Performance Artist Marina Abramović Describes Her “Really Good Plan” to Lose Her Virginity

in Art, Life | November 29th, 2016

Los­ing your virginity–it’s not a sub­ject we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly dis­cussed much here at Open Cul­ture. Nor is it a sub­ject about which we’d claim to have great exper­tise. (After all, you lose it only once in life.)

But per­for­mance artist Mari­na Abramović has giv­en the whole endeav­or some seri­ous thought. As she explains in the BBC Radio 4 video above, she wait­ed until she was 24 years old. Hav­ing seen pre­co­cious friends make mis­takes, she han­dled things in her own spe­cial way. A Per­ry Como album. A bot­tle of Alban­ian whisky. An expe­ri­enced, emo­tion­al­ly unin­volved part­ner. They all fig­ured into what she calls–now 45 years later–her “real­ly good plan.”

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In Touch­ing Video, Artist Mari­na Abramović & For­mer Lover Ulay Reunite After 22 Years Apart

Mari­na Abramović and Ulay’s Adven­tur­ous 1970s Per­for­mance Art Pieces

The Artists’ and Writ­ers’ Cook­book Col­lects Recipes From T.C. Boyle, Mari­na Abramović, Neil Gaiman, Joyce Car­ol Oates & More

Watch Come Together, Wes Anderson’s New Short Film/Commercial Starring Adrien Brody

in Film | November 29th, 2016

Why does the hol­i­day sea­son no longer feel com­plete with­out a Wes Ander­son movie? Sev­er­al of his fea­tures have opened in late fall or ear­ly win­ter, sure­ly the most Ander­son­ian time of year. Some have come out right around Christ­mas (The Life Aquat­ic with Steve Zis­sou on the day itself), and some, most notably The Roy­al Tenen­baums, take place par­tial­ly in the sea­son. While it looks as if we’ll have to do with­out a full-length Ander­son pro­duc­tion this Christ­mas, since the past year has report­ed­ly seen him in pre-pro­duc­tion on an as yet unti­tled stop-motion ani­mat­ed movie, the auteur of poignant and fun­ny anachro­nism has nev­er­the­less found time to direct Come Togeth­er, a brand new not-quite-com­mer­cial for “fast fash­ion” retail­er H&M.

Ander­son­’s unusu­al niche in the world of film­mak­ing allows him to both work as per­haps the most metic­u­lous cin­e­mat­ic vision­ary alive, and also to make ads with impuni­ty. We’ve fea­tured the pair of com­mer­cials for the Hyundai Azera he did in 2012, and more recent­ly the less overt Castel­lo Cav­al­can­ti, a sev­en-minute short spon­sored by Pra­da. These are in addi­tion to spots for the likes of Stel­la Artois and Amer­i­can Express, the lat­ter of which starred the direc­tor par­o­dy­ing him­self.

This time reg­u­lar col­lab­o­ra­tor Adrien Brody, pre­vi­ous­ly seen in The Dar­jeel­ing Lim­it­ed and The Grand Budapest Hotel and heard in The Fan­tas­tic Mr. Fox, takes the lead role of Con­duc­tor Ralph, the man in charge of a train that has fall­en far behind its sched­ule as Christ­mas Eve becomes Christ­mas Day. Still, dis­play­ing the same atti­tude most of Ander­son­’s char­ac­ters take toward mat­ters of aes­thet­ics and tra­di­tion, he takes seri­ous­ly indeed the job of mak­ing Christ­mas spe­cial for his pas­sen­gers. We glimpse these pas­sen­gers one at a time through their cab­in win­dows from out­side the train, a sequence rem­i­nis­cent of the cross-sec­tion shots of The Life Aquat­ic’s R/V Bela­fonte.

What will enliv­en the pale greens and mat­te grays of this slight­ly for­lorn but still dogged­ly rolling con­veyance? It takes less than four min­utes, dur­ing which Ralph, and Ander­son, sum­mon all the resources of this unspec­i­fied, dream­like past at their dis­pos­al, to find out. After­ward, Come Togeth­er leaves only one lin­ger­ing ques­tion. The famous­ly metic­u­lous Ander­son who appears to demand a cer­tain vin­tage yet time­less solid­i­ty in every­thing from his set­tings to his devices to his cui­sine to his wardrobe — he can’t pos­si­bly be into fast fash­ion. Can he?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wes Anderson’s New Com­mer­cials Sell the Hyundai Azera

Watch Wes Anderson’s Charm­ing New Short Film, Castel­lo Cav­al­can­ti, Star­ring Jason Schwartz­man

A Com­plete Col­lec­tion of Wes Ander­son Video Essays

The Auteurs of Christ­mas: Christ­mas Morn­ing as Seen Through the Eyes of Kubrick, Taran­ti­no, Scors­ese & 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.

British Advertisers Predict in 1935 What the World Will Look Like in 2500: Wireless TV, Atomic Cars & More

in Business, History, Sci Fi | November 28th, 2016

Back before the pub­lic came to terms with the grim causal rela­tion­ship between cig­a­rettes and can­cer, smok­ing was a jol­ly affair, whose plea­sures extend­ed well beyond the phys­i­cal act.

Smok­ing was socia­ble. Yes, there were cer­tain sit­u­a­tions in which three on a match could spell doom, but a far greater like­li­hood that light­ing an attrac­tive stranger’s cof­fin nail might kin­dle con­ver­sa­tion, and more.

If you were at a loss for words, you might break the ice with the trad­ing cards man­u­fac­tur­ers slipped inside cig­a­rette packs, such as these mid-30s beau­ties that came inside packs of Greys, a now-defunct British cig­a­rette brand, and favorite of WWI vets.

The sub­ject is unusu­al. Sports, cin­e­ma stars, and mil­i­tary scenes were com­mon themes of the time. The “Greys Antic­i­pa­tions” series took cre­ative lib­er­ties, by imag­in­ing a (can­cer-free) year 2500, in which Lon­don­ers would be privy to such inno­va­tions as solar-light­ing, mov­ing side­walks, and wire­less tele­vi­sion…

Great Scott! Were they psy­chic!?

Hope­ful­ly not.

Hope­ful­ly, we’ve still got 484 years to find out…

“Pica­dil­ly, Lon­don, A.D. 2500: Roofed-in under non-con­duc­tive mica glass . . mov­ing path­ways . . rub­ber road­ways avenued into 50, 100, 150 and 200 miles per hour . . sus­pend­ed mono rail­ways . . motors dri­ven by atom­ic ener­gy . . pho­net­ic spelling . . wire­less tele­vi­sion . . light­ed by cap­tured solar rays . . excur­sions to Mars.”

I’m fine with excur­sions to Mars and mono­rails but atom­ic ener­gy is as prob­lem­at­ic as the health claims once put for­ward by cig­a­rette ads.

“At the Cus­toms House on the Roof of Lon­don, A.D. 2500: The rail­way train has fol­lowed the ichthyosaurus into extinc­tion. Mighty aer­i­al lin­ers trans­port pas­sen­gers in their thou­sands, with great car­goes of mer­chan­dise from con­ti­nent to con­ti­nent. Mankind, liv­ing amidst such tremen­dous achieve­ments, thinks, plans, and acts with cor­re­spond­ing big­ness.”

Hmm…I was kind of root­ing for train trav­el to make a come­back…

“The Plea­sure City, Lon­don, A.D. 2500: Plea­sure-seek­ing has been raised to a fine art … muti­tudes when the short day’s work is done find a sat­is­fy­ing means of relax­ation in smok­ing “GREYS” Cig­a­rettes and lis­ten­ing to the mam­moth mechan­i­cal orches­tra … char­ac­ter­is­tic of the music of the peri­od … music so com­plex that it can be ren­dered only by won­der­ous mech­a­nism.”

This does sound rather fun, depend­ing on who’s doing the pro­gram­ming… per­haps we should just stick with head­phones and a busker on every cor­ner.

A Hive of Indus­try, A.D. 2500: Lit­er­al­ly a “hive” in that it is a city unto itself … radi­at­ing from the mam­moth super-fac­to­ry are work­ers’ dwellings and asso­ci­at­ed insti­tutes … archi­tec­ture gov­erned by the pre­vail­ing mate­r­i­al — con­crete … no smoke (oth­er than from tobac­co!) … no house­hold cook­ing . . meals deliv­ered by pneu­mat­ic tube from cen­tral cook­house.

Um…I strong­ly sug­gest revis­it­ing Ter­ry Gilliam’s 1985 film, Brazil,  before sign­ing off on the whole pneu­mat­ic tube thing.

Dar­ran Ander­son, author of  Imag­i­nary Cities, took a clos­er look at one of the cards in the above talk about imag­i­nary Lon­don. I share his opin­ion that “phonet­ic spelling… is the best thing that they envis­aged of the future.”

He also notes that the card is about 20 years ahead of its time in pro­mot­ing a mid-50s‑style vision of the future, but that it failed to pre­dict the demise of Greys Cig­a­rettes, by promi­nent­ly adver­tis­ing them on the side of a sus­pend­ed mono­rail.

Hubris!

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In 1900, Ladies’ Home Jour­nal Pub­lish­es 28 Pre­dic­tions for the Year 2000

Niko­la Tesla’s Pre­dic­tions for the 21st Cen­tu­ry: The Rise of Smart Phones & Wire­less, The Demise of Cof­fee, The Rule of Eugen­ics (1926/35)

Cig­a­rette Com­mer­cials from David Lynch, the Coen Broth­ers and Jean Luc Godard

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

Watch Animations of Two Italo Calvino Stories: “The False Grandmother” and “The Distance from the Moon”

in Animation, Literature | November 25th, 2016

There are those books we go to not to escape this world, but to expe­ri­ence the truth of a mys­te­ri­ous­ly attrib­uted quote, “There is anoth­er world, and it is this one.” That is to say that the worlds we find in cer­tain nov­els are no less filled with dread, ambi­gu­i­ty, and moral freight than our own. But these sorts of sto­ries offer new maps for real­i­ty. They may at first be those of the Protes­tant the­ol­o­gy and Vic­to­ri­an moral­i­ty of C.S. Lewis, whose Nar­nia books (avail­able in a free audio for­mat here) rather lit­er­al­ly give us anoth­er world in this one.

But we may soon find our­selves cat­a­pult­ed into the neu­rot­ic night­mares of Kaf­ka, the sci-fi para­noia of Philip K. Dick, the postin­dus­tri­al ennui of J.G. Bal­lard, the scholas­tic labyrinths of Borges, and.… Well, what are we to call the work of Invis­i­ble Cities and If on a Winter’s Night a Trav­el­er author Ita­lo Calvi­no? Jonathan Galas­si iden­ti­fies Calvi­no as a post­mod­ern folk­lorist, drawn into the mature idiom of his best-known books by his sus­tained engage­ment in “the mag­is­te­r­i­al anthol­o­gy Ital­ian Folk­tales” in 1956, a task that made him into “a mod­ern-day Grimm.”

Calvino’s facil­i­ty with the light mag­ic of folk­lore infus­es his work with a fleet-foot­ed­ness and brevi­ty that can mask its high seri­ous­ness. Two years after com­pil­ing his anthol­o­gy, he wrote that his “true direc­tion” was “the cri­sis of the bour­geois intel­lec­tu­al seen crit­i­cal­ly from the inside.” This accounts both for the the­o­ret­i­cal sophis­ti­ca­tion of his prose and the exper­i­men­tal form. Calvi­no bests even Borges as an exper­i­men­tal­ist, writ­ing large parts of If on a Winter’s Night a Trav­el­er in the impe­ri­ous sec­ond per­son, and pulling it off bril­liant­ly.

How­ev­er, Calvi­no will often break into the nov­el to remind us of the arti­fice, and at one point declare his desire “to fol­low the men­tal mod­els through which we live our human events.” Those mod­els, Calvi­no sug­gests, are not orga­nized and sys­tem­at­ic. They are as mean­der­ing and episod­ic as fairy tales, filled with irrel­e­vant detail that we pick up in fas­ci­na­tion then quick­ly for­get. It’s a dis­com­fit­ing idea for ratio­nal­ists. But for those who know that life is lived in sto­ries, it rings per­fect­ly true.

In the two ani­mat­ed videos here, we see Calvino’s genius for con­jur­ing irra­tional fables. At the top John Tur­tur­ro reads Calvino’s “The False Grand­moth­er” from his folk­lore anthol­o­gy, a ver­sion of the “Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood” sto­ry. And in the (sub­ti­tled) Hebrew-lan­guage ani­ma­tion above (per­fect­ly scored by Erik Satie), we see an adap­ta­tion of Calvino’s “The Dis­tance from the Moon” from Cos­mi­comics, a col­lec­tion whose fic­tions, writes Ted Gioia, “are absurd and inco­her­ent, yet the plot lines are filled with romance, dra­ma, and con­flicts that draw the read­ers deep­er and deep­er into the text.”

They are also filled with sci­en­tif­ic ideas: “Each sto­ry in Cos­mi­comics begins with a sci­en­tif­ic premise.” Like many a crit­i­cal human­ist before him, from Michel de Mon­taigne to Jonathan Swift, Calvi­no seems to won­der if our best intel­lec­tu­al efforts, even the sci­ences, fall sub­ject to “the foibles and fan­cies of humans,” and to the askew nar­ra­tive log­ic of folk­lore.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ita­lo Calvi­no Offers 14 Rea­sons We Should Read the Clas­sics

Hear Ita­lo Calvi­no Read Selec­tions From Invis­i­ble Cities, Mr. Palo­mar & Oth­er Enchant­i­ng Fic­tions

Invis­i­ble Cities Illus­trat­ed: Three Artists Paint Every City in Ita­lo Calvino’s Clas­sic Nov­el

Expe­ri­ence Invis­i­ble Cities, an Inno­v­a­tive, Ita­lo Calvi­no-Inspired Opera Staged in LA’s Union Sta­tion

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

New Animation Brings to Life a Lost 1974 Interview with Leonard Cohen, and Cohen Reading His Poem “Two Slept Together”

in Animation, Life, Music, Poetry | November 21st, 2016

Leonard Cohen was graced with a dis­tinc­tive slow burn of a voice, a man­ly purr well suit­ed to the louche mys­ter­ies of his most famous lyrics.

His death prompt­ed a post-elec­tion out­pour­ing from his already crest­fall­en fans, who sought cathar­sis by shar­ing the myr­i­ad ways in which his music had touched their lives.

As Cohen remarked in a 1995 inter­view with the New York Times: 

Music is like bread. It is one of the fun­da­men­tal nour­ish­ments that we have avail­able, and there are many dif­fer­ent vari­eties and degrees and grades. A song that is use­ful, that touch­es some­body, must be mea­sured by that util­i­ty alone. ‘Cheap music’ is an unchar­i­ta­ble descrip­tion. If it touch­es you, it’s not cheap. From a cer­tain point of view, all our emo­tions are cheap, but those are the only ones we’ve got. It’s lone­li­ness and long­ing and desire and cel­e­bra­tion.

Rolling Stone dubbed Cohen the Poet Lau­re­ate Of Out­rage And Roman­tic Despair. It’s far from his only nick­name, but it man­ages to encom­pass most of the oth­er 325 that super fan Allan Showal­ter col­lect­ed for his Cohen­cen­tric site.

Have you used Cohen’s music to “illu­mi­nate or dig­ni­fy your court­ing” (to bor­row anoth­er phrase from that Times inter­view)?

If so, you deserve to know that those seduc­tive lyrics aren’t always what they seem.

For one thing, he nev­er got car­nal with Suzanne.

Dit­to the “Sis­ters of Mer­cy.” Turns out they real­ly “weren’t lovers like that.” Cohen var­ied the facts a bit over the years, when called upon to recount this song’s ori­gin sto­ry. The loca­tion of the ini­tial meet­ing was a mov­ing tar­get, and ear­ly on, van­i­ty, or per­haps a rep­u­ta­tion to uphold, caused him to omit a cer­tain crit­i­cal detail regard­ing the night spent with two young women he bumped into in snowy Edmon­ton.

The 1974 radio inter­view with Kath­leen Kendel, above—straight from the horse’s mouth, and fresh­ly ani­mat­ed for PBS’ Blank on Blank series—brings to mind that pil­lar of young male sex com­e­dy, the close-but-no-cig­ar erot­ic encounter.

PBS’ Blank on Blank ani­ma­tor, Patrick Smith, wise­ly employs a light­ly humor­ous touch in depict­ing Cohen’s wild imag­in­ing of the delights Bar­bara and Lor­raine had in store for him. Whether or not they looked like the Dou­blemint Twins is a ques­tion for the ages.

The ani­ma­tion kicks off with a read­ing of his 1964 poem, “Two Went to Sleep,” an ellip­ti­cal jour­ney into the realm of the uncon­scious, a set­ting that pre­oc­cu­pied Cohen the poet. (See the far less pla­ton­ic-seem­ing “My Lady Can Sleep” and “Now of Sleep­ing” for starters…)

You can hear the inter­view Blank on Blank excerpt­ed for the above ani­ma­tion in its entire­ty here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Leonard Cohen’s Final Inter­view: Record­ed by David Rem­nick of The New York­er

How Leonard Cohen’s Stint As a Bud­dhist Monk Can Help You Live an Enlight­ened Life

Ani­mat­ed Video: John­ny Cash Explains Why Music Became a Reli­gious Call­ing

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er, Leonard Cohen fan 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.

The 10 Favorite Films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder

in Film | November 21st, 2016

Despite liv­ing for only 37 years, and with­in that hav­ing a career that last­ed for only fif­teen, the Ger­man auteur Rain­er Wern­er Fass­binder cre­at­ed so pro­lif­i­cal­ly that his final list of accom­plish­ments includes direct­ing forty fea­ture films, three shorts, and two tele­vi­sion series, as well as appear­ing in 36 dif­fer­ent roles as an actor — to say noth­ing of his works in oth­er media and his con­sid­er­able influ­ence on sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions of film­mak­ers around the world. Sheer pro­duc­tiv­i­ty aside, many of these works have either stood the test of time, like The Bit­ter Tears of Petra von Kant and Berlin Alexan­der­platz or, like philo­soph­i­cal sci­ence fic­tion World on a Wire, enjoyed recent redis­cov­er­ies.

What could have inspired in Fass­binder such unre­lent­ing cre­ativ­i­ty? His list of ten favorite films, drawn up a year before his death in 1982, pro­vides some clues. “Fassbinder’s very favorite was Visconti’s The Damned, a visu­al­ly sump­tu­ous panora­ma of soci­etal col­lapse and decay in Third Reich Ger­many and no doubt an influ­ence on the Ger­man auteur’s own “BRD Tril­o­gy,” in par­tic­u­lar the bawdy, bor­del­lo-set Lola,” writes Indiewire’s Ryan Lat­tanzio. He also “loved Max Ophuls’ 1955 Lola Montes, the sad sto­ry of a kept woman shot in the kind of glo­ri­ous­ly ren­dered col­or Fass­binder would lat­er employ in his own work. As with many top 10 lists com­piled by con­fronta­tion­al film­mak­ers, Pasolini’s beau­ti­ful­ly ugly descent into hell Salò was also close to his heart.”

Fass­binder’s final favorite-films list runs, in full, as fol­lows:

1. The Damned (1969, Dir: Luchi­no Vis­con­ti)
2. The Naked And the Dead (1958, Dir: Raoul Walsh)
3. Lola Montes (1955, Dir: Max Ophuls)
4. Flamin­go Road (1949, Dir: Michael Cur­tiz)
5. Salò, or the 120 Days Of Sodom (1975, Dir: Pier Pao­lo Pasoli­ni)
6. Gen­tle­men Pre­fer Blondes (1953, Dir: Howard Hawks)
7. Dis­hon­ored (1931, Dir: Josef von Stern­berg)
8. The Night Of The Hunter (1955, Dir: Charles Laughton)
9. John­ny Gui­tar (1954, Dir: Nicholas Ray)
10. The Red Snow­ball Tree (1973, Dir: Vasili Shuk­shin)

If one qual­i­ty unites all of Fass­binder’s motion pic­tures of choice, from all the afore­men­tioned to the stark, near-Expres­sion­ist noir of Night of the Hunter to the super­hu­man­ly snap­py com­e­dy of Gen­tle­men Pre­fer Blondes to the West­ern genre rein­ven­tion, high­ly appre­ci­at­ed in Europe, of John­ny Gui­tar, it might well be vivid­ness. All of these movies, each in their own way, allowed Fass­binder to release the vivid­ness — and cin­e­ma his­to­ry has remem­bered him as a mas­ter of the vivid as well as the vis­cer­al — res­i­dent in his imag­i­na­tion. Alas, no mat­ter how much he man­aged to real­ize, a great deal more of it sure­ly passed away with him.

via Indiewire

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aki­ra Kurosawa’s List of His 100 Favorite Movies

Woody Allen Lists the Great­est Films of All Time: Includes Clas­sics by Bergman, Truf­faut & Felli­ni

Mar­tin Scors­ese Reveals His 12 Favorite Movies (and Writes a New Essay on Film Preser­va­tion)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films (The First and Only List He Ever Cre­at­ed)

Andrei Tarkovsky Cre­ates a List of His 10 Favorite Films (1972)

Susan Sontag’s 50 Favorite Films (and Her Own Cin­e­mat­ic Cre­ations)

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 Cast of Hamilton Sends a Strong Message to Mike Pence (After the Crowd Jeers Him)

in Current Affairs, Politics, Theatre | November 18th, 2016

When Mike Pence entered the Richard Rodgers The­atre to see Hamil­ton Fri­day night, the crowd booed him.

When the play end­ed, the cast sent Pence off with a spe­cial mes­sage. Speak­ing for the cast, Bran­don Vic­tor Dixon, the actor who plays Aaron Burr, said this:

You know we have a guest in the audi­ence this evening. Vice Pres­i­dent-elect Pence I see you walk­ing out but I hope you will hear us just a few more moments.

There is noth­ing to boo here ladies and gen­tle­men, we are all shar­ing a sto­ry of love. We have a mes­sage for you sir, and we hope you will hear us out…

Vice Pres­i­dent-elect Mike Pence we wel­come you and we tru­ly thank you for join­ing us here at Hamil­ton, an Amer­i­can Musi­cal.

We, sir, we are the diverse Amer­i­ca who are alarmed and anx­ious that your new admin­is­tra­tion will not pro­tect us, our plan­et, our chil­dren, our par­ents or defend us or uphold our inalien­able rights, sir. But we tru­ly hope this show has inspired you to uphold our Amer­i­can val­ues and to work on behalf of all of us.

We tru­ly thank you for shar­ing this show, this won­der­ful Amer­i­can sto­ry told by a diverse group of men and women of dif­fer­ent col­ors, creeds and ori­en­ta­tions.

Trump and Pence came to office exploit­ing racial, nation­al and eth­nic resent­ments across Amer­i­ca. They’re now putting fig­ures like Steve Ban­non and Jeff Ses­sions (both tar­nished by alle­ga­tions of racism) in posi­tions of pow­er. And we’re seeing hate crimes on the rise. (701  report­ed cas­es since the elec­tion.) It’s no sur­prise that the new gov­ern­ment is get­ting tak­en to task. It’s free speech in action, democ­ra­cy being the some­times rau­cous, in your face thing it can be.

For­tu­nate­ly Pence seems to have a fin­er appre­ci­a­tion of the role dis­sent plays in our coun­try: He has since told The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, “I did hear what was said from the stage, and I can tell you, I was­n’t offend­ed by what was said.” “It was a real joy to be there. When we arrived, we heard a few boos and a few cheers, and I nudged my kids and remind­ed them, ‘That’s what free­dom sounds like.” Kudos to him.

In oth­er culture/education news, Don­ald Trump has agreed to pay $25 mil­lion to set­tle his Trump Uni­ver­si­ty fraud case.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alexan­der Hamil­ton: Hip-Hop Hero at the White House Poet­ry Evening

“Alexan­der Hamil­ton” Per­formed with Amer­i­can Sign Lan­guage

Hear Leonard Cohen’s Final Interview: Recorded by David Remnick of The New Yorker

in Music | November 14th, 2016

Image by Rama, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

We’ve heard very few details about Leonard Cohen’s death this week, and that is by design. The Cohen fam­i­ly request­ed pri­va­cy for his funer­al and received it. While most out­lets report­ed that he passed away on Thurs­day night, he actu­al­ly died on Wednes­day and was buried on Thurs­day. This col­lec­tive gra­cious­ness on the part of the press comes, I’d say, at a time when lit­tle grace abounds. Grace is a word that I par­tic­u­lar­ly asso­ciate with Cohen. He was a grace­ful man, always impec­ca­bly coiffed and dressed (his father was a tai­lor), his hand­some, hang­dog face nev­er any­thing but per­fect­ly direct.

For sev­er­al days before his death, New York­er edi­tor David Rem­nick sat down with Cohen for the first inter­view he’d giv­en in sev­er­al years. The poet and folk singer/songwriter leg­end had ter­mi­nal can­cer, we learn, and was con­fined to a med­ical chair. Nonethe­less, says Rem­nick, intro­duc­ing the edit­ed audio inter­view below, Cohen was “in an ebul­lient mood for a man… who knew exact­ly where he was going, and he was head­ed there in a hur­ry. And at the same time, he was incred­i­bly gra­cious. The most gra­cious host this side of my moth­er.” Cut to Cohen offer­ing him a few slices of cheese, and Rem­i­nick declin­ing.

Cohen kept his ill­ness secret (though he made allu­sions to it in a let­ter to his dying girl­friend Mar­i­anne this past sum­mer). Rem­nick reveals that he record­ed almost the entire­ty of his incred­i­ble final album You Want It Dark­er while con­fined to that chair. His voice rubbed raw with age, like John­ny Cash’s in his Amer­i­can Record­ings ses­sions, Cohen’s last songs car­ry all the spir­i­tu­al urgency and ragged vig­or of the best work of his career. Where did it come from? Unsur­pris­ing­ly, the first sub­ject in Rem­nick­’s inter­view is death. Cohen has been writ­ing about death since his first album in 1967.

He begins with his father’s death when he was nine, “a kind of ori­gin sto­ry for his career as a writer.”

The funer­al was held in our house. When we came down the stairs, the cof­fin was in the liv­ing room. And it was open. It was win­ter, you know. And I was think­ing, like, it must be hard to dig.

Remem­ber­ing this scene, Cohen’s Mon­tre­al accent strength­ens, then relax­es as he describes how, after the funer­al, he went to his father’s clos­et, cut a bow tie in half, wrote “some kind of farewell to my father” on the wing of the tie, and buried it in the back­yard. “It was just some attrac­tion to a rit­u­al response,” he says, “to an impos­si­ble event.”

This trag­ic vignette, and Cohen’s reflec­tion on it, is, as Rem­nick says, like a super­hero ori­gin sto­ry. With the same mea­sured, rhyth­mic voice and clear expres­sions as his songs, Cohen con­nects the mor­tal to the mys­te­ri­ous­ly divine act of writ­ing, which accom­plish­es “some kind of farewell” whose effects are unknown to us. What pos­si­ble sig­nif­i­cance the act had for Cohen, he can­not say, but it was sim­ply the appro­pri­ate response. Cohen’s final album seemed to be the right response to his own death.

This dwelling on mor­tal­i­ty is of course huge­ly sig­nif­i­cant and in the fore­ground of this inter­view-slash-trib­ute from Rem­nick, but it isn’t a mor­bid piece at all. In a ret­ro­spec­tive of Cohen’s career, we learn how he went from an acclaimed but strug­gling poet and nov­el­ist to folk singer in 1967, and how crip­pling stage fright led to him drink­ing three bot­tles of wine before he per­formed. At a 1972 con­cert in Israel, Cohen apol­o­gized, left the stage part­way through a song, and dropped two hits of acid in his dress­ing room. The audi­ence began singing loud­ly, and he returned to sing “So Long, Mar­i­anne” while hal­lu­ci­nat­ing wild­ly.

The sto­ry is hilar­i­ous, told with the same dry wit that under­cuts all of Cohen’s obser­va­tions about sex, death, and God. For all the deep­ness we asso­ciate with Leonard Cohen, says Rem­nick, he seemed reluc­tant to ana­lyze his work in reli­gious terms. But when he does open up about it, he gives us a back­drop against which to under­stand much of his spir­i­tu­al phi­los­o­phy: prayers, he says, “are to remind God, it was once a har­mo­nious uni­ty.… “ as well as his writ­ing phi­los­o­phy: “I only know,” says Cohen, “that if I write enough vers­es, and keep dis­card­ing the slo­gans, even the hip ones, even the sub­tle ones, that some­thing will emerge that rep­re­sents.”

You can also lis­ten to Remnick’s New York­er Radio Hour pod­cast at the WNYC site (and above) and read Remnick’s arti­cle on his last meet­ings with Cohen at The New York­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonard Cohen Has Passed at Age 82: His New and Now Final Album Is Stream­ing Free Online

Leonard Cohen Plays a Spell­bind­ing Set at the 1970 Isle of Wight Fes­ti­val

Ladies and Gen­tle­men… Mr. Leonard Cohen: The Poet-Musi­cian Fea­tured in a 1965 Doc­u­men­tary

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

Watch the Celebrated Ballerina Anna Pavlova Perform “The Dying Swan” (1925)

in Biology, Dance, Video - Arts & Culture | November 11th, 2016

Pre­pare my swan cos­tume.

— alleged last words of bal­le­ri­na Anna Pavlo­va, as report­ed by her hus­band

The Inter­net sug­gests that swans are fair­ly tough spec­i­mens, quick to hiss and flap at any YouTu­ber unwise enough to vio­late their per­son­al space with a video cam­era.

The cel­e­brat­ed bal­le­ri­na Anna Pavlo­va (1881–1931) paints a dif­fer­ent pic­ture in her sig­na­ture piece, The Dying Swan.

Chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Mikhail Fokine cre­at­ed the four minute solo in 1905 at Pavlova’s request, draw­ing on her admi­ra­tion for some res­i­dent swans in a Leningrad pub­lic park and Alfred, Lord Ten­nyson’s poem “The Dying Swan.”

It was per­haps a hap­py acci­dent that he had just learned how to play Camille Saint-Saëns’ Le Cygne from Le Car­naval des Ani­maux on his man­dolin. Per­formed on cel­lo, as orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed, it sup­plies a mood of gor­geous melan­choly with which to observe the tit­u­lar char­ac­ter’s en pointe death throes.

Fokine’s descrip­tion of the work’s cre­ation in Dance Mag­a­zine’s August 1931 issue speaks to the rig­or of these prac­ti­tion­ers and their art form:

It was almost an impro­vi­sa­tion. I danced in front of her [Pavlo­va], she direct­ly behind me. Then she danced and I walked along­side her, curv­ing her arms and cor­rect­ing details of pos­es. Pri­or to this com­po­si­tion, I was accused of bare­foot­ed ten­den­cies and of reject­ing toe danc­ing in gen­er­al. The Dying Swan was my answer to such criticism…The dance is tech­ni­cal­ly more dif­fi­cult than it may appear. The dancer moves con­stant­ly using  dif­fer­ent bour­rees. The feet must be beau­ti­ful, express­ing a trem­bling. All paus­es in sus-sous must show legs brought to one point. The arms and the back work inde­pen­dent­ly of the feet which con­tin­ue to move reg­u­lar­ly.

The archival footage from 1925, above, con­veys what Fokine’s words cannot—the deep emo­tion for which this par­tic­u­lar inter­preter was known. It’s a vis­cer­al expe­ri­ence to watch this bro­ken ani­mal fight­ing for its sur­vival, quiv­er­ing and heav­ing, before crum­pling at last. (A pity that this ver­sion cuts off so abrupt­ly… that final note should linger.)

Pavlo­va per­formed The Dying Swan around 4000 times over the course of her career, nev­er sick­en­ing of it, or of the beasts who inspired it. Swans pop­u­lat­ed a small pond at her Eng­lish coun­try home. You can wit­ness her fond­ness for them, below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 82-Year-Old Igor Stravin­sky Con­duct The Fire­bird, the Bal­let Mas­ter­piece That First Made Him Famous (1965)

Watch an Avant-Garde Bauhaus Bal­let in Bril­liant Col­or, the Tri­adic Bal­let First Staged by Oskar Schlem­mer in 1922

Bal­let Dancers Do Their Hard­est Moves in Slow Motion

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.

When Franz Kafka Invented the Answering Machine (1913)

in History, Literature, Technology | November 10th, 2016

We’ve all had the expe­ri­ence, punc­tu­at­ed by inter­minable wait­ing, of cir­cling over and over again through some enor­mous com­pa­ny’s auto­mat­ic tele­phone answer­ing sys­tem. Whether or not it counts as gen­uine­ly “Kafkaesque” may be up for debate, but we do have some evi­dence that the tech­nol­o­gy itself, or at least the idea of it, does indeed trace back to the author of The Meta­mor­pho­sis and The Tri­al him­self. This comes out in Kaf­ka biog­ra­ph­er Rein­er Stach’s new book of pho­tographs, let­ters, and oth­er dis­cov­er­ies called Is that Kaf­ka? 99 Finds.

“Although Kaf­ka was timid and skep­ti­cal in his inter­ac­tions with the lat­est tech­ni­cal gadgets—particularly when they inter­vened in social communication—he was always fas­ci­nat­ed by peo­ple who knew how to han­dle these devices as a mat­ter of course,” writes Stach in an excerpt at the Paris Review. “That includ­ed his fiancée Felice Bauer, who worked in the Berlin offices of Carl Lind­ström AG, where she was in charge of mar­ket­ing for the ‘par­lo­graph,’ a dic­ta­tion machine.” It must have required no great leap of Kafka’s for­mi­da­ble imag­i­na­tion to dream up “a cross between a tele­phone and a par­lo­graph,” which he described in a 1913 let­ter to Bauer:

The inven­tion of a cross between a tele­phone and a par­lo­graph, it real­ly can’t be that hard. Sure­ly by the day after tomor­row you’ll be report­ing to me that the project is already a suc­cess. Of course that would have an enor­mous impact on edi­to­r­i­al offices, news agen­cies, etc. Hard­er, but doubt­less pos­si­ble as well, would be a com­bi­na­tion of the gramo­phone and the tele­phone. Hard­er because you can’t under­stand a gramo­phone at all, and a par­lo­graph can’t ask it to speak more clear­ly. A com­bi­na­tion of the gramo­phone and the tele­phone wouldn’t have such great sig­nif­i­cance in gen­er­al either, but for peo­ple like me, who are afraid of the tele­phone, it would be a relief. But then peo­ple like me are also afraid of the gramo­phone, so we can’t be helped at all. By the way, it’s a nice idea that a par­lo­graph could go to the tele­phone in Berlin, call up a gramo­phone in Prague, and the two of them could have a lit­tle con­ver­sa­tion with each oth­er. But my dear­est the com­bi­na­tion of the par­lo­graph and the tele­phone absolute­ly has to be invent­ed.

The mod­ern answer­ing machine took some time to devel­op, attain­ing its first com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful form, the Elec­tron­ic Sec­re­tary, in 1949, a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry after Kafka’s death. But alas, unbe­knownst to him, some­one had also beat­en him to it when first he thought it up. “The com­bi­na­tion of a tele­phone and a dic­ta­tion machine had already been invent­ed and patent­ed — includ­ing the func­tions of an answer­ing machine,” writes Stach, cit­ing the engi­neer Ernest O. Kum­berg’s inven­tion of some­thing called the “Tele­phono­graph” in 1900. This might seem like just one more dis­ap­point­ment in a life full of them, but remem­ber: just over a cen­tu­ry on, when voice­mail and even new­er tech­nolo­gies have replaced the answer­ing machine, nobody describes any­thing with the word “Kum­ber­gian.”

You can pick up a copy of Is that Kaf­ka? 99 Finds here.

via The Paris Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Find Works by Kaf­ka in our Free eBooks col­lec­tion

Four Franz Kaf­ka Ani­ma­tions: Enjoy Cre­ative Ani­mat­ed Shorts from Poland, Japan, Rus­sia & Cana­da

Franz Kafka’s Kafkaesque Love Let­ters

The Art of Franz Kaf­ka: Draw­ings from 1907–1917

The Ani­mat­ed Franz Kaf­ka Rock Opera

What Does “Kafkaesque” Real­ly Mean? A Short Ani­mat­ed Video Explains

Down­load Jim Rockford’s Answer­ing Machine Mes­sages as MP3s

Mark Twain’s Patent­ed Inven­tions for Bra Straps and Oth­er Every­day Items

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.