Kevin Allison (The State, RISK!) Discusses Confessional Comedy on Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #70

in Comedy, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | November 25th, 2020

Kevin was in the infa­mous, NYU-based sketch com­e­dy group The State which had a show for a sea­son on MTV and seemed like it was going to get picked up by CBS, but no. After sev­er­al years get­ting over this dis­ap­point­ment, Kevin dis­cov­ered a new out­let for his ener­gies: He deliv­ers, curates, and coach­es per­son­al sto­ries (bor­der­ing on too per­son­al, thus the “risk”) for his stage show and pod­cast RISK!

Kevin joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to dis­cuss this idio­syn­crat­ic form: Do the sto­ries have to be fun­ny? Can you change things? What’s the rela­tion to auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal, humor­ous essays a la David Sedaris? What might be too per­son­al or actu­al­ly indi­cat­ing trau­ma to actu­al­ly share on RISK? This seems like some­thing any­one can do, so what’s the role of craft and sto­ry-telling his­to­ry?

Lis­ten to RISK at risk-show.com, and watch many sto­ries on the RISK! YouTube chan­nel. Also: kevinallison.net, thestorystudio.org, and @thekevinallison. Kev­in’s sto­ry about pros­ti­tut­ing him­self is about 14 min­utes into this episode. Hear Kevin on Marc Maron’s WTF! Lis­ten to that audio guide Kevin men­tions, “What Every RISK! Sto­ry­teller Should Know.” Read about the four lies of sto­ry­telling.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This time, the hosts tell (or at least out­line) their own RISK!-like sto­ries, and the result is pre­dictably too per­son­al for our pub­lic feed.

This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

Watch How to Be at Home, a Beautiful Short Animation on the Realities of Social Isolation in 2020

in Animation, Books, Film, Life, Poetry | November 23rd, 2020

I think, as social pri­mates, we want to feel a strong sense of belong­ing either in a rela­tion­ship or to a community—or both. But also intrin­sic to our human­i­ty is a feel­ing that we are tru­ly alone.

—Film­mak­er Andrea Dorf­man, 2010

When they first became friends, poet Tanya Davis and film­mak­er Andrea Dorf­man talked a lot about the plea­sures and hard­ships of being alone. Davis had just gone through a break up, and Dorf­man was just embark­ing on a rela­tion­ship after four years of fly­ing solo.

These con­ver­sa­tions led to a col­lab­o­ra­tion, 2010’s How to Be At Alone (see below), a whim­si­cal videopo­em that com­bines live action and ani­ma­tion to con­sid­er some of soli­tude’s sweet­er aspects, like sit­ting on a bench as sig­nal to the uni­verse that one is avail­able for impromp­tu con­ver­sa­tion with a stranger.

That bench reap­pears in their 2020 fol­low up, How to Be At Home, above. Now it is cor­doned off with black and yel­low cau­tion tape, a famil­iar pub­lic health mea­sure in 2020.

As with the ear­li­er project, a large part of Davis’ pur­pose was to reflect and reas­sure, both her­self, and by exten­sion, oth­ers.

Although she has become a poster child for the joys of soli­tude, she also rel­ish­es human con­tact, and found her­self miss­ing it ter­ri­bly while shel­ter­ing alone in the ear­ly days of the pan­dem­ic. Writ­ing the new poem gave her “an anchor” and a place to put her anx­i­ety.

Dorf­man notes that the project, which was com­mis­sioned by the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da as part of a short film col­lec­tion about Cana­di­ans nav­i­gat­ing life dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, was “essen­tial­ly cat­alyzed by COVID.”

As she embarked on the project, she won­dered if the pan­dem­ic would be over by the time it was com­plete. As she told the CBC’s Tom Pow­er:

There was this feel­ing that this could go away in a month, so this bet­ter be fin­ished soon, so it’s still rel­e­vant. So as an artist, as a film­mak­er, I thought, “I have to crank this out” but there’s no fast and easy way to do ani­ma­tion. It just takes so long and as I got into it and real­ized that this was going to be a marathon, not a sprint, the images just kept com­ing to me and I real­ly just made it up as I went along. I’d go into my stu­dio every day not know­ing what lay ahead and I’d think, “Okay, so, what do we have up next? What’s the next line? And I’d spend maybe a week on a line of the poem, ani­mat­ing it. 

It appears to have been an effec­tive approach.

Dorfman’s paint­ed images rip­ple across the fast turn­ing pages of an old book. The titles change from time to time, and the choic­es seem delib­er­ate—The Lone Star Ranger, Le Secret du Manoir Han­té, a chap­ter in The Bro­ken Halo—“Rose­mary for Remem­brance.”

“It’s almost as though the way the poem is writ­ten there are many chap­ters in the book. (Davis) moves from one sub­ject to anoth­er so com­plete­ly,” Dorf­man told the Uni­ver­si­ty of King’s Col­lege stu­dent paper, The Sig­nal.

In the new work, the absence of oth­er peo­ple proves a much heav­ier bur­den than it does in How To Be Alone.

Davis flirts with many of the first poem’s set­tings, places where a lone indi­vid­ual might have gone to put them­selves in prox­im­i­ty to oth­er humans as recent­ly as Feb­ru­ary 2020:

Pub­lic trans­porta­tion

The gym

A dance club

A descrip­tion from 2010:

The lunch counter, where you will be sur­round­ed by chow-down­ers, employ­ees who only have an hour and their spous­es work across town, and they, like you, will be alone.

Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone.

In 2020, she strug­gles to recre­ate that expe­ri­ence at home, her phone serv­ing as her most vital link to the out­side world, as she scrolls past images of a Black Lives Mat­ter protests and a masked essen­tial work­er:

I miss lunch coun­ters so much I’ve been eat­ing [pick­les and] toast­ed sand­wich­es while hang­ing unabashed­ly with my phone.

See How to Be at Home and the 29 oth­er films that com­prise The Curve, the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da series about life in the era of COVID-19 here.

How to be at Home

By Tanya Davis

If you are, at first, real­ly fuck­ing anx­ious, just wait. It’ll get worse, and then you’ll get the hang of it. Maybe. 

Start with the rea­son­able feel­ings – dis­com­fort, lack of focus, the sad­ness of alone

you can try to do yoga

you can shut off the radio when it gets to you

you can mes­sage your fam­i­ly or your friends or your col­leagues, you’re not sup­posed to leave your home any­way, so it’s safe for you

There’s also the gym

you can’t go there but you could pre­tend to

you could bendy by your­self in your bed­room

And there’s pub­lic trans­porta­tion

prob­a­bly best to avoid it

but there’s prayer and med­i­ta­tion, yes always

employ it

if you have pains in your chest ‘cause your anx­i­ety won’t rest

take a moment, take a breath

Start sim­ple

things you can han­dle based on your inter­ests

your issues and your trig­gers

and your inner logis­tics 

I miss lunch coun­ters so much I’ve been eat­ing [pick­les and] toast­ed sand­wich­es while hang­ing unabashed­ly with my phone

When you are tired, again of still being alone

make your­self a din­ner

but don’t invite any­body over

put some­thing green in it, or maybe orange

chips are fine some­times but they won’t keep you charged 

feed your heart

if peo­ple are your nour­ish­ment, I get you

feel the feel­ings that undo you while you have to keep apart

Watch a movie, in the dark

and pre­tend some­one is with you 

watch all of the cred­its

because you have time, and not much else to do

or watch all of the cred­its to remem­ber 

how many peo­ple come togeth­er

just to tell a sto­ry

just to make a pic­ture move

And then, set your­self up danc­ing

like it’s a club where every­one knows you

and they’re all gonna hold you

all night long

they’re gonna dance around you and with you and on their own

it’s your favourite song 

with the hard­est bass and the cathar­tic drums

your heart pumps along/hard, you belong

you put your hands up to feel it

With the come down comes the weep­ing

those down­cast eyes and feel­ings

the truth is you can’t go danc­ing, not right now

not at any club or par­ty in any town

The heart­break of this astounds you

it joins old aches way down in you

you can vis­it them, but please don’t stay there

Go out­side if you’re able, breathe the air

there are trees for hug­ging

don’t be embar­rassed

it’s your friend, it’s your moth­er, it’s your new crush

lay your cheek against the bark, it’s a liv­ing thing to touch

Sad­ly, leave all bench­es emp­ty

appre­ci­ate the kind­ness in the dis­tance of strangers

as you pine for com­pa­ny and wave at your neigh­bours

savour the depths of your con­ver­sa­tions

the lay­ers uncov­ered

in this strange space and time

Soci­ety is afraid of change

and no one wants to die

not now, from a tiny virus

not lat­er from the world on fire

But death is a truth we all hate to know

we all get to live, and then we all have to go

In the mean­time, we’re sur­round­ed, we’re alone

each a thread woven in the fab­ric, unrav­el­ling in moments though

each a solo enti­ty spin­ning on its axis, for­get­ting that the galaxy includes us all

Here­in our fall

from grace from each oth­er from god what­ev­er, doesn’t mat­ter

the dis­as­ter is that we believe we’re sep­a­rate 

we’re not

As evi­denced by virus­es tak­ing down soci­eties

as proven by the lone­li­ness inher­ent in no gath­er­ings

as pal­pa­ble as the vacan­cy in the space of one per­son hug­ging

If this dis­rup­tion undoes you

if the absence of peo­ple unrav­els you

if touch was the teth­er that held you togeth­er

and now that it’s sev­ered you’re frag­ile too 

lean into lone­li­ness and know you’re not alone in it 

lean into lone­li­ness like it is hold­ing you

like it is a gen­er­ous rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a glar­ing truth

oh, we are con­nect­ed

we for­get this, yet we always knew.

How to Be at Home will be added to the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch 66 Oscar-Nom­i­nat­ed-and-Award-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Shorts Online, Cour­tesy of the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da

Watch “Ryan,” Win­ner of an Oscar and 60 Oth­er Awards

2020: An Iso­la­tion Odyssey–A Short Film Reen­acts the Finale of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, with a COVID-19 Twist

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

Experience the Bob Ross Experience: A New Museum Open in the TV Painter’s Former Studio Home

in Art, Museums, Television | November 11th, 2020

Bob Ross is as renowned for the gen­tle encour­age­ment of his voice as for his speedy tech­nique: indeed, these very qual­i­ties are syn­ony­mous with the name “Bob Ross.” His revival in recent years has as much to do with the de-stress­ing effects of his permed onscreen per­sona as with our awe, iron­ic or oth­er­wise, at his kitschy pic­ture-per­fect land­scapes in under an hour. He’s become as much a saint of pub­lic tele­vi­sion as Mr. Rogers and even more of an inter­net icon.

