Watch Joni Mitchell Sing an Immaculate Version of Her Song “Coyote,” with Bob Dylan, Roger McGuinn & Gordon Lightfoot (1975)

in Music | May 22nd, 2020

Joni Mitchell doesn’t like to do inter­views, but once she starts to open up, she real­ly opens up, not only about her own strug­gles but about her feel­ings towards her fel­low artists. These are often decid­ed­ly neg­a­tive. Maybe she took a cue from her per­son­al hero, Miles Davis (who, it turned out secret­ly owned all her albums). Mitchell matched his lev­el of caus­tic com­men­tary in 2010 when she told the L.A. Times that Bob Dylan “is not authen­tic at all. He’s a pla­gia­rist, and his name and voice are fake. Every­thing about Bob is a decep­tion.”

Attempts to clar­i­fy fell flat with the most back­hand­ed of com­pli­ments. “I like a lot of Bob’s songs, though musi­cal­ly he’s not very gift­ed.” If any musi­cian has earned the right to crit­i­cize him… In any case, what­ev­er she thought of Dylan dur­ing her mid-sev­en­ties peri­od, when she record­ed and released her dense­ly exper­i­men­tal The Hiss­ing of Sum­mer Lawns and Court and Spark, she was hap­py to join the 1975 Bob Dylan Rolling Thun­der Revue.

Mar­tin Scors­ese cap­tured the tour, which played small­er, more inti­mate venues than Dylan had in years. The doc­u­men­tary, Rolling Thun­der Revue: A Bob Dylan Sto­ry by Mar­tin Scors­ese, was only released last year. Dylan may have been the head­lin­er, but this is also a Joni Mitchell sto­ry, and a Joan Baez, Roger McGuinn, and oth­er artists’ sto­ry. In the clip above, Mitchell plays a new song, “Coy­ote,” at Gor­don Lightfoot’s house, with Dylan and McGuinn join­ing in on gui­tar. Her per­for­mance is immac­u­late, full of con­fi­dence and nuance. McGuinn leans for­ward before she begins to intro­duce the song for Joni, mansplain­ing into the mic, “Joni wrote this song about this tour and on this tour and for this tour.”

Mitchell says noth­ing, but fans will know she wrote the song about Sam Shep­ard and first intro­duced it onstage dur­ing The Hiss­ing of Sum­mer Lawns tour. They’ll also rec­og­nize it as the first song on Mitchell’s 1976 album Heji­ra. The stu­dio ver­sion, above, is still dri­ven by her acoustic gui­tar but incor­po­rates per­cus­sion and Mitchell’s ser­pen­tine vocal line entwines with Jaco Pastorius’s bass. Lyri­cal­ly, the song is full of dusty, for­lorn images like the set­tings of Shepard’s plays. How McGuinn could have thought that it was about Dylan’s tour is beyond me. But Mitchell nev­er need­ed any­one else to speak for her.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Joni Mitchell Pub­lish­es a Book of Her Rarely Seen Paint­ings & Poet­ry

See Clas­sic Per­for­mances of Joni Mitchell from the Very Ear­ly Years–Before She Was Even Named Joni Mitchell (1965/66)

How Joni Mitchell Wrote “Wood­stock,” the Song that Defined the Leg­endary Music Fes­ti­val, Even Though She Wasn’t There (1969)

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

Bill Gates Recommends 5 Thought-Provoking Books to Read This Summer

in Books | May 22nd, 2020

Have free time on your hands? Then let Bill Gates sug­gest five books to fill your days. Most take you deep­er into think­ing about our chal­leng­ing times. At least one pro­vides a men­tal escape. Bill writes:

Upheaval: Turn­ing Points for Nations in Cri­sis, by Jared Dia­mond. I’m a big fan of every­thing Jared has writ­ten, and his lat­est is no excep­tion. The book explores how soci­eties react dur­ing moments of cri­sis. He uses a series of fas­ci­nat­ing case stud­ies to show how nations man­aged exis­ten­tial chal­lenges like civ­il war, for­eign threats, and gen­er­al malaise. It sounds a bit depress­ing, but I fin­ished the book even more opti­mistic about our abil­i­ty to solve prob­lems than I start­ed. More here.

