David Chase Reveals the Philosophical Meaning of The Soprano’s Final Scene

in Life, Television | April 17th, 2015

Eight years after it aired, the final scene of the final episode of The Sopra­nos still has peo­ple guess­ing: What hap­pened when the screen sud­den­ly went black? Did Tony Sopra­no get whacked? Or did he live to see anoth­er qua­si-ordi­nary day? Could he real­ly die as Jour­ney sings, “Don’t Stop Believ­ing?”

In a new inter­view appear­ing on The Direc­tors Guild of Amer­i­ca web site, David Chase, cre­ator of The Sopra­nos, revis­its the mak­ing of the final scene. Chase does­n’t direct­ly answer the ques­tions about Tony’s fate. But he does give us some insight into the deep­er philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions raised in the scene (watch it above) and how much they’re bound up in the lyrics of Jour­ney’s sound­track. There’s some deep­er mean­ing in the small town girl and the city boy tak­ing “the mid­night train goin’ any­where”:

I love the tim­ing of the lyric when Carmela enters: ‘Just a small town girl livin’ in a lone­ly world, she took the mid­night train goin’ any­where.’ Then it talks about Tony: ‘Just a city boy,’ and we had to dim down the music so you did­n’t hear the line, ‘born and raised in South Detroit.’ The music cuts out a lit­tle bit there, and they’re speak­ing over it. ‘He took the mid­night train goin’ any­where.’ And that to me was [every­thing]. I felt that those two char­ac­ters had tak­en the mid­night train a long time ago. That is their life. It means that these peo­ple are look­ing for some­thing inevitable. Some­thing they could­n’t find. I mean, they did­n’t become mis­sion­ar­ies in Africa or go to col­lege togeth­er or do any­thing like that. They took the mid­night train going any­where. And the mid­night train, you know, is the dark train.

And there’s mean­ing packed in the idea of “Strangers wait­ing up and down the boule­vard.”

Cut­ting to Mead­ow park­ing was my way of build­ing up the ten­sion and build­ing up the sus­pense, but more than that I want­ed to demon­strate the lyrics of the song, which is street­lights, peo­ple walk­ing up and down the boule­vard, because that’s what the song is say­ing. ‘Strangers wait­ing.’ I want­ed you to remem­ber that is out there. That there are street­lights and peo­ple out there and strangers mov­ing up and down. It’s the stream of life, but not only that, it’s the stream of life at night. There’s that pic­ture called His­to­ry Is Made at Night [from 1937]. I love that title. And that kind of echoes in my head all the time.

But if you’re look­ing for the philo­soph­i­cal essence of the scene, then look no fur­ther than the mantra, “Don’t stop believin.’ ” That’s what it’s all about:

I thought the end­ing would be some­what jar­ring, sure. But not to the extent it was, and not a sub­ject of such dis­cus­sion. I real­ly had no idea about that. I nev­er con­sid­ered the black a shot. I just thought what we see is black. The ceil­ing I was going for at that point, the biggest feel­ing I was going for, hon­est­ly, was don’t stop believ­ing. It was very sim­ple and much more on the nose than peo­ple think. That’s what I want­ed peo­ple to believe. That life ends and death comes, but don’t stop believ­ing. There are attach­ments we make in life, even though it’s all going to come to an end, that are worth so much, and we’re so lucky to have been able to expe­ri­ence them. Life is short. Either it ends here for Tony or some oth­er time. But in spite of that, it’s real­ly worth it. So don’t stop believ­ing.

Read Chase’s com­plete account of the famous final scene here.

Thanks to Ted Mills for flag­ging this. Fol­low him at @TedMills.

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Charles Darwin Creates a Handwritten List of Arguments for and Against Marriage (1838)

in History, Life | April 9th, 2015

Darwin Marriage Arguments

Plen­ty of us strug­gle, in the age when so many tra­di­tions in so many parts of the world now seem per­pet­u­al­ly up for revi­sion, with the choice of whether to get mar­ried. It even con­found­ed no less a mind than that from which On the Ori­gin of Species by Means of Nat­ur­al Selec­tion flowed. This hap­pened back in 1838, over twen­ty years before the pub­li­ca­tion of that most impor­tant book in biol­o­gy. And, for a moment, it must have seemed almost as vex­ing as the ques­tion of how all the species came about.

