When L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz Series Was Banned for “Depicting Women in Strong Leadership Roles” (1928)

in Books, K-12, Literature, Politics | September 28th, 2016

We’ve reached the final stretch of the most infu­ri­at­ing, unset­tling elec­tion I’ve ever expe­ri­enced. And we find the U.S. so polar­ized  that—as The Wall Street Jour­nal chill­ing­ly demon­strates in their “Blue Feed Red Feed” feature—the left and right seem to live in two entire­ly dif­fer­ent real­i­ties. Still, one would have to work very hard on either side, I think, to deny the role sex­ism has played. One can­di­date, a known and well-doc­u­ment­ed misog­y­nist, leads mil­lions of sup­port­ers call­ing for his opponent’s death, impris­on­ment, and humil­i­a­tion. That oppo­nent, of course, hap­pens to be the first woman to run on a major par­ty tick­et in a gen­er­al elec­tion.

Do many Amer­i­cans still have a prob­lem with accept­ing women as lead­ers? I per­son­al­ly don’t think there’s much of an argu­ment there, and peo­ple who see the ques­tion as redun­dant mar­vel at how long archa­ic atti­tudes about women in pow­er have per­sist­ed. At least these days we can open­ly have the—often high­ly inflamed—conversation about sex­ism in busi­ness, enter­tain­ment, and gov­ern­ment. And we can sup­port a cul­tur­al indus­try thriv­ing on strong female char­ac­ters in fic­tion, film, and tele­vi­sion. Not so much in 1928, when the Chica­go Pub­lic Library banned The Wiz­ard of Oz, writes Kristi­na Rosen­thal at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tul­sa Depart­ment of Spe­cial Col­lec­tions, “argu­ing that the sto­ry was ungod­ly for ‘depict­ing women in strong lead­er­ship roles.’”

First pub­lished in 1900, L. Frank Baum’s fan­ta­sy nov­el ini­ti­at­ed a series of 13 Oz-themed sequels, all of which became immense­ly pop­u­lar after MGM’s 1939 film adap­ta­tion. (You can find them all in text and audio for­mat here.) And yet, “through­out the years the books have been opposed for their pos­i­tive por­tray­als of fem­i­nin­i­ty.” Var­i­ous libraries used sim­i­lar excus­es to ban the books through­out the 50s and 60s. The Detroit pub­lic library banned the Oz books in 1957, stat­ing they had “no val­ue for chil­dren of today.” The ban remained in place until 1972. One Flori­da librar­i­an cir­cu­lat­ed a memo to her col­leagues call­ing the books “unwhole­some,” among oth­er things, and caus­ing a run on local book­stores as chil­dren des­per­ate­ly tried to find them.

Oth­er groups decid­ed that the books pro­mot­ed witch­craft in charges sim­i­lar to those levied at the Har­ry Pot­ter series. In 1986, a group of Fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­t­ian fam­i­lies in Ten­nessee came togeth­er to remove the The Wiz­ard of Oz from their schools’ cur­ricu­lum, protest­ing “the novel’s depic­tion of benev­o­lent witch­es.” They argued, writes Rosen­thal, “that all witch­es are bad, there­fore it is ‘the­o­log­i­cal­ly impos­si­ble ‘for good witch­es to exist.” Many seek­ing to ban the books since have sim­i­lar­ly referred to their pos­i­tive depic­tions of mag­ic and “god­less super­nat­u­ral­ism,” but the Ten­nessee case stands as a land­mark in the Reli­gious Right’s liti­gious cru­sade against the gov­ern­ment. The attor­ney who rep­re­sent­ed plain­tiff Vic­ki Frost called on “every born-again Chris­t­ian to get their chil­dren out of pub­lic schools.”

It’s odd to think of whim­si­cal children’s lit­er­a­ture so seem­ing­ly innocu­ous as The Wiz­ard of Oz books as ter­ri­to­ry in the long cul­ture wars of the 20th cen­tu­ry. But as we are remind­ed every year dur­ing Banned Books Week (Sep­tem­ber 25 − Octo­ber 1, 2016), lit­er­a­ture often arous­es the ire of those incensed by change and dif­fer­ence. Yet their attempts to sup­press cer­tain books have always back­fired, mak­ing the tar­gets of their cen­sor­ship even more pop­u­lar and sought-after. If you’d like to read Baum’s Oz books now, you needn’t con­front a gate­keep­ing librar­i­an; sim­ply head over to our post on the com­plete Wiz­ard of Oz series, with free eBooks and audio books of all 14 female-cen­tric fan­ta­sy clas­sics.

via The Smith­son­ian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

The Com­plete Wiz­ard of Oz Series, Avail­able as Free eBooks and Free Audio Books

North Car­oli­na Coun­ty Cel­e­brates Banned Book Week By Ban­ning Ralph Ellison’s Invis­i­ble Man … Then Revers­ing It

74 Free Banned Books (for Banned Books Week)

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

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

The Art of Making Old-Fashioned, Hand-Printed Books

in Books, Technology | September 26th, 2016

Reports of tra­di­tion­al books’ death are great­ly exag­ger­at­ed, thanks in part to the suc­cess of print-on-demand pub­lish­ing and oth­er dig­i­tal inno­va­tions.

As thrilled as we are about the sur­vival of the print­ed page—it’s a relief to have some­thing to read after Wi-Fi fails dur­ing the zom­bie invasion—the crafts­man­ship that goes into hand-print­ed, hand-bound vol­umes is an almost-lost art.

The Vic­to­ria and Albert Museum’s video, above, doc­u­ments the painstak­ing process, begin­ning with the arrang­ing of met­al type that will result in an octa­vo, the most com­mon type of book.

It’s a qui­et endeav­or, though sure­ly a bit loud­er than the V&A’s silent doc­u­men­ta­tion, an unusu­al choice giv­en a cer­tain seg­ment of the mil­len­ni­al pop­u­lace’s appetite for well-edit­ed arti­sanal craft videos in which music plays a big part.

A well-deployed tune could ele­vate these love­ly visu­als to the realms of the advanced ele­gy.

YouTube user, Krafts­man Sheng, attempts to rem­e­dy the sit­u­a­tion by repro­duc­ing the video (sans attri­bu­tion) with a sound­track of his own choos­ing—pianist Roger Williams’ syrupy 1965 ren­di­tion of “Soft­ly As I Leave You,” below.

An uncon­ven­tion­al choice, to be sure. I should think some­thing baroque would go bet­ter with all of this metic­u­lous fold­ing, cut­ting, and bind­ing.

Though per­haps some­thing a lit­tle more robust could high­light the hard­core hero­ism of the arti­sans toil­ing to keep this ancient art alive. Elec­tric Lit has a round up of great book-inspired punk songs, of which “Time” by Richard Hell and the Voidoids seems par­tic­u­lar­ly apt.

Print­’s not dead!

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Brazil Gives Out Books That Dou­ble as Sub­way Tick­ets, Pro­mot­ing Lit­er­a­cy & Mass Tran­sit at Once

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

Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Presents the 550-Year-Old Guten­berg Bible in Spec­tac­u­lar, High-Res Detail

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.

How Literature Can Improve Mental Health: Take a Free Course Featuring Stephen Fry, Ian McKellen, Melvyn Bragg & More

in Health, Literature, Online Courses | September 19th, 2016

The great 18th cen­tu­ry writer Dr. Samuel John­son, who suf­fered from severe bouts of depres­sion, said “the only end of writ­ing is to enable the read­er bet­ter to enjoy life or bet­ter to endure it.”

So…is it true? Can a poem help you cope with grief? Can a son­net stir your soul to hope?

The Uni­ver­si­ty of War­wick have teamed up with some famous faces, and a team of doc­tors to tack­le these ques­tions and oth­ers like them, in a free online course on Future­Learn.

Poets, writ­ers and actors like Stephen Fry, Ian McK­ellen, Melvyn Bragg, Mark Had­don (The Curi­ous Inci­dent of the Dog in the Night Time), Ben Okri (The Fam­ished Road), Rachel Kel­ly (Black Rain­bow) and oth­ers, will dis­cuss their own work and the work of famous writ­ers like Austen, Shake­speare and Wordsworth — explor­ing how they can impact men­tal health and why works of writ­ing are so often turned to in times of cri­sis.

Here’s Stephen Fry on the plea­sure of poet­ry:

Plus through­out the 6‑week course doc­tors will offer a med­ical per­spec­tive, giv­ing an insight into dif­fer­ent men­tal health con­di­tions.

The course is offered through Future­Learn which means it’s bro­ken into chunks — so you can do it step by step. Future­Learn also fea­tures lots of dis­cus­sion so you can share your ideas with oth­er learn­ers, which often can be as ben­e­fi­cial as the course mate­r­i­al (as one pre­vi­ous learn­er put it “a real­ly won­der­ful expe­ri­ence and I’ve loved the feed­back and com­ments from fel­low course mem­bers”).

Here’s a run­through of what’s on the syl­labus. The course focus­es on six themes:

1. Stress: In poet­ry, the word “stress” refers to the empha­sis of cer­tain syl­la­bles in a poem’s metre. How might the met­ri­cal “stress­es” of poet­ry help us to cope with the men­tal and emo­tion­al stress­es of mod­ern life?
2. Heart­break: Is heart­break a med­ical con­di­tion? What can Sidney’s son­nets and Austen’s Sense and Sen­si­bil­i­ty teach us about suf­fer­ing and recov­er­ing from a bro­ken heart?
3. Bereave­ment: The psy­chol­o­gist Elis­a­beth Kübler-Ross famous­ly pro­posed that there are five stages of grief. How might Shakespeare’s Ham­let and poems by Wordsworth and Hardy help us to think dif­fer­ent­ly about the process of griev­ing?
4. Trau­ma: PTSD or “shell­shock” has long been asso­ci­at­ed with the trau­mat­ic expe­ri­ences of sol­diers in World War 1. How is the con­di­tion depict­ed in war poet­ry of the era? Can poems and plays offer us an insight into oth­er sources of trau­ma, includ­ing mis­car­riage and assault?
5. Depres­sion and Bipo­lar: The writer Rachel Kel­ly sub­ti­tles her mem­oir Black Rain­bow “how words healed me – my jour­ney through depres­sion”. Which texts have peo­ple turned to dur­ing peri­ods of depres­sion, and why? What can we learn from lit­er­a­ture about the links between bipo­lar dis­or­der and cre­ativ­i­ty?
6. Age­ing and Demen­tia: One of the great­est stud­ies of age­ing in Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture is Shakespeare’s King Lear. Is it help­ful to think about this play in the con­text of demen­tia? Why are suf­fer­ers of age-relat­ed mem­o­ry loss often still able to recall the poems they have learned “by heart”?

Start the course for free today.

Jess Weeks is a copy­writer at Future­Learn. The one poem which helps her endure is The Orange by Wendy Cope.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Study Finds That Read­ing Tol­stoy & Oth­er Great Nov­el­ists Can Increase Your Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence

Book Read­ers Live Longer Lives, Accord­ing to New Study from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

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

An Animated Aldous Huxley Identifies the Dystopian Threats to Our Freedom (1958)

in History, Sci Fi, Technology | September 14th, 2016

20 years after Aldous Hux­ley pub­lished Brave New World (1931), he was still the medi­a’s go-to futur­ist. Let me cite two exam­ples:

In 1950, Red­book Mag­a­zine asked four experts (includ­ing Hux­ley) “what the world may look like fifty years hence?,” to which the author respond­ed:

Dur­ing the next fifty years mankind will face three great prob­lems: the prob­lem of avoid­ing war; the prob­lem of feed­ing and cloth­ing a pop­u­la­tion of two and a quar­ter bil­lions which, by 2000 A.D., will have grown to upward of three bil­lions, and the prob­lem of sup­ply­ing these bil­lions with­out ruin­ing the planet’s irre­place­able resources.

Then, in 1958, a young reporter named Mike Wal­lace had Hux­ley play prophet on a 30-minute TV show. Over­pop­u­la­tion gets dis­cussed again. But then Hux­ley returns to some famil­iar dystopi­an themes, iden­ti­fy­ing some emerg­ing threats to our free­doms. 

• Overor­ga­ni­za­tion: “Well anoth­er force which I think is very strong­ly oper­a­tive in this coun­try is the force of what may be called of overor­ga­ni­za­tion. Er…As tech­nol­o­gy becomes more and more com­pli­cat­ed, it becomes nec­es­sary to have more and more elab­o­rate orga­ni­za­tions, more hier­ar­chi­cal orga­ni­za­tions, and inci­den­tal­ly the advance of tech­nol­o­gy is being accom­pa­nied by an advance in the sci­ence of orga­ni­za­tion.

  It’s now pos­si­ble to make orga­ni­za­tions on a larg­er scale than it was ever pos­si­ble before, and so that you have more and more peo­ple liv­ing their lives out as sub­or­di­nates in these hier­ar­chi­cal sys­tems con­trolled by bureau­cra­cy, either the bureau­cra­cies of big busi­ness­es or the bureau­cra­cies of big gov­ern­ment.”

• Abuse of new tech­nolo­gies: “There are cer­tain­ly devices which can be used [to lim­it free­doms.] I mean, let us er…take after all, a piece of very recent and very painful his­to­ry is the pro­pa­gan­da used by Hitler, which was incred­i­bly effec­tive.

  I mean, what were Hitler’s meth­ods? Hitler used ter­ror on the one kind, brute force on the one hand, but he also used a very effi­cient form of pro­pa­gan­da, which er…he was using every mod­ern device at that time. He did­n’t have TV., but he had the radio which he used to the fullest extent, and was able to impose his will on an immense mass of peo­ple. I mean, the Ger­mans were a high­ly edu­cat­ed peo­ple.

• Drugs: I mean, in this book that you men­tioned, this book of mine, “Brave New World,” er…I pos­tu­lat­ed it a sub­stance called ‘soma,’ which was a very ver­sa­tile drug. It would make peo­ple feel hap­py in small dos­es, it would make them see visions in medi­um dos­es, and it would send them to sleep in large dos­es.…

  If you want to pre­serve your pow­er indef­i­nite­ly, you have to get the con­sent of the ruled, and this they will do part­ly by drugs as I fore­saw in “Brave New World,” part­ly by these new tech­niques of pro­pa­gan­da. They will do it by bypass­ing the sort of ratio­nal side of man and appeal­ing to his sub­con­scious and his deep­er emo­tions, and his phys­i­ol­o­gy even, and so, mak­ing him actu­al­ly love his slav­ery.

Above, you can watch ani­mat­ed excerpts from Wal­lace’s inter­view with Hux­ley, cour­tesy of Blank on Blank. Find the com­plete orig­i­nal inter­view below, along with a tran­script here. 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aldous Hux­ley Pre­dicts in 1950 What the World Will Look Like in the Year 2000

Hear Aldous Hux­ley Read Brave New World

Hux­ley to Orwell: My Hell­ish Vision of the Future is Bet­ter Than Yours (1949)

The History of Spiritual Jazz: Hear a Transcendent 12-Hour Mix Featuring John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Herbie Hancock & More

in Jazz, Music, Religion | September 12th, 2016

Jazz has inspired a great many things, and a great many things have inspired jazz, and more than a few of the music’s mas­ters have found their aspi­ra­tion by look­ing — or lis­ten­ing — to the divine. But that does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean they sub­scribe to tra­di­tion­al reli­gion. As befits this nat­u­ral­ly eclec­tic music that grew from an inher­ent­ly eclec­tic coun­try before it inter­na­tion­al­ized, its play­ers tend to have an eclec­tic con­cep­tion of the divine. In some of their inter­pre­ta­tions, that con­cep­tion sounds prac­ti­cal­ly all-encom­pass­ing. You can expe­ri­ence the full spec­trum of these aur­al visions, from the deeply per­son­al to the fath­om­less­ly cos­mic, in this four-part, twelve-hour playlist of spir­i­tu­al jazz from Lon­don online radio sta­tion NTS.

“Dur­ing the tumul­tuous ’60s, there was a reli­gious rev­o­lu­tion to accom­pa­ny the grand soci­etal, sex­u­al, racial, and cul­tur­al shifts already afoot,” writes Pitch­fork’s Andy Beta. “Con­cur­rent­ly, the era’s pri­ma­ry African-Amer­i­can art form reflect­ed such upheaval in its music, too: Jazz began to push against all con­straints, be it chord changes, pre­de­ter­mined tem­pos, or melodies, so as to best reflect the pur­suit of free­dom in all of its forms.”

This cul­mi­nat­ed in John Coltrane’s mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme, which opened the gates for oth­er jazz play­ers seek­ing the tran­scen­dent, using every­thing from “the sacred sound of the South­ern Bap­tist church in all its ecsta­t­ic shouts and yells” to “enlight­en­ment from South­east­ern Asian eso­teric prac­tices like tran­scen­den­tal med­i­ta­tion and yoga.”

It goes with­out say­ing that you can’t talk about spir­i­tu­al jazz with­out talk­ing about John Coltrane. Nor can you ignore the dis­tinc­tive music and the­ol­o­gy of Her­man Poole Blount, bet­ter known as Sun Ra, com­pos­er, band­leader, music ther­a­pist, Afro­fu­tur­ist, and teacher of a course called “The Black Man in the Cos­mos.” NTS’ expan­sive mix offers work from both of them and oth­er famil­iar artists like Alice Coltrane, Earth, Wind & Fire, Her­bie Han­cock, Gil Scott-Heron, Ornette Cole­man, and many more (includ­ing play­ers from as far away from the birth­place of jazz as Japan) who, whether or not you’ve heard of them before, can take you to places you’ve nev­er been before. Start lis­ten­ing with the embed­ded first part of the playlist above; con­tin­ue on to parts two, three, and four, and maybe — just maybe — you’ll come out of it want­i­ng to found a church of your own.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Coltrane’s Hand­writ­ten Out­line for His Mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme

Dis­cov­er the Church of St. John Coltrane, Found­ed on the Divine Music of A Love Supreme

Sun Ra’s Full Lec­ture & Read­ing List From His 1971 UC Berke­ley Course, “The Black Man in the Cos­mos”

Sun Ra Plays a Music Ther­a­py Gig at a Men­tal Hos­pi­tal; Inspires Patient to Talk for the First Time in Years

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

Space Jazz, a Son­ic Sci-Fi Opera by L. Ron Hub­bard, Fea­tur­ing Chick Corea (1983)

A Huge Anthol­o­gy of Noise & Elec­tron­ic Music (1920–2007) Fea­tur­ing John Cage, Sun Ra, Cap­tain Beef­heart & 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.

The History of Literature Podcast Takes You on a Literary Journey: From Ancient Epics to Contemporary Classics

in History, Literature, Podcasts | September 5th, 2016

Even before you start on a jour­ney through the his­to­ry of lit­er­a­ture, you know some of the stops you’ll make on the way: the Epic of Gil­gamesh, the Bible, Home­r’s Ili­ad and Odyssey, Greek tragedy, Shake­speare, Joyce. And so it comes as no sur­prise that Jacke Wil­son, cre­ator and host of the His­to­ry of Lit­er­a­ture pod­cast (from ancient epics to con­tem­po­rary clas­sics — Android — RSS), has so far devot­ed whole episodes, and often more than one, to each of them. A self-described “ama­teur schol­ar,” Wil­son aims with this show, which he launched last Octo­ber, to take “a fresh look at some of the most com­pelling exam­ples of cre­ative genius the world has ever known.”

Wil­son also address­es ques­tions like “How did lit­er­a­ture devel­op? What forms has it tak­en? And what can we learn from engag­ing with these works today?” And yet he asks this rhetor­i­cal one in The His­to­ry of Lit­er­a­ture’s very first episode: “Is it just me, or is lit­er­a­ture dying?” The also self-described “wild­ly unqual­i­fied host” admits that he at first tried to cre­ate a straight­for­ward, straight-faced march through lit­er­ary his­to­ry, but found the result staid and life­less. And so he loos­ened up, allow­ing in not just more of his per­son­al­i­ty but more of his doubts about the very lit­er­ary enter­prise in the 21st cen­tu­ry.

Giv­en that we get so much of our knowl­edge, human inter­ac­tion, and pure word­craft on the inter­net today, laments Wil­son, what remains for nov­els, sto­ries, poet­ry, and dra­ma to pro­vide us? As a His­to­ry of Lit­er­a­ture lis­ten­er, I per­son­al­ly see things dif­fer­ent­ly. The fact that we now have such abun­dant out­lets from which to receive all those oth­er things may strip lit­er­a­ture of some of the rel­e­vance it once held by default, but it also lifts from lit­er­a­ture a con­sid­er­able bur­den. Just as the devel­op­ment of pho­tog­ra­phy freed paint­ing from the oblig­a­tion to ever more faith­ful­ly rep­re­sent real­i­ty, lit­er­a­ture can now find forms and sub­jects bet­ter suit­ed to the artis­tic expe­ri­ence that it, and only it, can deliv­er.

Jorge Luis Borges counts as only one of the writ­ers who grasped the unex­plored poten­tial of lit­er­a­ture, and Wil­son uses one of the occa­sion­al episodes that breaks from the lin­ear­i­ty of his­to­ry to dis­cuss the “Gar­den of Fork­ing Paths” author’s thoughts on the mean­ing of life. He record­ed it (lis­ten above) in response to two deaths: that of “Fifth Bea­t­le” George Mar­tin, and even more so that of his uncle. Oth­er relat­able parts of Wilson’s life come into play in oth­er con­ver­sa­tions about writ­ers both ancient and mod­ern, such as the con­ver­sa­tion about the works of Gra­ham Greene and whether he can still get as much out of them as he did dur­ing his youth­ful trav­el­ing days. Lit­er­a­ture, after all, may have no greater val­ue than that it gets us ask­ing ques­tions — a val­ue The His­to­ry of Lit­er­a­ture demon­strates in every episode. 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Are Lit­er­a­ture, Phi­los­o­phy & His­to­ry For? Alain de Bot­ton Explains with Mon­ty Python-Style Videos

A Crash Course in Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture: A New Video Series by Best-Sell­ing Author John Green

Enti­tled Opin­ions, the “Life and Lit­er­a­ture” Pod­cast That Refus­es to Dumb Things Down

The Dead Authors Pod­cast: H.G. Wells Com­i­cal­ly Revives Lit­er­ary Greats with His Time Machine

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps Pod­cast, Now at 239 Episodes, Expands into East­ern Phi­los­o­phy

The Com­plete His­to­ry of the World (and Human Cre­ativ­i­ty) in 100 Objects

78 Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es: From Ancient Greece to The Mod­ern World

55 Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es: From Dante and Mil­ton to Ker­ouac and Tolkien

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.

Nakedly Examined Music Podcast Explores Songwriting with Cracker, King Crimson, Cutting Crew, Jill Sobule & More

in Music, Podcasts | August 28th, 2016

I’m Mark Lin­sen­may­er, the host of The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast, and I’d like to intro­duce you to a new-in-2016 inter­view series called Naked­ly Exam­ined Music (iTunes — Face­book — RSS) that fea­tures great song­writ­ers talk­ing about their moti­va­tions and tech­niques regard­ing spe­cif­ic songs.

In episode one, for instance, indie rock icon and activist for artist rights David Low­ery decon­struct­ed the lyrics for his sto­ry songs “All Her Favorite Fruit” (Camper Van Beethoven, 1989) and “I Sold the Arabs the Moon” (from his 2011 solo album), con­trast­ing these with the non­sense song that launched his career, “Take the Skin­heads Bowl­ing.”

The songs dis­cussed are played in full, and the idea is to get a sense of the artist’s approach in very spe­cif­ic terms, and how this has changed over time. In episode 15, Craig Wedren shows us his devel­op­ment from writ­ing heavy (“post-hard­core”), dis­so­nant music in the 90s with Shud­der to Think, to cre­at­ing dis­co synth­scapes with his ear­ly 00’s band Baby, to now com­pos­ing music for sound­tracks like Net­flix’s “Wet Hot Amer­i­can Sum­mer: First Day of Camp.”

The empha­sis in a giv­en inter­view depends on the artist: Gui­tar vir­tu­oso Gary Lucas (Cap­tain Beef­heart, Jeff Buck­ley) eschews music the­o­ry, so the focus is more on the ide­ol­o­gy of cre­ation, where­as tap-gui­tar wiz­ard Trey Gunn (King Crim­son, David Syl­vian) instructs us in com­bin­ing time sig­na­tures and solo­ing in modes. The inter­views both teach us how to lis­ten to and appre­ci­ate music by show­ing us what to focus on, and also serve to instruct song­writ­ers real and vic­ar­i­ous about deci­sions that go into a choice of chord or lyric or instru­men­ta­tion.

What kind of music can you expect to hear? Offi­cial­ly, any­thing that has thought behind it, but I’m start­ing with my expe­ri­ence as musi­cian (see www.marklint.com) and music lover grow­ing up in the 80s and 90s lis­ten­ing to pop­u­lar, indie, folk, punk, and pro­gres­sive rock. There hare been some move­ment into soul (Episode 16 fea­tures the great Nara­da Michael Walden, who pro­duced Whit­ney Hous­ton among many oth­ers), elec­tron­i­ca (Gareth Mitchell), coun­try (Beth Kille), and future episodes will ven­ture into clas­si­cal, hip-hop, and world music. More typ­i­cal, how­ev­er (i.e. more akin to my own writ­ing), are fig­ures like 90s sweet­heart and polit­i­cal activist Jill Sob­ule, cow-punk pio­neer Jon Lang­ford (Mekons), grunge-ped­dler turned sym­phon­ist Jonathan Don­ahue (Mer­cury Rev), NPR dar­ling Chad Clark (Beau­ty Pill), and 80s Cut­ting Crew front-man Nick Eede. One of the episodes next to be released will fea­ture Bill Bru­ford (Yes, King Crim­son, Earth­works).

Lis­ten to Jill Sob­ule in episode 18:

In one of the most inter­est­ing inter­views (episode 3), major league music video director–and mem­ber of 70s super­group 10cc and 80s duo God­ley & Creme–Kevin God­ley takes us from 70s prog excess (and get­ting to record jazz leg­end Sarah Vaugh­an) into the New Wave and out of music alto­geth­er, only to redis­cov­er it post-retire­ment.

This is not about get­ting behind the scenes with your favorite stars or any oth­er hype of that sort, but about talk­ing with smart peo­ple to fig­ure out the lan­guage of music, the moti­va­tions behind cre­ation, and the tech­niques avail­able for self-expres­sion. In the course of these dis­cus­sions, we get into chang­ing trends in mak­ing a liv­ing in music (or not!), new music tech­nolo­gies, and, of course, philo­soph­i­cal issues.

Mark Lin­sen­may­er is a writer and musi­cian in Madi­son, WI. His Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast has been down­loaded more than 15 mil­lion times. Learn more about Naked­ly Exam­ined Music at www.nakedlyexaminedmusic.com, sub­scribe via iTunes, or fol­low on Face­book.

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

in Music, Television | August 26th, 2016

On my last trip to New York, some friends took me to a favorite new-wave Chi­nese place of theirs. When I asked where to find the bath­room, they said to go down­stairs. The stair­case deposit­ed me into one of the most sur­re­al bath­room approach­es I’ve ever expe­ri­enced: a long, nar­row, ful­ly mir­rored hall­way with a haunt­ing­ly famil­iar com­po­si­tion piped in from speak­ers installed along its length. Not until I resur­faced and asked what the deal was could I iden­ti­fy the music: the “Love Theme” from David Lynch’s ear­ly-1990s tele­vi­sion series Twin Peaks.

Many TV themes have lodged them­selves into our col­lec­tive mem­o­ry, most­ly through sheer rep­e­ti­tion, but few have retained as much evoca­tive pow­er as the one Lynch’s com­pos­er, Ange­lo Badala­men­ti, record­ed for his short-lived post­mod­ern detec­tive show.

It had that pow­er from the moment Badala­men­ti put his fin­gers to the key­board, a sto­ry told in the clip above. “What do you see, David?” he remem­bers ask­ing the direc­tor as he sits down before the very same Fend­er Rhodes on which he com­posed Twin Peaks’ major themes all those years ago. “Just talk to me.”

“We’re in a dark woods,” Badala­men­ti recalls Lynch first say­ing. “There’s a soft wind blow­ing through sycamore trees. There’s a moon out, some ani­mal sounds in the back­ground. You can hear the hoot of an owl. Just get me into that beau­ti­ful dark­ness.” Badala­men­ti plays as he played then, which drew an imme­di­ate response from Lynch: “Ange­lo, that’s great. I love that. That’s a good mood. But can you play it slow­er?” With the feed­back loop between the scene in Lynch’s mind and the mood of Badala­men­ti’s music engaged, Lynch added a detail: “From behind a tree, in the back of the woods, is this very lone­ly girl. Her name is Lau­ra Palmer.”

Badala­men­ti light­ens his impro­vi­sa­tion in a way that makes it some­how eerier. “That’s it!” The com­pos­er and the direc­tor play off one anoth­er’s ideas, almost like two long-col­lab­o­rat­ing musi­cians in a jam ses­sion. “She’s walk­ing toward the cam­era, she’s com­ing clos­er… just keep build­ing it! Just keep build­ing it!” Even­tu­al­ly, they’ve cre­at­ed an entire ris­ing and falling dra­mat­ic arc in this sin­gle piece of music (arguably more dra­mat­ic than the one cre­at­ed by the series itself, which Lynch left after two sea­sons). “David got up, gave me a big hug, and said, ‘Ange­lo, that’s Twin Peaks’ ” — and to this day, a part of the cul­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Play the Twin Peaks Video Game: Retro Fun for David Lynch Fans

David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Title Sequence, Recre­at­ed in an Adorable Paper Ani­ma­tion

David Lynch Draws a Map of Twin Peaks (to Help Pitch the Show to ABC)

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

Ele­men­tary School Stu­dents Per­form in a Play Inspired by David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

David Lynch Directs a Mini-Sea­son of Twin Peaks in the Form of Japan­ese Cof­fee Com­mer­cials

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.

The Neuroscience & Psychology of Procrastination, and How to Overcome It

in Neuroscience, Productivity, Psychology | August 18th, 2016

Pro­cras­ti­na­tion is a skill, an art, a slight-of-hand tech­nique. I’m pro­cras­ti­nat­ing right now, but you’d nev­er know it. How many tabs do I have open in my mul­ti­ple brows­er win­dows? Pick a num­ber, any num­ber. How many tasks have I put off today? How many dreams have I deferred? I’ll nev­er tell. The unskilled pro­cras­ti­na­tors stick out, they’re easy to spot. They talk a lot about what they’re not doing. They run around in cir­cles of bewil­der­ment like the trou­bled hero of Dr. Seuss’s Hunch­es in Bunch­es. The skilled prac­ti­tion­er makes it look easy.

But no mat­ter how much Face­book time you get in before lunch and still man­age to ace those per­for­mance reviews, you’re real­ly only cheat­ing your­self, am I right? You want­ed to fin­ish that novel/symphony/improv class/physics the­o­rem. But some­thing stopped you. Some­thing in your brain per­haps. That’s where these things usu­al­ly hap­pen. When Stu­art Lang­field asked a neu­ro­sci­en­tist about the neu­ro­science of pro­cras­ti­na­tion, he got the fol­low­ing answer: “Peo­ple think that you can turn on an MRI and see where something’s hap­pen­ing in the brain, but the truth is that’s not so. This stuff is vast­ly more com­pli­cat­ed, so we have the­o­ries.”

There are the­o­ries aplen­ty that tell us, says Lang­field, “what’s prob­a­bly hap­pen­ing” in the brain. Lang­field explains his own: the prim­i­tive, plea­sure-seek­ing, pain-avoid­ing lim­bic sys­tem acts too quick­ly for our more delib­er­a­tive, ratio­nal pre­frontal cor­tex to catch up, ren­der­ing us stu­pe­fied by dis­trac­tions. Piers Steel, Dis­tin­guished Research Chair at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­gary and a pro­cras­ti­na­tion expert, shares this view. You can see him explain it in the short video below. The evo­lu­tion­ary “design flaw,” says Lang­field, might make the sit­u­a­tion seem hope­less, were it not for “neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty,” a fan­cy buzz­word that means we have the abil­i­ty to change our brains.

Langfield’s pur­pose in his short video is not only to under­stand the biol­o­gy of pro­cras­ti­na­tion, but to over­come it. He asks psy­chol­o­gist Tim Pychyl, whose answers we see and hear as an incom­pre­hen­si­ble jum­ble of ideas. But then Pychyl reduces the com­pli­cat­ed the­o­ries to a sim­ple solu­tion. You guessed it, mind­ful­ness meditation—to “down­reg­u­late the lim­bic sys­tem.” Real­ly, that’s it? Just med­i­tate? It is a proven way to reduce anx­i­ety and improve con­cen­tra­tion.

But Pychyl and his research team at Car­leton Uni­ver­si­ty have a few more very prac­ti­cal sug­ges­tions, based on exper­i­men­tal data gath­ered by Steel and oth­ers. The Wall Street Jour­nal offers this con­densed list of tips:

Break a long-term project down into spe­cif­ic sub-goals. State the exact start time and how long (not just “tomor­row”) you plan to work on the task.

Just get start­ed. It isn’t nec­es­sary to write a long list of tasks, or each inter­me­di­ate step.

Remind your­self that fin­ish­ing the task now helps you in the future. Putting off the task won’t make it more enjoy­able.

Imple­ment “micro­costs,” or mini-delays, that require you to make a small effort to pro­cras­ti­nate, such as hav­ing to log on to a sep­a­rate com­put­er account for games.

Reward your­self not only for com­plet­ing the entire project but also the sub-goals.

A Stock­holm Uni­ver­si­ty study test­ed these strate­gies, assign­ing a group of 150 self-report­ed “high pro­cras­ti­na­tors” sev­er­al of the self-help instruc­tions over 10 weeks, and employ­ing a reward sys­tem and vary­ing lev­els of guid­ance. “The results,” WSJ reports, “showed that after inter­ven­tion with both guid­ed and unguid­ed self-help, peo­ple improved their pro­cras­ti­na­tion, though the guid­ed ther­a­py seemed to show greater ben­e­fit.”

Oth­er times, adding self-help tasks to get us to the tasks we’re putting off doesn’t work so well. We can all take com­fort in the fact that pro­cras­ti­na­tion has a long his­to­ry, dat­ing back to ancient Egypt, Rome, and 18th cen­tu­ry Eng­land. The wis­dom of the ages could not defeat it, or as Samuel John­son wrote, “even they who most steadi­ly with­stand it find it, if not the most vio­lent, the most per­ti­na­cious of their pas­sions, always renew­ing its attacks, and, though often van­quished, nev­er destroyed.”

But there are peo­ple who pro­cras­ti­nate, beset by its per­ti­nac­i­ty, and then there are chron­ic pro­cras­ti­na­tors. “If you’re an occa­sion­al pro­cras­ti­na­tor, says Pychyl, “quit think­ing about your feel­ings and get to the next task.” Suck it up, in oth­er words, and walk it off—maybe after a short course of self-help. For all the con­flict­ing neu­ro­sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ry, “there is a qui­et sci­ence behind pro­cras­ti­na­tion,” writes Big Think, and “accord­ing to recent stud­ies, pro­cras­ti­na­tion is a learned habit.” Most research agrees it’s one we can unlearn through med­i­ta­tion and/or patient retrain­ing of our­selves.

How­ev­er if you’re of the chron­ic sub­set, say Pychyl, “you might need ther­a­py to bet­ter under­stand your emo­tions and how you’re cop­ing with them through avoid­ance.” Psy­chol­o­gist Joseph Fer­rari at DePaul Uni­ver­si­ty agrees. Cit­ing a fig­ure of “20 per­cent of U.S. men and women” who “make pro­cras­ti­na­tion their way of life,” he adds, “it is the per­son who does that habit­u­al­ly, always with plau­si­ble ‘excus­es’ that has issues to address.” Only you can deter­mine whether your trou­ble relates to bad habits or deep­er psy­cho­log­i­cal issues.

What­ev­er the caus­es, what might moti­vate us to med­i­tate or seek ther­a­py are the effects. Chron­ic pro­cras­ti­na­tion is “not a time man­age­ment issue,” says Fer­rari, “it is a mal­adap­tive lifestyle.” Habit­u­al pro­cras­ti­na­tors, the WSJ writes, “have high­er rates of depres­sion and anx­i­ety and poor­er well-being.” We may think, writes Eric Jaffe at the Asso­ci­a­tion for Psy­cho­log­i­cal Science’s jour­nal, of pro­cras­ti­na­tion as “an innocu­ous habit at worst, and maybe even a help­ful one at best,” a strat­e­gy Stan­ford phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor John Per­ry argued for in The Art of Pro­cras­ti­na­tion. Instead, Jaffe says, in a sober­ing sum­ma­ry of Pychyl’s research, “pro­cras­ti­na­tion is real­ly a self-inflict­ed wound that grad­u­al­ly chips away at the most valu­able resource in the world: time.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy & Neu­ro­science Cours­es

