous­ness and some reser­va­tions about the sur­re­al amount of but­ter required, Lytle and Nun­n’s reac­tion upon tast­ing their Dali recre­ation sug­gest that it was worth the effort:

Cas­sano­va cock­tail

• The juice of 1 orange
• 1 table­spoon bit­ters (Cam­pari)
• 1 tea­spoon gin­ger
• 4 table­spoons brandy
• 2 table­spoons old brandy (Vielle Cure)
• 1 pinch Cayenne pep­per

This is quite appro­pri­ate when cir­cum­stances such as exhaus­tion, over­work or sim­ply excess of sobri­ety are call­ing for a pick-me-up.

Here is a well-test­ed recipe to fit the bill.

Let us stress anoth­er advan­tage of this par­tic­u­lar pep-up con­coc­tion is that one doesn’t have to make the sour face that usu­al­ly accom­pa­nies the absorp­tion of a rem­e­dy.

At the bot­tom of a glass, com­bine pep­per and gin­ger. Pour the bit­ters on top, then brandy and “Vielle Cure.” Refrig­er­ate or even put in the freez­er.

Thir­ty min­utes lat­er, remove from the freez­er and stir the juice of the orange into the chilled glass.

Drink… and wait for the effect. 

It is rather speedy.

Your best bet for prepar­ing Eggs on a Spit, which Lytle com­pares to “an her­by, scram­bled frit­ta­ta that looks like a brain”, are con­tained in artist Rosan­na Shal­loe’s mod­ern adap­tion.

What would you do if you dis­cov­ered an orig­i­nal, auto­graphed copy of Les Din­ers de Gala in the attic of your new home?

A young man named Bran­don takes it to Rick Harrison’s Gold & Sil­ver Pawn Shop, hop­ing it will fetch $2500.

Har­ri­son, star of the His­to­ry Channel’s Pawn Stars, gives Bran­don a quick primer on the Per­sis­tence of Mem­o­ry, Dali’s famous “melt­ing clocks” paint­ing (fail­ing to men­tion that the artist insist­ed the clocks should be inter­pret­ed as “the Camem­bert of time.”)

Bran­don walks with some­thing less than the hoped for sum, and Har­ri­son takes the book home to attempt some of the dish­es. (Not, how­ev­er, Bush of Cray­fish in Viking Herb, which he declares, “a lit­tle creepy, even for Dali.”)

Alas, his younger rel­a­tives are wary of Oasis Leek Pie’s star ingre­di­ent and refuse to enter­tain a sin­gle mouth­ful of whole fish, baked with guts and eyes.

They’re not alone. The below news­reel sug­gests that come­di­an Bob Hope had some reser­va­tions about Dalin­ian Gas­tro Esthet­ics, too.

We intend to ignore those charts and tables in which chem­istry takes the place of gas­tron­o­my. If you are a dis­ci­ple of one of those calo­rie-coun­ters who turn the joys of eat­ing into a form of pun­ish­ment, close this book at once; it is too live­ly, too aggres­sive, and far too imper­ti­nent for you. — Sal­vador Dali

You can pur­chase a copy of Taschen’s recent reis­sue of Les Din­ers de Gala online. 

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Sal­vador Dalí’s 1973 Cook­book Gets Reis­sued: Sur­re­al­ist Art Meets Haute Cui­sine

What Makes Sal­vador Dalí’s Icon­ic Sur­re­al­ist Paint­ing “The Per­sis­tence of Mem­o­ry” a Great Work of Art

Walk Inside a Sur­re­al­ist Sal­vador Dalí Paint­ing with This 360º Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Video

The Most Com­plete Col­lec­tion of Sal­vador Dalí’s Paint­ings Pub­lished in a Beau­ti­ful New Book by Taschen: Includes Nev­er-Seen-Before Works

Sal­vador Dalí’s Tarot Cards, Cook­book & Wine Guide Re-Issued as Beau­ti­ful Art Books

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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18 Male Leonard Cohen Fans Over the Age of 65 Star in an Oddly Moving A Cappella Version of “I’m Your Man”

in Art, Creativity, Life, Music | December 14th, 2021

It’s going to be a tear­jerk­er, I think — artist Can­dice Bre­itz

Watch 18 diehard Leonard Cohen fans over the age of 65 ardent­ly fum­bling their way through the title track of his 1988 album, I’m Your Man, for a deep reminder of how we are trans­port­ed by the artists we love best.