But unlike most oth­er fan­doms, the devot­ed lovers of Bob Ross have had no place to call their own. They might show up in Bob Ross cos­play at com­ic con. Yet no Bob Ross Con has made the scene. Leave it to Ross’s orig­i­nal Joy of Paint­ing stu­dio to fill the gap with a muse­um ded­i­cat­ed to the paint­ing instruc­tor. The Bob Ross Expe­ri­ence is part of a larg­er cam­pus of build­ings called Min­netrista in Muncie, Indi­ana, found­ed by the Ball fam­i­ly of Ball mason jars. It’s an “immer­sive exhib­it,” fea­tur­ing “orig­i­nal paint­ings and arti­facts” and “inspir­ing vis­i­tors with Bob’s mes­sage of fear­less cre­ativ­i­ty.”

What more could you want from a Bob Ross muse­um? Well, maybe a ful­ly-online expe­ri­ence these days. For now, you’ll have to make the trip to Muncie, where locals pay $8 a tick­et (kids $6, 3 & under are free) and non-res­i­dents shell out $15 ($12 per kid, etc). There may be nowhere else you can see Ross’s hap­py lit­tle trees in per­son. As Ayun Hal­l­i­day wrote here recent­ly, “sales of his work hov­er around zero.” Almost all of his paint­ings, save a few owned by the Smith­son­ian and a few pri­vate indi­vid­u­als, reside in stor­age in North­ern Vir­ginia, where an exhib­it came and went last year.

Ross him­self, who honed his method dur­ing short breaks in the Air Force, hard­ly ever exhib­it­ed in his life­time; he was a made-for-TV painter with a small mer­chan­dis­ing empire to match. Now, fans can make the pil­grim­age to his cre­ative TV home at the Lucius L. Ball house. Swoon over per­son­al relics like his keys and hair pick and, of course, “the artist’s palette knife, easel, and brush­es,” writes Colos­sal. “Many of the arti­facts are free to touch.” A cur­rent exhi­bi­tion at the Expe­ri­ence, “Bob Ross at Home” through August 15, 2021, show­cas­es “a few dozen of the artist’s can­vas­es, many on loan from Muncieans who got the works direct­ly from Ross.”

Not only can you hang out on set and view Ross’s paint­ings and per­son­al effects, but you can also, Art­net reports, “sign up for $70 mas­ter class­es with cer­ti­fied Bob Ross instruc­tors.” That’s $70 more than it costs to watch the mas­ter him­self on YouTube, but if you’ve already made the trip…. One only hopes the instruc­tors can chan­nel what George Buss, vice pres­i­dent of the Expe­ri­ence, calls Ross’s best qual­i­ty, his gen­tle fear­less­ness: “He takes what looks like a mis­take and turns it into some­thing beau­ti­ful.” And that, friends, is the true joy of the Bob Ross expe­ri­ence.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Watch Every Episode of Bob Ross’ The Joy Of Paint­ing Free Online: 403 Episodes Span­ning 31 Sea­sons

What Hap­pened to the 1200 Paint­ings Paint­ed by Bob Ross? The Mys­tery Has Final­ly Been Solved

Watch 13 Come­di­ans Take “The Bob Ross Chal­lenge” & Help Raise Mon­ey for The Leukemia & Lym­phoma Soci­ety

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

The Plastic Bag Store: A Pop Art Installation with a Whimsical But Deadly Serious Environmental Message

in Art, Food & Drink | November 9th, 2020

When COVID-19 explod­ed in New York City last March, it erased every­thing on the cal­en­dar, includ­ing:

All live the­ater…

The city’s fresh­ly imple­ment­ed ban on sin­gle use plas­tic bags…

And The Plas­tic Bag Store, a pop-up instal­la­tion that was prepar­ing to open in Times Square.

The the­aters remain dark, but the ban is back on, as of Octo­ber 19th. The 7‑month pause was has­tened by the pan­dem­ic, but also by an unsuc­cess­ful law­suit brought by flex­i­ble pack­ing man­u­fac­tur­er Poly-Pak Indus­tries.

The Plas­tic Bag Store was allowed to open, too, albeit in an altered for­mat from the hybrid art instal­la­tion-adult pup­pet show cre­ator Robin Fro­hardt has been work­ing on for sev­er­al years.

She has long intend­ed for the project’s New York pre­miere to coin­cide with the ban.

Not because she hoped to get rich sell­ing bags to cit­i­zens accus­tomed to get­ting them free with pur­chase.

There’s noth­ing to buy in this “store.”

It’s a per­for­mance of sorts, but there’s no admis­sion charge.

It’s def­i­nite­ly an edu­ca­tion, and a med­i­ta­tion on how his­to­ry can be doomed to repeat itself, in one way or anoth­er.

The Plas­tic Bag Store just end­ed its sold out 3‑week run, play­ing to crowds of tick­et hold­ers now capped at 12 audi­ence mem­bers per per­for­mance. The live ele­ments have mor­phed into a trio of short films that are pro­ject­ed after tick­et holders—customers if you will—have had a chance to look around.

There’s plen­ty to see.

The Times Square instal­la­tion space has been kit­ted out to resem­ble a roomy bode­ga stocked with pro­duce, baked goods, sushi rolls on plas­tic trays, shrink wrapped meat, and oth­er famil­iar, if slight­ly skewed items.

