Hunter S. Thompson Talks with Keith Richards in a Very Memorable and Mumble-Filled Interview (1993)

in Music, Television | February 3rd, 2016

Here’s a vari­a­tion on the par­lor game ques­tion, “what famous per­son would you most like to have din­ner with, and why?” What two famous peo­ple would you like to stick in a room togeth­er for ten min­utes, and why? I imag­ine a fair num­ber of read­ers might think of Hunter S. Thomp­son and Kei­th Richards, and the why is pret­ty obvi­ous. Both impress us, writes Fla­vor­wire, for “hav­ing remained alive” for oh so many years “after all those drugs” and crazed exploits. If Thomp­son was gonzo, Thomp­son plus Richards equals “dou­ble gonzo.”

Well, your wish is grant­ed, in the almost ten-minute video above, in which Thomp­son and Richards have a mum­ble-off, dis­cussing such sub­jects as J. Edgar Hoover’s rein­car­na­tion (he would return as “a fart,” Kei­th says), the Hel­l’s Angels, The Bea­t­les, drugs, blood trans­fu­sions, and that Alta­mont inci­dent.

In the first minute of tape, we have a ram­bling solo intro­duc­tion from Thomp­son, and he assures us that he and Kei­th “have a sense of his­to­ry you don’t.” Hav­ing put the view­er in their place (or the cameraman—more on that anon), Thomp­son prompt­ly segues to the inter­view, which took place at the Ritz Car­leton in Aspen.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, no one has thought to add sub­ti­tles to this bizarre exchange, which has cir­cu­lat­ed on Youtube for some time now. That was where the man who shot the inter­view, Wayne Ewing, first saw the grainy video of footage he shot for a 1993 ABC series called “In Con­cert.” The project was fraught from the begin­ning. The orig­i­nal plan was to have the two meet in New York, then have MTV shoot the inter­view and Ewing shoot the whole scene with a third cam­era “while Kei­th and Hunter emp­tied the mini-bar and chat­ted.” Instead, Thomp­son “came down with a vir­u­lent flu,” and the pro­duc­ers had to lat­er lure Richards to Col­orado.

So remem­bers Ewing in a 2009 intro­duc­tion to notes he took down the day after the March 15th shoot. The jour­nal reveals Thomp­son’s agi­tat­ed state of mind in the week lead­ing up to the shoot, as he lashed out at his staff, at Ewing, and at “col­lege sopho­mores on ski vaca­tions demand­ing auto­graphs… hold­ing out soiled nap­kins with pens for a record of their momen­tary brush with fame.” He’s clear­ly ner­vous about Richards’ arrival, obsess­ing over the state of the local shoot­ing range, and when Ewing sug­gest­ed “goofy ideas for the video with Kei­th,” Thomp­son growled, “it’s not your movie! It’s Kei­th’s!” Ewing’s notes are both amus­ing and a lit­tle dis­tress­ing, giv­en the posi­tion of Thomp­son’s belea­guered assis­tants.

Both of these fig­ures rep­re­sent the epit­o­me of our ten­den­cy to roman­ti­cize writer/­mu­si­cian-addicts, but the effects on those around them don’t gen­er­al­ly make for great sto­ries (just ask their kids). And in Thomp­son’s case espe­cial­ly here, we can see the toll his drink­ing had tak­en on him at this stage in his life. But Richards is sur­pris­ing­ly lucid, as he con­tin­ues to often­times be, remem­ber­ing spe­cif­ic dates and details, and the whole inter­view is an inter­est­ing exer­cise in fol­low­ing the free-asso­cia­tive log­ic of two addled, but still bril­liant and always enter­tain­ing per­son­al­i­ties. No need to say more. Watch the tape.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thomp­son Gets Con­front­ed by The Hell’s Angels (1967)

Hunter S. Thompson’s Har­row­ing, Chem­i­cal-Filled Dai­ly Rou­tine

Chuck Berry Takes Kei­th Richards to School, Shows Him How to Rock (1987)

Hear Demos of Kei­th Richards Singing Lead Vocals on Rolling Stones Clas­sics: “Gimme Shel­ter,” “Wild Hors­es” & More

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

Jacques Derrida on Seinfeld: “Deconstruction Doesn’t Produce Any Sitcom”

in Philosophy, Television | February 2nd, 2016

Jacques Der­ri­da could enjoy a good movie like any­one else. In a 2002 inter­view with TIME, he declared “I have watched The God­fa­ther 10 times. I must watch it when­ev­er it’s on.” Who could­n’t?

Cop­po­la films were one thing. Appar­ent­ly sit­coms quite anoth­er. In anoth­er 2002 inter­view, a jour­nal­ist asked the French philoso­pher whether, in so many words, decon­struc­tion shared any­thing in com­mon with Sein­feld and the ironic/parodic way it looks at the world. This was tak­ing things too far. “Decon­struc­tion, as I under­stand it,” said Der­ri­da, “does­n’t pro­duce any sit­com. If sit­com is this, and peo­ple who watch this think decon­struc­tion is this, the only advice I have to give them is just stop watch­ing sit­com, do your home­work, and read.” The cringe­wor­thy scene orig­i­nal­ly appeared in the doc­u­men­tary, Der­ri­da, direct­ed by Kir­by Dick and Amy Zier­ing Hoff­man.

via Peter B. Kauf­man 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Philoso­pher Jacques Der­ri­da Inter­views Jazz Leg­end Ornette Cole­man: Talk Impro­vi­sa­tion, Lan­guage & Racism (1997)

Teacher Calls Jacques Derrida’s Col­lege Admis­sion Essay on Shake­speare “Quite Incom­pre­hen­si­ble” (1951)

Hear the Writ­ing of French The­o­rists Jacques Der­ri­da, Jean Bau­drillard & Roland Barthes Sung by Poet Ken­neth Gold­smith

130+ Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Discover Europeana Collections, a Portal of 48 Million Free Artworks, Books, Videos, Artifacts & Sounds from Across Europe

in Archives, Art, Maps, Photography | January 27th, 2016

“Where is the wis­dom we have lost in knowl­edge? Where is the knowl­edge we have lost in infor­ma­tion?,” asked T.S. Eliot in lines from his play “The Rock.” His pre­scient descrip­tion of the dawn­ing infor­ma­tion age has inspired data sci­en­tists and their dis­senters for decades. Thir­ty-six years after Eliot’s prophet­ic lament over “End­less inven­tion, end­less exper­i­ment,” futur­ist Alvin Tof­fler described the effects of infor­ma­tion over­load in his book Future Shock, and though many of his pre­dic­tions haven’t aged well, his “prog­no­sis,” writes Fast Com­pa­ny, “was more accu­rate than not.” Among his many “Tof­flerisms” is one I believe Eliot would appre­ci­ate: “The illit­er­ate of the future will not be the per­son who can­not read. It will be the per­son who does not know how to learn.”

