The Hieronymus Bosch Demon Bird Was Spotted Riding the New York City Subway the Other Day…

in Art, Comedy, Creativity, Life | September 21st, 2018

To me, the great promise of home­school­ing is that one day your child might, on their own ini­tia­tive, ride the New York City sub­ways dressed in a home­made, needle­felt­ed cos­tume mod­eled on the ice-skat­ing bird mes­sen­ger from Hierony­mus Bosch’s The Temp­ta­tion of St. Antho­ny.

Rae Stim­son, aka Rae Swon, a Brook­lyn-based artist who did just that a lit­tle over a week ago, describes her upbring­ing thus­ly:

Grow­ing up I was home schooled in the coun­try­side by my mom who is a sculp­tor and my dad who is an oil painter, car­pen­ter, and many oth­er things. Most of my days were spent draw­ing and observ­ing nature rather than doing nor­mal school work. Learn­ing tra­di­tion­al art tech­niques had always been very impor­tant to me so that I can play a role in keep­ing these beau­ti­ful meth­ods alive dur­ing this con­tem­po­rary trend of dig­i­tal, non­rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al, and con­cep­tu­al art. I make tra­di­tion­al art­work in a wide vari­ety of medi­ums, includ­ing wood­carv­ing, oil paint­ing, etch­ing, nee­dle felt­ing, and alter­na­tive process pho­tog­ra­phy.

Not every home­school­er, or, for that mat­ter, Wal­dorf stu­dent, is into nee­dle felt­ing. It only seems that way when you com­pare the num­bers to their coun­ter­parts in more tra­di­tion­al school set­tings…

Even the tini­est crea­ture pro­duced by this method is a labor inten­sive propo­si­tion, where­in loose woolen fibers are soaked, soaped, and jabbed with a nee­dle until they come togeth­er in a rough mat, suit­able for shap­ing into the whimsical—or demonic—figure of its creator’s choos­ing.

Stim­son matched her full-head bird mask to the one in the paint­ing by equip­ping it with gloves, a blan­ket cloak, long vel­vet ears, and a leaf­less twig emerg­ing from the spout of its hand-paint­ed fun­nel hat.

An accom­plished milliner, Stim­son was drawn to her subject’s unusu­al head­gear, telling HuffPo’s Priscil­la Frank how she wished she could ask Bosch about the var­i­ous ele­ments of his “beau­ti­ful demon-bird” and “what, if any, sym­bol­ic sig­nif­i­cance they hold.”

The answer lies in art his­to­ry writer Stan­ley Meisler’s Smith­son­ian mag­a­zine arti­cle, “The World of Bosch”:

…a mon­ster on ice skates approach­es three fiends who are hid­ing under a bridge across which pious men are help­ing an uncon­scious Saint Antho­ny. The mon­ster, wear­ing a badge that Bax says can be rec­og­nized as the emblem of a mes­sen­ger, bears a let­ter that is sup­pos­ed­ly a protest of Saint Antho­ny’s treat­ment. But the let­ter, accord­ing to (Bosch schol­ar and author Dirk) Bax, is in mir­ror writ­ing, a sure sign that the mon­ster and the fiends are mock­ing the saint. The mon­ster wears a fun­nel that sym­bol­izes intem­per­ance and waste­ful­ness, sports a dry twig and a ball that sig­ni­fy licen­tious mer­ry­mak­ing, and has lop­ping ears that show its fool­ish­ness. All this might have been obvi­ous to the artist’s con­tem­po­raries when the work was cre­at­ed, but the aver­age mod­ern view­er can only hope to under­stand the over­all intent of a Bosch paint­ing, while regard­ing the scores of bizarre mon­sters and demons as a kind of dark and cru­el com­ic relief.

A field guide to Bosch’s bizarre images in the same arti­cle gives view­ers leave to inter­pret any and all fun­nels in his work as a cod­ed ref­er­ence to deceit and intem­per­ance… per­haps at the hands of a false doc­tor or alchemist!

Not every sub­way rid­er caught the arty ref­er­ence. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, some even refused to acknowl­edge the strange being in their midst. Those folks must not share Stimson’s ded­i­ca­tion to exam­in­ing “that which is unfa­mil­iar, seek­ing out all that is yet unknown to you in both art and life.”

With­in 24 hours of its Met­ro­pol­i­tan Tran­sit Author­i­ty adven­ture, the one-of-a-kind demon-bird cos­tume was sold on Etsy.

(Holler if you wish Stim­son had kept it around long enough to take a spin on the ice at Rock­e­feller Cen­ter or Bryant Park, where the major­i­ty of patrons would no doubt be glid­ing around in igno­rance that, as per Meisler, Bosch equat­ed skates with fol­ly.)

