The Amazing Franz Kafka Workout!: Discover the 15-Minute Exercise Routine That Swept the World in 1904

in Health, Literature, Sports | March 11th, 2019

Does your spare tire show no signs of deflat­ing as biki­ni sea­son looms?

Is the fear of bul­lies kick­ing sand in your face begin­ning to out­strip the hor­ror of trans­form­ing into a giant bug overnight?

Do you long to expe­ri­ence last­ing health ben­e­fits along with an impres­sive­ly fit appear­ance?

Friends, we make you this promise: The Amaz­ing Franz Kaf­ka Work­out will trans­form your life along with your physique in just 15 min­utes a day.

That’s right, just 15 min­utes of dai­ly cal­is­then­ics (and some com­mon sense prac­tices with regard to diet, sleep, and hygiene) is all it takes. Even pen­cil-necked authors walk­ing around with their backs bowed, their shoul­ders droop­ing, their hands and arms all over the place, afraid of mir­rors because they show an inescapable ugli­ness, can dis­cov­er the con­fi­dence that eludes them, through improved pos­ture, breath­ing, and mus­cle tone.

(Note: the Amaz­ing Franz Kaf­ka Work­out will not pro­tect you from the per­ni­cious, even­tu­al­ly fatal effects of tuber­cu­lo­sis.)

The Amaz­ing Franz Kaf­ka Work­out is more cor­rect­ly attrib­uted to fit­ness guru Jør­gen Peter Müller, above, the author of sev­er­al exer­cise reg­i­men pam­phlets, includ­ing the best­selling My Sys­tem: 15 Min­utes’ Exer­cise a Day for Health’s Sake, which was pub­lished in 1904 and then trans­lat­ed into 25 lan­guages.

Kaf­ka was def­i­nite­ly the best known of Müller’s devo­tees, scrupu­lous­ly run­ning through the pre­scribed exer­cis­es morn­ing and evening, wear­ing noth­ing more than the skin he was born in—another prac­tice Müller hearti­ly endorsed.

The chis­eled Mr. Müller was a pro­po­nent of reg­u­lar den­tal check ups, sen­si­ble footwear, and vig­or­ous  tow­el­ing (or “rub­bing”), and an ene­my of con­stric­tive woolen under­wear, closed win­dows, and seden­tary lifestyles. My Sys­tem includes some obser­va­tions that wouldn’t sound out of place in a Kaf­ka nov­el:

The town office type is often a sad phe­nom­e­non pre­ma­ture­ly bent, with shoul­ders and hips awry from his dis­lo­cat­ing posi­tion on the office stool, pale, with pim­ply face and poma­tumed head, thin neck pro­trud­ing from a col­lar that an ordi­nary man could use as a cuff, and swag­ger­ing dress in the lat­est fash­ion flap­ping round the sticks that take the place of arms and legs! At a more advanced age the spec­ta­cle is still more pitiable… the eyes are dull, and the gen­er­al appear­ance is either still more sunken and shriv­eled or else fat, flab­by, and pal­lid, and enveloped in an odour of old paper, putri­fied skin grease, and bad breath.

In an essay on Slate, Sarah Wild­man, the descen­dent of two lean Müller fans, delves into the Müller System’s pop­u­lar­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly amongst 20th-cen­tu­ry Euro­pean Jews.

Just as best-sell­ing fit­ness experts do today, Müller beefed up his fran­chise with relat­ed titles: My Sys­tem for Ladies, My Sys­tem for Chil­dren, and My Sun­bathing and Fresh Air Sys­tem.

The orig­i­nal book is in the pub­lic domain and can be down­loaded for free from the Inter­net Archive, where one com­menter who has been fol­low­ing the sys­tem for near­ly sev­en­ty years gives it a hearty thumbs-up for its sta­mi­na restor­ing pow­ers.

Oth­ers seek­ing to make a buck by charg­ing for Kin­dle down­loads have the decen­cy to offer free instruc­tions for each of the indi­vid­ual exer­cis­es, includ­ing Quick Side­ways Bend­ing of Trunk (with Rub­bing) and the plank‑y Bend­ing and Stretch­ing of the Arms, part­ly Loaded with the Weight of the Body.

Even those unlike­ly to per­form so much as a sin­gle deep knee bend should get a bang out of the orig­i­nal pho­to illus­tra­tions, which, back in 1904, were as ripe for erot­ic dou­ble duty as the whole­some men’s physique mags of the 50s and 60s.