Rows of 2 liter soda bot­tles with icon­ic red labels are shelved across from the mag­a­zine rack. Tubs of Bag & Jerry’s Mint Plas­tic Chip are in the freez­er case.

The orig­i­nal plan allowed for cus­tomers to han­dle the goods as they want­ed.  Now such inter­ac­tions are pro­hib­it­ed.

Pri­or to March, New York­ers were pret­ty handsy with pro­duce, unabashed­ly press­ing thumbs into avo­ca­dos and hold­ing toma­toes and mel­ons to nos­trils to deter­mine ripeness.

The pan­dem­ic curbed that habit.

No mat­ter. Noth­ing is ripe in the Plas­tic Bag Store, where any item not con­tained in a can or card­board box has been con­struct­ed from the thou­sands of plas­tic bags Fro­hardt has col­lect­ed over the years.

The fac­sim­i­les are shock­ing­ly adroit.

“I hunt plas­tic bags on the streets of New York,” she said in an inter­view with cul­tur­al fun­der Cre­ative Cap­i­tal:

I’m a real con­nois­seur now. There are cer­tain col­ors I’m real­ly attract­ed to. Cer­tain bags are hard­er to find. I def­i­nite­ly look at trash dif­fer­ent­ly than most peo­ple. I’m always look­ing for reds and oranges and greens. Some­times I find a real­ly inter­est­ing col­or that I haven’t seen before, like salmon or laven­der. That’s always excit­ing.

This diver­si­ty of mate­ri­als helps with visu­al verisimil­i­tude, most impres­sive in the pro­duce sec­tion.

The prod­uct labels been rich­ly for­ti­fied with satir­i­cal com­men­tary.

A fam­i­ly sized pack­age of Yucky Shards appeals to chil­dren with sparkles, a rain­bow, and a bright eyed car­toon mas­cot who does­n’t seem to mind the 6‑pack yoke that’s attached itself to its per­son.

Every­thing about the “non-organ­ic, triple-washed Spring Green Mix” from “Earth­bag Farm” looks famil­iar, includ­ing the plas­tic con­tain­er.

Pack­ages of Some­times fem­i­nine pads promise “super pro­tec­tion” that will “lit­er­al­ly last for­ev­er.”

The cup­cakes on dis­play in the bak­ery sec­tion are topped with such fes­tive embell­ish­ments as a “dis­pos­able” lighter and floss­ing pick.

The tone is not scold­ing but rather com­ic, as Fro­hardt uses her spoofs to delight atten­dees into seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion of the “forever­ness” of plas­tic and its envi­ron­men­tal impact:

There is great humor to be found in the pit­falls of cap­i­tal­ism, and I find that humor and satire can be pow­er­ful tools for social crit­i­cism espe­cial­ly with issues that feel too sad and over­whelm­ing to con­front direct­ly.

It’s real­ly easy to turn away from images of tur­tles chok­ing on straws. That stuff comes up in my Insta­gram feed all the time, and I’m like “Whoa! Swipe on past” because it’s too hard to look at. So what I’m try­ing to do is to make some­thing that’s fun to look at, and fun to engage with, so you can think about it. Instead of just say­ing, “That’s fucked up! Ok on to the next thing.”

The Plas­tic Bag Store’s film seg­ments also wield com­e­dy to get their mes­sage across.

From the stiff shad­ow pup­pet Ancient Greeks who are seduced by the self-flat­ter­ing slo­gan of a new prod­uct, Knowl­edge Water, which comes in sin­gle use ves­sels, to the recip­i­ent of a mes­sage in a plas­tic bot­tle, dis­cov­ered so far into the future that he can only admire its crafts­man­ship, hav­ing no clue as to its pur­pose. (Let­ter car­ri­er is his best guess. Even­tu­al­ly, oth­er let­ter car­ri­ers are dis­cov­ered in the freez­ing equa­to­r­i­al ocean, and housed in a muse­um along­side oth­er hilar­i­ous­ly mis­la­beled relics of a long dead civ­i­liza­tion.)

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of the Müt­ter Muse­um and Its Many Anatom­i­cal­ly Pecu­liar Exhibits

The Dis­gust­ing Food Muse­um Curates 80 of the World’s Most Repul­sive Dish­es: Mag­got-Infest­ed Cheese, Putrid Shark & More

The Muse­um of Fail­ure: A New Swedish Muse­um Show­cas­es Harley-David­son Per­fume, Col­gate Beef Lasagne, Google Glass & Oth­er Failed Prod­ucts

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

Neil Young Releases a Never-Before-Heard Version of His 1979 Classic, “Powderfinger”: Stream It Online

in Music | November 6th, 2020

If Neil Young proved any­thing in his feud with Lynyrd Skynyrd (actu­al­ly “more like a spir­it­ed debate between respect­ful friends,” writes Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock), it’s that Cana­di­ans could play south­ern rock just as well as the South­ern Man, an argu­ment more or less also won at the same time by The Band’s Music from Big Pink. Young’s song­writ­ing con­tri­bu­tions to the tra­di­tion are just as well rec­og­nized as “The Weight.” Fore­most among them, we must place “Pow­derfin­ger,” cov­ered by every­one from Band of Hors­es to Cow­boy Junkies (below) to Rust­ed Root to Phish, and which Young sent to Ron­nie Van Zant, who might have record­ed it for the next Skynyrd album had he not died in 1977.

