Download Animals and Ethics 101: Thinking Critically About Animal Rights (Free)

in Books, Philosophy | March 20th, 2017

FYI: Nathan Nobis, a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor at More­house Col­lege in Atlanta, recent­ly pub­lished Ani­mals and Ethics 101: Think­ing Crit­i­cal­ly About Ani­mal Rights. A well-reviewed intro­duc­tion to ani­mal ethics, the text­book (cre­at­ed to accom­pa­ny an online course on the same sub­ject) eval­u­ates the argu­ments for and against var­i­ous uses of ani­mals, includ­ing:

• Is it moral­ly wrong to exper­i­ment on ani­mals? Why or why not?
• Is it moral­ly per­mis­si­ble to eat meat? Why or why not?
• Are we moral­ly oblig­at­ed to pro­vide pets with vet­eri­nary care (and, if so, how much)? Why or why not?

You can buy the paper­back on Ama­zon for $5.99 or Kin­dle for $2.99. But Nobis has also made the text avail­able free online, under a Cre­ative Com­mons license. You can down­load it in mul­ti­ple for­mats here.

Ethics 101: Think­ing Crit­i­cal­ly About Ani­mal Rights will be added to our list of Free Text­books.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Leo Tol­stoy Became a Veg­e­tar­i­an and Jump­start­ed the Veg­e­tar­i­an & Human­i­tar­i­an Move­ments in the 19th Cen­tu­ry

Watch Glass Walls, Paul McCartney’s Case for Going Veg­e­tar­i­an

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

135 Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks

Hear Prince’s Personal Playlist of Party Music: 22 Tracks That Will Bring Any Party to Life

in Music | March 17th, 2017

Many years ago, I took a job as a wed­ding DJ for a few months to knit ends togeth­er in col­lege. What­ev­er you pic­ture about the job of a wed­ding DJ, I can assure you that it’s even less glam­orous than that. But among the late hours, low pay, and end­less schlep­ping lay at least one pearl-like perk—at every func­tion, when the mood began to ebb along with my san­i­ty, I would put on Prince’s “Con­tro­ver­sy,” turn up the speak­ers as loud as I could, and for the next sev­en min­utes, all would be well. (See him play the song in 2010, above, to an audi­ence in Antwerp.)

For the rest of the night and the rest of the week, I’d be lost in mid-nod to that per­fect dis­til­la­tion of funk, the great­est dis­til­la­tion of funk to include the Lord’s Prayer that was ever put to tape.

Prince wrote per­fect par­ty songs—dozens of them, includ­ing the defin­i­tive par­ty song, “1999,” which Mar­tin Schnei­der at Dan­ger­ous Minds calls “a supreme sig­ni­fi­er for a Six­teen Can­dles lev­el blowout cel­e­bra­tion”… for a cer­tain cohort at least.

An entire mix­tape of Prince tunes would do right by any par­ty, but what would the man him­self put on? Sure­ly he didn’t just play his own music, although… why not? We do know he kept it raw and funky for Pais­ley Park gath­er­ings. In a playlist he pro­vid­ed to the TV show The New Girl in 2013 for an episode fea­tur­ing a fic­tion­al Prince par­ty, he opens with the midtem­po stomp of The Sta­ples Singers’ 1974 Stax Record­ing “City in the Sky.” Before long we’re onto the stone cold groove of Ste­vie Wonder’s “High­er Ground” and the dirty funk of Ohio Player’s “Skin Tight” a song about a “bad, bad mis­sus” in “skin tight britch­es.”

The Prince par­ty playlist (avail­able on Spo­ti­fy, YouTube, or stream it all below) has just the right mix of erot­ic, roman­tic, and spiritual—with the psy­che­del­ic funk of Shug­gie Otis thrown in, naturally—some of the most fine­ly-tuned soul the sev­en­ties pro­duced. One of the lat­est record­ings on the playlist, Cha­ka Khan’s “I Was Made to Love Him” came out in 1978, the same year as Prince’s first album, so we can take a fair­ly good guess at what he was lis­ten­ing to when he made his debut. In fact, we might look at the playlist as a snap­shot of the funk-rock-soul genius from Min­neapo­lis’ orig­i­nal inspi­ra­tions, which still res­onate like cos­mic radi­a­tion in his late dig­i­tal-era record­ings.