Dai­ly Med­i­ta­tion Boosts & Revi­tal­izes the Brain and Reduces Stress, Har­vard Study Finds

Miran­da July Teach­es You How to Avoid Pro­cras­ti­na­tion

The Art of Struc­tured Pro­cras­ti­na­tion

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

Three-Hour Mixtape Offers a Sonic Introduction to Underground Goth Music

in Music | August 17th, 2016

Image by Pedro Figueire­do, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Why, in my day we called it “post-punk” and we walked miles to find it in cat­a­combs with secret pass­words, far away from any mall appar­el stores or bev­er­age-spon­sored music fes­ti­vals….

Most­ly rub­bish, though I have heard many an old cam­paign­er say as much, decry­ing Goth rock as a recent, devo­lu­tion from more seri­ous, avant-garde trends. Some amal­gam of The Doors, Leonard Cohen, Nico and the Vel­vet Under­ground, The Damned, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, and Ham­mer hor­ror films, ear­ly goth rock went spare, atmos­pher­ic, and punky, like the ear­ly Cure, or baroque, morose, and cabaret like Bauhaus, or any oth­er num­ber of respectable art-rock direc­tions.

These bands, many of my cohort believe, had integri­ty, and much bet­ter taste than kids today. All that get off my lawn-ness makes an easy tar­get, as does the increas­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of a genre of music made for and by unpop­u­lar peo­ple.

Mix blog Secret Thir­teen, cura­tor of the goth rock mix above, admits as much. “Goth has nev­er been an easy affair to dis­cuss,” reads the mix intro in idio­syn­crat­ic Eng­lish: “Kitschy atmos­phere of mas­sive con­tem­po­rary goth fes­ti­vals and stereo­typ­ing dis­cours­es usu­al­ly over­whelmed the tex­tur­al and emo­tion­al core of goth.” Con­tem­po­rary per­cep­tions, fair or not, obscure the diversity—stylistically, that is… of the music, with its “diverse ele­ments includ­ing Dada move­ment, sur­re­al­ist aes­thet­ics, post-mod­ernism, French ‘fin-de-siecle’ poet­ry, 19^th cen­tu­ry roman­ti­cism, punk, kraut, glam, shoegaze, ambi­ent, folk, etc….”

Indeed, it’s all there, when a band with the abra­sive low-camp, grind­house punk of Nick Cave’s The Birth­day Par­ty shares a musi­cal lin­eage with the ear­ly syn­th­pop of Min­istry (with DJ-scratch­ing!) and the medieval- and world music-obsessed Dead Can Dance. But the key oper­a­tor in these extremes is the­atri­cal­i­ty. Since Siouxsie Sioux’s fish­nets and swastikas, Dave Vanian’s vam­pire cos­tumes and pan­cake make­up, and Robert Smith’s enor­mous weep­ing wil­low hair and onstage mist-shroud­ed cathe­drals of despair, goth has had to make over­wrought spec­ta­cles of itself, at times hor­ri­bly tacky ones.

But the Secret Thir­teen mix, com­piled by founder Justi­nas Mikul­skis, reminds us it’s real­ly about the music, by putting togeth­er “the deep cuts,” writes Elec­tron­ic Beats, “none of this ‘Bela’s Lugosi’s Dead’ stuff” (refer­ring to Bauhaus’ biggest hit).

Here instead we find “the bois­ter­ous deathrock of Mighty Sphinc­ter, Specimen’s Bat­cave thrashi­ness, the art­sy weird­ness of Red Wed­ding and ear­ly 4AD stal­warts Mass.” It’s a very 80s mix, but unless you were dig­ging deep in the crates of alter­na­tive record stores at the time, few names may be famil­iar. The Birth­day Par­ty shows up, and a band called Kom­mu­ni­ty FK that had a very minor hit. For­mer Sex Pis­tol John Lydon’s Pub­lic Image Ltd. appears with their pound­ing rant “Reli­gion II.” The Vir­gin Prunes also make the cut, num­ber 42 in the mix—a very much over­looked, and very dis­turb­ing band, often only known for their child­hood and fam­i­ly asso­ci­a­tion with U2. Find a com­plete list of the tracks at the bot­tom of this page.

It is over­all, I think, an excel­lent way to approach “goth”—or one def­i­n­i­tion of it—free from the wardrobe squab­bles and gen­er­a­tional con­de­scen­sion. The mix, writes Secret Thir­teen, isn’t intend­ed as “ency­clo­pe­dic or antho­log­i­cal” in nature, but is “rather pre­sent­ed as a nar­ra­tive with unex­pect­ed twists and turns show­cas­ing a wide vari­ety of ele­ments, moods.” Sort of like a good sto­ry by Poe, or a good B hor­ror movie.

via Elec­tron­ic Beats

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Mas­sive 800-Track Playlist of 90s Indie & Alter­na­tive Music, in Chrono­log­i­cal Order

The 120 Min­utes Archive Com­piles Clips & Playlists from 956 Episodes of MTV’s Alter­na­tive Music Show (1986–2013)

Stream 15 Hours of the John Peel Ses­sions: 255 Tracks by Syd Bar­rett, David Bowie, Siouxsie and the Ban­shees & Oth­er Artists

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