Nine Pints: A Jour­ney Through the Mys­te­ri­ous, Mirac­u­lous World of Blood. If you get grossed out by blood, this one prob­a­bly isn’t for you. But if you’re like me and find it fas­ci­nat­ing, you’ll enjoy this book by a British jour­nal­ist with an espe­cial­ly per­son­al con­nec­tion to the sub­ject. I’m a big fan of books that go deep on one spe­cif­ic top­ic, so Nine Pints (the title refers to the vol­ume of blood in the aver­age adult) was right up my alley. It’s filled with super-inter­est­ing facts that will leave you with a new appre­ci­a­tion for blood. More here.

A Gen­tle­man in Moscow, by Amor Towles. It seems like every­one I know has read this book. I final­ly joined the club after my broth­er-in-law sent me a copy, and I’m glad I did. Towles’s nov­el about a count sen­tenced to life under house arrest in a Moscow hotel is fun, clever, and sur­pris­ing­ly upbeat. Even if you don’t enjoy read­ing about Rus­sia as much as I do (I’ve read every book by Dos­toyevsky), A Gen­tle­man in Moscow is an amaz­ing sto­ry that any­one can enjoy. More here.

Pres­i­dents of War: The Epic Sto­ry, from 1807 to Mod­ern Times, by Michael Beschloss. My inter­est in all aspects of the Viet­nam War is the main rea­son I decid­ed to pick up this book. By the time I fin­ished it, I learned a lot not only about Viet­nam but about the eight oth­er major con­flicts the U.S. entered between the turn of the 19th cen­tu­ry and the 1970s. Beschloss’s broad scope lets you draw impor­tant cross-cut­ting lessons about pres­i­den­tial lead­er­ship. More here.

The Future of Cap­i­tal­ism: Fac­ing the New Anx­i­eties, by Paul Col­lier. Collier’s lat­est book is a thought-pro­vok­ing look at a top­ic that’s top of mind for a lot of peo­ple right now. Although I don’t agree with him about everything—I think his analy­sis of the prob­lem is bet­ter than his pro­posed solutions—his back­ground as a devel­op­ment econ­o­mist gives him a smart per­spec­tive on where cap­i­tal­ism is head­ed.

Find anoth­er addi­tion­al list of books Gates con­sid­ers worth read­ing here.

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:

How Bill Gates Reads Books

Bill Gates Describes His Biggest Fear: “I Rate the Chance of a Wide­spread Epi­dem­ic Far Worse Than Ebo­la at Well Over 50 Per­cent” (2015)

Bill Gates Names 5 Books You Should Read This Sum­mer (2018)

Bill Gates Rec­om­mends Five Books for Sum­mer 2017

5 Books Bill Gates Wants You to Read This Sum­mer (2016)

Studio Ghibli Producer Toshio Suzuki Teaches You How to Draw Totoro in Two Minutes

in Animation, Art, Film, K-12 | May 22nd, 2020

This is some­thing you can do at home. Every­one, please draw pic­tures —Toshio Suzu­ki

There’s no short­age of online tuto­ri­als for fans who want to draw Totoro, the  enig­mat­ic title char­ac­ter of Stu­dio Ghibli’s 1988 ani­mat­ed fea­ture, My Neigh­bor Totoro:

There’s a two-minute, non-nar­rat­ed, God’s-Eye-view with shad­ing…

A detailed geom­e­try-based step-by-step…

A ten-minute ver­sion for kids that uti­lizes a drink­ing glass and a bot­tle cap to get the pro­por­tions right pri­or to pen­cil­ing, ink­ing, and col­or­ing…

But none has more heart than Stu­dio Ghi­b­li pro­duc­er Toshio Suzu­ki’s sim­ple demon­stra­tion, above.

The paper is ori­ent­ed toward the artist, rather than the view­er.

His only instruc­tion is that the eyes should be spaced very far apart.

His brush pen lends itself to a freer line than the tight­ly con­trolled out­lines of Stu­dio Ghibli’s care­ful­ly ren­dered 2‑D char­ac­ter designs.

This is Totoro as Zen prac­tice, offered as a gift to cooped-up Japan­ese chil­dren, whose schools, like so many world­wide, were abrupt­ly shut­tered in an effort to con­tain the spread of the nov­el coro­n­avirus.

via MyMod­ern­Met

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hayao Miyazaki’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Releas­es Free Back­grounds for Vir­tu­al Meet­ings: Princess Mononoke, Spir­it­ed Away & More

A Vir­tu­al Tour Inside the Hayao Miyazaki’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Muse­um

Build Your Own Minia­ture Sets from Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Films: My Neigh­bor Totoro, Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her lat­est project is an ani­ma­tion and a series of free down­load­able posters, encour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to wear masks in pub­lic and wear them prop­er­ly. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