With the Prince vault opened and hun­dreds of nev­er-before-heard songs set for release, we’ll have years of oppor­tu­ni­ty to play spot-the-influ­ence. In the mean­time, get some peo­ple over and put on the mix above. If you sense a lull, drop “Con­tro­ver­sy” and watch the most awk­ward guests come alive with moves they nev­er knew they had.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read Prince’s First Inter­view, Print­ed in His High School News­pa­per (1976)

Prince (RIP) Per­forms Ear­ly Hits in a 1982 Con­cert: “Con­tro­ver­sy,” “I Wan­na Be Your Lover” & More

The Life of Prince in a 24-Page Com­ic Book: A New Release

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

Slavoj Žižek Expounds on His Hatred of Teaching, Grading Papers, and Particularly Holding Office Hours

in Education | February 21st, 2017

“Those who can, do,” so we often used to hear, “and those who can’t, teach.” Nowa­days the sit­u­a­tion seems to have trans­formed into some­thing more like, “Those who can, do, at least in the occa­sion­al free moments when they don’t have to teach.” At first you just take a teach­ing gig on the side to sup­ple­ment your real career, and before you know it teach­ing has usurped that real career almost entire­ly. We’ve all heard com­plaints from aca­d­e­m­ic friends about the seem­ing­ly unbreak­able cycle of lec­tur­ing, grad­ing, and hold­ing office hours, but how many have put it in terms as stark as Slavoj Žižek does in the inter­view above?

“I hate, I hate, I hate — okay, talks are okay, but I hate giv­ing class­es,” says the Sloven­ian philoso­pher-crit­ic-show­man at a 2014 Uni­ver­si­ty of Cincin­nati Col­lege of Design, Archi­tec­ture, Art and Plan­ning con­fer­ence devot­ed to his work. “I’m proud to say, I did teach a cou­ple of semes­ters here, and all the grad­ing was pure bluff. I even open­ly told the stu­dents. I told them, I remem­ber — at the New School, for exam­ple, in New York, ‘If you don’t give me any of your shit­ty papers, you’ll get an A. If you give me a paper, I may read it and not like it, you can get a low­er grade.’ And it worked — I got no papers.” And so he solves the prob­lem of grad­ing.

But what of office hours? These he calls “the main rea­son I don’t want to teach,” because “stu­dents, they’re like oth­er peo­ple; the major­i­ty are bor­ing idiots, so I can­not imag­ine a worse expe­ri­ence than some idiot comes and starts to ask you ques­tions.” In oth­er coun­tries one might find a way to endure it, but “the prob­lem is, here in Unit­ed States, stu­dents tend to be so open that if you’re kind to them, they even start to ask you per­son­al ques­tions, like pri­vate prob­lems, could you help them, and so on. What should I tell them? ‘I don’t care. Kill your­self. Not my prob­lem.’ ”

These teach­ing expe­ri­ences led Žižek’s to one con­clu­sion: “I like uni­ver­si­ties with­out stu­dents.” But not every­one cheers his pro­nounce­ment: “When­ev­er some­thing like this pops up, I wor­ry that some peo­ple will see it and say, ‘You see? That’s what I’ve been say­ing about those ivory tow­er types all along,’ ” writes one anony­mous aca­d­e­m­ic in response. “Žižek is an out­lier, in terms of both his stature and his atti­tude. Most work­ing aca­d­e­mics can’t get away with being dis­mis­sive of stu­dents, and even if we could, almost all of us would­n’t.”

Slate’s Rebec­ca Schu­man argues that the “real prob­lem with Žižek isn’t that he feels this way or that he says these things aloud. It’s that he does so and peo­ple think it’s hilar­i­ous. It’s that his view is, believe it or not, a com­mon ‘super­star’ view of stu­dents — so com­mon, in fact, that if you work at a research uni­ver­si­ty and actu­al­ly like teach­ing, you should maybe pre­tend you don’t, lest you appear not ‘seri­ous’ enough about your research.” A semi-fre­quent crit­ic of Žižek, most recent­ly of his endorse­ment of Don­ald Trump (“after all, the two thrice-mar­ried, out­spo­ken old­er gen­tle­men do have quite a bit in com­mon, a fact that would sure­ly hor­ri­fy them both”), Schu­man knows that the fault lies nev­er so much with the provo­ca­teur him­self as it does with our ten­den­cy to take his provo­ca­tions at face val­ue.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Slavoj Žižek Answers the Ques­tion “Should We Teach Chil­dren to Believe in San­ta Claus?”

Slavoj Žižek Calls Polit­i­cal Cor­rect­ness a Form of “Mod­ern Total­i­tar­i­an­ism”

Philoso­phers (Includ­ing Slavoj Žižek) and Ethi­cists Answer the Ques­tion: Is It OK to Punch Nazis?

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

How Machiavelli Really Thought We Should Use Power: Two Animated Videos Provide an Introduction

in History, Philosophy, Politics | February 15th, 2017

Nice guys, so they say, fin­ish last. Many of us might instinc­tive­ly label such a world­view “Machi­avel­lian,” par­tial­ly for good rea­son and par­tial­ly not. It stands as a tes­ta­ment to the insights of the Renais­sance-era Flo­ren­tine polit­i­cal philoso­pher Nic­colò Machi­avel­li, expressed with great clar­i­ty and suc­cinct­ness in his books The Prince and the Dis­cours­es on Livy, not just that his name became an adjec­tive, but that it became one that remains in wide use near­ly 500 years after his death. But like oth­er such terms — “Kafkaesque” and “Orwellian” come to mind — its mod­ern usage tends to come detached from its name­sake writer’s orig­i­nal ideas.