These men, select­ed from a pool of over 400 appli­cants, don’t appear over­ly both­ered by the qual­i­ty of their singing voic­es, though clear­ly they’re giv­ing it their all.

Instead, their chief con­cern seems to be com­muning with Cohen, who had died the year before, at the age of 82.

Artist Can­dice Bre­itz zeroed in on the like­li­est can­di­dates for this project using a 10-page appli­ca­tion, in which inter­est­ed par­ties were asked to describe Cohen’s role in their lives.

Almost all were based in Cohen’s home­town of Mon­tre­al.

Many have been fans since they were teenagers.

Par­tic­i­pant Fer­gus Keyes described meet­ing Cohen at a 1984 sign­ing for his poet­ry col­lec­tion, Book of Mer­cy:

He told me he liked my name. He asked if he could use it in some future song. I said yes and he wrote it down in his lit­tle note­book. I said to him, ‘Some­times I don’t under­stand what you’re say­ing.’ And he said there was no wrong way of inter­pret­ing it, because he wrote for oth­ers and what­ev­er we inter­pret is right. 

There’s def­i­nite­ly a vari­ety of inter­pre­ta­tions on dis­play, above, in an excerpt of Bre­itz’ 40-minute work, I’m Your Man: A Por­trait of Leonard Cohen.

In per­son, it’s dis­played as an instal­la­tion in-the-round, with view­ers free to roam around in the mid­dle, as each par­tic­i­pant is pro­ject­ed on his own life-size video mon­i­tor for the dura­tion.

They’re our men.

Some stand­ing stiffly.

Oth­ers with eyes tight­ly shut.

Some can­not resist the temp­ta­tion to act out cer­tain choice lines.

One joy­ful unin­hib­it­ed soul beams and dances.

They keep time with their hands, feet, heads… a seat­ed man taps his cane.

One whis­tles, con­fi­dent­ly fill­ing the space most com­mon­ly occu­pied by an instru­men­tal, while the major­i­ty of the oth­ers fid­get.

There are suit jack­ets, a cou­ple of Cohen-esque fedo­ras, a t‑shirt from a 2015 Cohen event, and what appears to be a linen gown, topped with a chunky sweater vest.

Breitz’s only require­ment of the par­tic­i­pants was that they mem­o­rize the lyrics to the I’m Your Man album in its entire­ty, pri­or to enter­ing the record­ing stu­dio.

Each man laid his track down solo, singing along while lis­ten­ing to the album on ear­buds, unaware of exact­ly how his con­tri­bu­tion would be used. Sev­er­al pro­fessed shock to dis­cov­er, on open­ing night, that syn­chro­nous edit­ing had trans­formed them into mem­bers of an a cap­pel­la choir. 

The project may strike some view­ers as fun­ny, espe­cial­ly when an indi­vid­ual or group flubs a lyric or veers off tem­po, but the pur­pose is not mock­ery. Bre­itz worked to estab­lish trust, and the par­tic­i­pants’ will­ing­ness to extend it gives the piece its emo­tion­al foun­da­tion.

Vic­tor Shiff­man, co-cura­tor of the 2017 Cohen exhib­it A Crack in Every­thing at the com­mis­sion­ing Musée d’art con­tem­po­rain de Mon­tréal, told the Mon­tre­al Gazette:

They are not pre­cise­ly singers. They are just pas­sion­ate, ardent fans; their goal was to com­mu­ni­cate their devo­tion and love for Leonard by par­tic­i­pat­ing in this trib­ute. It is not about hit­ting the notes. The emo­tion comes through in the con­vic­tion these men por­tray and in the ded­i­ca­tion they show in hav­ing put them­selves out there. There is so much beau­ty in that work; it dis­arms us.

Hav­ing cen­tered sim­i­lar fan-based mul­ti­chan­nel video exper­i­ments around such works as Bob Marley’s Leg­end and John Lennon’s Work­ing Class Hero, Bre­itz explained the cast­ing of the Cohen project to CBC Arts:

I was real­ly inter­est­ed in this moment in life when one starts to look back and con­tem­plate what kind of a life one has lived and what kind of life one wish­es to con­tin­ue liv­ing as one approach­es the end of that life. And I think that even when he was a young man, Cohen was some­body who thought about and wrote about mor­tal­i­ty in very pro­found ways. So what I decid­ed to do was to invite a group of Cohen fans who real­ly would be up to the project of inter­pret­ing that com­plex­i­ty.

