What Happens on the Internet in 60 Seconds

in Technology, Web/Tech | June 12th, 2013

Chances are in the past week you’ve read some argu­ment about how the inter­net has destroyed the mid­dle class, democ­ra­cy, cul­ture, etc, or a rebut­tal of one of the above. I can’t add much to these debates. They some­times sound like argu­ments over whether tele­pho­ny is a boon or a curse. These technologies—as long as the grid’s up and running—we shall always have with us.

Soci­o­log­i­cal spec­u­la­tion notwith­stand­ing, the expo­nen­tial­ly increas­ing com­put­ing pow­er that push­es our online inter­ac­tions to ever-dizzy­ing speeds is sure­ly some­thing to pause and mar­vel at, if not to fear. The short video above from Buz­zfeed takes us on a wild ride through the mil­lions of trans­ac­tions that occur online in a sin­gle minute. Here we learn that in six­ty-sec­onds, there will be 2,000,000 Google search­es, 27,800 uploads to Insta­gram, 278,000 Tweets, 1,875,000 Face­book likes, a “low esti­mate” of 200,000 peo­ple stream­ing porn….

Actu­al­ly, it does start to seem like all this online activ­i­ty is pret­ty nar­row­ly focused, or maybe that’s a lim­i­ta­tion of the sur­vey. Anoth­er video from 2011 (below) and info­graph­ics here and here offer some com­par­a­tive ana­lyt­ics.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Three Uni­ver­si­ty Projects Use Twit­ter to Under­stand Hap­pi­ness, Hate and Oth­er Emo­tions in Amer­i­ca

How Brew­ster Kahle and the Inter­net Archive Will Pre­serve the Infi­nite Infor­ma­tion on the Web

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

The National Gallery Makes 25,000 Images of Artwork Freely Available Online

in Art, Music, Technology | June 11th, 2013

No sur­prise that in “Mas­ter­works for One and All,” an arti­cle about how muse­ums have begun to offer free, high-qual­i­ty down­load­able images of works from their col­lec­tions, the New York Times’ Nina Sie­gal brings up Wal­ter Ben­jamin. The pre­oc­cu­pa­tions of the philoso­pher behind “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechan­i­cal Repro­duc­tion” may seem more rel­e­vant than ever in these days of not just mechan­i­cal repro­duc­tion, but uni­ver­sal, devel­oped-world own­er­ship of the means of mechan­i­cal repro­duc­tion — and near­ly instan­ta­neous, effort­less mechan­i­cal repro­duc­tion at that. Many rights-hold­ers, includ­ing cer­tain muse­ums, have effec­tive­ly decid­ed that if you can’t beat the mechan­i­cal repro­duc­ers, join ’em. “With the Inter­net, it’s so dif­fi­cult to con­trol your copy­right or use of images,” Sie­gal quotes the Rijksmu­se­um’s direc­tor of col­lec­tions as say­ing. “We decid­ed we’d rather peo­ple use a very good high-res­o­lu­tion image of [Ver­meer’s] ‘Milk­maid’ from the Rijksmu­se­um rather than using a very bad repro­duc­tion.” (See our pre­vi­ous post: The Rijksmu­se­um Puts 125,000 Dutch Mas­ter­pieces Online, and Lets You Remix Its Art.)

Sie­gal goes on to men­tion the efforts of Wash­ing­ton’s Nation­al Gallery of Art, which has so far made super high-res­o­lu­tion images of 25,000 works freely avail­able on NGA Images, a site that describes itself as “designed to facil­i­tate learn­ing, enrich­ment, enjoy­ment, and explo­ration.” You can browse the images by col­lec­tion — French gal­leries, self-por­traits, music — view the most recent addi­tions, or pull up the works of art most fre­quent­ly request­ed by oth­ers. Leonar­do’s por­trait of the Flo­ren­tine aris­to­crat Ginevra de’ Ben­ci, seen up top, has proven par­tic­u­lar­ly pop­u­lar, as has Claude Mon­et’s The Japan­ese Foot­bridge just above. But does all this bear out Ben­jam­in’s con­cerns about mechan­i­cal repro­duc­tion cheap­en­ing the orig­i­nal aura of a work? “I don’t think any­one thinks we’ve cheap­ened the image of the ‘Mona Lisa,’” an NGA spokes­woman said to Sie­gal. “Peo­ple have got­ten past that, and they still want to go to the Lou­vre to see the real thing. It’s a new, 21st-cen­tu­ry way of respect­ing images.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google Launch­es a New “Art Talks” Series: Tune in Tonight