Insert spec­u­la­tion as to Kafka’s sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion here, if you must.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Walt Whitman’s Unearthed Health Man­u­al, “Man­ly Health & Train­ing,” Urges Read­ers to Stand (Don’t Sit!) and Eat Plen­ty of Meat (1858)

77 Exer­cis­es: A Work­out Video For Fans of the Talk­ing Heads

What’s a Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-Proven Way to Improve Your Abil­i­ty to Learn? Get Out and Exer­cise

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City tonight, March 11, for the next install­ment of her ongo­ing book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Alan Watts Presents a 15-Minute Guided Meditation: A Time-Tested Way to Stop Thinking About Thinking

in Philosophy, Religion | March 11th, 2019

The con­cept of empti­ness—shūny­atā—in Mahayana Bud­dhism is per­haps a sub­ject best avoid­ed in casu­al con­ver­sa­tion. It so vex­es every­one not least because of issues of trans­la­tion: “empti­ness,” many schol­ars think, hard­ly suf­fices as a sub­sti­tute. In Eng­lish it has a more dis­tinct­ly nihilist fla­vor than was intend­ed. Yet empti­ness is so indis­pens­able that it can hard­ly go unmen­tioned when the prac­tice and pur­pose of med­i­ta­tion come up in Bud­dhist thought.

Leave it to Zen to put things in such suc­cinct and down-to-earth ways: the prac­tice of med­i­ta­tion is to devel­op “’no mind,’” says Suzu­ki Roshi. It is to have “no gain­ing idea.” The rea­son is to have no rea­son. But from the same point of view, there is a point: “the point we should make clear in our prac­tice,” the Zen mas­ter tells us: we should “put more empha­sis on big mind rather than small mind.”

If you need more clar­i­fi­ca­tion, you might turn to anoth­er Zen pop­u­lar­iz­er who also began to draw audi­ences in Cal­i­for­nia in the 50s: Alan Watts. Watts came to San Fran­cis­co not with a life­time of monas­tic train­ing in Japan, but through his train­ing as an aca­d­e­m­ic, Epis­co­pal priest, and Zen enthu­si­ast in Britain. He is wordier, less poet­ic, and more essay­is­tic in his deliv­ery, but in dis­cussing the pur­pose of med­i­ta­tion, you will find him say­ing the very same things as the Zen mas­ters:

Med­i­ta­tion is the dis­cov­ery that the point of life is always arrived at in the imme­di­ate moment. And there­fore, if you med­i­tate for an ulte­ri­or motive — that is to say, to improve your mind, to improve your char­ac­ter, to be more effi­cient in life — you’ve got your eye on the future and you are not med­i­tat­ing!

As for Suzuk­i’s “big mind,” Watts has his own ver­sion: “The art of med­i­ta­tion is a way of get­ting into touch with real­i­ty… our basic insep­a­ra­bil­i­ty from the whole uni­verse.” These are not nec­es­sar­i­ly syn­onyms for “empti­ness,” but the idea of hav­ing no idea maybe comes close to sum­ma­riz­ing the con­cept. “Not know­ing,” as the koan says, “is most inti­mate.”

Maybe it’s hair-split­ting and belabors the com­par­i­son, but Suzu­ki Roshi did not talk about med­i­ta­tion as a way to stop all think­ing. This is futile, he would argue. Watts seems to sug­gest oth­er­wise when he says that “we become inte­ri­o­ral­ly silent and cease from the inter­minable chat­ter that goes on inside our skulls. Because you see, most of us think com­pul­sive­ly all the time.” Most hon­est peo­ple will tell you they think com­pul­sive­ly dur­ing med­i­ta­tion as well. But in his guid­ed med­i­ta­tion above, Watts acknowl­edges just this fact.

Indeed, his mat­ter-of-fact way of rec­og­niz­ing the ever-pres­ence of thought is what makes the instruc­tions he gives so use­ful, even if they are also, ulti­mate­ly, point­less. Hear the orig­i­nal fif­teen minute guid­ed med­i­ta­tion at the top of the post and an edit, with some, maybe dis­tract­ing, back­ground music, just above. To let think­ing recede into the back­ground, we must engage our oth­er sens­es, let­ting every sound and sen­sa­tion come and go and the autonomous ner­vous sys­tem take over.

How to let go of think­ing about think­ing? Let Watts guide you in an exer­cise and see what hap­pens. Then lis­ten to Suzu­ki Roshi describe the Bud­dhist phi­los­o­phy of empti­ness. As far as med­i­ta­tion, or “zazen prac­tice,” goes, he says, our zazen prac­tice is based on… the teach­ing of shūny­atā or empti­ness,” which is not an idea but an expe­ri­ence of “let­ting go of fixed ideas,” writes anoth­er Zen mas­ter who brought his prac­tice to the U.S., “in order to go beyond them.”

via Big Think

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Alan Watts Dis­pens­es Wit & Wis­dom on the Mean­ing of Life in Three Ani­mat­ed Videos

How Med­i­ta­tion Can Change Your Brain: The Neu­ro­science of Bud­dhist Prac­tice