Pri­or to the work’s pre­miere, Bre­itz gath­ered the group for a toast, sug­gest­ing that the occa­sion was dou­bly spe­cial in that it was high­ly unlike­ly they would meet again.

Some­times artists are unaware of the pow­er­ful force they unleash.

Rather than going their sep­a­rate ways, the par­tic­i­pants formed friend­ships, reunite for non-solo Cohen sin­ga­longs, and in the words of one man, became “a real broth­er­hood… once you estab­lish that con­nec­tion, every­thing else dis­ap­pears.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Three Leonard Cohen Ani­ma­tions

An Ani­mat­ed Leonard Cohen Offers Reflec­tions on Death: Thought-Pro­vok­ing Excerpts from His Final Inter­view

Watch 4 Music Videos That Bring to Life Songs from Leonard Cohen’s Final Album, Thanks for the Dance

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­maol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Archaeologists Discover 200,000-Year-Old Hand & Footprints That Could Be the World’s Earliest Cave Art

in Art, Creativity, Life, Science | December 3rd, 2021

Wet cement trig­gers a pri­mal impulse, par­tic­u­lar­ly in chil­dren.

It’s so tempt­ing to inscribe a pris­tine patch of side­walk with a last­ing impres­sion of one’s exis­tence.

Is the coast clear? Yes? Quick, grab a stick and write your name!

No stick?

Sink a hand or foot in, like a movie star…

…or, even more thrilling­ly, a child hominin on the High Tibetan Plateau, 169,000 to 226,000 years ago!

Per­haps one day your sur­face-mar­ring ges­ture will be con­ceived of as a great gift to sci­ence, and pos­si­bly art. (Try this line of rea­son­ing with the angry home­own­er or shop­keep­er who’s intent on mea­sur­ing your hand against the one now per­ma­nent­ly set into their new cement walk­way.)

Tell them how in 2018, pro­fes­sion­al ich­nol­o­gists doing field­work in Que­sang Hot Spring, some 80 km north­west of Lhasa, were over the moon to find five hand­prints and five foot­prints dat­ing to the Mid­dle Pleis­tocene near the base of a rocky promon­to­ry.

Researchers led by David Zhang of Guangzhou Uni­ver­si­ty attribute the hand­prints to a 12-year-old, and the foot­prints to a 7‑year-old.

In a recent arti­cle in Sci­ence Bul­letin, Zhang and his team con­clude that the children’s hand­i­work is not only delib­er­ate (as opposed to “imprint­ed dur­ing nor­mal loco­mo­tion or by the use of hands to sta­bi­lize motion”) but also “an ear­ly act of pari­etal art.”

The Ura­ni­um dat­ing of the traver­tine which received the kids’ hands and feet while still soft is grounds for excite­ment, mov­ing the dial on the ear­li­est known occu­pa­tion (or vis­i­ta­tion) of the Tibetan Plateau much fur­ther back than pre­vi­ous­ly believed — from 90,000–120,000 years ago to 169,000–226,000 years ago.

That’s a lot of food for thought, evo­lu­tion­ar­i­ly speak­ing. As Zhang told TIME mag­a­zine, “you’re simul­ta­ne­ous­ly deal­ing with a harsh envi­ron­ment, less oxy­gen, and at the same time, cre­at­ing this.”

Zhang is stead­fast that “this” is the world’s old­est pari­etal art — out­pac­ing a Nean­derthal artist’s red-pig­ment­ed hand sten­cil in Spain’s Cave of Mal­travieso by more than 100,000 years.

Oth­er sci­en­tists are not so sure.

Anthro­pol­o­gist Paul Taçon, direc­tor of Grif­fith University’s Place, Evo­lu­tion and Rock Art Her­itage Unit, thinks it’s too big of “a stretch” to describe the impres­sions as art, sug­gest­ing that they could be chalked up to a range of activ­i­ties.

Nick Bar­ton, Pro­fes­sor of Pale­olith­ic Arche­ol­o­gy at Oxford won­ders if the traces, inten­tion­al­ly placed though they may be, are less art than child’s play. (Team Wet Cement!)

Zhang coun­ters that such argu­ments are pred­i­cat­ed on mod­ern notions of what con­sti­tutes art, dri­ving his point home with an appro­pri­ate­ly stone-aged metaphor:

When you use stone tools to dig some­thing in the present day, we can­not say that that is tech­nol­o­gy. But if ancient peo­ple use that, that’s tech­nol­o­gy.