See more of Rae Stimson’s nee­dle-felt­ed cre­ations, includ­ing a full-body alien robot cos­tume and a sculp­ture of author Joyce Car­ol Oates with her pet chick­en in her Etsy shop.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fig­ures from Hierony­mus Bosch’s “The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights” Come to Life as Fine Art Piñatas

Hierony­mus Bosch Fig­urines: Col­lect Sur­re­al Char­ac­ters from Bosch’s Paint­ings & Put Them on Your Book­shelf

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Hierony­mus Bosch’s Bewil­der­ing Mas­ter­piece The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is a New York City-based home­school­er, author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her at The Tank NYC on Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 24 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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When Led Zeppelin Reunited and Crashed and Burned at Live Aid (1985)

in Music | September 21st, 2018

I’ve tend­ed to avoid reunion shows from my favorite bands of old, and I’ve missed some great per­for­mances because of it, I’m told, and also a few clunk­ers and for­get­table nos­tal­gia trips. But some­times it real­ly doesn’t mat­ter how good or bad the band is ten or twen­ty years past their prime—or that one or more of their orig­i­nal mem­bers has left their mor­tal coil or shuf­fled off into retire­ment. It’s such a thrill for fans to see their heroes that they’ll over­look, or fail to notice, seri­ous onstage prob­lems.

The crowd of thou­sands at Philly’s JFK Sta­di­um explod­ed  after “Rock and Roll,” Led Zeppelin’s open­er to their 1985 Live Aid reunion gig (above), with Phil Collins and Chic’s Tony Thomp­son dou­bling on drum duties (because it takes two great drum­mers to equal one John Bon­ham, I guess). But accord­ing to the musi­cians them­selves, the show was an absolute fail—so much so that Collins near­ly walked off­stage in the mid­dle of the 20-minute set. “It was a dis­as­ter real­ly,” he said in a 2014 inter­view, “It wasn’t my fault it was crap.”

Collins expands on the prob­lems in his can­did auto­bi­og­ra­phy:

I know the wheels are falling off from ear­ly on in the set. I can’t hear Robert clear­ly from where I’m sat, but I can hear enough to know that he’s not on top of his game. Dit­to Jim­my. I don’t remem­ber play­ing ‘Rock and Roll,’ but obvi­ous­ly I did. But I do remem­ber an awful lot of time where I can hear what Robert decries as ‘knit­ting’: fan­cy drum­ming…. you can see me mim­ing, play­ing the air, get­ting out of the way lest there be a train wreck. If I’d known it was to be a two-drum­mer band, I would have removed myself from pro­ceed­ings long before I got any­where near Philadel­phia.

As for the Zep­pelin mem­bers prop­er, Plant and Page had no fond mem­o­ries of the gig. “It was hor­ren­dous,” said Plant in 1988. “Emo­tion­al­ly, I was eat­ing every word that I had uttered. And I was hoarse. I’d done three gigs on the trot before I got to Live Aid.” Page, writes Rolling Stone, “was hand­ed a gui­tar right before walk­ing onstage that was out of tune.” “My main mem­o­ries,” he lat­er recalled, “were of total pan­ic.” Appar­ent­ly, no one thought to ask John Paul Jones about the show.

Bare­ly rehearsed (Jones arrived “vir­tu­al­ly the same day as the show”) and with fail­ing mon­i­tors ensur­ing the band could hard­ly hear them­selves, they strug­gled through “Rock and Roll,” “Whole Lot­ta Love,” and “Stair­way to Heav­en.” The footage, which the band scrapped from the 2004 DVD release, doesn’t show them at their best, for sure, but it’s maybe not quite as bad as they remem­bered it either (see the full con­cert above).

In any case, Plant was so inspired that he tried to reunite the band, with Thomp­son back on drums, in secret rehearsals a few months lat­er. The attempt was “embar­rass­ing,” he’s since said. “We did about two days…. Jonesy played key­boards, I played bass. It sound­ed like David Byrne meets Hüsker Dü.” Now that is a reunion I’d pay good mon­ey to see.

22 years lat­er, at Lon­don’s O2 Are­na, the band was con­fi­dent and total­ly on top of their game once again for the Ahmet Erte­gun Trib­ute Con­cert, with Jason Bon­ham behind the kit. Prob­a­bly their last per­for­mance ever, and it’s damned good. See “Black Dog” above and buy the full con­cert film here.

The clip below lets you see more than 90 min­utes of Led Zep­pelin reunion con­certs. Beyond their Live Aid show, it includes per­for­mances at Atlantic Records’ 4oth anniver­sary (1988) and at the Rock­’n Roll Hall of Fame (1995).

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Led Zeppelin’s First Record­ed Con­cert Ever (1968)

What Makes John Bon­ham Such a Good Drum­mer? A New Video Essay Breaks Down His Inim­itable Style

Led Zep­pelin Plays One of Its Ear­li­est Con­certs (Dan­ish TV, 1969)

Jim­my Page Describes the Cre­ation of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lot­ta Love”

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

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William Shatner Is Releasing a Christmas Album with Iggy Pop & Henry Rollins : Get a First Listen to “Jingle Bells”

in Music | September 21st, 2018

You know what they say: each year the Christ­mas sea­son seems to start a lit­tle ear­li­er. Here it’s not yet Octo­ber, and already we’re hear­ing “Jin­gle Bells” — but then, this ver­sion does­n’t sound quite like any we’ve heard before. The song comes as the open­ing num­ber on Shat­ner Claus: The Christ­mas Album, which promis­es exact­ly what it sounds like it does. Offi­cial­ly drop­ping on Octo­ber 26th, it will con­tain, accord­ing to Con­se­quence of Sound, William Shat­ner’s “unique take on 13 hol­i­day sta­ples,” and fea­ture guest con­trib­u­tors like Iggy Pop on “Silent Night,” ZZ Top’s Bil­ly Gib­bons on “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Rein­deer,” and for­mer Black Flag front­man and all-around provo­ca­teur Hen­ry Rollins on “Jin­gle Bells,” a col­lab­o­ra­tion you can stream just above.