Stream 18 Hours of Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions

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

Bill Murray Explains How a 19th-Century Painting Saved His Life

in Art | March 11th, 2019

You don’t under­stand pre­war 20th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca unless you under­stand a par­tic­u­lar 19th-cen­tu­ry French paint­ing: Jules Bre­ton’s The Song of the Lark. “In this evoca­tive work, a young peas­ant woman stands silent­ly in the flat fields of the artist’s native Nor­mandy as the sun ris­es, lis­ten­ing to the song of a dis­tant lark,” says a post from the Art Insti­tute of Chica­go. Apart from being select­ed as Amer­i­ca’s favorite paint­ing in 1934, it was also Eleanor Roo­sevelt’s favorite work of art, it pro­vid­ed the title for Willa Cather’s third nov­el, and it “inspired Bill Mur­ray while he was strug­gling as an actor in Chica­go.”

In the video above, a clip from a press con­fer­ence on the Mur­ray-fea­tur­ing his­tor­i­cal art-heist film The Mon­u­ments Men, he tells the sto­ry of how The Song of the Lark saved him. “This may be a lit­tle bit not-com­plete­ly-true,” Mur­ray says, “but it’s pret­ty true.”

When he first start­ed act­ing on the stage in his home­town of Chica­go, he did­n’t quite have the skills that have made him such a com­pelling pres­ence for more than forty years on the screen. After what sounds like one par­tic­u­lar­ly poor ear­ly per­for­mance — poor enough to make him con­sid­er his life prac­ti­cal­ly over — he took a despair­ing walk toward Lake Michi­gan, think­ing, “If I’m going to die where I am, I may as well go over to the lake and float for a while after I’m dead.”

But then a sud­den, impul­sive turn up Michi­gan Avenue took Mur­ray to the Art Insti­tute of Chica­go, and there he found him­self in front of The Song of the Lark, which has now hung there for over a cen­tu­ry. The sight of it got him think­ing: “ ‘Well, there’s a girl who does­n’t have a whole lot of prospects, but the sun’s com­ing up any­way and she’s got anoth­er chance at it.’ So I think that gave me some sort of feel­ing that I, too, am a per­son, and I get anoth­er chance every day the sun comes up.” Many of the Great Depres­sion-era Amer­i­cans who admired Bre­ton’s paint­ing must have drawn sim­i­lar feel­ings from it, just as sure­ly as many of Mur­ray’s fans have found inspi­ra­tion in all his char­ac­ters, art­ful­ly craft­ed between the comedic and the dra­mat­ic — char­ac­ters that, with­out The Song of the Lark, he may nev­er have lived to per­form.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art Insti­tute of Chica­go Puts 44,000+ Works of Art Online: View Them in High Res­o­lu­tion

Bill Mur­ray Explains How He Pulled Him­self Out of a Deep, Last­ing Funk: He Took Hunter S. Thompson’s Advice & Lis­tened to the Music of John Prine

The Phi­los­o­phy of Bill Mur­ray: The Intel­lec­tu­al Foun­da­tions of His Comedic Per­sona

Bill Mur­ray Reads the Poet­ry of Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti, Wal­lace Stevens, Emi­ly Dick­in­son, Bil­ly Collins, Lorine Niedeck­er, Lucille Clifton & More

Lis­ten to Bill Mur­ray Lead a Guid­ed Medi­a­tion on How It Feels to Be Bill Mur­ray

Art Exhib­it on Bill Mur­ray Opens in the UK

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 or on Face­book.

The Big Pond: Stream 50 Audio Stories from the Goethe-Institut, Available Free Online

in Podcasts | March 10th, 2019

Who doesn’t love a good pod­cast? Don’t tell me you’ve nev­er binged Ser­i­al or laughed out loud with Marc Maron. Over the last few years, pod­casts have become a cul­tur­al phenomenon–they help us endure our dai­ly com­mutes and then lull us back to sleep at night. Lis­ten­ing cul­ture isn’t new, though–talk radio has been fill­ing the silence with anec­dotes, news, and dra­ma since the ear­ly 1900s. The Goethe-Insti­tut’s new radio and pod­cast series THE BIG POND. A US-Ger­man Lis­ten­ing Series is a per­fect mar­riage of these two audi­ble sto­ry­telling for­mats.

The Goethe-Insti­tut, a Ger­man cul­tur­al cen­ter with its North Amer­i­can head­quar­ters in Wash­ing­ton, has part­nered with the Pub­lic Radio Exchange (PRX), the RIAS Berlin Kom­mis­sion, KCRW Berlin, and oth­er pub­lic radio sta­tions and pro­duc­ers in Ger­many and the US to bring you THE BIG POND, a col­lec­tion of 50 unique audio pieces released on a week­ly basis. From pret­zels and beer to the Berlin Wall, from motor­cy­cles to recy­cling, THE BIG POND offers a fresh per­spec­tive on just how much these two coun­tries share while cel­e­brat­ing pod­cast­ing, broad­cast­ing, and “Wun­der­bar Togeth­er” – the Ger­man-Amer­i­can Year of Friend­ship.