Cor­nell University’s Thomas Urban, who co-authored the Sci­ence Bul­letin arti­cle with Zhang and a host of oth­er researchers shares his col­leagues aver­sion’ to def­i­n­i­tions shaped by a mod­ern lens:

Dif­fer­ent camps have spe­cif­ic def­i­n­i­tions of art that pri­or­i­tize var­i­ous cri­te­ria, but I would like to tran­scend that and say there can be lim­i­ta­tions imposed by these strict cat­e­gories that might inhib­it us from think­ing more broad­ly about cre­ative behav­ior. I think we can make a sol­id case that this is not util­i­tar­i­an behav­ior. There’s some­thing play­ful, cre­ative, pos­si­bly sym­bol­ic about this. This gets at a very fun­da­men­tal ques­tion of what it actu­al­ly means to be human.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Was a 32,000-Year-Old Cave Paint­ing the Ear­li­est Form of Cin­e­ma?

Hear a Pre­his­toric Conch Shell Musi­cal Instru­ment Played for the First Time in 18,000 Years

40,000-Year-Old Sym­bols Found in Caves World­wide May Be the Ear­li­est Writ­ten Lan­guage

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­maol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The 10 Paradoxical Traits of Creative People, According to Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (RIP)

in Creativity, Psychology | November 1st, 2021

Despite decades of research, sci­en­tists still know lit­tle about the source of cre­ativ­i­ty. Nonethe­less, humans con­tin­ue to cre­ate things. Or, at least, we con­tin­ue to be fas­ci­nat­ed by cre­ativ­i­ty; now more than ever, it seems. There may be as many best-sell­ing books on cre­ativ­i­ty as there are on diet­ing or rela­tion­ships. The cur­rent focus on cre­ativ­i­ty isn’t always a net pos­i­tive. Any­one who does cre­ative work may be labeled a “Cre­ative” (used as a noun) at some point in their career. The term lumps all work­ing artists togeth­er, as though their work were inter­change­able deliv­er­ables mea­sured in bill­able hours. The word sug­gests that those who don’t work as “Cre­atives” have no busi­ness in the area of cre­ativ­i­ty. As psy­chol­o­gist Mihaly Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi put it:

Not so long ago, it was accept­able to be an ama­teur poet…. Nowa­days if one does not make some mon­ey (how­ev­er piti­ful­ly lit­tle) out of writ­ing, it’s con­sid­ered to be a waste of time. It is tak­en as down­right shame­ful for a man past twen­ty to indulge in ver­si­fi­ca­tion unless he receives a check to show for it.

Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi, who passed away this month, deplored the instru­men­tal­iza­tion of cre­ativ­i­ty. He wrote, Austin Kleon notes, “about the joys of being an ama­teur” — which, in its lit­er­al sense, means being a devot­ed lover. Like Carl Jung, Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi believed that cre­ation pro­ceeds, in a sense, from falling in love with an activ­i­ty and los­ing our­selves in a state beyond our pre­oc­cu­pa­tions with self, oth­ers, or the past and future. He called this state “flow” and wrote a nation­al best­seller about it while found­ing the dis­ci­pline of pos­i­tive psy­chol­o­gy and co-direct­ing the Qual­i­ty of Life Research Cen­ter at Clare­mont Grad­u­ate Uni­ver­si­ty .

You can see an ani­mat­ed sum­ma­ry of Csikszentmihalyi’s book, Flow: The Psy­chol­o­gy of Opti­mal Expe­ri­ence above (includ­ing a pro­nun­ci­a­tion of Csikszentmihalyi’s name). Cre­ativ­i­ty should not only refer to skills we sell to our employ­ers. It is the prac­tice of doing things that make us hap­py, not the things that make us mon­ey, whether or not those two things are the same. This is a sub­ject close to Austin Kleon’s heart. The writer and design­er has been offer­ing tips for train­ing and hon­ing cre­ativ­i­ty for years, in books like Show Your Work, a guide “not just for ‘cre­atives’!” but for any­one who wants to cre­ate. Like Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi, he refutes the idea that there’s such a thing as a “cre­ative type.”

Instead, in his book Cre­ativ­i­ty: Flow and the Psy­chol­o­gy of Dis­cov­ery and Inven­tion, Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi notes that peo­ple who spend their time cre­at­ing exhib­it a list of 10 “para­dox­i­cal traits.”