A Soul Train-Style Detroit Dance Show Gets Down to Kraftwerk’s “Numbers” in the Late 80s

in Music | May 21st, 2020

Imag­ine Kraftwerk’s Ralf Hüt­ter in his robot voice, say­ing, as he once said to his friend Boris Ven­zen, “Our music is good if blacks and whites can dance to it at the same time.” This state­ment is the essence of Kraftwerk. Despite their ear­ly 70s avant-garde phase and their famous­ly satir­ic Teu­ton­ic look, the robot­ic Ger­man tech­no pio­neers set­tled ear­ly on their “prac­tice of fus­ing Euro­pean elec­tron­ic music with black Amer­i­can rhythms, forg­ing an aes­thet­ic that reached crit­i­cal mass with the release of Trans Europe Express.”

So writes John Mor­ri­son at The Wire, in an essay that explores this fusion in some depth. Mor­ri­son also quotes for­mer Kraftwerk per­cus­sion­ist Karl Bar­tos on the band’s debt to black music: “We were all fans of Amer­i­can music: soul, the Tamla/Motown thing, and of course, James Brown. We always tried to make an Amer­i­can rhythm feel, with a Euro­pean approach to har­mo­ny and melody.” The exper­i­men­tal method emerges even in their ear­li­est work, in which they begin work­ing with the “’Bo Did­dley’ beat… that dom­i­nat­ed rock ‘n’ roll in the 50s and ear­ly 60s,” Mor­ri­son notes.

Black DJs in the states picked up on what the Ger­mans were doing, and start­ed play­ing Kraftwerk—along with Gary Numan, Yel­lo Mag­ic Orches­tra, and New Order—in the dis­cos. Mean­while, Kraftwerk start­ed incor­po­rat­ing ear­ly Amer­i­can house music with their 1981 album Com­put­er World. The response to Kraftwerk in black clubs was huge, and they became even more famous after Afri­ka Bam­baataa sam­pled “Trans Europe Express” in his 1981 track, “Plan­et Rock,” a song that had a seis­mic impact on elec­tron­ic dance music around the world.

Kraftwerk’s most sin­gu­lar impact in the U.S. hap­pened in the city of Detroit. As Mor­ri­son writes:

[Kraftwerk]’s influ­ence took a par­tic­u­lar­ly strong hold in Detroit with Urban radio DJs Like Elec­tri­fy­ing Mojo intro­duc­ing the Euro­pean elec­tron­ic sound to the gen­er­a­tion of black youth that went on to cre­ate tech­no. In recent years, sev­er­al clips have been uploaded of The Scene (and its spin-off The New Dance Show), a Soul Train-style dance show that aired from 1975–87 on Detroit’s WGPR TV 62. In these videos, black youth from Detroit can be seen danc­ing to Kraftwerk and a vari­ety of pro­gres­sive elec­tron­ic dance music, giv­ing us a glimpse into Detroit’s scene at the time.

If you ever need­ed to know how to dance to Kraftwerk, writes Dan­ger­ous Minds of the exu­ber­ant Soul Train-like dance line above, “this is how it’s done”—or at least, how it was done in Detroit in the late 80s on The New Dance Show. From the ear­ly 80s on, Mor­ri­son writes, “Kraftwerk became increas­ing­ly aware of the black music scene,” and leg­endary Detroit tech­no DJs like Juan Atkins, Der­rick May, and Kevin Saun­der­son became increas­ing­ly aware of Kraftwerk, a sit­u­a­tion cul­tur­al schol­ar Paul Gilroy might fold into his con­cept of “the Black Atlantic,” but which could also be called some­thing like The Trans Düs­sel­dorf-Detroit Afro­fu­tur­ist Tech­no Express.

“All of the city latched on to” Kraftwerk’s sound, says May in a 2010 inter­view above. Atkins put it this way in a 2012 trib­ute to Kraftwerk pub­lished on Elec­tron­ic Beats:

[T]he first time I heard ‘Robots’ I just froze. My jaw dropped. It just sound­ed so new and fresh. I mean, I had already been doing elec­tron­ic music at the time, but the results weren’t so pristine—the sound of com­put­ers talk­ing to each oth­er. This sound­ed like the future, and it was fas­ci­nat­ing, because I had just start­ed learn­ing about sequencers and drum pro­grams. In my mind, Kraftwerk were, like, con­sul­tants to Roland and Korg and stuff because they had these sounds before any of the machines even appeared on the mar­ket.