Indeed, the expo­nen­tial accu­mu­la­tion of data and infor­ma­tion, and the incred­i­ble amount of ready access would make both men’s heads spin. Inter­net archives grow vaster and vaster, their con­tents an embar­rass­ing rich­ness of the world’s trea­sures, and a per­haps even greater store of its obscu­ri­ties. Each week, it seems, we bring you news of one or two more open access data­bas­es filled with images, texts, films, record­ed music. It can indeed be dizzy­ing. And of all the archives I’ve sur­veyed, used in my own research, and pre­sent­ed to Open Cul­ture read­ers, none has seemed to me vaster than Euro­peana Col­lec­tions, a por­tal of “48,796,394 art­works, arte­facts, books, videos and sounds from across Europe,” sourced from well over 100 insti­tu­tions such as The Euro­pean Library, Europho­to, the Nation­al Library of Fin­land, Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Dublin, Museo Galileo, and many, many more, includ­ing con­tri­bu­tions from the pub­lic at large. Where does one begin?

In such an enor­mous ware­house of cul­tur­al his­to­ry, one could begin any­where and in an instant come across some­thing of inter­est, such as the stun­ning col­lec­tion of Art Nou­veau posters like that fine exam­ple at the top, “Cer­cle Art­s­tique de Schaer­beek,” by Hen­ri Pri­vat-Live­mont (from the Plandiu­ra Col­lec­tion, cour­tesy of Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalynya, Barcelona). One might enter any one of the avail­able inter­ac­tive lessons and cours­es on the his­to­ry of World War I or vis­it some of the many exhibits on the peri­od, with let­ters, diaries, pho­tographs, films, offi­cial doc­u­ments, and war pro­pa­gan­da. One might stop by the vir­tu­al exhib­it, “Pho­tog­ra­phy on a Sil­ver Plate,” a fas­ci­nat­ing his­to­ry of the medi­um from 1839–1860, or “Record­ing and Play­ing Machines,” a his­to­ry of exact­ly what it sounds like, or a gallery of the work of Swiss painter Jean Antoine Linck. All of the arti­facts have source and licens­ing infor­ma­tion clear­ly indi­cat­ed.

The pos­si­bil­i­ties may lit­er­al­ly be end­less, as the col­lec­tion con­tin­ues to expand at a rate far beyond the abil­i­ty of any one per­son, or team of peo­ple, or entire research insti­tute of peo­ple to match. It is easy to feel adrift in such a data­base as this, which stretch­es on like a Bor­ge­sian library, offer­ing room after end­less room of visu­al splen­dor, doc­u­men­ta­tion, and inter­pre­ta­tion. It is also easy to make dis­cov­er­ies, to meet peo­ple, stum­ble upon art, hear music, see pho­tographs, learn his­to­ries you would nev­er have encoun­tered if you knew what you were look­ing for and knew exact­ly how to find it. Eliot warned us—and right­ly so—of the dan­gers of infor­ma­tion over­load. But he neglect­ed, in his puri­tan­i­cal way, to describe the plea­sures, the minor epipha­nies, the hap­py chance occur­rences afford­ed us by the ever-expand­ing sea of infor­ma­tion in which we swim. One can learn to nav­i­gate it, one can drift aim­less­ly, and one can, simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, feel immense­ly over­whelmed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New Archive Makes Avail­able 800,000 Pages Doc­u­ment­ing the His­to­ry of Film, Tele­vi­sion & Radio

Yale Launch­es an Archive of 170,000 Pho­tographs Doc­u­ment­ing the Great Depres­sion

The New York Pub­lic Library Lets You Down­load 180,000 Images in High Res­o­lu­tion: His­toric Pho­tographs, Maps, Let­ters & More

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

David Bowie Sings Impressions of Bruce Springsteen, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Tom Waits & More In Studio Outtakes (1985)

in Comedy, Music | January 22nd, 2016

We knew David Bowie could pret­ty much do it all—glam rock, jazz, funk, Philly soul, cabaret, pop, drum and bass, folk, avant-garde, you name it. In front of the cam­era, he could stretch him­self into the beau­ti­ful but wound­ed alien in The Man Who Fell to Earth, the scary-sexy-cool Gob­lin King of Labyrinth, the mys­ti­cal genius Tes­la in The Pres­tige. Noth­ing he attempt­ed seemed beyond his grasp, includ­ing, as you can hear above, off-the-cuff, most­ly spot-on impres­sions of friends and fel­low singers like Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Tom Waits, and Bruce Spring­steen.

The audio clip you hear comes from out­takes pro­duc­er Mark Saun­ders hap­pened to cap­ture on tape dur­ing the 1985 ses­sions for the Absolute Begin­ners film sound­track (“a bet­ter sound­track than it was a movie!” Saun­ders remarks).