Don’t wor­ry, the radio fea­tures are all in Eng­lish! Episodes are avail­able for free via PRX, iTunes, Spo­ti­fy, and THE BIG POND’s web­site as pod­casts and for broad­cast by pub­lic radio sta­tions in the Unit­ed States. This care­ful­ly curat­ed library of audio pro­duc­tions cov­ers all things Ger­man-Amer­i­can: Ger­man motor­cy­cle tourists in Utah, a young Ger­man journalist’s myth­i­cal day with John Lennon, Ger­man-style appren­tice­ships in the US, an Amer­i­can opera singer’s life in Berlin, New York City beer gar­dens, and much more. THE BIG POND is home to fea­tures from up-and-com­ing pro­duc­ers as well as indus­try greats like Katie Davis, a con­trib­u­tor to NPR’s “All Things Con­sid­ered” and “This Amer­i­can Life”, and the Kitchen Sis­ters (Davia Nel­son and Nik­ki Sil­va), pro­duc­ers of the award-win­ning NPR series “Hid­den Kitchens”.

“When an edi­tor asks me to do a radio sto­ry, it usu­al­ly comes with lots of direc­tions,” said radio pro­duc­er Katie Davis. “When the team at THE BIG POND talked to me about a sto­ry for this series, every­thing was wide open. No rules, require­ments; just a wide open can­vas with space for orig­i­nal sto­ries.”

Pro­vid­ed with the nec­es­sary free­dom to tell their transat­lantic tales, THE BIG POND pro­duc­ers have devel­oped pieces that res­onate with audi­ences of all back­grounds on both sides of the big pond, con­vey­ing a bal­anced and mod­ern image of Ger­many and the US. THE BIG POND isn’t a col­lec­tion of puff pieces about Germany–it’s a well-researched nar­ra­tive of Ger­man and Amer­i­can life and cul­ture. Close coop­er­a­tion with Ger­man and Amer­i­can jour­nal­ists gives an authen­tic voice to Ger­many, the US, and their many sub­cul­tures while build­ing up the transat­lantic radio net­work.

Any­one inter­est­ed in the series can down­load episodes free of charge for indi­vid­ual use or broad­cast­ing at PRX, iTunes, Spo­ti­fy, or by vis­it­ing THE BIG POND’s web­site. Check www.goethe.de/bigpond and the Goethe-Insti­tut Wash­ing­ton’s social media chan­nels for tran­scripts and behind-the-scenes con­tent.

For the project’s press release and oth­er press mate­ri­als, please vis­it:

www.goethe.de/bigpond/press

Savan­nah Beck is the Online Edi­tor at the Goethe-Insti­tut Wash­ing­ton.

Here’s John Steinbeck Asking Marilyn Monroe for Her Autograph (1955)

in Film, Letters, Life, Literature | March 8th, 2019

When ask­ing a celebri­ty for a spe­cial favor, it helps to be a bit of a celebri­ty your­self.

As Kei­th Fer­rell details in his biog­ra­phy, John Stein­beck: The Voice of the Land, the Nobel lau­re­ate had lit­tle patience for auto­graph seek­ers, pushy young writ­ers seek­ing help get­ting pub­lished, and “peo­ple who nev­er read books but enjoyed meet­ing authors.”

The shoe went on the oth­er foot when Mrs. Stein­beck let slip to her nephew that Uncle John had met the boy’s movie star crush, Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe.

Sud­den­ly, an auto­graphed pho­to seemed in order.

And not just some stan­dard issue pub­lic­i­ty shot, but ide­al­ly one show­ing the star of The Sev­en Year Itch and Gen­tle­men Pre­fer Blondes in a “pen­sive girl­ish mood.”

Also, could she please inscribe it by name to nephew Jon, a young man with, his uncle con­fid­ed, “one foot in the door of puber­ty”?

The star-to-star tone Stein­beck adopts for the above let­ter seems designed to ward off sus­pi­cion that this nephew could be a con­ve­nient inven­tion on the part of some­one desir­ing such a prize for him­self.

Six­ty years after a sec­re­tary typed it up, Stein­beck­’s mes­sage fetched $3,520 at Julien’s Auc­tions, one of a wide range of items culled from hard­core Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe col­lec­tor, David Gains­bor­ough-Roberts as well as the estate of Mon­roe’s act­ing teacher, Lee Stras­berg.

In addi­tion to oth­er cor­re­spon­dence, the Mar­i­lyn auc­tion includ­ed anno­tat­ed scripts, an emp­ty pre­scrip­tion bot­tle, a bal­le­ri­na paper­weight, stock­ings and gowns, some pin­up-type mem­o­ra­bil­ia, and a pro­gram from John F Kennedy’s 1962 birth­day cel­e­bra­tion at Madi­son Square Gar­den.