I mean, there were oth­er funky elec­tron­ic bands around—Tan­ger­ine Dream and Gary Numan and all that—but none were as funky as Kraftwerk­. I mean, you could actu­al­ly play the stuff on black radio, and that wasn’t a small feat. You could go to an all black club in Detroit and when they put on ‘Pock­et Cal­cu­la­tor’, every­body just went total­ly crazy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Flo­ri­an Schnei­der (RIP) in Clas­sic Ear­ly Kraftwerk Per­for­mances

The Case for Why Kraftwerk May Be the Most Influ­en­tial Band Since the Bea­t­les

Kraftwerk’s “The Robots” Per­formed by Ger­man First Graders in Adorable Card­board Robot Out­fits

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

The Original Star Wars Trilogy Adapted into a 14-Hour Radio Drama by NPR (1981–1996)

in Film, Radio, Sci Fi | May 20th, 2020

When it opened in 1977, Star Wars revived the old-fash­ioned swash­buck­ling adven­ture film. With­in a few years, Nation­al Pub­lic Radio made a bet that it could do the same for the radio dra­ma. Though still well with­in liv­ing mem­o­ry, the “gold­en age of radio” in Amer­i­ca had end­ed decades ear­li­er, and with it the shows that once filled the air­waves with sto­ries of every kind. Radio dra­mas seemed extinct, but then, before George Lucas’ space opera turned block­buster, so had movie seri­als like Flash Gor­don and Buck Rogers. The episod­ic nature of such source mate­r­i­al res­onat­ed with the sim­i­lar­ly episod­ic nature of clas­sic radio dra­ma, and that must have brought with­in the realm of pos­si­bil­i­ty a bold and near-scan­dalous propo­si­tion: to re-make Star Wars for NPR.

The idea came from a stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, who sug­gest­ed it to USC School of the Per­form­ing arts dean and radio-dra­ma enthu­si­ast Richard Toscan. There could have been no insti­tu­tion bet­ter-placed to take on such a project. Since Toscan had already pro­duced dra­mas on the school’s NPR-affil­i­at­ed radio sta­tion KUSC, he made an ide­al col­lab­o­ra­tor in the net­work’s effort to breathe new life into its dra­mat­ic pro­gram­ming. And as Lucas’ alma mater, USC inspired in him a cer­tain gen­eros­i­ty: Lucas sold KUSC Star Wars’ radio rights, along with use of the film’s music and sound effects, for one dol­lar. Found­ed just a decade ear­li­er, NPR still lacked the expe­ri­ence and resources to han­dle such an ambi­tious project itself, and so entered into a co-pro­duc­tion deal with the BBC, which had nev­er let radio dra­ma go into eclipse.

When the Star Wars radio dra­ma was first broad­cast in the spring of 1981, fans of the movie would have heard a mix­ture of the famil­iar (includ­ing the voic­es of Mark Hamill as Luke Sky­walk­er and Antho­ny Daniels as C‑3PO) and the unfa­mil­iar. With sci­ence-fic­tion nov­el­ist Bri­an Daley brought on to add or restore scenes to the script of the orig­i­nal dia­logue-light fea­ture film, the sto­ry stretch­es out to thir­teen episodes for a total run­time of six hours. The series thus stands as an ear­ly exam­ple of the expan­sion of the Star Wars uni­verse that, in all kinds of media, has con­tin­ued apace ever since. An Empire Strikes Back radio dra­ma fol­lowed in 1983, with Return of the Jedi fol­low­ing, after pro­longed devel­op­ment chal­lenges, in 1996.

You can hear all four­teen hours of these orig­i­nal Star Wars tril­o­gy radio dra­mas at the Inter­net Archive (Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi), or on a Youtube playlist with fan edits com­bin­ing the orig­i­nal­ly dis­crete episodes into con­tin­u­ous lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ences. NPR’s gam­ble on adapt­ing a Hol­ly­wood hit paid off: the first Star Wars radio dra­ma drew 750,000 new lis­ten­ers, many from the youth­ful demo­graph­ic the net­work had hoped to cap­ture. It was the biggest sci­ence-fic­tion event on Amer­i­can radio since Orson Welles scared the coun­try with his adap­ta­tion of H.G. Welles’ The War of the Worlds more than 40 years ear­li­er — a broad­cast pro­duced by John House­man, who in his capac­i­ty as USC’s artis­tic direc­to­ry in the 1970s, encour­aged Toscan to bring radio dra­ma back. In recent years, NPR’s audi­ence has con­tin­ued to age while the Star Wars fran­chise has in the­aters, on tele­vi­sion and else­where, gone from strength to strength. Has the time come for radio to use the Force once again?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sci-Fi Radio: Hear Radio Dra­mas of Sci-Fi Sto­ries by Ray Brad­bury, Philip K. Dick, Ursu­la K. LeGuin & More (1989)