South­ern rock stal­warts Dri­ve-By Truck­ers, who’ve cov­ered “Pow­derfin­ger” fre­quent­ly, often sound like the son­ic equiv­a­lent of the Young-Skynyrd debate (they even wrote a song about it), chan­nel­ing their Alaba­ma roots and Skynyrd obses­sions through the sen­si­tive, sharply observed, char­ac­ter-dri­ven nar­ra­tives Young wrote so well. “Pow­derfin­ger” was penned dur­ing the Zuma era, when Young and Crazy Horse rede­fined psy­che­del­ic Amer­i­cana with bar­room weep­ers like “Don’t Cry No Tears” and “Barstool Blues,” and wan­der­ing gui­tar epics like “Cortez the Killer” and “Dan­ger Bird.”

The com­bi­na­tion of beau­ti­ful­ly loose, sham­bling gui­tars, lop­ing rhythms, and “bizarre and bril­liant” twists on Amer­i­cana themes defined what many con­sid­er to be Young’s great­est peri­od. “Between 1969’s Every­body Knows This is Nowhere and 1978’s Rust Nev­er Sleeps Young reached a lev­el of genius that few song­writ­ers have ever topped,” Rolling Stone writes.

“Pow­derfin­ger” rou­tine­ly tops best-of-Neil-Young lists. Though intend­ed for Zuma, the song did not actu­al­ly appear until four years lat­er, open­ing the elec­tric side of the live clas­sic Rust Nev­er Sleeps. Now we can cel­e­brate the unre­leased ver­sion at the top, record­ed dur­ing the Zuma ses­sions and just post­ed to the Neil Young Archives Insta­gram page.

Not only does “Pow­derfin­ger” show Neil Young and Crazy Horse at their duel­ing gui­tar best; it is a lyri­cal mas­ter­piece of lit­er­ary com­pres­sion, with a nar­ra­tive fans have often strug­gled to piece togeth­er, and have seen as rep­re­sent­ing every­thing from the Civ­il War to Viet­nam. But the gen­er­al inter­pre­ta­tion of the folk-poet­ic vers­es goes some­thing like this, notes Rolling Stone:

It’s about a fam­i­ly of boot­leg­gers (or some oth­er kind of back­woods crim­i­nals) some­where up in the moun­tains. They’ve been through many tragedies, and now the author­i­ties are mov­ing in on them – explain­ing why the approach­ing boat has “num­bers on the side.” The 22-year-old son has been forced to deal with the sit­u­a­tion because “Dad­dy’s gone,” “broth­er’s out hunt­ing in the moun­tains” and “Big John’s been drink­ing since the riv­er took Emmy-Lou.” The young man is stand­ing on the dock with a rifle in his hand when the boat begins fir­ing, so he rais­es the gun to return fire – but it back­fires and blows his head off. 

It’s a cin­e­mat­ic, dark­ly com­ic scene con­veyed with haunt­ing pathos and con­fused urgency. The track will appear on Disc 8, Dume, of the upcom­ing box set Neil Young Archives Vol­ume II, which cov­ers the pro­lif­ic peri­od between 1972 and 1976. “This 1975 ver­sion of the song was pro­duced by Young and David Brig­gs,” Brock Theis­sen writes at Exclaim!, and fea­tures all the orig­i­nal mem­bers of Crazy Horse. You can also stream the unre­leased ear­ly “Pow­derfin­ger” at the Neil Young Archives site. Fur­ther up, see an ani­mat­ed video for an acoustic ver­sion of the clas­sic Neil Young track and hear the orig­i­nal live record­ing from Rust Nev­er Sleeps below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Who Is Neil Young?: A Video Essay Explores the Two Sides of the Ver­sa­tile Musician–Folk Icon and Father of Grunge

Neil Young Per­forms Clas­sic Songs in 1971 Con­cert: “Old Man,” “Heart of Gold” & More

The Time Neil Young Met Charles Man­son, Liked His Music, and Tried to Score Him a Record Deal

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

The Meticulous, Elegant Illustrations of the Nature Observed in England’s Countryside

in Art, Books, Nature | November 5th, 2020

If you hap­pen to have grown up in the Eng­lish coun­try­side, you prob­a­bly retain a cer­tain sen­si­tiv­i­ty to and affin­i­ty for nature. This can express itself in any num­ber of ways, most often by a com­pul­sion to gar­den, no mat­ter how urban the set­ting in which you now live. But Jo Brown has shown how to base a career on it: an artist and illus­tra­tor — and “bird­er wildlif­er mush­roomer,” accord­ing to her Twit­ter bio — she has long kept a “nature jour­nal” doc­u­ment­ing the flo­ra and fau­na encoun­tered in the coun­try­side around her home in Devon.

“At the end of April 2019, Jo post­ed a video of her jour­nal so far on Twit­ter,” says her web site. “It went viral and her fol­low­ers jumped from 9K fol­low­ers to 20K fol­low­ers in two days.” A glance at any giv­en page reveals what so impressed them. “Each page of Brown’s note­book con­tains a pen and col­ored pen­cil draw­ing that begins at the pages’ edges, appear­ing to grow from the cor­ner or across the paper,” writes Colos­sal’s Grace Ebert.

“Some­times cap­tured through close-ups that mim­ic sci­en­tif­ic illus­tra­tions, the del­i­cate ren­der­ings depict the detail of a buff-tailed bumblebee’s fuzzy tor­so and the red ten­drils of a round-leaved sun­dew. Brown notes the com­mon and Latin names for each species and com­mon char­ac­ter­is­tics, in addi­tion to where and when she spot­ted it.”

In oth­er words, the nature jour­nal show­cas­es at once its cre­ator’s keen eye, well-trained hand, and for­mi­da­ble knowl­edge of the nat­ur­al world. It also stands as a prime exam­ple of the art of note­book­ing.

Using to its fullest advan­tage her ruled Mole­sk­ine note­book (the brand of choice for those invest­ed in doing their jot­ting and sketch­ing on the go for a cou­ple of decades now), Brown effec­tive­ly deliv­ers a mas­ter class in the vivid, leg­i­ble, and ele­gant — dare we say organ­ic? — orga­ni­za­tion of both visu­al and tex­tu­al infor­ma­tion in the space of a small page.

You can take a clos­er look at how she does it on her web site as well as her feeds on both Twit­ter and Insta­gram. More recent­ly, her jour­nal has been pub­lished in book form as Secrets of a Devon Wood. Few nature-lovers, per­haps, can equal Jo Brown as an artist, but every­one can enjoy the glo­ri­ous­ly var­ied realm of life that sur­rounds them just as much as she does. “All that’s required,” she says, “is a lit­tle patience and qui­et obser­va­tion.”

via Kot­tke/Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Two Mil­lion Won­drous Nature Illus­tra­tions Put Online by The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library

The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library Makes 150,000 High-Res Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al World Free to Down­load

Ernst Haeckel’s Sub­lime Draw­ings of Flo­ra and Fau­na: The Beau­ti­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Draw­ings That Influ­enced Europe’s Art Nou­veau Move­ment (1889)

New Study: Immers­ing Your­self in Art, Music & Nature Might Reduce Inflam­ma­tion & Increase Life Expectan­cy

Japan­ese Artist Has Drawn Every Meal He’s Eat­en for 32 Years: Behold the Deli­cious Illus­tra­tions of Itsuo Kobayashi

The Sketch­book Project Presents Online 24,000 Sketch­books, Cre­at­ed by Artists from 135 Coun­tries

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

A Glass Floor in a Dublin Grocery Store Lets Shoppers Look Down & Explore Medieval Ruins

in Architecture, History | October 28th, 2020

In South Korea, where I live, many recent build­ings — the new Seoul City Hall, Zaha Hadid’s Dong­dae­mun Design Plaza — have incor­po­rat­ed the cen­tu­ry-upon-cen­tu­ry old ruins dis­cov­ered on their sites. This makes lit­er­al­ly vis­i­ble, often through clear glass floors, the “5,000 years of unbro­ken his­to­ry” about which one often hears boasts in Korea. But nor is Europe his­tor­i­cal­ly impov­er­ished, and there the win­dow-onto-the-past archi­tec­tur­al tech­nique has been applied in even less like­ly places: a new Dublin loca­tion, for instance, of Ger­man chain dis­count super­mar­ket Lidl.

“Archi­tects dis­cov­ered the remains of an 11th-cen­tu­ry house dur­ing the devel­op­ment of the site on Aungi­er Street,” says the video from Irish broad­cast­er RTÉ above. “The sunken-floored struc­ture has been pre­served and is dis­played beneath the glass.” Archae­o­log­i­cal site direc­tor Paul Duffy described the dis­cov­ery as poten­tial­ly hav­ing “func­tioned as many things, as a house or an extra space for the fam­i­ly. It’s a domes­tic struc­ture, so you have to imag­ine that there would have been a sub­urb here of Hiber­no-Norse Dublin­ers, who were effec­tive­ly the ances­tors of the Vikings.”

We’re a long way indeed from James Joyce’s Dublin­ers of 900 years lat­er. But the new Lidl has put more than one for­mer­ly buried era of the city’s past on dis­play: “A sec­ond glass pan­el near the check­out tills allows shop­pers to glimpse an 18th-cen­tu­ry ‘pit trap’ from the stage of the old Aungi­er Street The­atre,” writes Irish Cen­tral’s Shane O’Brien, pit traps being devices “used to bring an actor on stage as if by mag­ic. Anoth­er work­ing area under the build­ing pre­serves “the foun­da­tions of the medieval parish church of St. Peter, which served parish­ioners for more than 600 years between 1050 AD and 1650 AD.”

In the RTÉ video, Dublin City Archae­ol­o­gist Ruth John­son frames this as a chal­lenge to the speed-ori­ent­ed con­struc­tion mod­el — “put up a hoard­ing, exca­vate a site, and then put up a devel­op­ment” — preva­lent dur­ing Ire­land’s recent “Celtic Tiger” peri­od of eco­nom­ic growth. That and oth­er fac­tors have made the built envi­ron­ment of Dublin, a city of many charms, less inter­est­ing than it could be. In his recent book Trans-Europe Express’ chap­ter on Dublin, crit­ic Owen Hather­ley writes that “con­tem­po­rary Irish archi­tec­ture is marked by a strik­ing par­si­mo­ny, a cheap­ness and care­less­ness in con­struc­tion.” Look­ing to the past isn’t always the answer, of course, but in this case Lidl has done well to take it lit­er­al­ly.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mag­nif­i­cent Ancient Roman Mosa­ic Floor Unearthed in Verona, Italy

Explore Metic­u­lous 3D Mod­els of Endan­gered His­tor­i­cal Sites in Google’s “Open Her­itage” Project

See the Expan­sive Ruins of Pom­peii Like You’ve Nev­er Seen Them Before: Through the Eyes of a Drone