One lot that is con­spic­u­ous for its absence is Steinbeck’s promised “guest key to the ladies’ entrance of Fort Knox.”

Could it be that the boy nev­er got his cus­tomized auto­graph?

We’d like to think that he did. Per­haps he’s still savor­ing it in pri­vate.

H/T Alan Gold­wass­er/Let­ters of Note/Flash­bak

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Noth­ing Good Gets Away”: John Stein­beck Offers Love Advice in a Let­ter to His Son (1958)

The 430 Books in Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Library: How Many Have You Read?

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe & Elvis Pres­ley Star in an Action-Packed Pop Art Japan­ese Mon­ster Movie

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, this Mon­day, March 11. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

The Cringe-Inducing Humor of The Office Explained with Philosophical Theories of Mind

in Comedy, Neuroscience, Photography, Television | March 8th, 2019

“I’m a friend first and a boss sec­ond,” says David Brent, mid­dle man­ag­er at the Slough branch of paper com­pa­ny Wern­ham-Hogg. “Prob­a­bly an enter­tain­er third.” Those of us who’ve watched the orig­i­nal British run of The Office — and espe­cial­ly those of us who still watch it reg­u­lar­ly — will remem­ber that and many oth­er of Bren­t’s pitiable dec­la­ra­tions besides. As por­trayed by the show’s co-cre­ator Ricky Ger­vais, Brent con­sti­tutes both The Office’s comedic and emo­tion­al core, at once a ful­ly real­ized char­ac­ter and some­one we’ve all known in real life. His dis­tinc­tive com­bi­na­tion of social incom­pe­tence and an aggres­sive des­per­a­tion to be liked pro­vokes in us not just laugh­ter but a more com­plex set of emo­tions as well, result­ing in one expres­sion above all oth­ers: the cringe.

“In David Brent, we have a char­ac­ter so invest­ed in the per­for­mance of him­self that he’s blocked his own access to oth­ers’ feel­ings.” So goes the analy­sis of Evan Puschak, a.k.a. the Nerd­writer, in his video inter­pret­ing the humor of The Office through philo­soph­i­cal the­o­ries of mind.

The elab­o­rate friend-boss-enter­tain­er song-and-dance Brent con­stant­ly puts on for his co-work­ers so occu­pies him that he lacks the abil­i­ty or even the incli­na­tion to have any sense of what they’re think­ing. “The irony is that Brent can’t see that a weak the­o­ry of mind always makes for a weak self-per­for­mance. You can’t brute force your pre­ferred per­son­al­i­ty onto anoth­er’s con­scious­ness: it takes two to build an iden­ti­ty.”

Cen­tral though Brent is to The Office, we laugh not just at what he says and does, but how the oth­er char­ac­ters (which Puschak places across a spec­trum of abil­i­ty to under­stand the minds of oth­ers) react — or fail to react — to what he says and does, how he reacts to their reac­tions, and so on. Mas­tery of the comedic effects of all this has kept the orig­i­nal Office effec­tive more than fif­teen years lat­er, though its effect may not be entire­ly plea­sur­able: “A lot of peo­ple say that cringe humor like this is hard to watch,” says Puschak, “but in the same way that under our con­fi­dence, in the­o­ry of mind, lies an anx­i­ety, I think that under our cring­ing there’s actu­al­ly a deep feel­ing of relief.” When Brent and oth­ers fail to con­nect, their “body lan­guage speaks in a way that is total­ly trans­par­ent: in that moment the embar­rass­ment is not only pal­pa­ble, it’s pal­pa­bly hon­est.” And it reminds us that — if we’re being hon­est — none of us are exact­ly mind-read­ers our­selves.

You can get the com­plete British run of The Office on Ama­zon here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ricky Ger­vais Presents “Learn Gui­tar with David Brent”

The Phi­los­o­phy of Bill Mur­ray: The Intel­lec­tu­al Foun­da­tions of His Comedic Per­sona

A Romp Through the Phi­los­o­phy of Mind: A Free Online Course from Oxford

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 or on Face­book.

Hear Patti Smith’s New Work With The Soundwalk Collective, a Tribute to the Avant-Garde Poet Antonin Artaud

in Music | March 7th, 2019

The Sound­walk Col­lec­tive has made music art out of found sounds since 2004. They record­ed 2012’s Medea while tra­vers­ing the Black Sea and fish­ing for sounds using a scan­ner and high pow­ered aer­i­al anten­nas; 2014’s Last Beat used con­tact micro­phones on the archi­tec­ture of a music club to col­lect vibra­tions instead of music; 2017’s Before Music There Is Blood col­laged deep echo­ing record­ings of clas­si­cal music played in var­i­ous halls. This time, in their upcom­ing The Pey­ote Dance, they have brought in poet and rock god­dess Pat­ti Smith for a trip into Mex­i­co.