30 Hours of Doc­tor Who Audio Dra­mas Now Free to Stream Online

Hear Five JG Bal­lard Sto­ries Pre­sent­ed as Radio Dra­mas

Dimen­sion X: The 1950s Sci­Fi Radio Show That Dra­ma­tized Sto­ries by Asi­mov, Brad­bury, Von­negut & More

The Com­plete Star Wars “Fil­mu­men­tary”: A 6‑Hour, Fan-Made Star Wars Doc­u­men­tary, with Behind-the-Scenes Footage & Com­men­tary

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

“Prince and the Revolution: Live,” the Historic 1985 Concert Is Streaming Online

in Music | May 20th, 2020

A quick heads up. The Prince Estate has released Prince and the Rev­o­lu­tion: Live, a his­toric con­cert cap­tured at the Car­ri­er Dome in Syra­cuse, NY on March 30, 1985. Stream­ing to sup­port the COVID-19 Sol­i­dar­i­ty Response Fund for the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion, the video revis­its the Pur­ple Rain tour, when Prince was at the height of his pow­ers. You can find the 20-song setlist right below. Enjoy the free fundrais­ing stream while it lasts.

1. Let’s Go Crazy

2. Deliri­ous

3. 1999

4. Lit­tle Red Corvette

5. Take Me With U

6. Yan­kee Doo­dle Dandy

7. Do Me Baby

8. Irre­sistible Bitch

9. Pos­sessed

10. How Come You Don’t Call Me Any­more

11. Let’s Pre­tend We’re Mar­ried

12. Inter­na­tion­al Lover

13. God

14. Com­put­er Blue

15. Dar­ling Nik­ki

16. The Beau­ti­ful Ones

17. When Dove’s Cry

18. I Would Die 4 U

19. Baby I’m A Star

20. Pur­ple Rain

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A New Col­lec­tion of Offi­cial, Autho­rized Prince GIFs!

Hear Prince’s Per­son­al Playlist of Par­ty Music: 22 Tracks That Will Bring Any Par­ty to Life

Read Prince’s First Inter­view, Print­ed in His High School News­pa­per (1976)

The Prince Online Muse­um Archives 16 of Prince’s Offi­cial Web Sites, Span­ning 20 Years

Does Local News Deserve More of Your Attention? Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #44 w/ Deion Broxton of Bison Meme Fame

in Media, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | May 20th, 2020

Is news enter­tain­ment? To what extent has local news con­sump­tion decreased giv­en the alter­na­tives? Deion is an on-air reporter for NBC Mon­tana who was recent­ly memi­fied for flee­ing amus­ing­ly from some bison. He joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to dis­cuss what we might be miss­ing out on, the uses and abus­es of news cov­er­age, real­i­ty vs. media por­tray­als, and the cur­rent sta­tus of “trust­ed news reporter” in our col­lec­tive con­scious­ness.

Here are a few rel­e­vant arti­cles to peruse:

• “Why Does Local News Mat­ter? Let’s Ask Our Audi­ence” by Melody Kramer
• “Local News is the ‘Biggest Cri­sis’ in Jour­nal­ism, but a Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Cam­paign is Under­way” by Mark Jacob
• “News­pa­per Decline and the Effect of Local Gov­ern­ment Cov­er­age” by Jay Jen­nings
• “Local News­pa­pers Will Stand the Test of Time — Here’s Why” by Adam Sig­nol­da
• “Why View­ers Trust Local Polit­i­cal Cov­er­age” by Hank Price
• “Indus­try Insight: Local Sports Cov­er­age Needs to Adapt to the Mod­ern News­room” by Matt DeRien­zo

Read that sto­ry about the mur­der that Deion refers to. Deion’s bison encounter has been cov­ered on the Today Show, Time, Huff­in­g­ton Post, etc. Fol­low him @DeionNBCMT.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

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

1930s Phonograph Doubled as an Alarm Clock, Letting People Start Their Day with Their Favorite Record

in Music, Technology | May 19th, 2020

The Deutsches Uhrens­mu­se­um intro­duces the French-made Peter Pan clock above as fol­lows:

Even as ear­ly as 1930, peo­ple were try­ing to find a way to replace the unpleas­ant sound of the alarm clock. The inven­tor of this gramo­phone alarm clock had a bril­liant idea. The gramo­phone works like the stan­dard alarm clock of those days; how­ev­er, instead of a bell, the gramo­phone motor switch­es on when the alarm goes off and your favourite record begins to play to the live­ly crack­ling sound of a typ­i­cal gramo­phone. The motor plays this side of the record twice in suc­ces­sion. The opened lid of the box serves as a res­onator. Even the name is what dreams are made of: Peter Pan Alarm Clock. Who would not want to be a child again and fly off to Nev­er Nev­er Land?

This great find comes from the always inter­est­ing Twit­ter feeds of jazz crit­ic Ted Gioia and the Bib­lio­thèque nationale de France. You can watch the clock in action below.

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:

19th-Cen­tu­ry Skele­ton Alarm Clock Remind­ed Peo­ple Dai­ly of the Short­ness of Life: An Intro­duc­tion to the Memen­to Mori

How Clocks Changed Human­i­ty For­ev­er, Mak­ing Us Mas­ters and Slaves of Time

Wake Up & Smell the Cof­fee: The New All-in-One Cof­fee-Mak­er/Alarm Clock is Final­ly Here!

Haruki Murakami Will Host a Radio Show & Help Listeners “Blow Away Some of the Corona-Related Blues”

in Literature, Music | May 19th, 2020

Image by Ilana Simon

Char­ac­ters in Haru­ki Murakami’s books see emo­tions in col­ors and hear them in sounds—the sounds, specif­i­cal­ly, of The Bea­t­les, Shostakovich, Sarah Vaugh­an, and thou­sands more folk, pop, rock, clas­si­cal, and jazz artists in the novelist’s immense record col­lec­tion. We must occa­sion­al­ly sus­pend some dis­be­lief as read­ers, not only in the fan­tas­tic ele­ments in Murakami’s work, but in char­ac­ters who seem to know almost as much as the author does about music, who are always ready with ref­er­ences to deep cuts. Muraka­mi “is not (quite) a musi­cian,” writes Dre Dimu­ra at Fly­pa­per, “but he has a greater com­mand of music as an art form than most musi­cians I know, myself includ­ed. How is that pos­si­ble?”

Dimura’s expla­na­tion touch­es on aspects of Murakami’s life we’ve cov­ered before at Open Cul­ture: his long­stand­ing pas­sion for jazz, and time spent as the own­er of a jazz bar before he became a nov­el­ist; his pen­chant for lis­ten­ing to music in his study for hours and hours on end as he under­takes his marathon writ­ing ses­sions.

Muraka­mi has not only shared his ency­clo­pe­dic musi­cal knowl­edge through fic­tion­al char­ac­ters; he also hopes to turn his mas­sive col­lec­tion of approx­i­mate­ly 10,000 records into a pub­lic archive, along with all his books and papers: “a place,” he says, “of open inter­na­tion­al exchanges for lit­er­a­ture and cul­ture.”

Four decades after his jazz club days, Muraka­mi again became a DJ in 2018 when he took to the air­waves to play sev­er­al 55-minute sets called Muraka­mi Radio on Tokyo FM. Now, amidst the uncer­tain­ty and anx­i­ety of COVID-19 lock­downs, he will again play records for his fans in Japan on a show this Fri­day called Stay Home Spe­cial. “I’m hop­ing that the pow­er of music can do a lit­tle to blow away some of the coro­na-virus relat­ed blues that have been pil­ing up.”

Muraka­mi isn’t being Pollyan­nish about the “pow­er of music.” The phrase may be cliché, but fans know from read­ing his books how music plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in even the most mun­dane of social inter­ac­tions, the kind we’d come to take for grant­ed before the virus spread around the world. The author offers music as a friend­ly over­ture. In a char­ac­ter­is­tic image, he wrote before his first radio broad­cast in 2018:

It has been my hob­by to col­lect records and CDs since my child­hood, and thanks to that, my house is inun­dat­ed with such things. How­ev­er, I have often felt a sense of guilt toward the world while lis­ten­ing to such amaz­ing music and hav­ing a good time alone. I thought it may be good to share such good times with oth­er peo­ple while chat­ting over a glass of wine or a cup of cof­fee.