So what did Machi­avel­li actu­al­ly have to say to human­i­ty? “Machi­avel­li’s Advice for Nice Guys,” a new ani­mat­ed video from Alain de Bot­ton’s School of Life, high­lights the core insight of his work: “that the wicked tend to win. And they do so because they have a huge advan­tage over the good: they are will­ing to act with the dark­est inge­nu­ity and cun­ning to fur­ther their cause. They are not held back by those rigid oppo­nents of change: prin­ci­ples.

They will be pre­pared to out­right lie, twist facts, threat­en or get vio­lent. They will also – when the sit­u­a­tion demands it – know how to seduc­tive­ly deceive, use charm and hon­eyed words, bedaz­zle and dis­tract. And in this way, they con­quer the world.”

This line of think­ing, put in such stark terms, can make Machi­avel­li seem like an off­putting­ly harsh (if quite intel­li­gent) char­ac­ter. But his writ­ing is more nuanced: he advo­cates not using flat-out lies and vio­lence to achieve one’s ends, but indeed to be nice — just “nev­er to be over­ly devot­ed to act­ing nice­ly,” an atti­tude he thought the West­’s pop­u­lar read­ings of the sto­ry of Jesus of Nazareth too often advo­cat­ed —  while always know­ing “how to bor­row – when need be – every sin­gle trick employed by the most cyn­i­cal, das­tard­ly, unscrupu­lous and nas­ti­est peo­ple who have ever lived.” Nice guys, in short, have no choice but to learn from their ene­mies.

You can learn more about the some­times har­row­ing expe­ri­ences that taught Machi­avel­li all this in the School of Life’s intro­duc­tion to his polit­i­cal the­o­ry just above. He reck­oned, more mem­o­rably than any oth­er, “the price of deal­ing with the world as it is, and not as we feel it should be. The world has con­tin­ued to love and hate Machi­avel­li in equal mea­sure for insist­ing on this uncom­fort­able truth.” Machi­avel­li, as Salman Rushdie put it in a clip we fea­tured a few years ago, lived in a time when Italy’s rul­ing fam­i­lies behaved “in the most ruth­less way, and he wrote this lit­tle trea­tise about not what he would like things to be like, but how pow­er actu­al­ly works, which he observed.” Rushdie calls the neg­a­tive asso­ci­a­tions with the philoso­pher’s name “a clas­sic case of shoot­ing the mes­sen­ger” — some­thing, alas, even the most good-inten­tioned ruler may find him­self forced to do once in a while.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Salman Rushdie: Machiavelli’s Bad Rap

Intro­duc­tion to Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Yale Course

Allan Bloom’s Lec­tures on Machi­avel­li (Boston Col­lege, 1983)

6 Polit­i­cal The­o­rists Intro­duced in Ani­mat­ed “School of Life” Videos: Marx, Smith, Rawls & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

An Introduction to the Life & Thought of Hannah Arendt: Presented by the BBC Radio’s In Our Time

in Philosophy, Politics, Radio | February 8th, 2017

Unset­tling his­tor­i­cal par­al­lels between the new­ly-devel­op­ing world order and the ter­rors that scourged Europe in the 1930s and 40s now seem unde­ni­able to most informed observers of con­tem­po­rary geopol­i­tics. Euro­peans have their own polit­i­cal crises to weath­er, but all eyes cur­rent­ly seem trained on the mil­i­tary behe­moth that is my own coun­try. “These are not nor­mal times,” admits Jane Chong at Law­fare. Though she cri­tiques Nazi com­par­isons as need­less­ly alarmist, she “sees no rea­son for opti­mism.” While ref­er­ences to his­to­ry’s great­est vil­lain abound, we’ve also seen Aus­tralian sci­en­tist Alan Finkel com­pare the U.S. leader to Joseph Stal­in for the sup­pres­sion and cen­sor­ship of envi­ron­men­tal data.

The dev­as­ta­tion Hitler and Stal­in vis­it­ed upon West­ern and East­ern Europe can hard­ly be overstated—and we still find it near­ly impos­si­ble to com­pre­hend. But not soon after the end of World War II, one of the 20th century’s most prob­ing ana­lysts of polit­i­cal thought attempt­ed to do just that.