While record­ing a lead vocal, Saun­ders writes, Bowie “broke into the imper­son­ations and I real­ized that these might get erased at some point, so I quick­ly put a cas­sette in and hit ‘record.’” You can read his full rec­ol­lec­tions at The Talk­house in a short essay he wrote to accom­pa­ny the audio—introduced by Zach Stag­gers of indie band the So So Glos, who writes:

Bowie goes through a hand­ful of sung impres­sions, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to, Bruce Spring­steen, Iggy Pop, Tom Waits, Loud Reed and Antho­ny New­ly, who was such a big influ­ence on the icon­ic singer that the imper­son­ation almost sounds like Bowie mim­ic­k­ing him­self. Between takes you can hear Bowie hav­ing fun and going back and forth with the engi­neers. Jokes.

Bowie also does what sounds like Bob Dylan (or Tom Pet­ty, or Marc Bolan as some have spec­u­lat­ed?) in the sec­ond take and a pass­able Neil Young in the last. His Spring­steen, Reed, and Pop are excel­lent (Bowie called the Iggy impres­sion “dif­fi­cult, he’s some­where between all of them.”)  He clos­es the impromp­tu per­for­mance with “That’s it, night night.”

Bowie did indeed have jokes, though any­one who fol­lowed him over the decades knows of his comedic tal­ents, whether play­ing straight man to Ricky Ger­vais’ obnox­ious super­fan or dis­play­ing impec­ca­ble tim­ing in his dead­pan deliv­ery of “Bowie Secrets” from Late Night With Conan O’Brien in 2002.

Despite the kiss-off he gives Ger­vais in their com­e­dy bit, those who knew and worked with Bowie all tes­ti­fy that he nev­er took him­self too seri­ous­ly or, as Saun­ders remem­bers, threw his weight around by “using a big rock star ‘Hey, I’m David Bowie and I want it done my way.” He may have seemed to many like an alien or a god, but he was appar­ent­ly in per­son a pret­ty hum­ble, and very fun­ny, guy.

via Rolling Stone

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Per­forms a Live Acoustic Ver­sion of “Heroes,” with a Bot­tle Cap Strapped to His Shoe, Keep­ing the Beat

David Bowie Gives Grad­u­a­tion Speech At Berklee Col­lege of Music: “Music Has Been My Door­way of Per­cep­tion” (1999)

David Bowie (RIP) Sings “Changes” in His Last Live Per­for­mance, 2006

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

The 20 Most Influential Academic Books of All Time: No Spoilers

in Books | January 21st, 2016

Image by Let Ideas Com­pete, via Flickr Com­mons

Some­times I’ll meet some­one who men­tions hav­ing writ­ten a book, and who then adds, “… well, an aca­d­e­m­ic book, any­way,” as if that did­n’t real­ly count. True, aca­d­e­m­ic books don’t tend to debut at the heights of the best­seller lists amid all the eat­ing, pray­ing, and lov­ing, but some­times light­ning strikes; some­times the sub­ject of the author’s research hap­pens to align with what the pub­lic believes they need to know. Oth­er times, aca­d­e­m­ic books suc­ceed at a slow­er burn, and it takes read­ers gen­er­a­tions to come around to the insights con­tained in them — a less favor­able roy­al­ty sit­u­a­tion for the long-dead writer, but at least they can take some sat­is­fac­tion in the pos­si­bil­i­ty.

His­to­ry has shown, in any case, that aca­d­e­m­ic books can become influ­en­tial. “After a list of the top 20 aca­d­e­m­ic books was pulled togeth­er by expert aca­d­e­m­ic book­sellers, librar­i­ans and pub­lish­ers to mark the inau­gur­al Aca­d­e­m­ic Book Week,” writes The Guardian’s Ali­son Flood, “the pub­lic was asked to vote on what they believed to be the most influ­en­tial.” The short­list of these most impor­tant aca­d­e­m­ic books of all time runs as fol­lows (and you can read many of them free by fol­low­ing the links from our meta list of Free eBooks):

Relat­ed Con­tent:

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

Read 700 Free eBooks Made Avail­able by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia Press

The 10 Great­est Books Ever, Accord­ing to 125 Top Authors (Down­load Them for Free)

28 Impor­tant Philoso­phers List the Books That Influ­enced Them Most Dur­ing Their Col­lege Days

Life-Chang­ing Books: Your Picks

Dar­win: A 1993 Film by Peter Green­away

Darwin’s Per­son­al Library Goes Dig­i­tal: 330 Books Online

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

George Orwell Explains in a Reveal­ing 1944 Let­ter Why He’d Write 1984

The Dai­ly Habits of High­ly Pro­duc­tive Philoso­phers: Niet­zsche, Marx & Immanuel Kant

Philoso­phers Drink­ing Cof­fee: The Exces­sive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard

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.

Nietzsche Lays Out His Philosophy of Education and a Still-Timely Critique of the Modern University (1872)

in Education, Philosophy | January 20th, 2016

In a recent entry in the New York Times’ phi­los­o­phy blog “The Stone,” Robert Frode­man and Adam Brig­gle locate a “momen­tous turn­ing point” in the his­to­ry of phi­los­o­phy: its insti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion in the research uni­ver­si­ty in the late 19th cen­tu­ry. This, they argue, is when phi­los­o­phy lost its way—when it became sub­ject to the dic­tates of the acad­e­my, placed in com­pe­ti­tion with the hard sci­ences, and forced to prove its worth as an instru­ment of prof­it and progress. Well over a hun­dred years after this devel­op­ment, we debate a wider cri­sis in high­er edu­ca­tion, as uni­ver­si­ties (writes Mimi Howard in the Los Ange­les Review of Books) “increas­ing­ly resem­ble glob­al cor­po­ra­tions with their inter­na­tion­al cam­pus­es and multi­bil­lion dol­lar endow­ments. Tuition has sky­rock­et­ed. Debt is astro­nom­i­cal. The class­rooms them­selves are more often run on the backs of pre­car­i­ous adjuncts and grad­u­ate stu­dents than by real pro­fes­sors.”