Though he’s been char­ac­ter­ized as a nov­el­ist of iso­la­tion, and is “regard­ed as a recluse in Japan,” Muraka­mi sees the need to make deep con­nec­tions these days. And he rec­og­nizes music’s pow­er to cre­ate shared emo­tion­al spaces, the kind of thing it seems so hard to find in our new frag­ment­ed, quar­an­tined lives.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Announces an Archive That Will House His Man­u­scripts, Let­ters & Col­lec­tion of 10,000+ Vinyl Records

A Dream­i­ly Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Haru­ki Muraka­mi, Japan’s Jazz and Base­ball-Lov­ing Post­mod­ern Nov­el­ist

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

A 3,350-Song Playlist of Music from Haru­ki Murakami’s Per­son­al Record Col­lec­tion

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

Write Only 500 Words Per Day and Publish 50+ Books: Graham Greene’s Writing Method

in Books, Creativity, Writing | May 19th, 2020

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Nobody can write a book. That is, nobody can write a book at a stroke — unless aid­ed by aggres­sive­ly mind-invig­o­rat­ing sub­stances, and even then they sel­dom pull it off. As pro­fes­sion­al writ­ers know all too well, com­pos­ing just one pass­able chap­ter at a sit­ting demands a Stakhanovite for­ti­tude (or more com­mon­ly, a threat­en­ing­ly close dead­line). Books are writ­ten less one chap­ter at a time than one sec­tion at a time, less one sec­tion at a time than one para­graph at a time, less one para­graph at a time than one sen­tence at a time, and less one sen­tence at a time than one word at a time. Gra­ham Greene wrote his for­mi­da­ble body of work, more than 50 books, includ­ing nov­els, poet­ry and short fic­tion col­lec­tions, mem­oirs, and chil­dren’s sto­ries, 500 words at a time.

In one of his most beloved nov­els, 1951’s The End of the Affair, Greene has his writer pro­tag­o­nist Mau­rice Ben­drix describe a work­ing method much like his own:

Over twen­ty years I have prob­a­bly aver­aged five hun­dred words a day for five days a week. I can pro­duce a nov­el in a year, and that allows time for revi­sion and the cor­rec­tion of the type­script. I have always been very method­i­cal, and when my quo­ta of work is done I break off, even in the mid­dle of a scene. Every now and then dur­ing the morning’s work I count what I have done and mark off the hun­dreds on my man­u­script. No print­er need make a care­ful cast-off of my work, for there on the front page is marked the fig­ure — 83,764.

In his youth, Ben­drix notes, “not even a love affair would alter my sched­ule,” nor could one inter­rupt the night­ly phase of his process: “How­ev­er late I might be in get­ting to bed — as long as I slept in my own bed — I would read the morning’s work over and sleep on it.”

Much of a nov­el­ist’s writ­ing, he believes, “takes place in the uncon­scious; in those depths the last word is writ­ten before the first word appears on paper. We remem­ber the details of our sto­ry, we do not invent them.” Greene, too, set enough store by the uncon­scious to keep a dream jour­nal. A few year after The End of the Affair, writesThe New York­er’s Maria Kon­niko­va, “he faced a cre­ative ‘block­age,’ as he called it, that pre­vent­ed him from see­ing the devel­op­ment of a sto­ry or even, at times, its start. The dream jour­nal proved to be his sav­ior.”

All of us who write, what­ev­er we write, can learn from Greene’s meth­ods; Michael Kor­da got to wit­ness them first-hand. In the sum­mer of 1950 he was invit­ed by his uncle, the film pro­duc­er Alexan­der Kor­da, to come along on a French-Riv­iera cruise with a vari­ety of major indus­try fig­ures, Greene includ­ed. By that point Greene had already writ­ten a fair few screen­plays, includ­ing adap­ta­tions of his own nov­els Brighton Rock and The Third Man. But each morn­ing on the yacht he worked on a more per­son­al project, as the six­teen-year-old Kor­da watched:

An ear­ly ris­er, he appeared on deck at first light, found a seat in the shade of an awning, and took from his pock­et a small black leather note­book and a black foun­tain pen, the top of which he unscrewed care­ful­ly. Slow­ly, word by word, with­out cross­ing out any­thing, and in neat, square hand­writ­ing, the let­ters so tiny and cramped that it looked as if he were attempt­ing to write the Lord’s Prayer on the head of a pin, Gra­ham wrote, over the next hour or so, exact­ly five hun­dred words. He count­ed each word accord­ing to some arcane sys­tem of his own, and then screwed the cap back onto his pen, stood up and stretched, and, turn­ing to me, said, “That’s it, then. Shall we have break­fast?” I did not, of course, know that he was com­plet­ing The End of the Affair.