Han­nah Arendt’s 1951 The Ori­gins of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism remains one of “sev­er­al sem­i­nal works on tyran­ny and oppres­sion that have recent­ly gained pop­u­lar­i­ty among read­ers,” notes Ali­son Gris­wold at Quartz. And Arendt’s 1963 clas­sic Eich­mann in Jerusalem also con­tin­ues to inform the moment, offer­ing a “sober­ing reflec­tion,” writes Maria Popo­va, on what Arendt called “the fear­some, word-and-thought-defy­ing banal­i­ty of evil.”

Arendt’s renewed rel­e­vance recent­ly prompt­ed Melvyn Bragg, host of the excel­lent BBC Radio pro­gram In Our Time, to bring three guest phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sors—Robert Eagle­stone, Fris­bee Sheffield, and Lyn­d­sey Stone­bridge—on air to dis­cuss her ideas and influ­ence. Bragg begins with a brief out­line of Arendt’s biog­ra­phy, then turns to Sheffield, a lec­tur­er at Gir­ton Col­lege, Cam­bridge, for elab­o­ra­tion. They imme­di­ate­ly address one of the most con­tro­ver­sial aspects of Arendt’s young life, her affair with her men­tor, Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger, who joined the Nazi par­ty and remained a true believ­er in its ide­ol­o­gy.

But the con­ver­sa­tion quick­ly moves on from there to encom­pass Arendt’s mul­ti-dimen­sion­al thought. “There’s a great range to her writ­ings,” says Sheffield. A trained clas­si­cist, Arendt wrote her dis­ser­ta­tion on the idea of love in St. Augus­tine. Her most philo­soph­i­cal work, The Human Con­di­tion, drew on clas­si­cal con­cepts to rank human activ­i­ty into a hier­ar­chy of labor, work, and action. She “wrote on a great range of top­ics,” Sheffield notes, though “there is a con­sis­tent inter­est in pol­i­tics and polit­i­cal themes through­out her work.”

Yet Arendt reject­ed the label of polit­i­cal philoso­pher and is her­self “hard to pin down” polit­i­cal­ly. Her 1963 book On Rev­o­lu­tion, cri­tiqued left­ist and Marx­ist thought and praised the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion for its con­sti­tu­tion­al­ism. She was skep­ti­cal of the notion of uni­ver­sal human rights, and her essay On Vio­lence made the argu­ment that vio­lence appears only in the absence of polit­i­cal pow­er, not its ascen­den­cy. As we learn from lis­ten­ing to Bragg’s assem­bled pan­el of guests, Arendt con­sis­tent­ly empha­sized two clas­si­cal con­cepts: the val­ue of a civic and polit­i­cal order and the impor­tance of the “life of the mind,” also the title of a two-vol­ume work pub­lished posthu­mous­ly in 1978.

In Our Time’s short, live­ly con­ver­sa­tion pro­vides an excel­lent intro­duc­tion to Arendt’s life and work. To dive more deeply into the Arendt cor­pus, vis­it Bard College’s Han­nah Arendt Cen­ter for Pol­i­tics and Human­i­ties, browse the Library of Congress’s Han­nah Arendt Papers, and read Lyn­d­sey Stonebridge’s short online essay “Han­nah Arendt’s Refugee His­to­ry.” You’ll also find an exten­sive read­ing list of pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary sources at the In Our Time BBC page.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Han­nah Arendt Explains How Pro­pa­gan­da Uses Lies to Erode All Truth & Moral­i­ty: Insights from The Ori­gins of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism

Han­nah Arendt on “Per­son­al Respon­si­bil­i­ty Under Dic­ta­tor­ship:” Bet­ter to Suf­fer Than Col­lab­o­rate

Han­nah Arendt Dis­cuss­es Phi­los­o­phy, Pol­i­tics & Eich­mann in Rare 1964 TV Inter­view

Han­nah Arendt’s Orig­i­nal Arti­cles on “the Banal­i­ty of Evil” in the New York­er Archive

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

Free Coloring Books from World-Class Libraries & Museums: The Met, New York Public Library, Smithsonian & More

in Art, Coloring Books | February 7th, 2017

Call­ing all col­or­ing book lovers. You can now take part in #Col­or­Our­Col­lec­tions 2017–a cam­paign where muse­ums and libraries world­wide will make avail­able free col­or­ing books, let­ting you col­or art­work from their col­lec­tions and then share it on Twit­ter and oth­er social media plat­forms. When shar­ing, use the hash­tag #Col­or­Our­Col­lec­tions.

Below you can find a col­lec­tion of free col­or­ing books, which you can down­load and con­tin­ue to enjoy. If you see any that we’re miss­ing, please let us know in the com­ments, and we’ll do our best to update the page. To see the free col­or­ing books that were offered up in 2016, click here.

Col­or Our Col­lec­tions is orga­nized by The New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine Library. So please give them thanks.