It’s a cut­throat sys­tem I endured for many years as both an adjunct and grad­u­ate stu­dent, but even before that, in my ear­ly under­grad­u­ate days, I remem­ber well watch­ing pub­lic, then pri­vate, col­leges suc­cumb to demand for lean­er oper­at­ing bud­gets, more encroach­ment by cor­po­rate donors and trustees, and less auton­o­my for edu­ca­tors. Uni­ver­si­ties have become, in a word, high-priced, high-pow­ered voca­tion­al schools where every dis­ci­pline must prove its val­ue on the open mar­ket or risk mas­sive cuts, and where stu­dents are treat­ed, and often demand to be treat­ed, like con­sumers. Expen­sive pri­vate enti­ties like for-prof­it col­leges and cor­po­rate edu­ca­tion­al com­pa­nies thrive in this envi­ron­ment, often promis­ing much but offer­ing lit­tle, and in this envi­ron­ment, phi­los­o­phy and the lib­er­al arts bear a crush­ing bur­den to demon­strate their rel­e­vance and prof­itabil­i­ty.

Howard writes about this sit­u­a­tion in the con­text of her review of Friedrich Niet­zsche’s lit­tle-known, 1872 series of lec­tures, On the Future of Our Edu­ca­tion­al Insti­tu­tions, pub­lished in a new trans­la­tion by Damion Searls with the pithy title Anti-Edu­ca­tion. Niet­zsche, an aca­d­e­m­ic prodi­gy, had become a pro­fes­sor of clas­si­cal philol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Basel at only 24 years of age. By 27, when he wrote his lec­tures, he was already dis­il­lu­sioned with teach­ing and the stric­tures of pro­fes­sion­al acad­e­mia, though he stayed in his appoint­ment until ill­ness forced him to retire in 1878. In the lec­tures, Niet­zsche exco­ri­ates a bour­geois high­er edu­ca­tion sys­tem in terms that could come right out of a crit­i­cal arti­cle on the high­er ed of our day. In a Paris Review essay, his trans­la­tor Searls quotes the surly philoso­pher on what “the state and the mass­es were appar­ent­ly clam­or­ing for”:

as much knowl­edge and edu­ca­tion as possible—leading to the great­est pos­si­ble pro­duc­tion and demand—leading to the great­est hap­pi­ness: that’s the for­mu­la. Here we have Util­i­ty as the goal and pur­pose of edu­ca­tion, or more pre­cise­ly Gain: the high­est pos­si­ble income … Cul­ture is tol­er­at­ed only inso­far as it serves the cause of earn­ing mon­ey. 

Per­haps lit­tle has changed but the scale and the appear­ance of the uni­ver­si­ty. How­ev­er, Niet­zsche did admire the fact that the school sys­tem “as we know it today… takes the Greek and Latin lan­guages seri­ous­ly for years on end.” Stu­dents still received a clas­si­cal edu­ca­tion, which Niet­zsche approv­ing­ly cred­it­ed with at least teach­ing them prop­er dis­ci­pline. And yet, as the cliché has it, a lit­tle knowl­edge is a dan­ger­ous thing; or rather, a lit­tle knowl­edge does not an edu­ca­tion make. Though many pur­sue an edu­ca­tion, few peo­ple actu­al­ly achieve it, he believed. “No one would strive for edu­ca­tion,” wrote Niet­zsche, “if they knew how unbe­liev­ably small the num­ber of tru­ly edu­cat­ed peo­ple actu­al­ly was, or ever could be.” For Niet­zsche, the uni­ver­si­ty was a scam, trick­ing “a great mass of peo­ple… into going against their nature and pur­su­ing an edu­ca­tion” they could nev­er tru­ly achieve or appre­ci­ate.

While it’s true that Niet­zsche’s cri­tiques are dri­ven in part by his own cul­tur­al elit­ism, it’s also true that he seeks in his lec­tures to define edu­ca­tion in entire­ly dif­fer­ent terms than the util­i­tar­i­an “state and masses”—terms more in line with clas­si­cal ideals as well as with the Ger­man con­cept of Bil­dung, the term for edu­ca­tion that also means, writes Searls, “the process of form­ing the most desir­able self, as well as the end point of the process.” It’s a res­o­nance that the Eng­lish word has lost, though its Latin roots—e duc­ere, “to lead out of” or away from the com­mon and conventional—still retain some of this sense. Bil­dung, Searls goes on, “means enter­ing the realm of the ful­ly formed: true cul­ture is the cul­mi­na­tion of an edu­ca­tion, and true edu­ca­tion trans­mits and cre­ates cul­ture.”

Niet­zsche the philol­o­gist took the rich valence of Bil­dung very seri­ous­ly. In the years after pen­ning his lec­tures on the edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem, he com­plet­ed the essays that would become Untime­ly Med­i­ta­tions (includ­ing one of his most famous, “On the Use and Abuse of His­to­ry for Life”). Among those essays was “Schopen­hauer as Edu­ca­tor,” in which Niet­zsche calls the gloomy philoso­pher Arthur Schopen­hauer his “true edu­ca­tor.” How­ev­er, writes Peter Fitzsi­mons, the “image” of Schopen­hauer “is more a metaphor for Niet­zsche’s own self-educa­tive process.” For Niet­zsche, the process of a true edu­ca­tion con­sists not in rote mem­o­riza­tion, or in attain­ing cul­tur­al sig­ni­fiers con­sis­tent with one’s class or ambi­tions, or in learn­ing a set of prac­ti­cal skills with which to make mon­ey. It is, Fitzsi­mons observes, “rather an exhor­ta­tion to break free from con­ven­tion­al­i­ty, to be respon­si­ble for cre­at­ing our own exis­tence, and to over­come the iner­tia of tra­di­tion and custom”—or what Niet­zsche calls the uni­ver­sal con­di­tion of “sloth.” In “Schopen­hauer as Edu­ca­tor,” Niet­zsche defines the role of the edu­ca­tor and expli­cates the pur­pose of learn­ing in delib­er­ate­ly Pla­ton­ic terms:

…for your true nature lies, not con­cealed deep with­in you, but immea­sur­ably high above you, or at least above that which you usu­al­ly take your­self to be. Your true edu­ca­tors and for­ma­tive teach­ers reveal to you what the true basic mate­r­i­al of your being is, some­thing in itself ined­u­ca­ble and in any case dif­fi­cult of access, bound and paral­ysed: your edu­ca­tors can be only your lib­er­a­tors.