Watch Ancient Ruins Get Restored to their Glo­ri­ous Orig­i­nal State with Ani­mat­ed GIFs: The Tem­ple of Jupiter, Lux­or Tem­ple & More

James Joyce’s Dublin Cap­tured in Vin­tage Pho­tos from 1897 to 1904

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Jazz-Zither-Piano-Man Laraaji Discusses His Decades of Meditative Improvisations: A Nakedly Examined Music Podcast Conversation (#134)

in Music, Podcasts | October 26th, 2020

Jazz mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist Edward Lar­ry Gor­don Jr. became Laraa­ji around the same time he start­ed releas­ing med­i­ta­tive zither music in the late 70s and was then dis­cov­ered by Bri­an Eno, who pro­duced “The Dance No. 1” from  Ambi­ent 3: Day of Radi­ance (1980). Laraa­ji has since had around 40 releas­es of large­ly impro­vised music, and this inter­view (below) explores his approach toward impro­vi­sa­tion on numer­ous instru­ments, play­ing “func­tion­al” music intend­ed to aid med­i­ta­tion and reflec­tion, and the evo­lu­tion of Laraa­ji’s unique musi­cal vision.

Each episode of Naked­ly Exam­ined Music fea­tures full-length pre­sen­ta­tions of four record­ings dis­cussed by the artist with your host Mark Lin­sen­may­er. Here we present “Hold on to the Vision” and “Shenan­doah” from Laraa­ji’s lat­est release, Sun Piano (2020), the sin­gle edit of “Intro­spec­tion” from Bring On the Sun (2017), and “All of a Sud­den,” a 1986 vocal tune released on Vision Songs, Vol. 1 (2017). Get more infor­ma­tion at laraaji.blogspot.com.

Want more? Hear all of “The Dance No. 1.” Watch the live TV ver­sion of “All of a Sud­den” we dis­cuss, as well anoth­er episode of Celestrana fea­tur­ing Dr. Love the pup­pet. Watch a sim­i­lar, recent iso­la­tion stream also fea­tur­ing Dr. Love and much more. Lis­ten to the full glo­ry of “Intro­spec­tion” and the trip that is “Sun Gong.” Check out some live gong play­ing. Here’s a remix of “Intro­spec­tion” by Dntel.

Find the archive of song­writer inter­views at nakedlyexaminedmusic.com or get the ad-free feed at patreon.com/nakedlyexaminedmusic. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Naked­ly Exam­ined Music is a pod­cast. Mark Lin­sen­may­er also hosts The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast and Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast, and releas­es music under the name Mark Lint.

The 100 Most Influential Photographs: Watch TIME’s Video Essays on Photos That Changed the World

in Photography | October 19th, 2020

We live in a cul­ture over­sat­u­rat­ed with images. Videos of vio­lence and death cir­cu­late with dis­turb­ing reg­u­lar­i­ty, only rarely ris­ing to the lev­el of mass pub­lic out­rage. Social media and news feeds bom­bard us not only with dis­tress­ing head­lines but with pho­to­graph after photograph–doctored, memed, repeat­ed, then dis­card­ed and for­got­ten. It’s impos­si­ble to do oth­er­wise than to for­get: the sheer vol­ume of visu­al infor­ma­tion most of us take in dai­ly over­whelms the brain’s abil­i­ty to sort and process.

As if insist­ing that we look and real­ly see, the judges of the Pulitzer Prize have giv­en the award for fea­ture pho­tog­ra­phy almost exclu­sive­ly to images of tragedy in recent years. In most cas­es, the con­flicts and dis­as­ters they depict have not gone away, they have only dis­ap­peared from head­line news. Whether we can say that pho­tog­ra­phy is los­ing its pow­er to move and shock us in the over­whelm­ing sea of visu­al noise is a sub­ject for a much longer med­i­ta­tion. But I can think of few recent images com­pa­ra­ble to those in the TIME 100 Pho­tographs series.

Of course the say­ing “time will tell” isn’t just a pun here: we can only know if a pho­to will have his­toric impact in hind­sight, but in near­ly all of the 100 pho­tos featured—which have been giv­en their own mini-doc­u­men­taries—the impact was imme­di­ate and gal­va­niz­ing, inspir­ing action, activism, wide­spread, sor­row, anger, appre­ci­a­tion, or awe. The emo­tion­al res­o­nance, in many cas­es, has only deep­ened over the decades.

The image of Emmett Till’s face, bat­tered into unrec­og­niz­abil­i­ty, has not lost its pow­er to shock and appall one bit. Although the spe­cif­ic con­text may now elude us, its details still mys­te­ri­ous, we can still be moved by Jeff Widener’s pho­to­graph of a defi­ant Chi­nese cit­i­zen fac­ing down the tanks in Tianan­men Square. Alber­to Korda’s 1960 por­trait of Che Gue­var­ra became not only icon­ic but a lit­er­al icon.

What will we see fifty, or 100, years from now, on the oth­er hand, in “Oscars Self­ie” (2014), by Bradley Coop­er? The pho­to seems to me an eeri­ly cheer­ful por­tent from the point-of-view of 2020, just a hand­ful of years lat­er, with its well-groomed, smil­ing, mask-less faces and lack of social dis­tanc­ing. It is an image of a gen­uine­ly sim­pler, or at least a pro­found­ly more obliv­i­ous, time. And it was also just yes­ter­day in the scale of TIME’s list, whose ear­li­est pho­to dates to almost 200 years ago and hap­pens to be the “first known per­ma­nent pho­to­graph.”