The above track “The New Rev­e­la­tions of Being” is a pre­view of what’s to come. The album title comes from a book by Antonin Artaud, the avant-garde the­ater direc­tor and author, who trav­eled to Mex­i­co to explore rev­e­la­to­ry visions with the Rará­muri peo­ple in 1936. Artaud was hop­ing that pey­ote would shake his opi­oid addic­tion. When he lat­er returned to France, Artaud stayed and remained in an insane asy­lum, receiv­ing elec­tric shock ther­a­py. His time with the Rará­muri stayed a touch­stone of hap­pi­ness dur­ing his dark­est days.

With a shared belief that trav­el expands the mind, the Sound­walk Col­lec­tive trav­eled to the same Sier­ra Tarahu­marar region of Mex­i­co as Artaud, vis­it­ed the same places he stayed, and indeed also took pey­ote. They record­ed instru­ments and sound­scapes, and then back in the States, Pat­ti Smith wrote and record­ed poems based on Artaud’s book, his oth­er works, and her own respons­es to the sound fields.

“The poets enter the blood­stream, they enter the cells. For a moment, one is Artaud,” Smith said about the record­ing. “You can’t ask for it, you can’t buy it, you can’t take drugs for it to be authen­tic. It just has to hap­pen, you have to be cho­sen as well as choose.”

The album is the first in a tril­o­gy with Smith about poets and trav­el. The oth­er two albums will be based on works and jour­neys by Arthur Rim­baud and René Dau­mal, and fea­ture sounds record­ed at the Abyssin­ian val­ley of Ethiopia and the Himalayan Sum­mit of India respec­tive­ly.

This not the first time the group has col­lab­o­rat­ed with Pat­ti Smith. In 2016, they released Killer Road a trib­ute to Nico and her final days on the island of Ibiza, where the singer plunged to her death on a bicy­cle ride. The album also fea­tured vocals by Smith’s daugh­ter Jessie Paris Smith.

Sound­walk Col­lec­tive mem­ber Stephan Cras­nean­sc­ki first met Pat­ti Smith, fit­ting­ly, at an air­port in Paris, as the two were return­ing from sep­a­rate artis­tic trav­els: Cras­nean­sc­ki from East­ern Europe and Rus­sia, Smith from French Guiana and Tang­iers.

The Pey­ote Dance will be released May 31 on Bel­la Union.

via Lithub

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith’s List of Favorite Books: From Rim­baud to Susan Son­tag

Pat­ti Smith’s Award-Win­ning Mem­oir, Just Kids, Now Avail­able in a New Illus­trat­ed Edi­tion
Hear Antonin Artaud’s Cen­sored, Nev­er-Aired Radio Play: To Have Done With The Judg­ment of God (1947)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

“Stay Free: The Story of the Clash” Narrated by Public Enemy’s Chuck D: A New 8‑Episode Podcast

in Music, Podcasts | March 7th, 2019

Spo­ti­fy, in part­ner­ship with the BBC, has launched “Stay Free: The Sto­ry of the Clash,” an eight-part pod­cast on the icon­ic punk band, nar­rat­ed by Pub­lic Ene­my front man, Chuck D. It might seem like an unex­pect­ed pair­ing. And yet Spo­ti­fy explains: “Like The Clash, Pub­lic Ene­my open­ly chal­lenged the sta­tus quo in a com­plete­ly orig­i­nal way—this par­al­lel and Chuck D’s per­son­al expe­ri­ences bring a sur­pris­ing new dimen­sion to the sto­ry of The Clash.” Review­ing the pro­duc­tion in The New York­er, Sarah Lar­son adds:

In [“Stay Free: The Sto­ry of the Clash”], we learn that Chuck D, a radio d.j. at the time, co-found­ed Pub­lic Ene­my after a con­ver­sa­tion, in 1986, with a friend at Def Jam, who want­ed him to become “the hip-hop ver­sion of Joe Strum­mer,” of the Clash—to make music with “intel­lec­tu­al heft” that could also “rock the par­ty.” And read­er, he did. His pres­ence as nar­ra­tor adds appeal­ing per­spec­tive and grav­i­tas to the pod­cast, which begins with the sto­ry of the Clash’s ori­gins, in a West Lon­don riot in 1976. With a skill­ful­ly lay­ered pre­sen­ta­tion of punk music, sev­en­ties-Lon­don audio, and inter­view clips, the pod­cast so far thrills me the way that “Mogul,” the Spo­ti­fy-Gim­let pod­cast about the late hip-hop mogul Chris Lighty, did; I’m eager to hear the rest.

Watch the pod­cast trail­er above. Stream the pod­cast episodes–all eight–on Spo­ti­fy here. Also the relat­ed playlist of music. And remem­ber folks, The Clash, they’re still the only band that mat­ters…

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:

The Beast­ie Boys Release a New Free­wheel­ing Mem­oir, and a Star-Stud­ded 13-Hour Audio­book Fea­tur­ing Snoop Dogg, Elvis Costel­lo, Bette Midler, John Stew­art & Dozens More

The Clash Live in Tokyo, 1982: Watch the Com­plete Con­cert

Mick Jones Plays Three Favorite Clash Songs at the Library

Doc­u­men­tary Viva Joe Strum­mer: The Sto­ry of the Clash Sur­veys the Career of Rock’s Beloved Front­man

The Clash Star in 1980’s Gang­ster Par­o­dy Hell W10, a Film Direct­ed by Joe Strum­mer

Sleep or Die: Neuroscientist Matthew Walker Explains How Sleep Can Restore or Imperil Our Health

in Health, Neuroscience | March 7th, 2019

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could fix the work/life thing by chuck­ing out the dif­fer­ence? At home, you’re in the office, at the office, you’re at home, always on and nev­er off—sleep, option­al. Two-four hours per 24-hour cycle should be enough, right? Wrong. We need prop­er sleep like we need good food, low stress, engag­ing pur­suits, etc.—to thrive and live a long and hap­py life. If you wait until you’re dead to sleep, you’ll be dead soon­er than you think. “Short sleep pre­dicts a short­er life,” explains sleep researcher Matthew Walk­er in the RSA ani­ma­tion Sleep or Die, above. “Sleep,” he says, “is a non-nego­tiable bio­log­i­cal neces­si­ty.“

The Nation­al Sleep Foun­da­tion rec­om­mends that adults sleep an aver­age of eight hours a night. That num­ber may vary from per­son to per­son, but few­er than six can be high­ly detri­men­tal. Walk­er is some­thing of a “sleep evan­ge­list,” notes Berke­ley News. Ask him about “the down­side of pulling an all-nighter, and he’ll rat­tle off a list of ill effects that range from mem­o­ry loss and a com­pro­mised immune sys­tem to junk food crav­ings and wild mood swings.” The neu­ro­sci­en­tist tells Ter­ry Gross on Fresh Air, “Every dis­ease that is killing us in devel­oped nations has causal and sig­nif­i­cant links to a lack of sleep.”

Walk­er has a lot more to say about sleep in the inter­view below, includ­ing tips for get­ting there, whether you can make up for lost sleep (you can’t), and why you shouldn’t yank teenagers out of bed on the week­ends. Why should we lis­ten to him? Well, he isn’t just any sleep sci­en­tist. “To be spe­cif­ic,” writes Rachel Cooke at The Guardian, “he is the direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Human Sleep Sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, a research insti­tute whose goal—possibly unachievable—is to under­stand every­thing about sleep’s impact on us, from birth to death, in sick­ness and health.”

The ben­e­fits of sound sleep include enhanced cre­ativ­i­ty and con­cen­tra­tion, low­er blood pres­sure, bet­ter mood reg­u­la­tion, and high­er immu­ni­ty and fer­til­i­ty. Lack of sleep, how­ev­er, is “increas­ing our risk of can­cer, heart attack and Alzheimer’s,” notes Cooke. Indeed, “after just one night of only four or five hours’ sleep,” Walk­er tells The Guardian, “your nat­ur­al killer cells—the ones that attack the can­cer cells that appear in your body every day—drop by 70%.” Sleep depri­va­tion has such seri­ous out­comes that “the World Health Organ­i­sa­tion has classed any form of night-time shift work as a prob­a­ble car­cino­gen.”

Sleep holds many mys­ter­ies, but one thing sci­en­tists like Walk­er seem to know: poor sleep leaves us more in sick­ness than in health. And we are in the midst of a “cat­a­stroph­ic sleep-loss epi­dem­ic.” “No one would look at an infant baby asleep, and say ‘What a lazy baby!” Walk­er observes. Yet adults have “stig­ma­tized sleep with the label of lazi­ness. We want to seem busy, and one way we express that is by pro­claim­ing how lit­tle sleep we’re get­ting.” It’s a way to broad­cast that we aren’t falling behind or miss­ing out. But our bod­ies’ nat­ur­al cycles and rhythms don’t speed up along with tech­nol­o­gy and glob­al mar­kets.