You may not describe Shat­ner’s dis­tinc­tive half-singing-half-speak­ing style as pos­sessed of a great “range,” tech­ni­cal­ly speak­ing, but who can doubt the for­mi­da­ble cul­tur­al range of his musi­cal career? On his debut album The Trans­formed Man fifty years ago he cov­ered the Bea­t­les, ten years lat­er he took on “Rock­et Man,” and more recent­ly he appeared on Dr. Demen­to’s punk album singing The Cramps’ “Garbage Man” with Weird Al Yankovic.

Shat­ner Claus demon­strates that the for­mer Cap­tain Kirk’s inter­est in punk rock has­n’t dis­si­pat­ed, and the pair­ing of him and no less an icon of that genre makes a cer­tain kind of sense, see­ing as both of them have spent decades blur­ring the per­for­ma­tive line between singing and the spo­ken word, each in his own dis­tinc­tive way.

Per­haps it comes as no sur­prise, then, that Shat­ner and Rollins are friends, and have been since they first record­ed togeth­er on Shat­ner’s album Has Been in 2004. Rollins once described Shat­ner to rock site Blab­ber­mouth as “extra­or­di­nar­i­ly friend­ly, a very ener­gized guy” despite being three decades the  mid­dle-aged Rollins’ senior. “He impress­es me in that he’s a guy who’s real­ly fig­ured out what he likes,” espe­cial­ly foot­ball: “I’ve been to the Shat­ner house many times for din­ner, for Super Bowl Sun­day, for foot­ball games. I don’t watch foot­ball, but I like his friends. I’m a shy per­son. I don’t real­ly go out of my way to hang out but I like him and his wife… and I like all the food he lays out.” The vast game-day spreads at chez Shat­ner have also giv­en Rollins sto­ries to tell at his spo­ken-word shows, and lis­ten­ing to Shat­ner Claus, you have to won­der: what must they have for Christ­mas din­ner?

via Con­se­quence of Sound

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dr. Demento’s New Punk Album Fea­tures William Shat­ner Singing The Cramps, Weird Al Yankovic Singing The Ramones & Much More

A Cult Clas­sic: William Shat­ner Sings Elton John’s “Rock­et Man” at 1978 Sci­Fi Awards Show

William Shat­ner Sings Near­ly Blas­phe­mous Ver­sion of “Lucy in the Sky with Dia­monds” (1968)

Stream a Playlist of 68 Punk Rock Christ­mas Songs: The Ramones, The Damned, Bad Reli­gion & More

Hear the 20 Favorite Punk Albums of Black Flag Front­man Hen­ry Rollins

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Discover Rare 1980s CDs by Lou Reed, Devo & Talking Heads That Combined Music with Computer Graphics

in Computer Science, Music, Software, Technology | September 20th, 2018

When it first hit the mar­ket in 1982, the com­pact disc famous­ly promised “per­fect sound that lasts for­ev­er.” But inno­va­tion has a way of march­ing con­tin­u­al­ly on, and nat­u­ral­ly the inno­va­tors soon start­ed won­der­ing: what if per­fect sound isn’t enough? What if con­sumers want some­thing to go with it, some­thing to look at? And so, when com­pact disc co-devel­op­ers Sony and Philips updat­ed its stan­dards, they includ­ed doc­u­men­ta­tion on the use of the for­mat’s chan­nels not occu­pied by audio data. So was born the CD+G, which boast­ed “not only the CD’s full, dig­i­tal sound, but also video infor­ma­tion — graph­ics — view­able on any tele­vi­sion set or video mon­i­tor.”

That text comes from a pack­age scan post­ed by the online CD+G Muse­um, whose Youtube chan­nel fea­tures rips of near­ly every record released on the for­mat, begin­ning with the first, the Fire­sign The­atre’s Eat or Be Eat­en.

When it came out, lis­ten­ers who hap­pened to own a CD+G‑compatible play­er (or a CD+G‑compatible video game con­sole, my own choice at the time hav­ing been the Tur­bo­grafx-16) could see that beloved “head com­e­dy” troupe’s dense­ly lay­ered stu­dio pro­duc­tion and even more dense­ly lay­ered humor accom­pa­nied by images ren­dered in psy­che­del­ic col­or — or as psy­che­del­ic as images can get with only six­teen col­ors avail­able on the palette, not to men­tion a res­o­lu­tion of 288 pix­els by 192 pix­els, not much larg­er than a icon on the home screen of a mod­ern smart­phone. Those lim­i­ta­tions may make CD+G graph­ics look unim­pres­sive today, but just imag­ine what a cut­ting-edge nov­el­ty they must have seemed in the late 1980s when they first appeared.