• New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine
• The New York Botan­i­cal Gar­den Col­or­ing Book
• The New York Pub­lic Library Col­or­ing Book
• Smith­son­ian Libraries Col­or­ing Book
• Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Library Col­or­ing Book
• Chem­i­cal Her­itage Foun­da­tion Col­or­ing Book
• The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Col­or­ing Book
• New­ber­ry Library Col­or­ing Book
• Amer­i­can Book­binders Muse­um Col­or­ing Book
• Auraria Library Col­or­ing Book
• Bib­lio­thèque interuni­ver­si­taire de San­té, Paris Col­or­ing Book
• Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library Col­or­ing Book Part 1
• Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library Col­or­ing Book Part 2
• Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library Col­or­ing Book Part 3
• Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library Col­or­ing Book Part 4
• Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library Col­or­ing Book Part 5
• Bodleian Library at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty
• Brook­lyn Pub­lic Library, Brook­lyn Col­lec­tion Col­or­ing Sheets
• Dit­trick Med­ical His­to­ry Cen­ter Col­or­ing Book
• Dig­i­tal Library@Villanova Uni­ver­si­ty Col­or­ing Books
• Digi­ta Vat­i­cana Col­or­ing Book
• Euro­peana Art Nou­veau Col­or Book
• Euro­peana Colour­ing Book
• Frances Willard Memo­r­i­al Library and Archives Col­or­ing Sheet
• Health Sci­ences Library, Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na at Chapel Hill Col­or­ing Book
• Hunter Col­lege Libraries – City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York Col­or­ing Book
• The Hunt­ing­ton Library, Art Col­lec­tions, and Botan­i­cal Gar­dens
• James Madi­son Uni­ver­si­ty Libraries Col­or­ing Book
• Mar­i­an Library, Uni­ver­si­ty of Day­ton
• Nation­al Library of Med­i­cine Col­or­ing Book
• Nation­al Muse­um Wales Col­or­ing Book
• New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine Famous Women Col­or­ing Sheet
• OHSU His­tor­i­cal Col­lec­tions & Archives Col­or­ing Sheets
• Roy­al Col­lege of Physi­cians
• Spe­cial Col­lec­tions and Archives, Trexler Library, Muh­len­berg Col­lege Col­or­ing Books
• The Rosen­bach Col­or­ing Sheets
• Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­gary Libraries and Cul­tur­al Resources
• Uni­ver­si­ty of Hous­ton Spe­cial Col­lec­tions Col­or­ing Book
• Uni­ver­si­ty of Ore­gon Col­or­ing Book
• Uni­ver­si­ty of Scran­ton Archives and McHugh Spe­cial Col­lec­tions Col­or­ing Book
• Uni­ver­si­ty of Puget Sound, Collins Memo­r­i­al Library, Archives & Spe­cial Col­lec­tions Col­or­ing Book
• Uni­ver­si­ty of Read­ing Muse­ums and Col­lec­tions Col­or­ing Book
• Wan­gen­steen His­tor­i­cal Library of Biol­o­gy and Med­i­cine, Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta Libraries
• Williams Col­lege Libraries Col­or­ing Sheets

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­­sion­al­­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Adult Col­or­ing Book: See the Sub­ver­sive Exec­u­tive Col­or­ing Book From 1961

Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

Read Mar­tin Luther King and The Mont­gomery Sto­ry: The Influ­en­tial 1957 Civ­il Rights Com­ic Book

Dr. Seuss Draws Anti-Japan­ese Car­toons Dur­ing WWII, Then Atones with Hor­ton Hears a Who!

Discover the 1126 Books in John Cage’s Personal Library: Foucault, Joyce, Wittgenstein, Virginia Woolf, Buckminster Fuller & More

in Books, Literature, Music, Philosophy | February 6th, 2017

Image by or Rob Bogaerts/Fotocollectie Ane­fo

To prop­er­ly hon­or your cul­tur­al role mod­els, don’t try to do what they did, or even to think what they thought, but to think how they thought. This goes at least dou­ble for John Cage, the exper­i­men­tal com­pos­er whose inno­v­a­tive works can be, and often are, re-staged (go on, have four min­utes and 33 sec­onds of silence to your­self), but it takes a dif­fer­ent kind of effort alto­geth­er to cul­ti­vate the kind of mind that would come up with them in the first place. As a means of acti­vat­ing your own inner Cage­ness, you could do much worse than read through his per­son­al library, a list of whose books you’ll find at johncage.org.

The vol­umes num­ber 1126 in total, and if you load the library’s main page, it will present you with a list of ten ran­dom­ly select­ed books. (You can get a list of all of them by select­ing the “See Entire Library” option on the left side­bar.)