As in Pla­to’s notion of innate knowl­edge, or anam­ne­sis, Niet­zsche believed that edu­ca­tion con­sists main­ly of a clear­ing away of “the weeds and rub­bish and ver­min” that attack and obscure “the real ground­work and import of thy being.” This kind of edu­ca­tion, of course, can­not be for­mal­ized with­in our present insti­tu­tions, can­not be mar­ket­ed to a mass audi­ence, and can­not serve the inter­ests of the state and the mar­ket. Hence it can­not be obtained by sim­ply pro­gress­ing through a sys­tem of grades and degrees, though one can use such sys­tems to obtain access to the lib­er­a­to­ry mate­ri­als one pre­sum­ably needs to real­ize one’s “true nature.”

For Niet­zsche, in his exam­ple of Schopen­hauer, achiev­ing a true edu­ca­tion is an enter­prise fraught with “three dangers”—those of iso­la­tion, of crip­pling doubt, and of the pain of con­fronting one’s lim­i­ta­tions. These dan­gers “threat­en us all,” but most peo­ple, Niet­zsche thinks, lack the for­ti­tude and vig­or to tru­ly brave and con­quer them. Those who acquire Bil­dung, or cul­ture, those who real­ize their “true selves,” he con­cludes “must prove by their own deed that the love of truth has itself awe and pow­er,” though “the dig­ni­ty of phi­los­o­phy is trod­den in the mire,” and one will like­ly receive lit­tle respite, rec­om­pense, or recog­ni­tion for their labors.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dig­i­tal Niet­zsche: Down­load Nietzsche’s Major Works as Free eBooks

What is the Good Life? Pla­to, Aris­to­tle, Niet­zsche, & Kant’s Ideas in 4 Ani­mat­ed Videos

Down­load Wal­ter Kaufmann’s Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard, Sartre & Mod­ern Thought (1960)

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

How a Good Night’s Sleep — and a Bad Night’s Sleep — Can Enhance Your Creativity

in Creativity, Health, Neuroscience, Psychology | December 29th, 2015

Cre­ative Com­mons image, “Sleep,” by Masha Kras­no­va-Shabae­va

You decide you need some med­ical advice, so you take to the inter­net. Whoops! There’s your first mis­take. Now you are bom­bard­ed with con­tra­dic­to­ry opin­ions from ques­tion­able sources and you begin to devel­op symp­toms you nev­er knew exist­ed. It’s all down­hill from there. So I’ll say this upfront: I have no med­ical qual­i­fi­ca­tions autho­riz­ing me to dis­pense infor­ma­tion about sleep dis­or­ders. The only advice I’d ven­ture, should you have such a prob­lem, is to go see a doc­tor. It might help, or not. I can cer­tain­ly sym­pa­thize. I am a chron­ic insom­ni­ac.

The down­side to this con­di­tion is obvi­ous. I nev­er get enough sleep. When­ev­er I con­sult the inter­net about this, I learn that it’s prob­a­bly very dire and that I may lose my mind or die young(ish). The upside—which I learned to mas­ter after years of try­ing and fail­ing to sleep like nor­mal people—is that the nights are qui­et and peace­ful, and thus a fer­tile time cre­ative­ly.

Med­ical issues aside, what do we know about sleep, insom­nia, and cre­ativ­i­ty? Let us wade into the fray, with the pro­vi­so that we will like­ly reach few con­clu­sions and may have to fall back on our own expe­ri­ence to guide us. In sur­vey­ing this sub­ject, I was pleased to have my expe­ri­ence val­i­dat­ed by an arti­cle in Fast Com­pa­ny. Well, not pleased, exact­ly, as the author, Jane Porter, cites a study in Sci­ence that links a lack of sleep to Alzheimer’s and the accu­mu­la­tion of “poten­tial­ly neu­ro­tox­ic waste prod­ucts.”

And yet, in praise of sleep­less­ness, Porter also rec­om­mends turn­ing insom­nia into a “pro­duc­tiv­i­ty tool,” nam­ing famous insom­ni­acs like Mar­garet Thatch­er, Bill Clin­ton, Charles Dick­ens, Mar­cel Proust, and Madon­na (not all of whom I’d like to emu­late). She then quotes psy­chol­o­gist Tomas Chamor­ro-Pre­muz­ic of Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don, who made the dubi­ous-sound­ing claim in Psy­chol­o­gy Today that “insom­nia is to excep­tion­al achieve­ment what men­tal ill­ness is to cre­ativ­i­ty.” Every­thing about this anal­o­gy sounds sus­pect to me.

But there are more sub­stan­tive views on the mat­ter. Anoth­er study, pub­lished in Cre­ativ­i­ty Research Jour­nal, sug­gests insom­nia may be a symp­tom of “notable cre­ative poten­tial,” though the authors only go as far as say­ing the two phe­nom­e­non are “asso­ci­at­ed.” The arrow of causal­i­ty may point in either direc­tion. Per­haps the most prag­mat­ic view on the sub­ject comes from Michael Perlis, psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, who says, “What is insom­nia, but the gift of more time?”

Den­nis Dra­belle at The Wash­ing­ton Post, also an insom­ni­ac, refers to a recent study (as of 2007) from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Can­ter­bury that sug­gests “insom­nia and orig­i­nal­i­ty may go hand in hand.” He also points out that the notion of sleep­less­ness as pro­duc­tive, though “coun­ter­in­tu­itive,” has plen­ty of prece­dent. Dra­belle men­tions many more famous cas­es, from W.C. Fields to Theodore Roo­sevelt to Franz Kaf­ka. The list could go on and on.