This work­ing rit­u­al, a Kor­da describes it, suits the sen­si­bil­i­ties of the writer, a con­vert to Catholi­cism who dealt with themes of reli­gious prac­tice in his work:

Greene’s self-dis­ci­pline was such that, no mat­ter what, he always stopped at five hun­dred words, even if it left him in the mid­dle of a sen­tence. It was as if he brought to writ­ing the pre­ci­sion of a watch­mak­er, or per­haps it was that in a life full of moral uncer­tain­ties and con­fu­sion he sim­ply need­ed one area in which the rules, even if self-imposed, were absolute. What­ev­er else was going on, his dai­ly writ­ing, like a reli­gious devo­tion, was sacred and com­plete. Once the dai­ly penance of five hun­dred words was achieved, he put the note­book away and did­n’t think about it again until the next morn­ing.

Just as Greene’s adher­ence to Catholi­cism lost some of its rig­or in his lat­er years (he claimed to have been con­vert­ed by argu­ments, then for­got­ten the argu­ments), his dai­ly word count decreased. “In the old days, at the begin­ning of a book, I’d set myself 500 words a day, but now I’d put the mark to about 300 words,” a 66-year-old Greene told the New York Times in 1971. But such are the wages of the nov­el­ist’s art, in which Greene felt a demand to “know — even if I’m not writ­ing it — where my char­ac­ter’s sit­ting, what his move­ments are. It’s this focus­ing, even though it’s not focus­ing on the page, that strains my eyes, as though I were watch­ing some­thing too close.”

Greene was­n’t alone in writ­ing a cer­tain num­ber of words each day. Accord­ing to a post at Word Counter, Ernest Hem­ing­way got start­ed on his own 500 dai­ly words at first light. Ian McE­wan says he aims “for about six hun­dred words a day and hope for at least a thou­sand when I’m on a roll.” For the more pro­lif­ic J.G. Bal­lard, a thou­sand was the min­i­mum, “even if I’ve got a hang­over. You’ve got to dis­ci­pline your­self if you’re pro­fes­sion­al. There’s no oth­er way.” The near-inhu­man­ly pro­lif­ic Stephen King dou­bles that: “I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words,” he says in his mem­oir On Writ­ing. “On some days those ten pages come eas­i­ly; I’m up and out and doing errands by eleven-thir­ty in the morn­ing, perky as a rat in liv­er­wurst. More fre­quent­ly, as I grow old­er, I find myself eat­ing lunch at my desk and fin­ish­ing the day’s work around one-thir­ty in the after­noon.”

John Updike, no slouch when it came to pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, rec­om­mend­ed writ­ing for a length of time rather than to a num­ber of words. “Even though you have a busy life, try to reserve an hour, say — or more — a day to write,” he says in an inter­view clip pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. “Some very good things have been writ­ten on an hour a day.” At The Guardian, nov­el­ist Neil Grif­fiths dis­cuss­es his apos­ta­sy from the thou­sand-words-a-day method: “I’m writ­ing a nov­el — an artis­tic enter­prise, one hopes — but I was mea­sur­ing my work­ing day by a num­ber.” Switch­ing to the “fin­ish the bit you’re work­ing on” method, he writes, means he does­n’t have “half an eye on what is going to hap­pen in the next bit because with­out it I’ll nev­er make the day’s 1000. My sole con­cern is the words before me, how­ev­er many or few they are, and get­ting them right before mov­ing on.” And so, it seems, those of us try­ing to get our life’s work writ­ten have two options: do what Gra­ham Greene did, or do the oppo­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Updike’s Advice to Young Writ­ers: ‘Reserve an Hour a Day’

David Sedaris Breaks Down His Writ­ing Process: Keep a Diary, Car­ry a Note­book, Read Out Loud, Aban­don Hope

Ursu­la K. Le Guin’s Dai­ly Rou­tine: The Dis­ci­pline That Fueled Her Imag­i­na­tion

The Dai­ly Rou­tines of Famous Cre­ative Peo­ple, Pre­sent­ed in an Inter­ac­tive Info­graph­ic

Stephen King’s 20 Rules for Writ­ers

The Sev­en Road-Test­ed Habits of Effec­tive Artists

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.