Hit­ting refresh a few times will give you a sense of the breadth of Cage’s read­ing: Emma Gold­man on anar­chism, Chi­nese poet­ry gath­ered by Ken­neth Rexroth, M. Con­rad Hyers’ Zen and the Com­ic Spir­it (two of Cage’s dri­ving forces if ever I’ve heard them), How to Play Backgam­mon, essays on Ulysses (an inter­est shared with Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe), and even essays on John Cage. Here we’ve assem­bled a list of ten books from Cage’s library of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to the Open Cul­ture read­er:

• Fun­da­men­tals of Music Com­po­si­tion by Arnold Schoen­berg
• Edu­ca­tion Automa­tion: Free­ing the Schol­ar to Return to His Stud­ies by R. Buck­min­ster Fuller
• Ave­line Kushi’s Com­plete Guide to Mac­ro­bi­ot­ic Cook­ing by Ave­line Kushi
• A Skele­ton Key to Finnegans Wake by Joseph Camp­bell and Hen­ry Mor­ton Robin­son
• The Vir­ginia Woolf Poems edit­ed by Jack­son Mac Low
• Alice in Won­der­land & Through the Look­ing Glass by Lewis Car­roll
• Philo­soph­i­cal Inves­ti­ga­tions by Lud­wig Wittgen­stein
• An Intro­duc­tion to Meta­physics by Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger
• The Nar­row Road to the Deep North and Oth­er Trav­el Sketch­es by Mat­suo Basho
• The Poet­ics of Inde­ter­mi­na­cy: Rim­baud to Cage by Mar­jorie Perloff
• Dublin­ers by James Joyce
• The Note­books of Leonar­do Da Vin­ci by Leonard Da Vin­ci
• The Order of Things: An Archae­ol­o­gy of the Human Sci­ences by Michel Fou­cault

To those who know any­thing of Cage’s life and inter­ests, his shelves on healthy eating—on which Din­ing Nat­u­ral­ly in Japan: A Restau­rant Guide to Whole­some Food also appears, as, nat­u­ral­ly giv­en the era and Cage’s acquired north­ern-Cal­i­for­ni­an­ness, The Tas­sa­jara Bread Book—and espe­cial­ly the eat­ing of mush­rooms, come as no sur­prise, nor might his incli­na­tion toward phi­los­o­phy. But we should note what looks like a par­tic­u­lar fas­ci­na­tion with the work of Lud­wig Wittgen­stein, evi­denced by 22 of the books in his library: his best-known works like the Trac­ta­tus Logi­co-Philo­soph­i­cus, but also his let­ters, lec­tures, and note­books, as well as biogra­phies, com­men­taries, and Wittgen­stein and Bud­dhism, which Cage must have con­sid­ered an excit­ing find indeed.

In one of his most quotable quotes, Cage describes col­lege as “two hun­dred peo­ple read­ing the same book. An obvi­ous mis­take. Two hun­dred peo­ple can read two hun­dred books.” And indeed, 1126 peo­ple can read 1126 books—or many more peo­ple can each read a dif­fer­ent sub­set of those books. While you could method­i­cal­ly read your way through Cage’s entire library, and would sure­ly learn a great deal in the process, would­n’t mak­ing use of the unthink­ing guid­ance of the ten-ran­dom-books func­tion, sur­ren­der­ing the direc­tion of this infor­mal edu­ca­tion to the kind of chance that places Paul Bowles next to the com­mon fun­gi of North Amer­i­can and Charles Ives next to Ital­ian futur­ism, be a much more Cagean way of going about it?

(h/t @lrlarson)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Avant-Garde Com­pos­er John Cage’s Sur­pris­ing Mush­room Obses­sion (Which Began with His Pover­ty in the Depres­sion)

The Music of Avant-Garde Com­pos­er John Cage Now Avail­able in a Free Online Archive

John Cage Unbound: A New Dig­i­tal Archive Pre­sent­ed by The New York Pub­lic Library

Jorge Luis Borges Selects 74 Books for Your Per­son­al Library

The 321 Books in David Fos­ter Wallace’s Per­son­al Library: From Blood Merid­i­an to Con­fes­sions of an Unlike­ly Body­builder

A Look Inside Han­nah Arendt’s Per­son­al Library: Down­load Mar­gin­a­lia from 90 Books (Hei­deg­ger, Kant, Marx & More)

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

Darwin’s Per­son­al Library Goes Dig­i­tal: 330 Books Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Pakistani Immigrant Goes to a Led Zeppelin Concert, Gets Inspired to Become a Musician & Then Sells 30 Million Albums

in Life, Music | January 30th, 2017

Salman Ahmad, the gui­tarist who found­ed the acclaimed Sufi rock band Junoon, has sold over 30 mil­lion albums world­wide, per­formed at the Nobel Peace Prize cer­e­mo­ny, and con­tin­ued mak­ing music despite threats from The Tal­iban. He also teach­es cours­es on Mus­lim music and poet­ry at Queens Col­lege of the City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York.

Above, in a video pro­duced by The Moth, the bound­ary-break­ing musi­cian recounts his inspi­ra­tional life sto­ry. Born in Lahore, Pak­istan, he moved to New York at the age of 11. Being the “only over­weight, brown, Mus­lim kid” in school, he lived in rel­a­tive isolation–that is until Dan Spitz (lat­er the gui­tarist of Anthrax) urged him “to get cool.” Cool came in the form of a tick­et to a Led Zep­pelin con­cert at Madi­son Square Gar­den, which kicked off, odd­ly enough, with “Kash­mir.”

I’ll let Ahmad tell the rest of his sto­ry. It’s also a sto­ry about how Amer­i­ca does good (for the world and itself) when it remains open in heart, mind, and law.

To get bet­ter acquaint­ed with Ahmad’s jour­ney, read his recent book, Rock & Roll Jihad: A Mus­lim Rock Star’s Rev­o­lu­tion.

To keep Amer­i­ca open, make a dona­tion to the ACLU.

Relat­ed Con­tent

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play a Delight­ful Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

81-Year-Old Man Walks into a Gui­tar Shop & Starts Play­ing a Sub­lime Solo: Ignore the Tal­ents of the Elder­ly at Your Own Per­il

Pak­istani Orches­tra Plays Enchant­i­ng Ren­di­tion of The Bea­t­les’ “Eleanor Rig­by”

The Theater Dictionary: A Free Video Guide to Theatre Lingo

in English Language, Language Lessons, Theatre | January 27th, 2017

It’s 11 o’clock. Do you know where your show­stop­pers are? Or, more to the point, do you know why a musi­cal-com­e­dy writ­ing team seeks to ori­ent its show­stop­ping num­ber at “eleven o’clock”?

The The­ater Devel­op­ment Fund’s The­atre Dic­tio­nary is an ongo­ing attempt to define and doc­u­ment the­ater terms for both the rab­ble and any bud­ding prac­ti­tion­ers who’ve yet to mas­ter the lin­go.

Each term is accom­pa­nied by a loopy slap­dash skit. Not all of the per­form­ers exhib­it the pedi­gree Veron­i­ca J. Kuehn and Nick Kohn of Avenue Q bring to “Eleven O’Clock Num­ber,” above, but cast­ing admin­is­tra­tors and tick­et booth reps in star­ring roles lend a homey egal­i­tar­i­an­ism, such as when stu­dents from the Yale School of Drama’s Depart­ment of Dra­matur­gy and Dra­mat­ic Crit­i­cism are giv­en free license to explore the ori­gins of “vom.”

(This loosey goosey approach also allows for uncred­it­ed appear­ances by oth­er the­atri­cal tropes—the marathon rehearsals where pop­corn con­sti­tutes lunch and one actor repeat­ed­ly com­plains that his work has been insuf­fi­cient­ly acknowl­edged.)

A “What Does This Word Mean” tab for each term anchors the video silli­ness, pro­vid­ing his­tor­i­cal and anec­do­tal con­text. It’s in keep­ing with the Dictionary’s greater goal of bring­ing the­ater to the peo­ple, let­ting every­one play with the toys.

Some of the def­i­n­i­tions are prac­ti­cal short­hand…

Oth­ers are couched in long­time, pos­si­bly archa­ic the­ater lore…

I’d exer­cise cau­tion with some of this lin­go. Even though many of these terms are born of prac­ti­cal­i­ty, overus­ing them may cause oth­ers to view you as the most obnox­ious of self-declared Triple Threats, the kid in the com­e­dy-tragedy mask sweat­shirt, prone to belt­ing out the entire sound­track of CATS at the slight­est provo­ca­tion. (“Thanks, 5!!!”)

Some of these terms have unex­pect­ed crossover appeal, most recent­ly Ghost Light, above. Know­ing the mean­ing of the term will help you bet­ter appre­ci­ate the pow­er of the Ghost­light Project, a post-elec­tion com­ing togeth­er of the­ater artists and audi­ences in defense and sup­port of vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties.

You can browse the The­ater Dic­tio­nary com­plete glos­sary here or watch the videos on TDF’s Youtube chan­nel.

The The­ater Dictionary’s FAQ con­tains infor­ma­tion on how pro­fes­sion­al the­atre com­pa­nies and orga­ni­za­tions and col­lege-lev­el the­atre pro­grams can apply to con­tribute a video.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

100,000+ Won­der­ful Pieces of The­ater Ephemera Dig­i­tized by The New York Pub­lic Library

Young Orson Welles Directs “Voodoo Mac­beth,” the First Shake­speare Pro­duc­tion With An All-Black Cast: Footage from 1936

Take a “Breath” and Watch Samuel Beckett’s One-Minute Play

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

Read Prince’s First Interview, Printed in His High School Newspaper (1976)

in Music | January 26th, 2017

Two years before Prince released his first album For You and before he began his ascent into the funk-rock-pop pan­theon, he was a very tal­ent­ed, very ambi­tious, and occa­sion­al­ly frus­trat­ed high school senior at Cen­tral High in Min­neapo­lis. That’s where the school news­pa­per got him to sit for an inter­view, more of a char­ac­ter sketch, to talk about his hopes for a musi­cal career. You can read it below.

If Prince was charis­mat­ic enough to be picked up on the high school paper’s radar, he doesn’t let it show in the arti­cle.

Most­ly, he rues the loca­tion of his home town.

“I think it is very hard for a band to make it in this state, even if they’re good. Main­ly because there aren’t any big record com­pa­nies or stu­dios in this state. I real­ly feel that if we would have lived in Los Ange­les or New York or some oth­er big city, we would have got­ten over by now.”

By the ‘80s, of course, he had made Min­neapo­lis the cen­ter of his own musi­cal empire, and Pais­ley Park became his home, com­pound, and music stu­dio, the place where he would even­tu­al­ly pass away.

But he did like high school, accord­ing to him, because the music teach­ers let him do his own thing. Already a mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist, the arti­cle finds Prince just start­ing to explore singing. This might be the most sur­pris­ing part of the piece. Prince’s range and the amount of char­ac­ter (and lit­er­al­ly char­ac­ters, male, female, or a mix) in his songs would lead you to believe that his voice came first.

Maybe some of the humil­i­ty came from his sta­tus in the high school band. The name Grand Cen­tral was inspired by Prince’s obses­sion with Gra­ham Cen­tral Sta­tion, whose bass play­er Lar­ry Gra­ham would lat­er join Prince’s ‘90s band and also con­vert him to become a Jehovah’s Wit­ness. Com­pet­ing for atten­tion was Mor­ris Day and André Cymone, who Prince would write for and pro­duce after he got his record con­tract. It was friend­ly but seri­ous com­pe­ti­tion.

To round out the arti­cle, Prince—who plays by ear—gets asked if he has any advice for fel­low stu­dents: “I advise any­one who wants to learn gui­tar to get a teacher unless they are very musi­cal­ly inclined. One should learn all their scales too. That is very impor­tant.”

You can read the full arti­cle below:

Nel­son Finds It “Hard To Become Known”

“I play with Grand Cen­tral Cor­po­ra­tion. I’ve been play­ing with them for two years,” Prince Nel­son, senior at Cen­tral, said. Prince start­ed play­ing piano at age sev­en and gui­tar when he got out of eighth grade.

Prince was born in Min­neapo­lis. When asked, he said, “I was born here, unfor­tu­nate­ly.” Why? “I think it is very hard for a band to make it in this state, even if they’re good. Main­ly because there aren’t any big record com­pa­nies or stu­dios in this state. I real­ly feel that if we would have lived in Los Ange­les or New York or some oth­er big city, we would have got­ten over by now.”

He likes Cen­tral a great deal, because his music teach­ers let him work on his own. He now is work­ing with Mr. Bick­ham, a music teacher at Cen­tral, but has been work­ing with Mrs. Doep­kes.

He plays sev­er­al instru­ments, such as gui­tar, bass, all key­boards, and drums. He also sings some­times, which he picked up recent­ly. He played sax­o­phone in sev­enth grade but gave it up. He regrets he did. He quit play­ing sax when school end­ed one sum­mer. He nev­er had time to prac­tice sax any­more when he went back to school. He does not play in the school band. Why? “I real­ly don’t have time to make the con­certs.”

Prince has a broth­er that goes to Cen­tral whose name is Duane Nel­son, who is more ath­let­i­cal­ly enthu­si­as­tic. He plays on the bas­ket­ball team and played on the foot­ball team. Duane is also a senior.

Prince plays by ear. “I’ve had about two lessons, but they didn’t help much. I think you’ll always be able to do what your ear tells you, so just think how great you’d be with lessons also,” he said.

“I advise any­one who wants to learn gui­tar to get a teacher unless they are very musi­cal­ly inclined. One should learn all their scales too. That is very impor­tant,” he con­tin­ued.

Prince would also like to say that his band is in the process of record­ing an album con­tain­ing songs they have com­posed. It should be released dur­ing the ear­ly part of the sum­mer.

“Even­tu­al­ly I would like to go to col­lege and start lessons again when I’m much old­er.”

via That Eric Alper

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Prince and Miles Davis’ Rarely-Heard Musi­cal Col­lab­o­ra­tions

Prince Plays Mind-Blow­ing Gui­tar Solos On “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps” and “Amer­i­can Woman”

Prince (RIP) Per­forms Ear­ly Hits in a 1982 Con­cert: “Con­tro­ver­sy,” “I Wan­na Be Your Lover” & More

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