Lists of Note tells us that the “29-year-old nat­u­ral­ist Charles Dar­win found him­self fac­ing a dif­fi­cult deci­sion: whether or not to pro­pose to the love of his life, Emma Wedg­wood. This was his hand­writ­ten solu­tion — a list of the pros and cons of mar­riage that includes such gems as ‘bet­ter than a dog any­how’ and ‘not forced to vis­it rel­a­tives.’ ” (See orig­i­nal doc­u­ment above. Or click here to view it in a larg­er for­mat, and read a com­plete tran­scrip­tion.)

Of the tan­ta­liz­ing claims of the sin­gle life, Dar­win also includes “free­dom to go where one liked,” “con­ver­sa­tion of clever men at clubs,” free­dom from the “expense & anx­i­ety of chil­dren,” and no risk of the awful pos­si­bil­i­ty that “per­haps my wife won’t like Lon­don.” But mat­ri­mo­ny presents a strong case of its own, in the form of a “con­stant com­pan­ion, (& friend in old age) who will feel inter­est­ed in one,” “some­one to take care of house,” “charms of music & female chit-chat.” (And note his writ­ing of “Chil­dren — (if it Please God)” under the pros, an inter­est­ing phras­ing giv­en the sorts of debates his name gets hauled into today.)

And so Dar­win reach­es his con­clu­sion: “My God, it is intol­er­a­ble to think of spend­ing ones whole life, like a neuter bee, work­ing, work­ing, & noth­ing after all. — No, no won’t do. — Imag­ine liv­ing all one’s day soli­tar­i­ly in smoky dirty Lon­don House. — Only pic­ture to your­self a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire, & books & music per­haps.” He would indeed mar­ry and spend the rest of his life with Wedg­wood, a union that pro­duced ten chil­dren (one of whom, Fran­cis, would go on to infor­mal­ly illus­trate On the Ori­gin of Species man­u­script pages).

You can peruse the full list, even in Dar­win’s own hand­writ­ing (if you can deci­pher it), at Dar­win Online. If he went on to write a list of his secrets of a suc­cess­ful mar­riage, Dar­win schol­ars haven’t yet dis­cov­ered it, but I think we can safe­ly say that it would include at least this rec­om­men­da­tion: think the deci­sion through, but don’t let it keep you from your life’s work.

via Lists of Note

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Charles Darwin’s Son Draws Cute Pic­tures on the Man­u­script of On the Ori­gin of Species

What Did Charles Dar­win Read? See His Hand­writ­ten Read­ing List & Read Books from His Library Online

Watch Dar­win, a 1993 Film by Peter Green­away

Read the Orig­i­nal Let­ters Where Charles Dar­win Worked Out His The­o­ry of Evo­lu­tion

The Genius of Charles Dar­win Revealed in Three-Part Series by Richard Dawkins

Darwin’s Per­son­al Library Goes Dig­i­tal: 330 Books Online

16,000 Pages of Charles Darwin’s Writ­ing on Evo­lu­tion Now Dig­i­tized and Avail­able Online

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

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Listen to Bill Murray Lead a Guided Meditation on How It Feels to Be Bill Murray

in Film, Life, Philosophy | April 3rd, 2015

Pho­to by Gage Skid­more, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

How does it feel to be Bill Mur­ray?

Won­der­ful, pre­sum­ably. You’re wealthy, well respect­ed, and high­ly sought. Your ran­dom real world cameos bring joy to scores of unsus­pect­ing mor­tals.

Mur­ray’s St. Vin­cent direc­tor Ted Melfi cites his abil­i­ty to inhab­it the present moment:

He does­n’t care about what just hap­pened. He does­n’t think about what’s going to hap­pen. He does­n’t even book round-trip tick­ets. Bill buys one-ways and then decides when he wants to go home.

A stun­ning­ly good use of wealth and pow­er. If he were any­one but the inim­itable Bill Mur­ray, I bet we’d be seething with envi­ous class rage.

He devis­es the rules by which he plays, from the way he rubs shoul­ders with the com­mon man to the toll free num­ber that serves as his agent to indulging in cre­ative acts of rebel­lion that could get a younger, less nuanced star labelled brat­ty, if not men­tal­ly ill, and des­per­ate­ly in need of rehab.

As if Mur­ray needs any­one else to deter­mine when he needs a break. When his 1984 film adap­ta­tion of Som­er­set Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge failed at the box office, he grant­ed him­self a four year sab­bat­i­cal. He stud­ied his­to­ry and phi­los­o­phy at the Sor­bonne, became fas­ci­nat­ed with the Gre­co-Armen­ian mys­tic George Gur­d­j­eff…and learned how to avoid spook­ing the pub­lic by putting a light spin on a clear­ly trans­for­ma­tive expe­ri­ence:

I’ve retired a cou­ple of times. It’s great, because you can just say, “Oh, I’m sor­ry. I’m retired.” And peo­ple will actu­al­ly believe that you’ve retired. There are nut­ters out there that will go, “Oh, okay!” and then leave you alone.

But how does it real­ly feel to be Bill Mur­ray?

Relax­ing, appar­ent­ly:

…some­one told me some secrets ear­ly on about liv­ing, and that you just have to remind your­self … you can do the very best you can when you’re very very relaxed. No mat­ter what it is, what­ev­er your job is, the more relaxed you are the bet­ter you are. That’s sort of why I got into act­ing. I real­ized the more fun I had the bet­ter I did it and I thought, that’s a job I can be proud of. If I had to go to work and no mat­ter what my con­di­tion, no mat­ter what my mood is, no mat­ter how I feel … if I can relax myself and enjoy what I’m doing and have fun with it, I can do my job real­ly well. It has changed my life, learn­ing that.

When the ques­tion was put to him at the 2014 Toron­to Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val, Mur­ray led a guid­ed med­i­ta­tion, below, to help the audi­ence get a feel for what it feels like to be as relaxed and in the moment as Bill Mur­ray. Putting all jok­ing to the side, he shares his for­mu­la as sin­cere­ly as Mr. Rogers address­ing his young tele­vi­sion audi­ence. Don’t for­get that this is a man who read the poet­ry of Emi­ly Dick­in­son to a room­ful of rapt con­struc­tion work­ers with a straight and con­fi­dent face. Com­plete text is below.

Let’s all ask our­selves that ques­tion right now: What does it feel like to be you? What does it feel like to be you? Yeah. It feels good to be you, doesn’t it? It feels good, because there’s one thing that you are — you’re the only one that’s you, right?

So you’re the only one that’s you, and we get con­fused some­times — or I do, I think every­one does — you try to com­pete. You think, damn it, some­one else is try­ing to be me. Some­one else is try­ing to be me. But I don’t have to armor myself against those peo­ple; I don’t have to armor myself against that idea if I can real­ly just relax and feel con­tent in this way and this regard.

If I can just feel… Just think now: How much do you weigh? This is a thing I like to do with myself when I get lost and I get feel­ing fun­ny. How much do you weigh? Think about how much each per­son here weighs and try to feel that weight in your seat right now, in your bot­tom right now. Parts in your feet and parts in your bum. Just try to feel your own weight, in your own seat, in your own feet. Okay? So if you can feel that weight in your body, if you can come back into the most per­son­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, a very per­son­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, which is: I am. This is me now. Here I am, right now. This is me now. Then you don’t feel like you have to leave, and be over there, or look over there. You don’t feel like you have to rush off and be some­where. There’s just a won­der­ful sense of well-being that begins to cir­cu­late up and down, from your top to your bot­tom. Up and down from your top to your spine. And you feel some­thing that makes you almost want to smile, that makes you want to feel good, that makes you want to feel like you could embrace your­self.

So, what’s it like to be me? You can ask your­self, “What’s it like to be me?” You know, the only way we’ll ever know what it’s like to be you is if you work your best at being you as often as you can, and keep remind­ing your­self: That’s where home is.

via One Being

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bill Mur­ray Reads Great Poet­ry by Bil­ly Collins, Cole Porter, and Sarah Man­gu­so

Bill Mur­ray Gives a Delight­ful Dra­mat­ic Read­ing of Twain’s Huck­le­ber­ry Finn (1996)

Bill Mur­ray Sings the Poet­ry of Bob Dylan: Shel­ter From the Storm

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

 

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Christopher Hitchens Creates a Revised List of The 10 Commandments for the 21st Century

in Life, Religion | April 2nd, 2015

Christo­pher Hitchens was there, rail­ing against reli­gion and war crim­i­nals one minute, and the next, it seems, he was gone, a vic­tim to esophageal can­cer in 2011. In the 2010 video above, Hitchens takes on one of the hoari­est pre­cepts of the Bible (and the Torah) and reimag­ines an updat­ed, sec­u­lar ver­sion. I mean, it’s not like the Ten Com­mand­ments are set in stone, right? (Rimshot!)

The first two-thirds of the video fea­tures Hitchens mak­ing his way through the orig­i­nal com­mand­ments one by one, pulling them apart for incon­sis­ten­cies and hypocrisy. For exam­ple Moses, hav­ing told his fol­low­ers Thou Shalt Not Kill, encour­aged them to then kill all the Mid­i­an­ites and save the vir­gin girls as chattel/prizes, which they then did.

Now, Hitchens does like the 8th Com­mand­ment (“Thou Shalt Not Steal”) because, hey, what soci­ety isn’t against steal­ing, and he saves his true admi­ra­tion for the exam­ple of “rare nuance and sophis­ti­ca­tion” in the 9th Com­mand­ment (“Thou Shalt Not Bear False Wit­ness”) because it looks ahead to a truth-based judge­ment sys­tem (and the Magna Car­ta.)

But for the rest, Hitchens sug­gests rip­ping it up and start­ing again. With a few snarky asides, the list, orig­i­nal­ly print­ed in Van­i­ty Fair, presents rules for liv­ing as an empa­thet­ic, ratio­nal human being in the 21st cen­tu­ry. He wraps it up with an anti-fun­da­men­tal­ist bow at the end.

I: Do not con­demn peo­ple on the basis of their eth­nic­i­ty or col­or.
II: Do not ever use peo­ple as pri­vate prop­er­ty.
III: Despise those who use vio­lence or the threat of it in sex­u­al rela­tions.
IV: Hide your face and weep if you dare to harm a child.
V: Do not con­demn peo­ple for their inborn nature.
VI: Be aware that you too are an ani­mal and depen­dent on the web of nature, and think and act accord­ing­ly.
VII: Do not imag­ine that you can escape judg­ment if you rob peo­ple with a false prospec­tus rather than with a knife.
VIII: Turn off that fuck­ing cell phone.
IX: Denounce all jihadists and cru­saders for what they are: psy­cho­path­ic crim­i­nals with ugly delu­sions.
X: Be will­ing to renounce any god or any reli­gion if any holy com­mand­ments should con­tra­dict any of the above.

While we’re talk­ing about rethink­ing the Com­mand­ments, George Car­lin had some sim­i­lar thoughts on the sub­ject.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Christo­pher Hitchens: No Deathbed Con­ver­sion for Me, Thanks, But it was Good of You to Ask

Christo­pher Hitchens Cre­ates a Read­ing List for Eight-Year-Old Girl

Bertrand Russell’s Ten Com­mand­ments for Liv­ing in a Healthy Democ­ra­cy

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

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Leo Tolstoy’s 17 “Rules of Life:” Wake at 5am, Help the Poor, & Only Two Brothel Visits Per Month

in Life, Literature, Writing | March 30th, 2015

tolstoy rules 2

Many aspir­ing epic nov­el­ists sure­ly would­n’t mind writ­ing like Leo Tol­stoy. But can you write like the writer you admire with­out liv­ing like the writer you admire? Biogra­phies reveal plen­ty of facts about how the author of such immor­tal vol­umes as War and Peace and Anna Karen­i­na passed his 82 years, none more telling than that even Leo Tol­stoy strug­gled to live like Leo Tol­stoy. “I must get used to the idea, once and for all, that I am an excep­tion­al human being,” he wrote in 1853, at age 25, under­scor­ing that “I have not met one man who is moral­ly as good as I am, or ready to sac­ri­fice every­thing for his ide­al, as I am.”

Clear­ly, exces­sive mod­esty did­n’t count among Tol­stoy’s faults. Sev­en years before mak­ing that dec­la­ra­tion, he had already envi­sioned for him­self a life of virtue and indus­try, lay­ing out what he called his “rules of life,” per­haps a fore­shad­ow­ing of his search for a rig­or­ous­ly reli­gious life with­out belief in a high­er being. The web­site Tol­stoy Ther­a­py has post­ed a selec­tion of these rules, which com­mand­ed him as fol­lows:

  • Wake at five o’clock
  • Go to bed no lat­er than ten o’clock
  • Two hours per­mis­si­ble for sleep­ing dur­ing the day
  • Eat mod­er­ate­ly
  • Avoid sweet foods
  • Walk for an hour every day
  • Vis­it a broth­el only twice a month
  • Love those to whom I could be of ser­vice
  • Dis­re­gard all pub­lic opin­ion not based on rea­son
  • Only do one thing at a time
  • Dis­al­low flights of imag­i­na­tion unless nec­es­sary

To this list of pre­cepts drawn up at the dawn of his adult life, most of which would­n’t seem out of place as any of our 21st-cen­tu­ry new year’s res­o­lu­tions, Tol­stoy lat­er added these:

  • Nev­er to show emo­tion
  • Stop car­ing about oth­er peo­ple’s opin­ion of myself
  • Do good things incon­spic­u­ous­ly
  • Keep away from women
  • Sup­press lust by work­ing hard
  • Help those less for­tu­nate

Even if you haven’t read much about Tol­stoy’s life, you may sense in some of these gen­er­al prin­ci­ples evi­dence of bat­tles with par­tic­u­lar impuls­es: observe, for instance, how his twice-month­ly lim­it on broth­el vis­its becomes the much more strin­gent and much less real­is­tic for­bid­dance of women entire­ly. But per­haps his tech­nique of work­ing hard, how­ev­er well or poor­ly it sup­pressed his lust (the man did father four­teen chil­dren, after all), ben­e­fit­ed him in the end, giv­en the vast and (often lit­er­al­ly) weighty body of work he left behind.

“Between ‘rules of life’ and life itself, what a chasm!” exclaims biog­ra­ph­er Hen­ri Troy­at in Tol­stoy. But as rich with inter­est as we find books like that, we ulti­mate­ly care about writ­ers not because of how they live, but because of how they write. The young Tol­stoy knew that, too; “the pub­li­ca­tion of Child­hood and ‘The Raid’ hav­ing made him, in his own eyes, a gen­uine man of let­ters,” writes Troy­at, “he soon added no less peremp­to­ry ‘Rules of Writ­ing’ to his ‘Rules of Life’:”

  • When you crit­i­cize your work, always put your­self in the posi­tion of the most lim­it­ed read­er, who is look­ing only for enter­tain­ment in a book.
  • The most inter­est­ing books are those in which the author pre­tends to hide his own opin­ion and yet remains faith­ful to it.
  • When reread­ing and revis­ing, do not think about what should be added (no mat­ter how admirable the thoughts that come to mind) … but about how much can be tak­en away with­out dis­tort­ing the over­all mean­ing.

Then again, War and Peace has in the mod­ern day become a byword for sheer length, and few read­ers not already steeped in 19th-cen­tu­ry Russ­ian lit­er­a­ture would turn to Tol­stoy for pure enter­tain­ment. Per­haps the writer’s life implic­it­ly adds one caveat atop all the ever-stricter rules he made for him­self while liv­ing it: nobody’s per­fect.

via Tol­stoy Ther­a­py

Relat­ed con­tent:

Leo Tol­stoy Cre­ates a List of the 50+ Books That Influ­enced Him Most (1891)

Rare Record­ing: Leo Tol­stoy Reads From His Last Major Work in Four Lan­guages, 1909

Vin­tage Footage of Leo Tol­stoy: Video Cap­tures the Great Nov­el­ist Dur­ing His Final Days

The Com­plete Works of Leo Tol­stoy Online: New Archive Will Present 90 Vol­umes for Free (in Russ­ian)

Leo Tolstoy’s Fam­i­ly Recipe for Mac­a­roni and Cheese

Stephen King’s Top 20 Rules for Writ­ers

Ray Brad­bury Offers 12 Essen­tial Writ­ing Tips and Explains Why Lit­er­a­ture Saves Civ­i­liza­tion

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

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Download Images From Rad American Women A‑Z: A New Picture Book on the History of Feminism

in Art, History, K-12, Life | March 30th, 2015

patti smith letter

The next time sto­ry hour rolls around, you can give a mouse a cook­ie or you can awak­en pre-read­ers (and your­self) to some key fig­ures in wom­en’s his­to­ry. 26 of them, to be pre­cise. It’s no acci­dent that that num­ber cor­re­sponds to the exact num­ber of let­ters in the alpha­bet.

Author Kate Schatz and illus­tra­tor Miri­am Klein Stahl active­ly sought to include women of col­or and a vari­ety of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tions when choos­ing whom to fea­ture in Rad Amer­i­can Women A To Z, a pro­gres­sive fem­i­nist text cum ABC primer. (Illus­tra­tions from the book, like the ones fea­tured on this page, can be down­loaded here for free.)

odetta letter

Hope­ful­ly Glo­ria Steinem was not too upset to learn that G is for the Grimke sis­ters. Actu­al­ly, I sus­pect that the sec­ond wave’s most rec­og­niz­able super­star would be pleased if read­ers are moved to edu­cate them­selves as to some of the book’s more obscure ref­er­ences.

ursula letter

B is for Bil­lie Jean King who whooped male chau­vin­ist pig Bob­by Rig­gs on the court in 1973’s Bat­tle of the Sex­es. I remem­ber her! A Bil­lie and Bob­by-themed pump­kin took top hon­ors in my school’s Hal­loween carv­ing con­test that year.

It’s fun­ny how when a woman does some­thing they always think we only affect half of the pop­u­la­tion, and peo­ple will come up to me and say thanks for what you did for wom­en’s ten­nis all the time, and I know they’d nev­er say that to a guy.

E is for civ­il rights activist Ella Bak­er, a sec­re­tary who rose through the ranks of the NAACP to become direc­tor of branch­es. She rec­og­nized the press often over­looked her role, as did his­to­ry.

You did­n’t see me on tele­vi­sion, you did­n’t see news sto­ries about me. The kind of role that I tried to play was to pick up pieces or put togeth­er pieces out of which I hoped orga­ni­za­tion might come. My the­o­ry is, strong peo­ple don’t need strong lead­ers.

J is for Jovi­ta Idar, edu­ca­tor and cofounder of the Mex­i­can Fem­i­nist League.

Mex­i­can chil­dren in Texas need an edu­ca­tion…. There is no oth­er means to do it but our­selves, so that we are not deval­ued and humil­i­at­ed by the strangers who sur­round us. 

God­moth­er of Punk Pat­ti Smith, author Ursu­la K. La Guin, and Odet­ta, leg­endary blues singer and “Voice of the Civ­il Rights Move­ment,” are among the mar­quee names to be can­on­ized. See their illus­tra­tions above.

To get all 26 illus­tra­tions in a down­load­able for­mat, click here. To order your own copy of the book, go here.

via Good

Relat­ed Con­tent:

74 Essen­tial Books for Your Per­son­al Library: A List Curat­ed by Female Cre­atives

Simone de Beau­voir Explains “Why I’m a Fem­i­nist” in a Rare TV Inter­view (1975)

Chrissie Hynde’s 10 Pieces of Advice for “Chick Rock­ers” (1994)

Simone de Beau­voir Tells Studs Terkel How She Became an Intel­lec­tu­al and Fem­i­nist (1960)

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

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Hysterical Literature: Art & Sexuality Collide in Readings of Whitman, Emerson & Other Greats (NSFW)

in Biology, Film, Life, Literature | March 27th, 2015

With­out shame the man I like knows and avows the deli­cious­ness of his sex, 

With­out shame the woman I like knows and avows hers.

Thus spaketh Walt Whit­man in Leaves of Grass. 160 years after that poem’s pub­li­ca­tion, how might that most Amer­i­can of Amer­i­can Roman­tics react to the spec­ta­cle of an attrac­tive young woman plea­sur­ing her­self with his work, as an unseen hand beneath the table sur­rep­ti­tious­ly plea­sures her with the Cadil­lac of vibra­tors?

The peep­hole is much larg­er than it would’ve been in 1855. Hys­ter­i­cal Lit­er­a­ture was con­ceived as an online project in which each session’s fea­tured female par­tic­i­pant choos­es a res­o­nant text, then reads it aloud until a Hitachi Mag­ic Wand puts an end to her abil­i­ty to form coher­ent sen­tences.

Cre­ator Clay­ton Cubitt has com­plained that the orgas­mic ele­ment and the sta­tus of cer­tain celebri­ty par­tic­i­pants like come­di­an Mar­garet Cho  have pre­oc­cu­pied the press. His pref­er­ence is for view­ers to take a more holis­tic approach, view­ing the expe­ri­ence with some “mys­tery and mag­ic and ‘WTF.’”

Accord­ing­ly, let us focus upon some of the select­ed works:

Beloved by Toni Mor­ri­son

Sex­ing the Cher­ry by Jeanette Win­ter­son

The Necrophil­ia Vari­a­tions by Super­vert

Real­ly, no Anaïs Nin? I would’ve thought…

The most recent con­trib­u­tor to the series is also its old­est, 60-year-old Janet, below, who had to take leave of Whitman’s pal, Ralph Wal­do Emer­son, not once but twice in eight min­utes.

Cumu­la­tive­ly, these ses­sions make a mar­velous­ly frank primer for actors or direc­tors charged with cre­at­ing real­is­tic sex scenes. The dichoto­my of Hys­ter­i­cal Lit’s stag­ing ensures that things are fair­ly respectable above the waist, thus sat­is­fy­ing YouTube’s Com­mu­ni­ty Guide­lines.

Dar­ing female lovers of lit­er­a­ture should be advised that Cubitt seeks to include more women of col­or, old­er par­tic­i­pants, and non-Eng­lish texts. No word on who exact­ly is under that table. Drain your pent-up rivers by apply­ing here.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read Fan­ny Hill, the 18th-Cen­tu­ry Erot­ic Nov­el That Went to the Supreme Court in the 20th Cen­tu­ry

This is Your Brain on Sex and Reli­gion: Exper­i­ments in Neu­ro­science

An Intro­duc­tion to World Lit­er­a­ture by a Cast Of Lit­er­ary & Aca­d­e­m­ic Stars (Free Course)

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

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What Happens When a Cheap Ikea Print Gets Presented as Fine Art in a Museum

in Art, Comedy, Design, Life | March 23rd, 2015

The enti­ty to whom Dutch group, Life­hunters, attrib­ut­es the muse­um qual­i­ty art­work in the video prank above doesn’t exist. The “famous” Swedish artist’s han­dle –IKE Andrews –is but a puck­ish ref­er­ence to IKEA, the pur­vey­or of the 10€ print (oh snap, it’s not even an orig­i­nal!) var­i­ous unnamed “art experts” are asked to eval­u­ate, hav­ing been led to believe it’s some­thing rare and won­der­ful. IKE Andrews’ fel­low fic­tion­al enti­ty, Borat, would be grat­i­fied by how read­i­ly these experts accept pre­sen­ter Boris Lange’s sug­ges­tions as to the val­ue of this work.

So how bad is this “paint­ing”? Wal­ter Keane bad? Mar­garet Keane bad? Is it a Velvis? A sad clown? The sort of crum­my land­scape artist Wayne White might snap up in a thrift store?

Only if you think IKEA achieved glob­al dom­i­nance by choos­ing designs, pat­terns, and images in order for snot­ty hip­sters to buy them iron­i­cal­ly…

As sev­er­al YouTube, Twit­ter, and blog com­menters have men­tioned, the print itself is pret­ty cool.

It’s a media fren­zy, but inter­est­ing­ly, the artist is not com­ing for­ward to her­ald his or her role in the hoax.

Make that artists. Turns out IKE Andrews is a pair of Swiss street artists, Chris­t­ian Rebec­chi and Pablo Tog­ni, who col­lab­o­rate as NEVERCREW.

They have a fas­ci­na­tion with cross sec­tions. As their web­site some­what murk­i­ly explains [all sic]:

These mod­els, as such, from time to time actu­al­ly con­tain more or less exten­sive real­i­ties, rep­re­sent­ed as autonomous sys­tems of which the real­i­ty of the view­er becomes a part. This then the rap­port becomes the very sub­ject, main­ly high­light­ed as the rela­tion­ship between man and nature (between human being and its nature), but auto­mat­i­cal­ly extend­ed to a vision of total and inevitable rela­tion­ship between every­thing, between every part, where it is only the point of view, the posi­tion with­in a sys­tem, to define a selec­tion.

IKEA stream­lines the artists’ phi­los­o­phy for the mass­es thus­ly:

We call the theme “liv­ing struc­tures” and we like to see them as mod­els of liv­ing sys­tems. We would like our art to gen­er­ate inter­est and curios­i­ty, and the view­er to become a part of the mech­a­nism with his or her thoughts, per­spec­tive and emo­tions.

never-crew-message-in-a-bottle

 

Philosophy’s all well and good, but what’s it actu­al­ly look like, this “Mes­sage in a Bot­tle”?

Well, it seems to me to be a bot­tle, implau­si­bly halved length­wise to reveal a bunch of steam­punk stuff bal­anced atop robot spi­der legs, form­ing a cage around an ancient-look­ing whale. Also, a cloud rain­ing yel­low liq­uid, or pos­si­bly light. (Hope­ful­ly the lat­ter). Oh! And it appears to have been paint­ed on a brown paper bag.

I can think of plen­ty of peo­ple who’d not only like it, but find mean­ing in it, as the experts do. The only dif­fer­ence is the experts do so on cam­era, a fact not all of them are will­ing to laugh at, when host Lange informs them they’ve been punked.

The artists aren’t the only ones play­ing it cool. The inter­net may be explod­ing, but so far, nei­ther IKEA, nor the Nether­lands’ Arn­hem Muse­um, where the prank was staged, have made men­tion of this busi­ness.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

F for Fake: Orson Welles’ Short Film & Trail­er That Was Nev­er Released in Amer­i­ca

The Great Dr. Fox Lec­ture: A Vin­tage Aca­d­e­m­ic Hoax (1970)

How the “Paul McCart­ney is Dead” Hoax Start­ed at an Amer­i­can Col­lege News­pa­per and Went Viral (1969)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and moth­er of a teen film­mak­er whose best known work was shot guer­ril­la style in a Red Hook, Brook­lyn Ikea. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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