Actor and musi­cian Matt Berry tells The Guardian how, after years of toss­ing and turn­ing, he final­ly har­nessed his sleep­less hours to write and record an album, Music for Insom­ni­acs. “I knew that this was dead time,” says Berry, “and I could be doing some­thing instead of sit­ting wor­ry­ing about not being asleep.” Anoth­er musi­cian, Dave Bay­ley of band Glass Ani­mals, “owes his career in music to insom­nia,” The Guardian writes, then notes a phe­nom­e­non sleep researchers call—with some skep­ti­cism—“cre­ative insom­nia.” Oth­er musi­cians like Chris Mar­tin, Moby, Tricky, and King Krule have all suf­fered the con­di­tion and turned it to good account.

The Guardian also notes that each of these poor souls has found “sleep­less nights inspir­ing as well as tor­ment­ing.” Insom­nia is not, in fact a gift or tal­ent, but a painful con­di­tion that Porter and Dra­belle both acknowl­edge can be asso­ci­at­ed with depres­sion, addic­tion, and oth­er seri­ous med­ical con­di­tions. One might make good use of the time—but per­haps only for a time. A site called Sleep­dex—-which offers “resources for bet­ter sleep”—puts it this way:

Occa­sion­al insom­nia appears to help some peo­ple pro­duce new art and work, but is a detri­ment to oth­ers. It is per­haps true that more peo­ple find it a detri­ment than find it use­ful. Long-term insom­nia and the accom­pa­ny­ing sleep debt are almost sure­ly neg­a­tive for cre­ativ­i­ty.

This brings us to the sub­ject of sleep—good, rest­ful sleep—and its rela­tion­ship to cre­ativ­i­ty. Sleep­dex cites sev­er­al research stud­ies from Swiss and Ital­ian uni­ver­si­ties, UC San Diego, and UC Davis. The gen­er­al con­clu­sion is that REM sleep—that peri­od dur­ing which dreams “are the most nar­ra­tive­ly coher­ent of any dur­ing the night”—is also an impor­tant stim­u­lus for cre­ativ­i­ty. There are the numer­ous anec­dotes from artists like Sal­vador Dali, Paul McCart­ney, and count­less oth­ers about famous works of art tak­ing shape in dream states (Kei­th Richards says he heard the riff from “Sat­is­fac­tion” in a dream).

And there are the exper­i­men­tal data, pur­port­ed­ly con­firm­ing that REM sleep enhances “cre­ative prob­lem solv­ing.” Euro­pean sci­en­tists have found that peo­ple were more like­ly to have cre­ative insights after a long peri­od of rest­ful sleep, when the right brain gets a boost. Like­wise, Tom Stafford at the BBC describes the “post-sleep, dream­like men­tal state—known as sleep iner­tia or the hypnopom­pic state” that infus­es our “wak­ing, direct­ed thoughts with a dust­ing of dream­world mag­ic.” It isn’t that insom­ni­acs don’t expe­ri­ence this, of course, but we have less of it, as peri­ods of REM sleep can be short­er and often inter­rupt­ed by the need to scram­ble out of bed and get to work or get the kids to school not long after hit­ting the pil­low.

Stafford points us toward a UC Berke­ley study (appar­ent­ly the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia has some sort of monop­oly on sleep research) “that helps illus­trate the pow­er of sleep to fos­ter unusu­al con­nec­tions, or ‘remote asso­ciates’ as psy­chol­o­gists call them.” Like near­ly all of the sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­ture on sleep, this study express­es lit­tle doubt about the impor­tance of sleep to mem­o­ry func­tion and prob­lem solv­ing. Big Think col­lects sev­er­al more stud­ies that con­firm the find­ings.

On the whole, when it comes to the links between sleep—or sleeplessness—and cre­ativ­i­ty, the data and the sto­ries point in dif­fer­ent direc­tions. This is hard­ly sur­pris­ing giv­en the slip­per­i­ness of that thing we call “cre­ativ­i­ty.” Like “love” it’s an abstract qual­i­ty every­one wants and no one knows how to make in a lab­o­ra­to­ry. If it’s extra time you’re after—and very qui­et time at that—I can’t rec­om­mend insom­nia enough, though I wouldn’t rec­om­mend it at all as a vol­un­tary exer­cise. If it’s the spe­cial cre­ative insights only avail­able in dream states, well, you’d best get lots of sleep. If you can, that is. Cre­ative insomniacs—like those wan­der­ing in the con­fines of a dream world—know all too well they don’t have much choice in the mat­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why You Do Your Best Think­ing In The Show­er: Cre­ativ­i­ty & the “Incu­ba­tion Peri­od”

The Psy­chol­o­gy of Messi­ness & Cre­ativ­i­ty: Research Shows How a Messy Desk and Cre­ative Work Go Hand in Hand

David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Enhances Our Cre­ativ­i­ty

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

Shot-By-Shot Breakdowns of Spielberg’s Filmmaking in Jaws, Scorsese’s in Cape Fear, and De Palma’s in The Untouchables

in Film | December 22nd, 2015

This past sum­mer, we fea­tured a shot-by-shot break­down of sev­er­al sequences in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris by film­mak­er and video essay­ist Anto­nios Papan­to­niou. Solaris, as well as the rest of Tarkovsky’s oeu­vre, has giv­en and will con­tin­ue to give detail-ori­ent­ed cinephiles a seem­ing­ly infi­nite amount of mate­r­i­al to break down, scru­ti­nize, and explain the genius of.

But what of big Hol­ly­wood films? Do they have noth­ing of inter­est to offer? Papan­to­niou clear­ly does­n’t think so: his oth­er Shot by Shot video essays include looks, and very close looks indeed, at Bri­an De Pal­ma’s The Untouch­ables, Mar­tin Scors­ese’s remake of Cape Fear, and even the moth­er of all block­busters, Steven Spiel­berg’s Jaws.