“As bed­rooms every­where glow from the screens of round-the-clock tech­nol­o­gy con­sump­tion,” Berke­ley News writes, mil­lions of peo­ple suf­fer phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al, cog­ni­tive, and psy­cho­log­i­cal stress­es. Or, put more pos­i­tive­ly, “a grow­ing body of sci­en­tif­ic work” shows that “a sol­id sev­en to nine hours of sleep a night serves func­tions beyond our wildest imag­i­na­tions.” Learn more about not only what’s gone wrong with sleep, but how to start address­ing the prob­lem in Walker’s book Why We Sleep: Unlock­ing the Pow­er of Sleep and Dreams.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bertrand Russell’s Advice For How (Not) to Grow Old: “Make Your Inter­ests Grad­u­al­ly Wider and More Imper­son­al”

Bri­an Eno Lists the Ben­e­fits of Singing: A Long Life, Increased Intel­li­gence, and a Sound Civ­i­liza­tion

10 Longevi­ty Tips from Dr. Shigea­ki Hino­hara, Japan’s 105-Year-Old Longevi­ty Expert

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

Van Gogh’s Ugliest Masterpiece: A Break Down of His Late, Great Painting, The Night Café (1888)

in Art | March 7th, 2019

Ask passers­by to name a Vin­cent van Gogh paint­ing off the top of their heads, and most will come up with works like The Star­ry Night, The Pota­to Eaters, one of his self-por­traits (prob­a­bly with his ear ban­daged), or maybe the one with the smok­ing skele­ton David Sedaris used for a book cov­er. How many will men­tion 1888’s The Night Café, an inte­ri­or, van Gogh wrote to his broth­er Theo from Arles (the town in the south of France where he had come in search of Japan-like sur­round­ings), “of the café where I have a room, by gas light, in the evening,” the kind of place that nev­er clos­es, accom­mo­dat­ing the kind of “night prowlers” who “have no mon­ey to pay for a lodg­ing, or are too drunk to be tak­en in”?

Promis­ing sub­ject mat­ter for a painter, one might think. When Vin­cent wrote back to Theo after com­plet­ing The Night Café, he described the paint­ing “one of the ugli­est I’ve done,” but that does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean he saw it as a fail­ure, or indeed that we should­n’t see it as a mas­ter­piece. “At first glance, you can see what he meant,” says Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the Nerd­writer, in the explain­er above. “This is a jar­ring image, even for van Gogh, espe­cial­ly when you com­pare it to his oth­er famous scene of a café in Arles, Café Ter­race at Night,” which “cap­tures that roman­tic sense of Euro­pean cafés on sum­mer evenings where friends gath­er to talk and laugh.” And yet The Night Café is “a paint­ing of anx­i­ety,” offer­ing the night­mare to Café Ter­race at Night’s “dream of French night life.”

Just as van Gogh used col­or “to cap­ture his emo­tion­al response to nat­ur­al beau­ty” in oth­er paint­ings, here he used col­or “to con­vey the uneasi­ness of a low-class bar­room after mid­night.” Puschak digs into the artist’s let­ters and finds clear­ly stat­ed intent behind all this: “I’ve tried to express the ter­ri­ble human pas­sions with the red and the green,” wrote van Gogh. “Every­where it’s a bat­tle and an antithe­sis of the most dif­fer­ent greens and reds.” Puschak goes on to break down all the ele­ments van Gogh used to delib­er­ate­ly make The Night Café unset­tling: mak­ing the wall of the space “a thick, oppres­sive rib­bon the col­or of blood,” a col­or that clash­es with the green of the ceil­ing and cre­ates “a ten­sion that trem­bles in the eye,” and using on the rest of the inte­ri­or “a sul­fur yel­low that gets into every­thing.”

The mood is set by much more than col­or: the lack of shad­ows apart from that cast by the pool table, the hunched pos­ture of the patrons and the scat­tered posi­tions of the chairs and glass­es, the “warped qual­i­ty” of the per­spec­tive itself. “There’s no escape,” Puschak says, “not for the peo­ple inside the paint­ing, not for the peo­ple out­side it” — and not for van Gogh him­self, who com­mit­ted his famous act of ear-slic­ing mere months after fin­ish­ing The Night Café. But through this inescapable paint­ing we can see as well as or bet­ter than in any oth­er how van Gogh’s artis­tic mas­tery real­ly worked, and how mas­tery in ser­vice of some­thing oth­er than beau­ty remains mas­tery all the same.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Van Gogh’s 1888 Paint­ing, “The Night Cafe,” Ani­mat­ed with Ocu­lus Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Soft­ware

13 Van Gogh’s Paint­ings Painstak­ing­ly Brought to Life with 3D Ani­ma­tion & Visu­al Map­ping

Near­ly 1,000 Paint­ings & Draw­ings by Vin­cent van Gogh Now Dig­i­tized and Put Online: View/Download the Col­lec­tion

A Com­plete Archive of Vin­cent van Gogh’s Let­ters: Beau­ti­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed and Ful­ly Anno­tat­ed

Down­load Vin­cent van Gogh’s Col­lec­tion of 500 Japan­ese Prints, Which Inspired Him to Cre­ate “the Art of the Future”

Edward Hopper’s Icon­ic Paint­ing Nighthawks Explained in a 7‑Minute Video Intro­duc­tion

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 or on Face­book.