Dis­play­ing lyrics for karaoke singers was the most obvi­ous use of CD+G tech­nol­o­gy, but its short lifes­pan also saw a fair few exper­i­ments on such oth­er major-label releas­es, all view­able at the CD+G Muse­um, as Lou Reed’s New York, which com­bines lyrics with dig­i­tized pho­tog­ra­phy of the epony­mous city; Talk­ing Heads’ Naked, which pro­vides musi­cal infor­ma­tion such as the chord changes and instru­ments play­ing on each phrase; Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach’s St. Matthew Pas­sion, which trans­lates the libret­to along­side works of art; and Devo’s sin­gle “Dis­co Dancer,” which tells the ori­gin sto­ry of those “five Spud­boys from Ohio.” With these and almost every oth­er CD+G release avail­able at the CD+G muse­um, you’ll have no short­age of not just back­ground music but back­ground visu­als for your next late-80s-ear­ly-90s-themed par­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 1970s Ani­ma­tions of Songs by Joni Mitchell, Jim Croce & The Kinks, Aired on The Son­ny & Cher Show

The Sto­ry of How Beethoven Helped Make It So That CDs Could Play 74 Min­utes of Music

Dis­cov­er the Lost Ear­ly Com­put­er Art of Telidon, Canada’s TV Pro­to-Inter­net from the 1970s

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Why Should You Read Edgar Allan Poe? An Animated Video Explains

in Literature | September 20th, 2018

His gloomy, haunt­ed vis­age adorns the cov­ers of col­lect­ed works, pub­li­ca­tions of whose like he would nev­er see in his life­time. Edgar Allan Poe died in penury and near-obscu­ri­ty, and might have been for­got­ten had his work not been turned into sen­sa­tion­al­ized, abridged, adap­ta­tions posthu­mous­ly, a fate he might not have wished on his most hat­ed lit­er­ary rival.

But Poe sur­vived car­i­ca­ture to become known as one of the great­est of Amer­i­can writ­ers in any genre. A pio­neer of psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror and sci­ence fic­tion, founder of the detec­tive sto­ry, poet of loss and mourn­ing, and inci­sive lit­er­ary crit­ic whose prin­ci­ples informed his own work so close­ly that we can use essays like his 1846 “The Phi­los­o­phy of Com­po­si­tion” as keys to unlock the for­mal prop­er­ties of his sto­ries and nar­ra­tive poems.

In the short TED-Ed video above, script­ed by Poe schol­ar Scott Peeples of the Col­lege of Charleston, we are intro­duced to many of the qual­i­ties of form and style that make Poe dis­tinc­tive, and that made him stand out among a crowd of pop­u­lar hor­ror writ­ers of the time. There are his prin­ci­ples, elab­o­rat­ed in his essay, which state that one should be able to read a sto­ry in one sit­ting, and that every word in the sto­ry must count.

These rules pro­duced what Poe called the “Uni­ty of Effect,” which “goes far beyond fear. Poe’s sto­ries use vio­lence and hor­ror to explore the para­dox­es and mys­ter­ies of love, grief, and guilt, while resist­ing sim­ple inter­pre­ta­tions or clear moral mes­sages. And while they often hint at super­nat­ur­al ele­ments, the true dark­ness they explore is the human mind.”

This obser­va­tion leads to an analy­sis of Poe’s unre­li­able nar­ra­tors, par­tic­u­lar­ly in sto­ries like The Tell-Tale Heart. But there is anoth­er aspect to Poe—one which makes his unre­li­able voic­es so com­pelling. Even when the sto­ries seem incred­i­ble, the events bizarre, the nar­ra­tors mani­a­cal, we believe them whole­heart­ed­ly. And this has much to do with the fram­ing con­ven­tions Poe uses to draw read­ers in and impli­cate them, forc­ing them to iden­ti­fy with the sto­ries’ tellers.

For exam­ple, “Ms. Found in a Bot­tle,” the very first sto­ry in Poe’s posthu­mous col­lec­tion, Tales of Mys­tery and Imag­i­na­tion, opens with an epi­graph from French libret­tist Quinault’s opera Atys, an adap­tion of one of Ovid’s sto­ries. The lines trans­late to “He who has but a moment to live has no longer any­thing to dis­sem­ble.”

We are invit­ed into a con­fi­dence through the door­way of this device—a clas­si­cal, and neo­clas­si­cal, ref­er­ence to truth-telling, a sober, learned lit­er­ary stamp of author­i­ty. As the name­less nar­ra­tor intro­duces him­self, he makes sure to place him­self in anoth­er ancient tra­di­tion, Pyrrhon­ism, a skep­ti­cal phi­los­o­phy con­cerned with epis­te­mol­o­gy, or how it is we can know what we know.

The nar­ra­tor assures us that “no per­son could be less liable than myself to be led away from the severe precincts of truth by the ignes fatui of super­sti­tion.” Though we may doubt this bold asser­tion, and the per­son mak­ing it, we might also be con­vinced of our own unshake­able ratio­nal­i­ty and skep­ti­cism. These are the moves, to put it plain­ly, of stage magi­cians, moun­te­banks, and con­fi­dence men, and Poe was one of the great­est of them all.