These three auteurs, all of the same gen­er­a­tion, came up in the 1970s cohort of film­mak­ers who brought about the “New Hol­ly­wood,” a move­ment where­in young direc­tors like Spiel­berg, De Pal­ma, and Scors­ese (as well as Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, George Lucas, Paul Schrad­er, and many oth­ers) changed the rules of clas­si­cal cin­e­ma, intro­duc­ing a host of sub­jects and tech­niques pre­vi­ous­ly unheard of in main­stream Amer­i­can films. Yet they still did make main­stream Amer­i­can films, which required a kind of hybridiza­tion of cut­ting-edge sen­si­bil­i­ties with sil­ver-screen expec­ta­tions. Papan­to­niou specif­i­cal­ly exam­ines how these direc­tors accom­plish it through the kind of shots they cap­ture and how they cut them togeth­er.

Papan­to­niou’s analy­ses iden­ti­fy the visu­al evi­dence of Spiel­berg’s “appetite for non­stop dynam­ic film­mak­ing,” De Pal­ma’s “own unique post-mod­ern style” expressed through tech­niques like point-of-view-shots, and of how “Scors­ese dis­tincts [sic] him­self by adopt­ing more rebel­lious tech­niques.” You might get the sense of a slight awk­ward­ness in the lan­guage here, but the images select­ed speak for them­selves — and besides, if you took film stud­ies class­es in col­lege, you no doubt had at least one or two pro­fes­sors who com­pen­sat­ed for their odd turns of phrase with their rig­or­ous love of cin­e­ma, and from whom you ulti­mate­ly learned a great deal. Video essays like these have increas­ing­ly made it pos­si­ble for any­one, with­out going back to col­lege or even going in the first place, to do that kind of learn­ing — and, whether watch­ing Tarkovsky or Spiel­berg, to nev­er watch them inat­ten­tive­ly again.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris Shot by Shot: A 22-Minute Break­down of the Director’s Film­mak­ing

Spiel­berg Reacts to the 1975 Oscar Nom­i­na­tions: ‘Com­mer­cial Back­lash!’

Watch Steven Spielberg’s Rarely Seen 1968 Film, Amblin’

Mar­tin Scors­ese Makes a List of 85 Films Every Aspir­ing Film­mak­er Needs to See

Revis­it Mar­tin Scorsese’s Hand-Drawn Sto­ry­boards for Taxi Dri­ver

The 10 Hid­den Cuts in Rope (1948), Alfred Hitchcock’s Famous “One-Shot” Fea­ture Film

Chaos Cin­e­ma: A Break­down of How 21st-Cen­tu­ry Action Films Became Inco­her­ent

Learn the Ele­ments of Cin­e­ma: Spielberg’s Long Takes, Scorsese’s Silence & Michael Bay’s Shots

Sig­na­ture Shots from the Films of Stan­ley Kubrick: One-Point Per­spec­tive

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.

Hear Flannery O’Connor’s Short Story, “Revelation,” Read by Legendary Historian & Radio Host, Studs Terkel

in Literature | December 8th, 2015

Images via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Flan­nery O’Connor’s sur­gi­cal satire has the abil­i­ty to strip away the pre­ten­sions of not only those char­ac­ters we are already pre­dis­posed to dis­like, but also those with whom we may sympathize—that is, edu­cat­ed peo­ple with broad­ly human­ist views who think they see right through the self-impor­tant prej­u­dices and provin­cial­ism of peo­ple like Mrs. Hopewell in “Good Coun­try Peo­ple” or Mrs. Chest­ny in “Every­thing that Ris­es Must Con­verge.” Both sto­ries dra­ma­tize gen­er­a­tional ten­sions in the form of mother/child pairs at odds. In the for­mer, super­fi­cial, con­de­scend­ing Mrs. Hopewell and her daugh­ter Joy—a mis­er­able, grad­u­ate-edu­cat­ed amputee who prefers to call her­self Hulga—battle over their con­flict­ing moral philoso­phies, only to both be tak­en in by a devi­ous bump­kin pos­ing as a Bible sales­man.

In the lat­ter story—also the title of O’Connor’s most wide­ly read col­lec­tion, pub­lished posthu­mous­ly in 1965—a moth­er and son pair present us with two kinds of intol­er­ance. Mrs. Chest­ny is an overt big­ot whose self-impor­tance depends on her sense of her­self as a descen­dent of a proud, if decayed, South­ern aris­toc­ra­cy. Julian, her unem­ployed son, a despair­ing recent col­lege-grad with designs of becom­ing a writer but with no real prospects, thinks him­self above his mother’s ugly racism and desires noth­ing more than that she learn her les­son: “The old world is gone,” he says, “You aren’t who you think you are.” When she final­ly gets her come­up­pance at the end of the sto­ry (on the way, com­i­cal­ly, to a “reduc­ing class”) it may have come, to Julian’s dis­may, at the cost of her life. Though we are inclined to sym­pa­thize at first with the bit­ter­ly iron­ic son, as the sto­ry pro­gress­es, the nar­ra­tor reveals his moti­va­tions as hard­ly more ele­vat­ed than his mother’s hate and fear.

These are not char­ac­ters we fall in love with, but we nev­er for­get them either. Through them we come to see that none of us is who we think we are, that the human capac­i­ty for self-decep­tion is bound­less. This is the les­son com­mon to each of O’Connor’s sto­ries, one she offers anew with wit and vari­ety each time, and each time through a kind of rev­e­la­tion. Her sto­ries draw us into points of view that reveal themselves—through sud­den epipha­nies and grad­ual unfoldings—to be inad­e­quate, delud­ed, pro­found­ly lim­it­ed. And though O’Connor’s South­ern Catholic pes­simism has aston­ish­ing­ly uni­ver­sal reach, the region­al ground­ing of her sto­ries and nov­els present us with par­tic­u­lar­ly Amer­i­can ver­sions of the pet­ty mean­ness and con­ceit com­mon to the human species.