  1. Cre­ative peo­ple have a great deal of phys­i­cal ener­gy, but they’re also often qui­et and at rest.
  2. Cre­ative peo­ple tend to be smart yet naive at the same time.
  3. Cre­ative peo­ple com­bine play­ful­ness and dis­ci­pline, or respon­si­bil­i­ty and irre­spon­si­bil­i­ty.
  4. Cre­ative peo­ple alter­nate between imag­i­na­tion and fan­ta­sy, and a root­ed sense of real­i­ty.
  5. Cre­ative peo­ple tend to be both extro­vert­ed and intro­vert­ed.
  6. Cre­ative peo­ple are hum­ble and proud at the same time.
  7. Cre­ative peo­ple, to an extent, escape rigid gen­der role stereo­typ­ing.
  8. Cre­ative peo­ple are both rebel­lious and con­ser­v­a­tive.
  9. Most cre­ative peo­ple are very pas­sion­ate about their work, yet they can be extreme­ly objec­tive about it as well.
  10. Cre­ative people’s open­ness and sen­si­tiv­i­ty often expos­es them to suf­fer­ing and pain, yet also to a great deal of enjoy­ment.

We may well be remind­ed of Walt Whitman’s “Do I con­tra­dict myself? Very well then I con­tra­dict myself,” and per­haps it is to Whit­man we should turn to resolve the para­dox. Cre­ativ­i­ty involves the will­ing­ness and courage to become “large,” the poet wrote, to get weird and messy and “con­tain mul­ti­tudes.” Maybe the best way to become a more cre­ative per­son, to lose one­self ful­ly in the act of mak­ing, is to heed Bertrand Russell’s guid­ance for fac­ing death:

[M]ake your inter­ests grad­u­al­ly wider and more imper­son­al, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increas­ing­ly merged in the uni­ver­sal life. An indi­vid­ual human exis­tence should be like a riv­er: small at first, nar­row­ly con­tained with­in its banks, and rush­ing pas­sion­ate­ly past rocks and over water­falls. Grad­u­al­ly the riv­er grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more qui­et­ly, and in the end, with­out any vis­i­ble break, they become merged in the sea… 

This elo­quent pas­sage — Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi might have agreed — express­es the very essence of cre­ative “flow.”

via Austin Kleon

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Cre­ativ­i­ty, Not Mon­ey, is the Key to Hap­pi­ness: Dis­cov­er Psy­chol­o­gist Mihaly Csikszentmihaly’s The­o­ry of “Flow”

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

Slavoj Žižek: What Full­fils You Cre­ative­ly Isn’t What Makes You Hap­py

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

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Nick Cave’s Online Store: Pencils Adorned with Lyrics, Mugs, Polaroids & More

in Creativity, Design, Music, Writing | October 19th, 2021

I’m sit­ting on the bal­cony
Read­ing Flan­nery O’Connor
With a pen­cil and a plan

- Nick Cave, Car­nage

Access to tech­nol­o­gy has trans­formed the cre­ative process, and many artists who’ve come to depend on it have long ceased to mar­vel at the labor and time saved, seething with resent­ment when devices and dig­i­tal access fails.

Musi­cian Nick Cave, founder and front­man of The Bad Seeds, is one who hasn’t aban­doned his ana­log ways, whether he’s in the act of gen­er­at­ing new songs, or seek­ing respite from the same.

“There has always been a strong, even obses­sive, visu­al com­po­nent to the (song­writ­ing) process,” he writes, “a com­pul­sive ren­der­ing of the lyric as a thing to be seen, to be touched, to be exam­ined:”

I have always done this—basically drawn my songs—for as long as I’ve been writ­ing them…when the pres­sure of song writ­ing gets too much, well, I draw a cute ani­mal or a naked woman or a reli­gious icon or a mytho­log­i­cal crea­ture or some­thing. Or I take a Polaroid or make some­thing out of clay. I do a col­lage, or write a child’s poem and date stamp and stick­er it, or do some granny-art with a set of water­colour paints. 

Last year, these extra cre­ative labors became fruits in their own right, with the open­ing of Cave Things, an online shop well stocked with quirky objects “con­ceived, sourced, shaped, and designed” by the musi­cian.

These include such long­time fas­ci­na­tions as prayer cards, pic­ture discs, and Polaroids, and a series of enam­eled charms and ceram­ic fig­ures that evoke Vic­to­ri­an Stafford­shire “flat­backs.”

T‑shirts, gui­tar picks and egg cups may come graced with doo­dles of fre­quent col­lab­o­ra­tor War­ren Ellis’ beard­ed mug, or the afore­men­tioned naked women, which Cage describes to Inter­view’s Ben Bar­na as “a com­pul­sive habit I have had since my school days”:

They have no artis­tic mer­it. Rather, they are evi­dence of a kind of rit­u­al­is­tic and habit­u­al think­ing, not dis­sim­i­lar to the act of writ­ing itself, actu­al­ly.

Of all of Cave’s Cave Things, the ones with the broad­est appeal may be the pen­cil sets per­son­al­ized with the­mat­ic snip­pets of his lyrics.

White god pen­cils quote from “Into My Arms,” “Idiot Prayer,” “Mer­maids,”  and “Hand of God.”

A red dev­il pen­cil bear­ing lines from “Bromp­ton Ora­to­ry” slips a bit of god into the mix, as well as a ref­er­ence to the sea, a fre­quent Cave motif.

Mad­ness and war pen­cils are coun­ter­bal­anced by pen­cils cel­e­brat­ing love and flow­ers.

The pen­cils are Vikings, a clas­sic Dan­ish brand well known to pen­cil nerds, hard and black on the graphite scale.

Put them all in a cup and draw one out at ran­dom, or let your mood or feel­ings about what said pen­cil will be writ­ing or draw­ing deter­mine your pick.

Mean­while Cave’s imple­ments of choice may sur­prise you. As he told NME’s Will Richards last Decem­ber:

My process of lyric writ­ing is as fol­lows: For months, I write down ideas in a note­book with a Bic medi­um ball­point pen in black. At some point, the songs begin to reveal them­selves, to take some kind of form, which is when I type the new lyrics into my lap­top. Here, I begin the long process of work­ing on the words, adding vers­es, tak­ing them away, and refin­ing the lan­guage, until the song arrives at its des­ti­na­tion. At this stage, I take one of the yel­low­ing back pages I have cut from old sec­ond-hand books, and, on my Olympia type­writer, type out the lyrics. I then glue it into my bespoke note­book, num­ber it, date-stamp it, and stick­er it. The song is then ‘offi­cial­ly’ com­plet­ed.

Hmm. No pen­cils, though there’s a ref­er­ence to a blind pen­cil sell­er in Cave’s con­tri­bu­tion to the sound­track of Wim Wen­ders’ sci­ence fic­tion epic Until the End of the World.

Two more lyrics about pen­cils and he’ll have enough to put a Pen­cil Pen­cils set up on Cave Things!

Fol­low Cave Things on Insta­gram to keep tabs on new pen­cil drops.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Nick Cave Answers the Hot­ly Debat­ed Ques­tion: Will Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Ever Be Able to Write a Great Song?

Lis­ten to Nick Cave’s Lec­ture on the Art of Writ­ing Sub­lime Love Songs (1999)

Ani­mat­ed Sto­ries Writ­ten by Tom Waits, Nick Cave & Oth­er Artists, Read by Dan­ny Devi­to, Zach Gal­i­fi­anakis & 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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A Guitarist Rocks Out on Guitars Made from Shovels, Cigar Boxes, Oil Cans & Whisky Barrels

in Creativity, Design, Music | October 6th, 2021

When Kei­th Richards felt he’d gone as far as he could go with the six-string gui­tar, he took one string off and played five, a trick he learned from Ry Cood­er. These days, the trend is to go in the oppo­site direc­tion, up to sev­en or eight strings for high­ly tech­ni­cal pro­gres­sive met­al com­po­si­tions and down­tuned “djent.” Tra­di­tion­al­ists may balk at this. A five-string, after all, is a mod­i­fi­ca­tion eas­i­ly accom­plished with a pair of wire-cut­ters. But odd­ly shaped eight-string gui­tars seem like weird­ly roco­co extrav­a­gances next to your aver­age Stra­to­cast­er, Tele, or Les Paul.

Ideas we have about what a gui­tar should be, how­ev­er, come most­ly from the mar­ket­ing and pub­lic rela­tions machin­ery around big brand gui­tars and big name gui­tarists. The truth is, there is no Pla­ton­ic ide­al of the gui­tar, since no one is quite sure where the gui­tar came from.

It’s most eas­i­ly rec­og­nized ances­tors are the oud and the lute, which them­selves have ancient her­itages that stretch into pre­his­to­ry. The six-string arrived rather late on the scene. In the renais­sance, gui­tars had eight strings, tuned in four “cours­es,” or pairs, like the mod­ern 12-string, and baroque gui­tars had 10 strings in five cours­es.

Clos­er in time to us, “the jazz gui­tarist George Van Eps had a sev­en-string gui­tar built for him by Epi­phone Gui­tars in the late 1930s,” notes one brief his­to­ry, “and a sig­na­ture Gretsch sev­en-string in the late 60s and ear­ly 70s…. Sev­er­al oth­ers began using sev­en-string gui­tars after Van Eps.” Russ­ian folk gui­tars had sev­en strings before the arrival of six-string Span­ish clas­si­cal instru­ments (two hun­dred years before the arrival of Korn).

Mean­while, in the hills, hol­lars, and deltas of the U.S. south, folk and blues musi­cians built gui­tars out of what­ev­er was at hand, and fit as many, or as few, strings as need­ed. From these instru­ments came the pow­er­ful­ly sim­ple, time­less licks Keef spent his career emu­lat­ing. Gui­tarist Justin John­son has cul­ti­vat­ed an online pres­ence not only with his slick elec­tric slide play­ing, but also with his trib­utes to odd, old-time, home­made gui­tars. At the top, he plays a three-string shov­el gui­tar, doing Kei­th two bet­ter.

Fur­ther up, some “Porch Swing Slidin’” with a six-string cig­ar box-style gui­tar engraved with a por­trait of Robert John­son. Above, hear a stir­ring ren­di­tion of George Harrison’s “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps” on an oil can and a slide solo on a whiskey bar­rel gui­tar. Final­ly, John­son rocks out Ray Charles on a three string cig­ar box gui­tar, made most­ly out of ordi­nary items you might find around the shed.

You might not be able to pluck out Renais­sance airs or com­pli­cat­ed, sweep-picked arpeg­gios on some of these instru­ments, but where would even the most com­plex pro­gres­sive rock and met­al be with­out the raw pow­er of the blues dri­ving the evo­lu­tion of the gui­tar? Final­ly, below, see John­son play a hand­made one-string Did­dley Bow (and see the mak­ing of the instru­ment as well). Orig­i­nal­ly a West African instru­ment, it may have been the very first gui­tar.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Kei­th Richards Demon­strates His Famous 5‑String Tech­nique (Used on Clas­sic Stones Songs Like “Start Me Up,” “Honky Tonk Women” & More)

Meet Brushy One String, the One String Gui­tar Play­er Who Will Blow Your Mind

The His­to­ry of the Gui­tar: See the Evo­lu­tion of the Gui­tar in 7 Instru­ments

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

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Cartoonist Lynda Barry Teaches You How to Make a Visual Daily Diary

in Comics/Cartoons, Creativity, How to Learn for Free | September 20th, 2021

Car­toon­ist and edu­ca­tor Lyn­da Barry is a favorite here at Open Cul­ture.

We’re always excit­ed to share exer­cis­es from her books and intel on her class­es at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin, but noth­ing beats the warmth and humor of her live instruc­tion… even when it’s deliv­ered vir­tu­al­ly.

Last week, she took to Insta­gram to inform the four­teen lucky U of W stu­dents enrolled in her fall Mak­ing Comics class to pre­pare for a new way of keep­ing their required dai­ly diaries, using a tech­nique she calls “sis­ter images.”

Those of us at home can play along, above.

Grab a com­po­si­tion book, or two blank sheets of paper, and a black felt tip pen. (Even­tu­al­ly you’ll need a timer, but not today.)

Rather than describe the ten-minute writ­ing and draw­ing exer­cise in advance, we encour­age you to jump right in, con­fi­dent that teacher Bar­ry would approve.

There are plen­ty of resources out there for those who want to learn how to out­line, script, and sto­ry­board comics.

Bar­ry aims to tap a deep­er vein of cre­ativ­i­ty with exer­cis­es that help stu­dents embrace the unknown.

The sis­ter diary’s pur­pose, she says, is to “let our hands lead the way in terms of fig­ur­ing out our sto­ries.”

Whether or not you seek to make comics, it’s an engag­ing way to doc­u­ment your life. You can also imple­ment the sis­ter diary tech­nique for dis­cov­er­ing more about char­ac­ters in your fic­tion­al work.

You’ll also pick up some bonus tips on draw­ing back­grounds, using all caps, allot­ting enough space with­in a pan­el for full body ren­der­ings, and stay­ing in the moment should you find your­self at a tem­po­rary loss.


Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Barry’s Two-Hour Draw­ing Work­shop

Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry Teach­es You How to Draw

Take a Road Trip Across Amer­i­ca with Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry in the 90s Doc­u­men­tary, Grandma’s Way Out Par­ty

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

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Take an Intellectual Odyssey with a Free MIT Course on Douglas Hofstadter’s Pulitzer Prize-Winning Book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

in Computer Science, Creativity, Math, MIT, Music, Neuroscience, Philosophy, Psychology | August 2nd, 2021

In 1979, math­e­mati­cian Kurt Gödel, artist M.C. Esch­er, and com­pos­er J.S. Bach walked into a book title, and you may well know the rest. Dou­glas R. Hof­s­tadter won a Pulitzer Prize for Gödel, Esch­er, Bach: an Eter­nal Gold­en Braid, his first book, thence­forth (and hence­forth) known as GEB. The extra­or­di­nary work is not a trea­tise on math­e­mat­ics, art, or music, but an essay on cog­ni­tion through an explo­ration of all three — and of for­mal sys­tems, recur­sion, self-ref­er­ence, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, etc. Its pub­lish­er set­tled on the pithy descrip­tion, “a metaphor­i­cal fugue on minds and machines in the spir­it of Lewis Car­roll.”

GEB attempt­ed to reveal the mind at work; the minds of extra­or­di­nary indi­vid­u­als, for sure, but also all human minds, which behave in sim­i­lar­ly unfath­omable ways. One might also describe the book as oper­at­ing in the spir­it — and the prac­tice — of Her­man Hesse’s Glass Bead Game, a nov­el Hesse wrote in response to the data-dri­ven machi­na­tions of fas­cism and their threat to an intel­lec­tu­al tra­di­tion he held par­tic­u­lar­ly dear. An alter­nate title (and key phrase in the book) Mag­is­ter Ludi, puns on both “game” and “school,” and alludes to the impor­tance of play and free asso­ci­a­tion in the life of the mind.

Hesse’s eso­teric game, writes his biog­ra­ph­er Ralph Freed­man, con­sists of “con­tem­pla­tion, the secrets of the Chi­nese I Ching and West­ern math­e­mat­ics and music” and seems sim­i­lar enough to Hof­s­tadter’s approach and that of the instruc­tors of MIT’s open course, Gödel, Esch­er, Bach: A Men­tal Space Odyssey. Offered through the High School Stud­ies Pro­gram as a non-cred­it enrich­ment course, it promis­es “an intel­lec­tu­al vaca­tion” through “Zen Bud­dhism, Log­ic, Meta­math­e­mat­ics, Com­put­er Sci­ence, Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence, Recur­sion, Com­plex Sys­tems, Con­scious­ness, Music and Art.”

Stu­dents will not study direct­ly the work of Gödel, Esch­er, and Bach but rather “find their spir­its aboard our men­tal ship,” the course descrip­tion notes, through con­tem­pla­tions of canons, fugues, strange loops, and tan­gled hier­ar­chies. How do mean­ing and form arise in sys­tems like math and music? What is the rela­tion­ship of fig­ure to ground in art? “Can recur­sion explain cre­ativ­i­ty,” as one of the course notes asks. Hof­s­tadter him­self has pur­sued the ques­tion beyond the entrench­ment of AI research in big data and brute force machine learn­ing. For all his daunt­ing eru­di­tion and chal­leng­ing syn­the­ses, we must remem­ber that he is play­ing a high­ly intel­lec­tu­al game, one that repli­cates his own expe­ri­ence of think­ing.

Hof­s­tadter sug­gests that before we can under­stand intel­li­gence, we must first under­stand cre­ativ­i­ty. It may reveal its secrets in com­par­a­tive analy­ses of the high­est forms of intel­lec­tu­al play, where we see the clever for­mal rules that gov­ern the mind’s oper­a­tions; the blind alleys that explain its fail­ures and lim­i­ta­tions; and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of ever actu­al­ly repro­duc­ing work­ings in a machine. Watch the lec­tures above, grab a copy of Hofstadter’s book, and find course notes, read­ings, and oth­er resources for the fas­ci­nat­ing course Gödel, Esch­er, Bach: A Men­tal Space Odyssey archived here. The course will be added to our list, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How a Bach Canon Works. Bril­liant.

Math­e­mat­ics Made Vis­i­ble: The Extra­or­di­nary Math­e­mat­i­cal Art of M.C. Esch­er

The Mir­ror­ing Mind: An Espres­so-Fueled Inter­pre­ta­tion of Dou­glas Hofstadter’s Ground­break­ing Ideas

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

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