He flat­ters his read­ers’ intel­li­gence, draws them close enough to see his hands mov­ing, then picks their com­fort­able assump­tions from their pock­ets. Poe under­stood what many of his peers did not: read­ers love to be conned by a juicy yarn, but it must be real­ly good—it must show us some­thing we did not see before, and that we could, per­haps, only look at it indi­rect­ly, through a pleas­ing act of aes­thet­ic (self) decep­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load The Com­plete Works of Edgar Allan Poe on His Birth­day

7 Tips from Edgar Allan Poe on How to Write Vivid Sto­ries and Poems

Edgar Allan Poe’s the Raven: Watch an Award-Win­ning Short Film That Mod­ern­izes Poe’s Clas­sic Tale

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

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Hear Nico’s Pre-Velvets Recording, “I’m Not Sayin,” Backed by the Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones & Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page (1965)

in Music | September 20th, 2018

For most of us, the Teu­ton­ic singer Nico has always been asso­ci­at­ed with the first Vel­vet Under­ground album and then a series of fas­ci­nat­ing solo albums (often with Vel­vets con­nec­tions) released dur­ing the ‘70s and ‘80s before her untime­ly death in 1988. The voice and the look are unmis­tak­able, that far away stare, that detached, brood­ing and flat tone. It might also feel like she mag­i­cal­ly appeared from a cloud of smoke in 1967 New York City.

But before she met Andy Warhol, the for­mer teen mod­el had crossed paths with a who’s who of ’50 and ‘60s cool: Coco Chanel, Mario Lan­za, Fed­eri­co Felli­ni (who cast her in a bit part in La Dolce Vita), Lee Stras­berg, Jean Paul Bel­mon­do, Alain Delon (who alleged­ly fathered her first child).

In 1965 Nico met and began dat­ing Rolling Stones’ gui­tarist Bri­an Jones, and that’s how we get to the video above. Already hav­ing sung in night­clubs in New York, her smoky voice was estab­lished, but Jones con­vinced the Stones’ man­ag­er Andrew Loog Old­ham to sign her to his bou­tique label Imme­di­ate, which had just start­ed.

Old­ham brought in his reli­able stu­dio musi­cian and A&R man, a young gui­tarist called Jim­my Page, to pro­duce and play gui­tar (along with Jones) on both sides of Nico’s first sin­gle, the A‑side “I’m Not Say­ing” (a Gor­don Light­foot cov­er) and the B‑Side “The Last Mile” (writ­ten by Page and Old­ham). As a ses­sion musi­cian, Page is on a *lot* of British hit sin­gles, includ­ing Petu­la Clark’s “Down­town,” Them’s “Here Comes the Night,” Mar­i­anne Faithfull’s “As Tears Go By,” and a sur­pris­ing amount more.

The result­ing pleas­ant-enough sin­gle didn’t exact­ly rock the charts, but it was a first foot in the door. Jones would intro­duce Nico to Andy Warhol soon after that and she began to appear in some of his films like Chelsea Girls. Des­tiny was right around the cor­ner.

For a singer so tied to the Vel­vets, it’s worth remem­ber­ing she was only on three songs on the 11 song debut album and then left. But her place in rock his­to­ry was assured, even though it was the odd­est of team-ups at the time.

On a side note, the video for “I’m Not Say­ing” was shot at Canary Wharf on the Thames, long before it was turned into shiny tow­ers for the rich. It’s a win­dow back into a very dif­fer­ent time.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Crazy, Icon­ic Life of Nico; Andy Warhol Muse, Vel­vet Under­ground Vocal­ist, Enig­ma in Amber

Nico Sings “Chelsea Girls” in the Famous Chelsea Hotel

Pat­ti Smith’s New Haunt­ing Trib­ute to Nico: Hear Three Tracks

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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How Meditation Can Change Your Brain: The Neuroscience of Buddhist Practice

in Health, Neuroscience, Psychology | September 19th, 2018

Nir­vana is a place on earth. Pop­u­lar­ly thought of a Bud­dhist “heav­en,” reli­gious schol­ars dis­cuss the con­cept not as an arrival at some­place oth­er than the phys­i­cal place we are, but as the extinc­tion of suf­fer­ing in the mind, achieved in large part through inten­sive med­i­ta­tion. If this state of enlight­en­ment exists in the here and now—the sci­en­tif­ic inquir­er is jus­ti­fied in asking—shouldn’t it be some­thing we can mea­sure?

Maybe it is. Psy­chol­o­gist Daniel Gole­man and neu­ro­sci­en­tist Richard David­son set out to do just that when they flew sev­er­al “Olympic lev­el med­i­ta­tors” from Nepal, India, and France to Davidson’s lab at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin.

Once they put the med­i­ta­tors under David­son’s scan­ners, researchers found that “their brain waves are real­ly dif­fer­ent,” as Gole­man says in the Big Think video above.

Per­haps the most remark­able find­ings in the Olympic lev­el med­i­ta­tors has to do with what’s called a gam­ma wave. All of us get gam­ma for a very short peri­od when we solve a prob­lem we’ve been grap­pling with, even if it’s some­thing that’s vexed us for months. We get about half sec­ond of gam­ma; it’s the strongest wave in the EEG spec­trum….

What was stun­ning was that the Olympic lev­el med­i­ta­tors, these are peo­ple who have done up to 62,000 life­time hours of med­i­ta­tion, their brain­wave shows gam­ma very strong all the time as a last­ing trait just no mat­ter what they’re doing. It’s not a state effect, it’s not dur­ing their med­i­ta­tion alone, but it’s just their every day state of mind. We actu­al­ly have no idea what that means expe­ri­en­tial­ly. Sci­ence has nev­er seen it before.