Down­load Hun­dreds of Free Art Cat­a­logs from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

Free: The Guggen­heim Puts 65 Mod­ern Art Books Online

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Patti Smith Reads Federico Garcia Lorca’s “Little Viennese Waltz” in New York City

in Poetry | June 10th, 2013

Last Wednes­day night, New York Insti­tu­tion Pat­ti Smith appeared at down­town venue Bow­ery Ball­room with a few friends to read poet­ry and play some music. The occa­sion? One of many in an almost two-month-long cel­e­bra­tion of Span­ish poet and play­wright Fed­eri­co Gar­cia Lorca’s brief sojourn in New York City in 1929–1930 while he was a stu­dent at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty. That year inspired a book, Poet in New York, which has been repub­lished in a revised bilin­gual edi­tion by Far­rar, Straus & Giroux.

In the clip above, watch Smith read a selec­tion of Gar­cia Lorca’s “Lit­tle Vien­nese Waltz.” Her Jersey/New York inflec­tions make the lines her own (love the way she says “piano”), and her ban­ter with the audi­ence is price­less.

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!

via The New York Times

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith Shares William S. Bur­roughs’ Advice for Writ­ers and Artists

Watch Pat­ti Smith Read from Vir­ginia Woolf, and Hear the Only Sur­viv­ing Record­ing of Woolf’s Voice

Pat­ti Smith’s Cov­er of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Strips the Song Down to its Heart

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

Watch Idem Paris, David Lynch’s Short Film on the Art of Making Lithographs

in Art, Film | June 4th, 2013

Locat­ed in the Mont­par­nasse sec­tion of Paris, the Idem stu­dio was orig­i­nal­ly built by the print­er Emile Dufrenoy in 1880, as a space to house his lith­o­graph­ic press­es. Mov­ing into the next cen­tu­ry, var­i­ous own­ers pre­served the art of lith­o­g­ra­phy, pro­duc­ing lith­o­graphs by the likes of Matisse, Picas­so, Miro, Braque, Cha­gall, Léger, Cocteau, and oth­ers. Today, the tra­di­tion con­tin­ues. And, amaz­ing­ly, the ate­lier still uses 19th cen­tu­ry flatbed machines, pow­ered by a gas steam boil­er, to keep the tra­di­tion of lith­o­g­ra­phy alive. While on a recent trip to Paris, the sur­re­al­ist film­mak­er David Lynch paid a vis­it to Idem and fell in love with what he saw, so much so that he pro­duced a short doc­u­men­tary high­light­ing Idem’s artis­tic process. As a pref­ace to the film, Lynch wrote on the Idem web site:

Hervé Chandès from the Fon­da­tion Carti­er brought me over to Idem and intro­duced me to Patrice For­est. I see this incred­i­ble place, and I get the oppor­tu­ni­ty to work there. And this was like a dream! It just opened up this brand-new world of the lith­o­g­ra­phy and the mag­ic of lith­o­g­ra­phy, the mag­ic of the stones. And it was a great, great thing! This thing of lith­o­g­ra­phy, this chan­nel of lith­o­g­ra­phy opened up and a bunch of ideas came flow­ing out and it led to about a hun­dred lith­o­graphs. I will say that Idem print­ing stu­dio has a unique, very spe­cial mood, and it is so con­ducive to cre­at­ing. Patrice has the great­est atti­tude for all the artists and he cre­ates this space of free­dom and this joy of cre­at­ing. It’s so beau­ti­ful! And I think the place is very important—in oth­er wors, the same stone could be moved to anoth­er place, and I think that the work that comes out would be dif­fer­ent. It’s a com­bi­na­tion of the stone, the place, the peo­ple, this mood, and out comes these cer­tain ideas.

You can find the short film, Idem Paris, list­ed in our col­lec­tion of 525 Free Movies Online. You can also find a primer explain­ing the basics of lith­o­g­ra­phy here.

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Free: The Guggen­heim Puts 65 Mod­ern Art Books Online

Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky Caught in the Act of Cre­ation, 1926

How the CIA Secret­ly Fund­ed Abstract Expres­sion­ism Dur­ing the Cold War

Watch Animations of Oscar Wilde’s Children’s Stories “The Happy Prince” and “The Selfish Giant”

in Animation, Film, Literature | June 4th, 2013

Long before Oscar Wilde became a lit­er­ary celebri­ty for his most famous work—The Pic­ture of Dori­an Gray and plays like Salome and The Impor­tance of Being Earnest—he was a bit of a real­i­ty star. Wilde trav­eled the UK and the Unit­ed States (as por­trayed by Stephen Fry here) as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the pop­u­lar phi­los­o­phy of “aes­theti­cism,” an urbane nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry move­ment against Vic­to­ri­an prud­ery and the dry moral cal­cu­lus of util­i­tar­i­an­ism and its asso­ci­a­tions with indus­tri­al cul­ture. Aes­thetes such as Wilde sought to ele­vate good taste and the pur­suit of beau­ty alone as a guid­ing prin­ci­ple of art and life. Wilde expressed the ideas in sev­er­al well-known epi­grams, such as the wry­ly redun­dant, “In all unim­por­tant mat­ters, style, not sin­cer­i­ty, is the essen­tial. In all impor­tant mat­ters, style, not sin­cer­i­ty, is the essen­tial.”

Wilde was ridiculed for the many of the same rea­sons he was feted—his flam­boy­ant pub­lic per­sona and devo­tion to aes­theti­cism, which satirists car­i­ca­tured as a kind of deca­dent navel-gaz­ing. But care­ful read­ers of Wilde’s diverse canon of poet­ry, prose, and dra­ma will know of his crit­i­cal looks at solip­sism and super­fi­cial­i­ty. Some of his best works as a moral­ist are his children’s sto­ries, such as the 1888 book of fairy sto­ries The Hap­py Prince and Oth­er Tales. In the title sto­ry, a prince is trans­formed into a glit­ter­ing stat­ue on a pedestal high above a city, where res­i­dents look up to him as an exam­ple of human per­fec­tion. But the prince, we learn, spends his time weep­ing in com­pas­sion for the pover­ty and suf­fer­ing he sees below him. Made in 1974 by Cana­di­an com­pa­ny Pot­ter­ton Pro­duc­tions, and fea­tur­ing the voic­es of Christo­pher Plum­mer and Gly­nis Johns, the ani­mat­ed short film above is a faith­ful ren­der­ing of Wilde’s sto­ry. You can find it added to our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online, under Ani­ma­tion.

In 1971, Pot­ter­ton pro­duced an ear­li­er ani­mat­ed short film based on anoth­er sto­ry from the Hap­py Prince col­lec­tion. A Chris­t­ian alle­go­ry, The Self­ish Giant (above) tells the tale of a cranky giant who walls off his gar­den to keep chil­dren out. The plight of one lit­tle boy changes the giant’s dis­po­si­tion. The film was nom­i­nat­ed for an Oscar for best ani­mat­ed short in 1972. Pot­ter­ton also pro­duced a short film of Hans Chris­t­ian Andersen’s “The Lit­tle Mer­maid,” and stu­dio head Ger­ald Pot­ter­ton would go on in 1981 to direct the cult ston­er film Heavy Met­al. An inter­est­ing irony of the Wilde ani­ma­tions above: both films, and a third called The Remark­able Rock­et, were co-pro­duced with Reader’s Digest, the mag­a­zine that rep­re­sents the hard-head­ed prac­ti­cal­i­ty and sen­ti­men­tal, sex­u­al­ly repres­sive Vic­to­ri­an val­ues (in Amer­i­can dress) that Wilde dis­dained.

If you can’t get enough of Wilde’s mov­ing fairy tales, you won’t want to miss Stephen Fry read­ing “The Hap­py Prince” below.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Oscar Wilde Offers Prac­ti­cal Advice on the Writ­ing Life in a New­ly-Dis­cov­ered Let­ter from 1890

Hear Oscar Wilde Recite a Sec­tion of The Bal­lad of Read­ing Gaol (1897)

“Jer­sey Shore” in the Style of Oscar Wilde

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

Free: The Great Gatsby & Other Major Works by F. Scott Fitzgerald

in Literature | June 3rd, 2013

In some pop­u­lar imag­in­ings, F. Scott Fitzger­ald becomes so asso­ci­at­ed with the jazz age friv­o­li­ty he keen­ly observed, and the social climb­ing of his best-known char­ac­ter, that much of his pre- and post-Gats­by writ­ing gets occlud­ed. While Fitzger­ald may have been an alco­holic spend­thrift who pre­ferred the fin­er things and those who wore them, he was also a very dis­ci­plined and seri­ous writer, espe­cial­ly of short sto­ries, which were his sole source of income through­out much of the ‘20s. Fitzgerald’s des­per­ate­ly pro­lif­ic out­put in the form means that there are a few hasti­ly-com­posed pieces, some light­weight, whim­si­cal fan­tasies, but all of the work is beau­ti­ful­ly writ­ten and a joy to read.

The fan­tasies (which include the now-famous “The Curi­ous Case of Ben­jamin But­ton”) reveal quite a bit about Fitzgerald’s pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with arti­fice. He was a very well-read, if not par­tic­u­lar­ly deep, thinker who approached lit­er­a­ture through fairy tales—Orientalist fables, adven­ture sto­ries, Edmund Spencer’s allegories—and his ear­ly sto­ries mix a boy­ish imag­i­na­tion with the feigned world­li­ness of a Prince­ton under­grad­u­ate. The most sub­stan­tial of those ear­ly sto­ries “May Day,” almost a novel­la, opens in a post-World War One New York City described as a fairy king­dom in the throes of mar­ket-mad­ness:

So gai­ly and nois­i­ly were the peace and pros­per­i­ty impend­ing hymned by the scribes and poets of the con­quer­ing peo­ple that more and more spenders had gath­ered from the provinces to drink the wine of excite­ment, and faster and faster did the mer­chants dis­pose of their trin­kets and slip­pers until they sent up a mighty cry for more trin­kets and more slip­pers in order that they might give in barter what was demand­ed of them. Some even of them flung up their hands help­less­ly, shout­ing:

“Alas! I have no more slip­pers! and alas! I have no more trin­kets! May heav­en help me for I know not what I shall do!”

This excerpt from the open­ing sec­tion of “May Day” reads like Hans Chris­t­ian Ander­sen, but with the sly satir­i­cal under­tone of one of Oscar Wilde’s children’s sto­ries. The sto­ry then shifts to a real­ist mode, intro­duc­ing the famil­iar Fitzger­ald themes of extrav­a­gant wealth and privilege—and their pre­car­i­ous nature. Some of the char­ac­ters embody­ing these traits, a group of Yale grad­u­ates, soon show the moral fail­ings exem­pli­fied by Gats­by’s Buchanans: cal­lous indif­fer­ence to the needs of oth­ers and vain self-regard.

The main plot of “May Day” goes to a very dark place, deal­ing with the kind of upper-class despair Bret Eas­t­on Ellis trades in, with a doomed main char­ac­ter quite obvi­ous­ly a stand-in for Fitzger­ald him­self. A some­what clum­sy sub­plot reach­es at times for a com­ic foil but also sounds a grim note. The story—with its almost vicious depic­tion of class division—is a minor work with major ambi­tion and a com­plex inter­weav­ing of Fitzgerald’s major themes.

“May Day”—first pub­lished in The Smart Set mag­a­zine in 1920 and lat­er appear­ing in the col­lec­tion Tales of the Jazz Age—draws from events of the Cleve­land May Day riots of 1919 and some New York expe­ri­ences in Fitzgerald’s life. Once asked, how­ev­er, if the sto­ry was auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal, the author replied, “there are no good biogra­phies of nov­el­ists because they are so many peo­ple.”

You can encounter all of the var­i­ous peo­ple Fitzger­ald car­ried with­in him in the sto­ries and nov­els we’ve gath­ered in our col­lec­tions of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books. (Find them below.) And to learn more about Fitzger­ald, in rela­tion to two oth­er 20th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can mas­ters, you might want to check out Wai Chee Dimock’s Open Yale online course, “Hem­ing­way, Fitzger­ald, Faulkn­er,” avail­able on YouTube and iTunes. It oth­er­wise appears in our col­lec­tion of 700 Free Cours­es Online.

eBooks

• Col­lect­ed Sto­ries
  • Read Online
• All the Sad Young Men
  • Read Online
• Flap­pers and Philoso­phers
  • Read Online
• Tales of the Jazz Age
  • Read Online
• Taps at Reveille
  • Read Online
• Ten­der is the Night
  • Read Online
• The Beau­ti­ful and Damned
  • Read Online
• The Curi­ous Case of Ben­jamin But­ton
  • Read Online
• The Great Gats­by
  • Read Online
• This Side of Par­adise
  • Read Online

Audio

• Flap­pers and Philoso­phers
  • Audio
• The Curi­ous Case of Ben­jamin But­ton
  • Audio
• Tales of the Jazz Age
  • Audio
• The Great Gats­by
  • Audio
• This Side of Par­adise
  • Audio

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sev­en Tips From F. Scott Fitzger­ald on How to Write Fic­tion

F. Scott Fitzger­ald in Drag (1916)

Ernest Hem­ing­way to F. Scott Fitzger­ald: “Kiss My Ass”

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

Atheist Ira Glass Believes Christians Get the Short End of the Media Stick

in Life, Philosophy, Radio, Religion | June 3rd, 2013

So, an athe­ist and a devout Chris­t­ian walk into a Taco­ma hotel restau­rant-bar…

Wait, though, it’s not what you think! The athe­ist in ques­tion is pub­lic radio star Ira Glass, ami­ably sit­ting for an inter­view with ama­teur spir­i­tu­al anthro­pol­o­gist and for­mer This Amer­i­can Life guest Jim Hen­der­son. The mutu­al respect is refresh­ing. Hen­der­son makes it his mis­sion to seek out influ­en­tial peo­ple who are “unusu­al­ly inter­est­ed in oth­ers,” and will­ing to “stay in the room with dif­fer­ence.” Glass’ relaxed and chat­ty demeanor trans­lates to mis­sion accom­plished.

The non-believ­ing child of sec­u­lar Jews does his tribe proud by vol­un­teer­ing the opin­ion that Chris­tians get a bum rap in the nation­al media. The por­tray­al of Chris­tians as “doc­tri­naire crazy hot­head peo­ple” does­n’t square with fond rec­ol­lec­tions of for­mer pub­lic radio col­leagues who kept Bibles on their desks and invit­ed him to screen­ings of Rap­ture movies (At WBEZ? Real­ly?).

The civil­i­ty of the dis­course could renew your faith in mankind, what­ev­er your beliefs.

You can watch oth­er parts of the longer inter­view on YouTube here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ira Glass on the Art and Craft of Telling Great Radio Sto­ries

The Unbe­liev­ers, A New Film Star­ring Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, Wern­er Her­zog, Woody Allen, & Cor­mac McCarthy

Does God Exist? Christo­pher Hitchens Debates Chris­t­ian Philoso­pher William Lane Craig

Alain de Bot­ton Wants a Reli­gion for Athe­ists: Intro­duc­ing Athe­ism 2.0

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is in Ira’s camp. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Dexter Gordon’s Elegant Version of the Jazz Standard ‘What’s New,’ 1964

in Music | May 31st, 2013

In 1964, when this per­for­mance was giv­en, the tenor sax­o­phon­ist Dex­ter Gor­don was in the sec­ond year of his Euro­pean exile.

Gor­don had risen to promi­nence in the ear­ly 1940s, after join­ing the Lionel Hamp­ton band at the age of 17. He was one of the pio­neer trans­la­tors of the bebop idiom to the tenor sax. And he was an ear­ly influ­ence on the play­ing of John Coltrane and Son­ny Rollins.

“Dex­ter made a great con­tri­bu­tion to the bebop lan­guage,” Rollins once said. “In fact, I think he defined it dur­ing a cer­tain peri­od. He tran­scribed a lot of the stuff that Bird was doing, and brought that approach to the tenor with­out being a copi­er. He was an impor­tant fig­ure in bring­ing peo­ple along. Coltrane at one time sound­ed like Dex­ter, and I still hear that lin­eage.”

But by the 1950s Gor­don was addict­ed to hero­in. He checked him­self into the hos­pi­tal sev­er­al times but always fell back. In 1960 he was arrest­ed in Los Ange­les on drug charges and spent three months in prison. When he got out he had trou­ble find­ing gigs. Even though he had com­plete­ly kicked his habit by 1962, New York police refused to issue him a cabaret card to play in the city’s night­clubs. An offer to play in Europe changed his life. “I  went for three months and stayed for 14 years,” Gor­don told Peo­ple mag­a­zine in 1986. “I came alive over there.”

Gor­don had clear­ly hit his stride again by July 29, 1964, when this scene was record­ed for Dutch tele­vi­sion in Amers­foort, Hol­land. Gor­don is play­ing the 1939 Bob Hag­gart and John­ny Burke stan­dard, “What’s New?” His Euro­pean quar­tet includes George Gruntz on piano, Guy Ped­er­sen on bass and Daniel Humair on drums. The per­for­mance is avail­able as part of the Jazz Icons DVD, Dex­ter Gor­don: Live in ’63 & ’64. In the lin­er notes, Gor­don’s for­mer pro­duc­er Michael Cus­cu­na describes him as being in peak form when this film was made: “His tone res­onates with pow­er and beau­ty, his chops enable him to exe­cute what­ev­er occurs to him and his ideas flow seam­less­ly.”

Gor­don learned from his idol Lester Young that it was a good idea to know the lyrics of a song if you want to under­stand its essence. One of Gor­don’s idio­syn­crasies was to recite a few lines from the lyrics before play­ing the song. In this scene, the six-foot, six-inch-tall sax­o­phon­ist steps up to the micro­phone and, in his deep bari­tone voice, recites the open­ing lines to “What’s New?” before launch­ing into a beau­ti­ful instru­men­tal ver­sion. Sum­ming up Gor­don’s dis­tinc­tive play­ing, a biog­ra­ph­er at the New Grove Dic­tio­nary of Jazz writes: “His rich, vibrant sound, har­mon­ic aware­ness, behind-the-beat phras­ing, and his predilec­tion for humor­ous quo­ta­tions com­bine to cre­ate a unique style.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Advice From the Mas­ter: Thelo­nious Monk Scrib­bles a List of Tips for Play­ing a Gig

The Nazis’ 10 Con­trol-Freak Rules for Jazz Per­form­ers: A Strange List from World War II

Watch 1959: The Year that Changed Jazz

Hear Sylvia Plath Read 18 Poems From Her Final Collection, Ariel, in a 1962 Recording

in Poetry | May 29th, 2013

“Add to the avail­able accounts of Plath (there are so many) this, please: nobody brought a house to life the way she did.” So writes Dan Chi­as­son in a Feb­ru­ary New York­er piece com­mem­o­rat­ing the fifti­eth anniver­sary of Sylvia Plath’s death. Chiasson’s plea is made all the more poignant by his care­ful read­ings of the tenderness—amidst the pain and horror—in Plath’s final col­lec­tion, Ariel, which she left sit­ting on the kitchen table to be found along with her body. (The col­lec­tion has recent­ly been restored to cor­re­spond to Plath’s final wish­es).

Chiasson’s refo­cus­ing of Plath’s lega­cy feels nec­es­sary, giv­en that, as James Park­er writes in The Atlantic, “Her short life has been tram­pled and retram­pled under the biographer’s hoof, her opus viewed and skewed through every con­ceiv­able lens of inter­pre­ta­tion.” It is some­times dif­fi­cult to con­nect with work—even with that as stun­ning­ly accom­plished and res­o­nant as Plath’s—through this thick haze of sen­sa­tion­al­ism and cult fan­dom. Even if many of the poems in Ariel—most famous­ly “Lady Lazarus”—seem to request this kind of scruti­ny, many oth­ers, Chi­as­son writes, includ­ing the title poem, need to be approached afresh, with­out the mor­bid celebri­ty bag­gage Plath’s name car­ries.

Is this pos­si­ble? Per­haps one way to recon­nect with the poet­ry is to hear Plath her­self read­ing it. In these record­ings, you can hear her read fif­teen poems from Ariel, her New Eng­land Brah­min vow­els inflect­ing every line, draw­ing out inter­nal rhymes and asso­nance, then clip­ping at caesuras like a well-bred horse’s trot­ting hooves.

The title poem “Ariel”—which Chi­as­son eulo­gizes as “a per­fect poem, per­fect in its excess­es and stray blasphemies”—is, in fact, part­ly named after Plath’s favorite horse. Also enfold­ed in the title is the cap­tive sprite bound to per­form tricks for Shakespeare’s mage Pros­pero in The Tem­pest, and an Old Tes­ta­ment name giv­en to Jerusalem, mean­ing “lion of God” (the sec­ond stan­za begins “God’s lioness…”). Plath’s poet­ic self-under­stand­ing is as com­plex as this allu­sive lay­er­ing sug­gests, and the poem’s jar­ring ellipses demand very close atten­tion.

The read­ings here are from record­ings made on Octo­ber 20, 1962. Poems include: “The Rab­bit Catch­er,” “A Birth­day Present,” “A Secret,” “The Appli­cant,” “Dad­dy,” “Medusa,” “Stopped Dead,” “Fever 103°,” “Amne­si­ac,” “Cut,” “Ariel,” “Pop­pies In Octo­ber,” “Nick And The Can­dle­stick,” “Pur­dah,” and “Lady Lazarus.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

On 50th Anniver­sary of Sylvia Plath’s Death, Hear Her Read ‘Lady Lazarus’

For Sylvia Plath’s 80th Birth­day, Hear Her Read ‘A Birth­day Present’

The Art of Sylvia Plath: Revis­it Her Sketch­es, Self-Por­traits, Draw­ings & Illus­trat­ed Let­ters

525 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

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

Watch Another Green World, a Hypnotic Portrait of Brian Eno (2010)

in Art, Music, Television | May 24th, 2013

In Sep­tem­ber 1975, Bri­an Eno released his album Anoth­er Green World. The fol­low­ing month, the BBC’s acclaimed doc­u­men­tary series Are­na first aired, using Anoth­er Green World’s title track as its theme music. 35 years lat­er, the show final­ly got around to doc­u­ment­ing Eno him­self. This 2010 episode, also called Anoth­er Green World, cap­tures the “intel­lec­tu­al guru of the rock world” (as a Desert Island Discs DJ calls him) at work in his stu­dio, in con­ver­sa­tion with a vari­ety of interlocutors—including jour­nal­ist Mal­colm Glad­well, record pro­duc­er Steve Lil­ly­white, and evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist Richard Dawkins—and cycling around the green hills that roll around his neigh­bor­hood. Bono from U2, sev­er­al of whose records Eno pro­duced, calls the man “a mind-expand­ing drug,” and lis­ten­ing to Eno expound here upon his var­i­ous ideas about and expe­ri­ences with art, music, tech­nol­o­gy, jour­nal­ing, and his native Eng­land, I’d have to agree.

The faint­ly hyp­not­ic tone and pace of the episode — a sen­si­bil­i­ty not far removed from Eno’s famous “ambi­ent” records like Dis­creet Music and Music for Air­ports — might also have some­thing to do with that. We learn about Eno’s school days, his love of singing, his descent from a long line of “post­men with pas­sion,” his get­ting more girls than Bryan Fer­ry in their days with Roxy Music, his pref­er­ence for incon­sis­tent instru­ments, his his­to­ry with Catholi­cism, his enthu­si­asm for Stafford Beer’s man­age­ment book Brain of the Firm, his work with audio­vi­su­al instal­la­tions, and his ever-present inter­est in how com­plex­i­ty aris­es from sim­plic­i­ty. But we also feel like we’ve seen some­thing not just about Eno, but Eno-like, where form meets func­tion as close­ly as in all of Are­na’s most mem­o­rable episodes and all of Eno’s most mem­o­rable projects. Or maybe I just like the sound of the rain out­side dur­ing the stu­dio seg­ments — a sound which had a lot to do with Eno’s devel­op­ment of ambi­ent music in the first place.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Genius of Bri­an Eno On Dis­play in 80 Minute Q&A: Talks Art, iPad Apps, ABBA, & More

Bri­an Eno Once Com­posed Music for Win­dows 95; Now He Lets You Cre­ate Music with an iPad App

Bri­an Eno on Cre­at­ing Music and Art As Imag­i­nary Land­scapes (1989)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.