TIME itself, once a stan­dard bear­er for pho­to­jour­nal­ism, shows us how much our inter­ac­tion with pho­tog­ra­phy has changed. The so-called “turn to video” may have been most­ly hype—we con­tin­ue to read, lis­ten to pod­casts, and yes, pour over strik­ing pho­tographs obses­sive­ly. But hard­ly any­thing these days, it seems, can pass by with­out a mini-YouTube doc­u­men­tary. We may not need them to be emo­tion­al­ly moved by these pho­tographs, yet tak­en alto­geth­er, these short videos offer “an unprece­dent­ed explo­ration,” writes TIME, of how “each spec­tac­u­lar image… changed the course of his­to­ry.”

Watch all of the 21 short doc­u­men­tary videos cur­rent­ly avail­able at TIME’s YouTube chan­nel, with more, it seems, like­ly to come.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Sto­ry Behind the Icon­ic Pho­to­graph of 11 Con­struc­tion Work­ers Lunch­ing 840 Feet Above New York City (1932)

The First Pho­to­graph Ever Tak­en (1826)

The First Faked Pho­to­graph (1840)

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

What Caused the Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe?: A Brief Investigation into the Poet’s Demise 171 Years Ago Today

in History, Literature | October 7th, 2020

Edgar Allan Poe died 171 years ago today, but we still don’t know why. Of course, we all must meet our end soon­er or lat­er, as the lit­er­ary mas­ter of the macabre would well have under­stood. His incli­na­tion toward the mys­te­ri­ous would have pre­pared him to believe as well in the pow­er of ques­tions that can nev­er be answered. And so, per­haps, Poe would have expect­ed that a death like his own — ear­ly, unex­pect­ed, and of final­ly unde­ter­minable cause — would draw pub­lic fas­ci­na­tion. But could even he have imag­ined it con­tin­u­ing to com­pel gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion of urban-leg­end and Amer­i­can-lore enthu­si­asts, whether or not they’ve read “The Raven” or “The Fall of the House of Ush­er”?

Poe’s end thus makes ide­al mate­r­i­al for Buz­zfeed Unsolved, a video series whose oth­er pop­u­lar episodes include the death of Vin­cent van Gogh, the dis­ap­pear­ance of D.B. Coop­er, and the assas­si­na­tion of John F. Kennedy. In 25 min­utes, “The Macabre Death Of Edgar Allan Poe” sum­ma­rizes the writer’s remark­ably unlucky life and gets into the detail of his equal­ly unlucky death, begin­ning on Sep­tem­ber 27th, 1849, when “Poe left Rich­mond by steam­er, stop­ping the next day in Bal­ti­more. For the next five days, Poe’s where­abouts are unknown.” Then, on Octo­ber 3rd, he was found “deliri­ous, immo­bile, and dressed in shab­by cloth­ing” in “a gut­ter out­side of a pub­lic house that was being used as a polling place.”

“Rap­ping at death’s cham­ber’s door, Poe was tak­en to Wash­ing­ton Col­lege Hos­pi­tal that after­noon.” (The nar­ra­tion works in sev­er­al such ref­er­ences to his writ­ing.) “Assumed to be drunk, the weak and weary Poe was brought to a spe­cial room reserved for patients ill from intox­i­ca­tion.” Alas, “Poe nev­er ful­ly regained con­scious­ness to be able to detail what had hap­pened to him,” and expired on Octo­ber 7th at the age of 40. The hosts exam­ine sev­er­al of the the­o­ries that attempt to explain what hap­pened (nine­teen of which we pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture): did a binge trig­ger his known phys­i­cal intol­er­ance of alco­hol? Did he have a brain tumor? Did he get beat­en up by his fiancée’s angry broth­ers? Was he a vic­tim of “coop­ing”?

Coop­ing, a “vio­lent form of vot­er fraud that was extreme­ly com­mon in Bal­ti­more at that time,” involved rov­ing gangs who “would kid­nap a vic­tim and force him to vote mul­ti­ple times in a vari­ety of dis­guis­es.” This jibes with the loca­tion and state in which Poe was found — and because “vot­ers were often giv­en some alco­hol after vot­ing as a cel­e­bra­tion,” it also explains his appar­ent stu­por. But none of the major the­o­ries actu­al­ly con­tra­dict each oth­er, and thus more than one could be true: “Edgar Allan Poe may very well have been beat­en and kid­napped in a coop­ing scheme, sent into a stu­por with alco­hol after vot­ing, and unable to recov­er due to a brain tumor.” How­ev­er it hap­pened, his death became a final sto­ry as endur­ing as — and even grim­mer than — many of his tales of the grotesque.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mys­tery of Edgar Allan Poe’s Death: 19 The­o­ries on What Caused the Poet’s Demise

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

Famous Edgar Allan Poe Sto­ries Read by Iggy Pop, Jeff Buck­ley, Christo­pher Walken, Mar­i­anne Faith­ful & More

5 Hours of Edgar Allan Poe Sto­ries Read by Vin­cent Price & Basil Rath­bone

Édouard Manet Illus­trates Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” in a French Edi­tion Trans­lat­ed by Stephane Mal­lar­mé (1875)

Down­load The Com­plete Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Macabre Sto­ries as Free eBooks & Audio Books

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.