The med­i­ta­tors them­selves describe the state of mind in terms con­sis­tent with thou­sands of years of lit­er­a­ture on the sub­ject; “it’s very spa­cious and you’re wide open, you’re pre­pared for what­ev­er may come.” Gole­man and David­son have elab­o­rat­ed their find­ings for the pub­lic in the book Altered Traits: Sci­ence Reveals How Med­i­ta­tion Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body. For more on Davidson’s work on the sub­ject, see his talk at Google, “Trans­form Your Mind, Change Your Brain.”

The bar to enlight­en­ment seems high. Gole­man and Davidson’s “Olympic lev­el” test sub­jects spent a min­i­mum of 62,000 hours in med­i­ta­tion, which amounts to some­thing like 20 years of eight-hour days, sev­en days a week (and maybe explains why the path to enlight­en­ment is often spread out over sev­er­al life­times in the tra­di­tion). But that doesn’t mean med­i­ta­tion in less­er dos­es does not have sig­nif­i­cant effects on the brain as well.

As Gole­man explains in the video above, med­i­ta­tion induces a state of hyper-focus, or “flow,” that acts as a gym for your brain: low­er­ing stress, rais­ing the lev­el of resilience under stress, and increas­ing focus “in the midst of dis­trac­tions.” At some point, he says, these tem­po­rary “altered states” become per­ma­nent “altered traits.” Along the way, as with any con­sis­tent, long-term work­out pro­gram, med­i­ta­tors devel­op strength, sta­mi­na, and flex­i­bil­i­ty the longer they stick with the prac­tice. Find resources to get you start­ed in the Relat­eds below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Bud­dhism & Neu­ro­science Can Help You Change How Your Mind Works: A New Course by Best­selling Author Robert Wright

Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions From UCLA: Boost Your Aware­ness & Ease Your Stress

Med­i­ta­tion 101: A Short, Ani­mat­ed Beginner’s Guide

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

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Hear Dylan Thomas Recite His Classic Poem, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”

in Poetry | September 19th, 2018

When Dylan Thomas was a lit­tle boy his father would read Shake­speare to him at bed­time. The boy loved the sound of the words, even if he was too young to under­stand the mean­ing. His father, David John Thomas, taught Eng­lish at a gram­mar school in south­ern Wales but want­ed to be a poet. He was bit­ter­ly dis­ap­point­ed with his sta­tion in life.

Many years lat­er when the father lay on his deathbed, Dylan Thomas wrote a poem that cap­tures the pro­found sense of empa­thy he felt for the dying old man. The poem, “Do not go gen­tle into that good night,” was writ­ten in 1951, only two years before the poet­’s own untime­ly death at the age of 39. Despite the impos­si­bil­i­ty of escap­ing death, the anguished son implores his father to “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

The poem is a beau­ti­ful exam­ple of the vil­lanelle form, which fea­tures two rhymes and two alter­nat­ing refrains in verse arranged into five ter­cets, or three-lined stan­zas, and a con­clud­ing qua­train in which the two refrains are brought togeth­er as a cou­plet at the very end. You can hear Thomas’s famous 1952 recital of the poem above. To see the poem’s struc­ture and read along as you lis­ten, click here to open the text in a new win­dow.

And to hear more of Thomas recit­ing his own works (and more), please vis­it our pri­or post 8 Glo­ri­ous Hours of Dylan Thomas Read­ing Poetry–His Own & Oth­ers’.

All poems have been added to our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Note: an ear­li­er ver­sion of this post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in August 2012.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Antho­ny Hop­kins Reads ‘Do Not Go Gen­tle into That Good Night’

Hear Dylan Thomas Read Three Poems by W.H. Auden, Includ­ing “Sep­tem­ber 1, 1939”

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The History of the Guitar & Guitar Legends: From 1929 to 1979

in Music | September 19th, 2018

In the age of the Clas­si­cal Edu­ca­tion, stu­dents pored over and mem­o­rized the works of “author­i­ties,” exem­plars of gram­mar, rhetoric, log­ic, etc. Con­stel­la­tions in the night sky of igno­rance, so to speak, these writ­ers and thinkers showed the way to knowl­edge through their excel­lence. The method may have fall­en out of favor in mod­ern ped­a­gogy, but it sur­vives in pop­u­lar cul­ture, and in the videos here, pro­duc­er and musi­cian Rick Beato employs it as a way of teach­ing the his­to­ry of gui­tar.

In the episode above, he names gui­tar play­ers from 1929–1969 that “every seri­ous gui­tarist should know.” Below, he does the same for the decade of the sev­en­ties. These gui­tarists exem­pli­fy Clas­si­cal, Blues, Jazz, Coun­try and Rock & Roll gui­tar, accord­ing to Beato, and yes, he knows he prob­a­bly left off your favorite play­ers, so go ahead and men­tion them in the com­ments.

Beato includes a brief film or audio clip of each play­er, with the unspo­ken assump­tion that seri­ous stu­dents will seek out more of their record­ed music and become more famil­iar with what made them unique. In the list below, you can see the 48 names he lists in his first video.