In “Rev­e­la­tion,” anoth­er sto­ry from Every­thing Ris­es Must Con­verge—read above by Studs Terkel—O’Con­nor lays bare some par­tic­u­lar­ly Amer­i­can race and class bias­es in the char­ac­ter of Mrs. Turpin, anoth­er old­er South­ern lady whose prej­u­dices are more vicious and spite­ful than both Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Chest­ny put togeth­er. The sto­ry achieves a sub­tle exam­i­na­tion of some very unsub­tle atti­tudes, and the read­ing by Terkel, in his Chica­go-accent­ed radio voice, does it jus­tice indeed. Terkel read the sto­ry on his radio show, The Studs Terkel Pro­gram, in 1965, the year of its pub­li­ca­tion and a lit­tle over a year after O’Con­nor’s death. See a com­plete tran­script of the broad­cast at the Terkel show’s Pop Up Archive. The audio above has been kind­ly enhanced for us by sound design­er Berrak Nil.

As an added treat, hear “Every­thing that Ris­es Must Con­verge” read above by Acad­e­my Award-win­ning actress Estelle Par­sons, who became known in her lat­er years for play­ing an over­bear­ing moth­er like the sto­ry’s Mrs. Chest­ny in the TV sit­com Roseanne. Despite the quaint­ness of O’Con­nor’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tions, we are not far at all from the world she depict­ed, giv­en the stub­born per­sis­tence of human big­otry, self­ish­ness, and blind self-regard. For more clas­sic O’Con­nor, hear the sharp-tongued writer, who died too soon of com­pli­ca­tions from her lupus at age 39, read her sto­ry “A Good Man is Hard to Find” here.

The read­ing above can be found in our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Studs Terkel Inter­views Bob Dylan, Shel Sil­ver­stein, Maya Angelou & More in New Audio Trove

Rare 1959 Audio: Flan­nery O’Connor Reads ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’

Flan­nery O’Connor to Lit Pro­fes­sor: “My Tone Is Not Meant to Be Obnox­ious. I’m in a State of Shock”

Flan­nery O’Connor’s Satir­i­cal Car­toons: 1942–1945

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

Marcel Marceau Mimes the Progression of Human Life, From Birth to Death, in 4 Minutes

in Film, Life, Philosophy, Theatre | December 7th, 2015

What do you think of when you hear the word “mime.”

A cheeky, stripe-shirt­ed, invis­i­ble lad­der-climb­ing pub­lic nui­sance?

The soli­tary prac­ti­tion­er Dustin Hoff­man word­less­ly top­pled in the 1982 film Toot­sie?

Or Mar­cel Marceau?

Ah ha, and what does the name “Mar­cel Marceau” bring to mind?

The cheeky, stripe shirt­ed, but­ter­fly chas­ing Bip (who maybe caus­es you to cringe a lit­tle, despite his creator’s rep­u­ta­tion as a great artist)?

I was sur­prised to learn that he was a for­mer French Resis­tance fight­er, whose first review was print­ed in Stars and Stripes after he accept­ed an Amer­i­can general’s spur of the moment invi­ta­tion to per­form for 3,000 GIs in 1945 Frank­furt.

The film above doc­u­ments a 1965 per­for­mance of his most cel­e­brat­ed piece, Youth, Matu­ri­ty, Old Age, and Death, giv­en at 42, the exact mid­point of his life. In four abstract min­utes, he pro­gress­es through the sev­en ages of man, rely­ing on nuances of gait and pos­ture to con­vey each stage.

He per­formed it count­less times through­out his extra­or­di­nary career, nev­er stray­ing from his own pre­cise­ly ren­dered chore­og­ra­phy. The play­ing area is just a few feet in diam­e­ter.

Observe the 1975 per­for­mance that film­mak­er John Barnes cap­tured for his series Mar­cel Marceau’s Art of Silence, below. Noth­ing left to chance there, from the tim­ing of the small­est abdom­i­nal iso­la­tions to the angle of his head in the final tableau.

Time’s effects may have pro­vid­ed the sub­ject for the piece, but its peren­ni­al­ly lithe author claimed not to con­cern him­self with age, telling the New York Times in 1993 that his focus was on “life-force and cre­ation.”

Lat­er in the same inter­view, he reflect­ed:

When I start­ed, I hunt­ed but­ter­flies. Lat­er, I began to remem­ber the war and I began to dig deep­er, into mis­ery, into soli­tude, into the fight of human souls against robots.

This would seem to sup­port the the­o­ry that matu­ri­ty is a side effect of age.

His alter ego Bip’s lega­cy may be the infer­nal invis­i­ble ropes and glass cages that are a mime’s stock in trade, but dis­till­ing human expe­ri­ence to its purest expres­sion was the basis of Marceau’s silent art.

In a recent appre­ci­a­tion pub­lished in the Paris Review, author Mave Fel­lowes con­sid­ers the many stages of Marceau, from the for­ma­tive effects of child­hood encoun­ters with Char­lie Chap­lin films to his death at 84:

He feels his advanc­ing age and fears that the art of mime will die with him. It’s a tran­si­to­ry, ephemer­al art, he explains, as it exists only in the moment. As an old man, he works hard­er than ever, per­form­ing three hun­dred times a year, teach­ing four hours a day. He is named the UN Ambas­sador for Aging. Five nights a week he smears the white paint over his face, draws in the red bud at the cen­ter of his lips, fol­lows the line of his eye­lid with a black pen­cil. And then takes to the stage, his side­burns frayed, his hair dyed chest­nut and combed for­ward, look­ing like a toupee.

His body is as elas­tic as ever, but the old suit of Bip hangs loose on him now. Beneath the whitened jaw­line is a bag­gy, sinewy neck. With each con­tor­tion of his face, the white paint reveals deep lines. At the end of his show, he folds in a deep bow and the knobs of his spine show above the low cut of Bip’s Bre­ton top.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Édith Piaf’s Mov­ing Per­for­mance of ‘La Vie en Rose’ on French TV, 1954

David Bowie Launch­es His Act­ing Career in the Avant-Garde Play Pier­rot in Turquoise (1967)

Klaus Nomi: The Bril­liant Per­for­mance of a Dying Man

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. In col­lege, she earned a hun­dred dol­lars for appear­ing as a mime before a con­ven­tion of hun­gover glass­ware sales­men, an expe­ri­ence briefly recalled in her mem­oir, Job Hop­per. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday