115 Books on Lena Dunham & Miranda July’s Bookshelves at Home (Plus a Bonus Short Play)

in Film, Life, Literature, Poetry, Television | January 26th, 2015

“Miranda-july-reading” by Alexis Barrera / Licensed under CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons.

Ah, the joys of dining at a new friend’s home, knowing sooner or later, one’s hostess’ bladder or some bit of last minute meal preparation will dictate that one will be left alone to rifle the titles on her bookshelf with abandon. No medicine cabinet can compete with this peek into the psyche.

Pity that some of the people whose bookshelves I’d be most curious to see are the least likely to open their homes to me. That’s why I’d like to thank The Strand bookstore for providing a virtual peek at the shelves of filmmakers-cum-authors Miranda July and Lena Dunham. (Previous participants in the Authors Bookshelf series include just-plain-regular authors George Saunders, Edwidge Danticat and the late David Foster Wallace whose contributions were selected by biographer D.T. Max.)

“Lena Dunham” by David Shankbone — Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

I wish Dunham and July had offered up some personal commentary to explain their hand-picked titles. (Surely their homes are lined with books. Surely each list is but a representative sampling, one shelf from hundreds. Hmm. Interesting. Did they run back and forth between various rooms, curating with a vengeance, or is this a case of whatever happened to be in the case closest at hand when deadline loomed?)

Which book’s a longtime favorite?

Which the literary equivalent of comfort food?

Are there things that only made the cut because the author is a friend?

Both women are celebrated storytellers. Surely, there are stories here beyond the ones contained between two covers.

But no matter. The lack of accompanying anecdotes means we now have the fun of inventing imaginary dinner parties:

ME: (standing in the living room, calling through the kitchen door, a glass of wine in hand) Whoa, Lena, I can’t believe you’ve got Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry!

LENA DUNHAM: (polite, but distracted by a pot of red sauce) I know, isn’t that one great?

ME: So great! Where’d you buy it?

LENA DUNHAM: Uh, The Strand, I think.

ME: Me too! Such a great conceit, that book. Wish I’d come up with it!

LENA DUNHAM: I know what you mean.

ME: Ooh, you’ve got Was She Pretty?

LENA DUNHAM: Hmm? Oh, yeah, my friend Miranda gave me that.

ME: (glancing between the two books.) Wait! Leanne Sharpton. Leanne Sharpton. I didn’t realize it’s the same author.

LENA DUNHAM: As what?

ME: The person who wrote Was She Pretty? also wrote Important Artifacts and Personal Property-

ME & LENA DUNHAM IN UNISON: — from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry!

LENA DUNHAM: Gotta love that title.

ME: Why do you have all these kids’ books?

LENA DUNHAM: Those are from my childhood.

ME: (sliding an unnamed title off the shelf, eyes widening as I read the shockingly graphic personal inscription on the flyleaf) Oh?

LENA DUNHAM: I really relate to Eloise.

ME: (hastily sliding the volume back onto the shelf before Lena can catch me snooping) Oh yeah…ha ha.

LENA DUNHAM: Are you the one who likes graphic novels?

ME: Me? Yes!!!

LENA DUNHAM: Yeah. My friend Miranda does too.

ME: That’s funny - Sex and the Single Girl right next to Of Human Bondage.

LENA DUNHAM: (cursing under her breath)

ME: Need help?

LENA DUNHAM: No, it’s just this damn …arrrggh. I hate this cookbook!

ME: (brightly) Smells good!

LENA DUNHAM: … crap.

ME: So, is Adam Driver coming? Or Ray or anybody?

LENA DUNHAM: (testily) You mean Alex Karpovsky?

ME: (flustered) Oh, ha ha, yes! Alex! … I sent him a Facebook request and he accepted.

LENA DUNHAM: (mutters under her breath)

ME: Design Sponge? Really? What’s someone in your shoes doing with a bunch of DIY decorating books?

LENA DUNHAM: (coldly) Research.

Actually, maybe it is better to admire one’s idols’ bookshelves from afar.

I’m chagrined that I don’t recognize more of their modern fiction picks. That wasn’t such a problem when I was measuring myself against the 430 books on Marilyn Monroe’s reading list.

Thank heaven for old standbys like Madame Bovary.

In all sincerity, I was glad that Dunham didn’t try to mask her love of home decor blog books.

And that July included her husband’s monograph, Our Bodies, Ourselves and a handbook to raising self-confident babies.

One’s shelves, after all, are a matter of taste. So, celebrate the similarities, take their recommendations under advisement, see below and read what you like!

MIRANDA JULY’S SHELF

A Time for Everything — Karl Ove Knausgaard

A Very Young Dancer — Jill Krementz

Alice James: A Biography — Jean Strouse

Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect — Mel Y. Chen

Arthur Tress: The Dream Collector — John Minahan

Building Stories — Chris Ware

Cruddy: An Illustrated Novel — Lynda Barry

Diaries, 1910–1923 — Franz Kafka

Do the Windows Open? — Julie Hecht

Dorothy Iannone: Seek The Extremes! (v.1) — Barbara Vinken, Sabine Folie

Edgewise: A Picture of Cookie Mueller — Chloe Griffin

Embryogenesis — Richard Grossinger

Friedl Kubelka Vom Groller — Melanie Ohnemus

American War — Harrell Fletcher

Hannah Höch: Album (English and German Edition) — Hannah Höch

How to Build a Girl — Caitlin Moran

Humiliation — Wayne Koestenbaum

It’s OK Not to Share and Other Renegade Rules for Raising Competent and Compassionate Kids — Heather Shumaker

King Kong Theory — Virginie Despentes

Leaving the Atocha Station — Ben Lerner

Lightning Rods — Helen DeWitt

Lost at Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries — Jon Ronson

Maidenhead — Tamara Faith Berger

Man V. Nature: Stories — Diane Cook

Mike Mills: Graphics Films — Mike Mills

Napa Valley Historical Ecology Atlas: Exploring a Hidden Landscape of Transformation and Resilience — Robin Grossinger

Need More Love — Aline Kominsky Crumb

Our Bodies, Ourselves (Completely Revised and Updated Version) — Boston Women’s Health Book Collective

Jim Goldberg: Rich and Poor — Jim Goldberg

Sanja Ivekovic: Sweet Violence — Roxana Marcoci

Sophie Calle: The Address Book — Sophie Calle

Staring Back — Chris Marker

Taryn Simon: A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters, I‑XVIII — Homi Bhabha, Geoffrey Batchen

Tete-a-Tete: The Tumultuous Lives & Loves of Simone De Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre — Hazel Rowley

The Hour of the Star — Clarice Lispector

The Illustrated I Ching — R.L. Wing

Two Kinds of Decay: A Memoir — Sarah Manguso

Traffic — Kenneth Goldsmith

Two Serious Ladies — Jane Bowles

Was She Pretty? — Leanne Shapton

What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng: A Novel — Dave Eggers

Why Did I Ever — Mary Robison

Women in Clothes — Sheila Heti

Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do — Studs Terkel

Your Self-Confident Baby: How to Encourage Your Child’s Natural Abilities — From the Very Start — Magda Gerber

Far from the Tree — Andrew Solomon

How Should a Person Be? — Sheila Heti

LENA DUNHAM’S LIST

The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing — Melissa Bank

A Little History of the World — E. H. Gombrich

Anne of Green Gables — L.M. Montgomery

Apartment Therapy Presents: Real Homes, Real People, Hundreds of Real Design Solutions — Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan

Ariel: The Restored Edition — Sylvia Plath

Bad Feminist: Essays — Roxane Gay

Bastard Out of Carolina (20th Anniversary Edition) — Dorothy Allison

Blue is the Warmest Color — Julie Maroh

Brighton Rock — Graham Greene

Cavedweller - Dorothy Allison

Country Girl: A Memoir — Edna O’Brien

Crazy Salad and Scribble Scribble: Some Things About Women and Notes on Media — Nora Ephron

Design Sponge at Home — Grace Bonney

Dinner: A Love Story: It All Begins at the Family Table — Jenny Rosenstrach

Eleanor & Park — Rainbow Rowell

Eloise — Kay Thompson

Eloise In Moscow — Kay Thompson

Eloise In Paris — Kay Thompson

Fanny At Chez Panisse — Alice Waters

Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories — Philip Roth

Holidays on Ice — David Sedaris

Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry — Leanne Shapton

Lentil — Robert McCloskey

Love Poems — Nikki Giovanni

Love, an Index (McSweeney’s Poetry Series) — Rebecca Lindenberg

Love, Nina: A Nanny Writes Home - Nina Stibbe

Madame Bovary: Provincial Ways — Gustave Flaubert

NW: A Novel — Zadie Smith

Of Human Bondage — W. Somerset Maugham

Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx — Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

Rebecca — Daphne Du Maurier

Remodelista — Julie Carlson

Selected Stories, 1968–1994 - Alice Munro

Sex and the Single Girl — Helen Gurley Brown

She’s Come Undone — Wally Lamb

Somewhere Towards the End: A Memoir — Diana Athill

Stet: An Editor’s Life - Diana Athill

Sula — Toni Morrison

Summer Blonde — Adrian Tomine

Super Natural Every Day: Well-Loved Recipes from My Natural Foods Kitchen — Heidi Swanson

Tenth of December - George Saunders

Tess of the D’Urbervilles — Thomas Hardy

The Boys of My Youth - Jo Ann Beard

The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis — Lydia Davis

The Dud Avocado — Elaine Dundy

The Important Book — Margaret Wise Brown

The Journalist and the Murderer — Janet Malcolm

The Liars’ Club: A Memoir — Mary Karr

The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.: A Novel — Adelle Waldman

The Marriage Plot — Jeffrey Eugenides

The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again) - Andy Warhol

The Story of Ferdinand — Munro Leaf

The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

The Writing Class — Jincy Willett

This Is My Life - Meg Wolitzer

Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from ‘Dear Sugar’ - Cheryl Strayed

Wallflower At the Orgy — Nora Ephron

Was She Pretty? — Leanne Shapton

We Have Always Lived In the Castle — Shirley Jackson

What Lips My Lips Have Kissed: The Loves and Love Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay — Daniel Mark Epstein

What She Saw… — Lucinda Rosenfeld

What the Living Do: Poems — Marie Howe

While I Was Gone - Sue Miller

With or Without You: A Memoir — Domenica Rut

Women in Clothes — Sheila Heti

via Scribner Books

David Foster Wallace’s Love of Language Revealed by the Books in His Personal Library

The 430 Books in Marilyn Monroe’s Library: How Many Have You Read?

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

by Ayun Halliday | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Jean Cocteau Delivers a Speech to the Year 2000 in 1962: “I Hope You Have Not Become Robots”

in Art, Film, Life, Poetry | January 21st, 2015

Jean Cocteau was a great many things to a great many people—writer, filmmaker, painter, friend, and lover. In the latter two categories he could count among his acquaintances such modernist giants as Pablo Picasso, Kenneth Anger, Erik Satie, Marlene Dietrich, Edith Piaf, Jean Marais, Marcel Proust, André Gide, and a number of other famous names. But Cocteau himself had little use for fame and its blandishments. As you’ll see in the short film above, “Cocteau Addresses the Year 2000,” the great 20th century artist considered the many awards bestowed upon him naught but “transcendent punishment.” What Cocteau cared for most was poetry; for him it was the “basis of all art, a ‘religion without hope.’ ”

Cocteau began his career as a poet, publishing his first collection, Aladdin’s Lamp, at the age of 19. By 1963, at the age of 73, he had lived one of the richest artistic lives imaginable, transforming every genre he touched.

Deciding to leave one last artifact to posterity, Cocteau sat down and recorded the film above, a message to the year 2000, intending it as a time capsule only to be opened in that year (though it was discovered, and viewed a few years earlier). Biographer James S. Williams describes the documentary testament as “Cocteau’s final gift to his fellow human beings.”

He reiterates some of his long-standing artistic themes and principles: death is a form of life; poetry is beyond time and a kind of superior mathematics; we are all a procession of others who inhabit us; errors are the true expression of an individual, and so on. The tone is at once speculative and uncompromising…

Portraying himself as “a living anachronism” in a “phantom-like state,” Cocteau, seated before his own artwork, quotes St. Augustine, makes parables of events in his life, and addresses, primarily, the youth of the future. The uses and misuses of technology comprise a central theme of his discourse: “I certainly hope that you have not become robots,” Cocteau says, “but on the contrary that you have become very humanized: that’s my hope.” The people of his time, he claims, “remain apprentice robots.”

Among Cocteau’s concerns is the dominance of an “architectural Esperanto, which remains our time’s great mistake.” By this phrase he means that “the same house is being built everywhere and no attention is paid to climate, atmospherical conditions or landscape.” Whether we take this as a literal statement or a metaphor for social engineering, or both, Cocteau sees the condition as one in which these monotonous repeating houses are “prisons which lock you up or barracks which fence you in.” The modern condition, as he frames it, is one “straddling contradictions” between humanity and machinery. Nonetheless, he is impressed with scientific advancement, a realm of “men who do extraordinary things.”

And yet, “the real man of genius,” for Cocteau, is the poet, and he hopes for us that the genius of poetry “hasn’t become something like a shameful and contagious sickness against which you wish to be immunized.” He has very much more of interest to communicate, about his own time, and his hopes for ours. Cocteau recorded this transmission from the past in August of 1963. On October 11 of that same year, he died of a heart attack, supposedly shocked to death by news of his friend Edith Piaf’s death that same day in the same manner.

His final film, and final communication to a public yet to be born, accords with one of the great themes of his life’s work—“the tug of war between the old and the new and the paradoxical disparities that surface because of that tension.” Should we attend to his messages to our time, we may find that he anticipated many of our 21st century dilemmas between technology and humanity, and between history and myth. It’s interesting to imagine how we might describe our own age to a later generation, and, like Cocteau, what we might hope for them.

via Network Awesome

The Postcards That Picasso Illustrated and Sent to Jean Cocteau, Apollinaire & Gertrude Stein

David Lynch Presents the History of Surrealist Film (1987)

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

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Allen Ginsberg Sings the Poetry of William Blake (1970)

in Music, Poetry | January 14th, 2015

There was once a time, if you can believe it, when Allen Ginsberg could take the poetry of William Blake, sing it in a recording studio, and then MGM Records would release it as a long-playing album. I refer to the time, of course, of “the sixties,” that half-mythical era that seems to have run from around 1966 to 1972. Smack in the middle of the sixties, thus defined, came this distinctive release, Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake, tuned by Allen Ginsberg, recorded in December 1969 and released in 1970.

Every reader familiar with Blake, of course, knows Songs of Innocence and of Experience as a book, an illustrated collection of poems first self-published in 1789 and in 1794 re-issued and expanded as Songs of Innocence and of Experience Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. This work of an 18th-century poet captured the imagination of the 20th-century poet Ginsberg, and not just as reading material; he came to believe that not only did Blake intend his words to be sung, but that he himself could render them faithfully in song — as well as play the piano and harmonium in accompaniment.

You can hear hear the fruit of Ginsberg’s musical-poetic reconstructive labors at the top of the post, at the Internet Archive, or at PennSound, which not only offers each track individually but also its lyrics and sometimes even links to the corresponding page from the original book at the William Blake Archive. When we think of sixties-defining albums, we think of Blonde on Blonde, Are You Experienced?, Sgt, Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, that sort of thing, and rightly so, but a project like Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake, tuned by Allen Ginsberg speaks just as much to what became possible in that artistic Cambrian explosion of an era.

Hear Allen Ginsberg’s Short Free Course on Shakespeare’s Play, The Tempest (1980)

Allen Ginsberg’s “Celestial Homework”: A Reading List for His Class “Literary History of the Beats”

Allen Ginsberg’s Last Three Days on Earth as a Spirit: The Poet’s Final Days Captured in a 1997 Film

Allen Ginsberg Recordings Brought to the Digital Age. Listen to Eight Full Tracks for Free

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.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Patti Smith and David Lynch Talk About the Source of Their Ideas & Creative Inspiration

in Creativity, Film, Music, Poetry, Television | January 12th, 2015

Where do artistic ideas come from?

The collective unconscious?

Cheesy covers of 50s pop tunes?

The ghost of Jerry Garcia?

Perhaps rather than trying to identify the source, we should work toward being open to inspiration in whatever guise it presents itself. It’s an approach that certainly seems to be working for Patti Smith and David Lynch, aka the Godmother of Punk and Jimmy Stewart from Mars, both a shockingly youthful 69.

One of the most exciting things about their recent segment for the BBC’s Newsnight “Encounters” series is watching how appreciative these veterans are of each other’s process.

“I want a copy of what you just said,” Smith gasps, after Lynch likens the beginnings of a creative process to being in possession of a single, intriguing puzzle piece, knowing that a completed version exists in the adjacent room.

Lynch, a longtime advocate of transcendental meditation, smiles benignly as Smith waxes poetic about the formation of her ideas.

As artists, they’re committed to peeking beneath the veneer. “What’s more horrifying than normalcy?” Smith asks.

It does seem important to note how both of these longtime practitioners mention jotting their ideas down immediately following the muse’s visit.

Also what I wouldn’t give for a ringtone of Lynch saying, “I want to talk to you about Pussy Riot,” as sincerely and earnestly as Mr. Rogers!

David Lynch Explains How Meditation Enhances Our Creativity

David Lynch Lists His Favorite Films & Directors, Including Fellini, Wilder, Tati & Hitchcock

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

by Ayun Halliday | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Isaac Asimov Wrote “Gross” Limericks — Lots of Them

in Poetry, Sci Fi | January 7th, 2015

Isaac Asimov — he’s best known for his masterful works of science fiction. He was also a professor of biochemistry at Boston University. A committed humanist. And someone who enjoyed writing lots of dirty limericks. Somewhere on his list of 500+ books, you will find Lecherous Limericks (1976), Limericks: Too Gross (1978), A Grossery of Limericks (1981), and Asimov Laughs Again: More Than 700 Jokes, Limericks, and Anecdotes (1993). In two of these volumes, Asimov sparred with popular poet and Dante translator John Ciardi, each writing dirty poems, and trying to master a rather strict poetic form that began in early 18th century England.

Most of the limericks are indeed a “gross.” Many are crude. Some would be considered downright offensive by 2015 standards. But, if you want a taste of what Asimov served up, you can try out these tamer ones from Limericks: Too Gross.

The haughty philosopher, Plato
Would unbend to a sweet young tomato.
Though she might be naive
Like you wouldn’t believe
He would patiently show her the way to.

A certain young fellow named Scott
Once jumped his young bride on their cot.
He intended no shirking.
But from sheer overworking
A dry run is all that she got.

If you want to see Asimov at his tamest, you can also check out his book Limericks for Children.

Free: Isaac Asimov’s Epic Foundation Trilogy Dramatized in Classic Audio

Isaac Asimov Imagines Learning in the Electronic Age … and Gets It Quite Right (1989)

by OC | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Rare Footage of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac & Other Beats Hanging Out in the East Village (1959)

in Film, Literature, Photography, Poetry | January 2nd, 2015

We don’t often think of the Beats as family men, and that’s because the most prominent of them weren’t, except William Burroughs for a time (a tragic story or two for another day). But friends of Ginsberg and Kerouac like Lucien and Francesca Carr and Robert and Mary Frank brought children into the poets’ lives, and you can see them all above, relaxing at the Harmony Bar & Restaurant in New York’s East Village in 1959.

This rare silent footage unites the three Carr and two Frank children in a rare appearance of the Beats together on film. The mustachioed Lucien Carr —a character with his own dark story—can be seen seated next to Kerouac. The Franks, père and mère, were both artists in their own right—London-born Mary a trained dancer, sculptor, and painter, and Robert an important American photographer and documentary filmmaker.

Dangerous Minds speculates that it’s Robert Frank behind the camera, both because we don’t see him in front of it and because Frank would that same year direct the short film Pull My Daisy (above), featuring both Ginsberg and Kerouac and adapted from Kerouac’s play Beat Generation. (Frank apparently denies he shot the footage at the top). Pull My Daisy also includes famous Beats like Gregory Corso, musician David Amram, and Ginsberg’s partner, poet Peter Orlovsky. In a previous post on that film, Open Culture’s Colin Marshall described it as crafted with “great deliberateness, albeit the kind of deliberateness meant to create the impression of thrown-together, ramshackle spontaneity.”

To learn more about the Beats’ appearances on film—as themselves, in character, and through their adapted work, see this excellent filmography. And just above, watch a mash-up of most of those various cinematic appearances in a trailer produced by Cinefamily for the IFC and Sundance series “Beats on Film.”

via The Wall Breakers/Dangerous Minds

William S. Burrough’s Avant-Garde Movie ‘The Cut Ups’ (1966)

Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg Visit the Grave of Jack Kerouac (1975)

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

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 6 ) |

Watch a Music Video & Hear Tracks From Maya Angelou’s Posthumous Hip-Hop Album, Caged Bird Songs

in Music, Poetry | December 29th, 2014

Before she died earlier this year, Maya Angelou was working on Caged Bird Songs, a musical collaboration that features Angelou reciting her poems and producers Shawn Rivera and RoccStarr blending them with modern day hip-hop. After her passing, Angelou’s estate continued nudging the project along. Eventually the 13-song album was released in November, and now comes a music video. The video (above) centers around “Harlem Hopscotch,” a poem Angelou wrote in 1969. The text of the poem is available over at the Poetry Foundation. You can hear more tracks from the album below, or purchase the complete album here:

via Metafilter

Maya Angelou Reads “Still I Rise” and “On the Pulse of the Morning”

Watch Langston Hughes Read Poetry from His First Collection, The Weary Blues (1958)

by OC | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

A Sun Ra Christmas: Hear His 1976 Radio Broadcast of Poetry and Music

in Music, Poetry, Radio | December 25th, 2014

Everybody spreads holiday cheer in their own way. On Christmas Day 1976, the eccentric jazz composer and bandleader did it by appearing on Blue Genesis, a show on the University of Pennsylvania’s radio station WXPN, reading his poetry with music. “The choice of poems and their sequencing offers what Sun Ra thought was most important in his writing,” writes John Szwed in Space is the Place: The Life and Times of Sun Ra. “Here are key words like ‘cosmos,’ ‘truth,’ ‘bad,’ ‘myth,’ and ‘the impossible’; attention to phonetic equivalence; the universality of the music and its metaphysical status; allusions to black fraternal orders and secret societies; biblical passages and their interpretation; and even a few autobiographical glimpses.”

Part 1

Part 2

Though read on Christmas, these poems have no particular religious slant — nothing, that is, but Sun Ra’s usual mixture of the Kabbalah, Rosicrucianism, numerology, Freemasonry, ancient Egyptian mysticism, Gnosticism, and black nationalism.

Fans of Sun Ra would expect no less. But those more recently acquainted with the jazzman born Herman Poole Blount may find this an unusual half-hour of listening, for the holidays or otherwise. “A pioneer of ‘Afrofuturism,’ Sun Ra emerged from a traditional swing scene in Alabama, touring the country in his teens as a member of his high school biology teacher’s big band,” wrote Open Culture’s own Josh Jones earlier this year. “While attending Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University, he had an out-of-body experience during which he was transported into outer space.”

In that post on Sun Ra’s 1971 UC Berkeley Course “The Black Man in the Cosmos,” you can learn more about the numerous nonstandard experiences and philosophies that went into the production of his words and his music, which converge in this special broadcast you can hear at the top of the post or on Ubuweb. It’ll make you regret that Sun Ra and his free-jazz “Arkestra” never produced a full-length Christmas album — though maybe, on whichever distant planet his immortal spirit reached after the end of his Earth-life two decades ago, he’s recording it as we speak.

via Ubuweb

The Cry of Jazz: 1958’s Highly Controversial Film on Jazz & Race in America (With Music by Sun Ra)

Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture 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.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

115 Books on Lena Dunham & Miranda July’s Bookshelves at Home (Plus a Bonus Short Play)

Jean Cocteau Delivers a Speech to the Year 2000 in 1962: “I Hope You Have Not Become Robots”

Allen Ginsberg Sings the Poetry of William Blake (1970)

Patti Smith and David Lynch Talk About the Source of Their Ideas & Creative Inspiration

Isaac Asimov Wrote “Gross” Limericks — Lots of Them

Rare Footage of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac & Other Beats Hanging Out in the East Village (1959)

Watch a Music Video & Hear Tracks From Maya Angelou’s Posthumous Hip-Hop Album, Caged Bird Songs

A Sun Ra Christmas: Hear His 1976 Radio Broadcast of Poetry and Music

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