1. Andres Segovia
2. Julian Bream
3. Charley Pat­ton
4. Robert John­son
5. Light­nin Hop­kins
6. Blind Lemon Jef­fer­son
7. Lead­bel­ly 8. Elmore James
9. Mud­dy Waters
10. Fred­die King
11. Albert King
12. B.B. King
13. Bud­dy Guy
14. Otis Rush
15. Djan­go Rein­hardt
16. Char­lie Chris­t­ian
17. Wes Mont­gomery
18. Joe Pass
19. George Ben­son
20. Bar­ney Kessel
21. Herb Ellis
22. George Van Eps
23. Ken­ny Bur­rell
24. Jim Hall
25. Grant Green
26. Tal Far­low
27. Anto­nio Car­los Jobim
28. Les Paul and Mary Ford
29. Chuck Berry
30. Hank Mar­vin
31. Dick Dale
32. George Har­ri­son
33. Kei­th Richards
34. Steve Crop­per
35. Chet Atkins
36. Jer­ry Reed
37. Glen Camp­bell
38. Jimi Hen­drix
39. Eric Clap­ton
40. Jim­my Page
41. Jeff Beck
42. Peter Green
43. Mike Bloom­field
44. John­ny Win­ter
45. Car­los San­tana
46. Jer­ry Gar­cia
47. Ritchie Black­more
48. Frank Zap­pa

The peri­od of 1970–1979 saw “some of the most sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ments for the role of the gui­tar,” brought about by the British Inva­sion, the influ­ence of the blues, and the “son­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal advances of the gui­tar.” The peri­od began with two great loss­es in the gui­tar world: jazz great Wes Mont­gomery in 1968 and Jimi Hen­drix in 1970. But many more greats soon came to promi­nence, such as clas­si­cal gui­tarists Christo­pher Parken­ing and John Williams and jazz adven­tur­ers Pat Methe­ny and Joe Pass.

Beato namechecks sev­er­al gui­tarists well-known to most of the lis­ten­ing pub­lic and many more you may nev­er have heard before. His rapid intro­duc­tion will like­ly inspire gui­tarists to learn what they can from these author­i­ties of the instru­ment, broad­en­ing both their his­tor­i­cal knowl­edge and their tech­nique. He promis­es more videos like this in the future, each cov­er­ing a new decade. Who will Beato choose as most influ­en­tial play­ers of the eight­ies, nineties, and oughties? Sub­scribe to his chan­nel to find out.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Rock Musi­cal­ly Told in 100 Gui­tar Riffs and 100 Bass Riffs

Learn to Play Gui­tar for Free: Intro Cours­es Take You From The Very Basics to Play­ing Songs In No Time

How to Build a Cus­tom Hand­craft­ed Acoustic Gui­tar from Start to Fin­ish: The Process Revealed in a Fas­ci­nat­ing Doc­u­men­tary

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

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Get a First Listen to David Lynch & Angelo Badalamenti’s Long-Lost Album, Thought Gang

in Film, Music, Television | September 19th, 2018

All of David Lynch’s movies, tele­vi­sion shows, music videos, and com­mer­cials — and also his paint­ings, pho­tographs, and com­ic strips — express a con­sis­tent, and con­sis­tent­ly Lynchi­an, vision. But that vision depends on more than just the visu­al: the son­ic has also played a vital part in its devel­op­ment at least since the night­mar­ish­ly intri­cate sound design of Lynch’s 1977 debut fea­ture Eraser­head. And just imag­ine how much impact lat­er Lynch projects like Blue Vel­vet, Twin Peaks, The Straight Sto­ry, and Mul­hol­land Dri­ve would have lost with­out the rich and often haunt­ing scores of Ange­lo Badala­men­ti, a com­pos­er with whom Lynch has worked at seem­ing­ly every oppor­tu­ni­ty.

Lynch made his own offi­cial debut as a record­ing artist sev­en years ago with Crazy Clown Time, and this Novem­ber he and Badala­men­ti will release their first col­lab­o­ra­tive album Thought Gang. Accord­ing to its Band­camp page, this “eso­teric jazz side­ project of David Lynch and Ange­lo Badala­men­ti evolved from the seeds of Twin Peaks’ trade­mark slow cool jazz and blos­somed into more exper­i­men­tal pas­tures: hori­zon­less vis­tas of acid­-soaked free­jazz, laced with spo­ken word nar­ra­tives and sprawl­ing nois­escapes.” If that sounds good to you, you can get a first taste of the album from the track “Wood­cut­ters From Fiery Ships” above.

The Thought Gang ses­sions hap­pened 25 years ago, between the end of Twin Peaks’ sec­ond sea­son and the pro­duc­tion of the Twin Peaks movie Fire Walk with Me. Out of those ses­sions came a quan­ti­ty of music that Lynch describes as “sort of like jet-­fu­eled jazz in a weird way… but it’s all based on sto­ries.” Two of those tracks, “A Real Indi­ca­tion” and “The Black Dog Runs at Night,” appeared on the sound­track of the movie, and two oth­ers, “Frank 2000” and “Sum­mer Night Noise,” (as well as the instru­men­tal mix of anoth­er, “Log­ic and Com­mon Sense”) fea­ture in Twin Peaks: The Return, which aired on Show­time last year. More con­nec­tions to Lynch’s oth­er work sur­face in “Wood­cut­ters From Fiery Ships,” begin­ning with its title, which adorned a Lynch-themed, seem­ing­ly nev­er-devel­oped CD-ROM game twen­ty years ago.

Much of the Lynchi­an imagery that fills the song — talk-sung by Badala­men­ti him­self, who, says the Band­camp page, sum­moned “such a vio­lent laugh­ter­-fueled excite­ment from Lynch that he lit­er­al­ly induced a her­nia” — may also sound famil­iar. A char­ac­ter called Pete “saw the girl next door take off her clothes last night and walk through her house nude.” At a din­er, “he heard a man say that the doc­tors had cut him down his neck and into his chest.” A “grey man with big ears lit a big cig­ar” and “smoke drift­ed over Pete’s apple pie.” Badala­men­ti at one point declares that “things aren’t mak­ing sense. For instance, why is that boy bleed­ing from the mouth?” True fans will rec­og­nize that line as the title of one of Lynch’s paint­ings. And so the grand Lynchi­an project con­tin­ues, some­how get­ting both weird­er and more coher­ent all the time.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ange­lo Badala­men­ti Reveals How He and David Lynch Com­posed the Twin Peaks‘ “Love Theme”

Hear the Music of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Played by the Dan­ish Nation­al Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra

Hear the Music of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Played by the Exper­i­men­tal Band, Xiu Xiu: A Free Stream of Their New Album

David Lynch’s Music Videos: Nine Inch Nails, Moby, Chris Isaak & More

David Lynch’s New ‘Crazy Clown Time’ Video: Intense Psy­chot­ic Back­yard Crazi­ness (NSFW)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Download Classic Japanese Wave and Ripple Designs: A Go-to Guide for Japanese Artists from 1903

in Art, Books, Design, History | September 18th, 2018

Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese art may please so many of us, even those of us with lit­tle inter­est in Japan itself, because of the way it inhab­its the realm between rep­re­sen­ta­tion and abstrac­tion. But then, it does­n’t just inhab­it that realm: it has set­tled those bor­der­lands, made them its own, for much longer than most cul­tures have been doing any­thing at all. The space between art, strict­ly defined, and what we now call design has also seen few achieve­ments quite so impres­sive as those made in Japan, going all the way back to the rope mark­ings on the clay ves­sels used by the islands’ Jōmon peo­ple in the 11th cen­tu­ry BC.

Those ancient rope-on-clay mark­ings can eas­i­ly look like pre­de­ces­sors of the “wave pat­terns” still seen in Japan­ese art and design today. Since time almost immemo­r­i­al they have appeared on “swords (both blades and han­dles) and asso­ci­at­ed para­pher­na­lia (known as ‘sword fur­ni­ture’), as well as lac­quer­ware, Net­suke, reli­gious objects, and a host of oth­er items.”

So says the Pub­lic Domain Review, which has fea­tured a series of three books full of ele­gant wave and rip­ple designs orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in 1903 and now avail­able to down­load free at the Inter­net Archive (vol­ume one, vol­ume two, vol­ume three).

Called Hamon­shū, the books were pro­duced by the artist Mori Yuzan, “about whom not a lot is known,” adds the Pub­lic Domain review, “apart from that he hailed from Kyoto, worked in the Nihon­ga style” — or the “Japan­ese paint­ing” style of Japan­ese paint­ing, which emerged dur­ing the Mei­ji peri­od, a time of rapid West­ern­iza­tion in Japan.

He “died in 1917. The works would have act­ed as a kind of go-to guide for Japan­ese crafts­men look­ing to adorn their wares with wave and rip­ple pat­terns.” Though they do con­tain text, they require no knowl­edge of the Japan­ese lan­guage to appre­ci­ate the many illus­tra­tions they present.

Tak­en togeth­er, Mori’s books offer a com­plete spec­trum from tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese-style rep­re­sen­ta­tion — espe­cial­ly of land, water, moun­tains, sky, and oth­er nat­ur­al ele­ments — to a taste of the infi­nite vari­ety of abstract pat­terns that result. Such imagery remains preva­lent in Japan more than a cen­tu­ry after the pub­li­ca­tion of Hamon­shū, as any vis­i­tor to Japan today will see.

But now that the Inter­net Archive has made the books freely avail­able online (vol­ume one, vol­ume two, vol­ume three), they’ll sure­ly inspire work not just between rep­re­sen­ta­tion and abstrac­tion as well as between art and design, but between Japan­ese aes­thet­ics and those of every oth­er cul­ture in the world as well.

via Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Japan­ese Wood­work­ing Mas­ters Cre­ate Ele­gant & Elab­o­rate Geo­met­ric Pat­terns with Wood

Mes­mer­iz­ing GIFs Illus­trate the Art of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Wood Join­ery — All Done With­out Screws, Nails, or Glue

Down­load 2,500 Beau­ti­ful Wood­block Prints and Draw­ings by Japan­ese Mas­ters (1600–1915)

1,000+ His­toric Japan­ese Illus­trat­ed Books Dig­i­tized & Put Online by the Smith­son­ian: From the Edo & Meji Eras (1600–1912)

The Art of Col­lo­type: See a Near Extinct Print­ing Tech­nique, as Lov­ing­ly Prac­ticed by a Japan­ese Mas­ter Crafts­man

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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