Enroll in Harvard’s Free Online Architecture Course: An Introduction to the History & Theory of Architecture

in Architecture, Online Courses | February 20th, 2018

So, you want to be an archi­tect. Where to begin? It seems like a very big aspi­ra­tion. One the­o­rist argues that mod­ernist archi­tec­ture has been “char­ac­ter­ized by a thau­matur­gic… ambi­tion which would heal the ‘dis­eases’ of indi­vid­u­als and soci­ety.” As any­one who’s spent much time in a hous­ing project, face­less office park, or strip mall might attest, more recent approach­es can also have “the pow­er of hurt­ing.”

If you’re intent on wield­ing the pow­er of archi­tec­ture for good, you’ll need many years of study and appren­tice­ship. But whether you’re just get­ting your feet wet or have already wad­ed into the field, you’ll like­ly gain quite a lot of under­stand­ing from “The Archi­tec­tur­al Imag­i­na­tion,” a free online course from Har­vard’s Grad­u­ate School of Design, in which you will “learn how to ‘read’ archi­tec­ture as a cul­tur­al expres­sion as well as a tech­ni­cal achieve­ment.” The course, which begins on Feb­ru­ary 28th, is free, but for $99 stu­dents can also receive a cer­tifi­cate of com­ple­tion.

“Archi­tec­ture is one of the most com­plex­ly nego­ti­at­ed and glob­al­ly rec­og­nized cul­tur­al prac­tices,” notes the course intro­duc­tion. Build­ing design “involves all of the tech­ni­cal, aes­thet­ic, polit­i­cal, and eco­nom­ic issues at play with­in a giv­en soci­ety.” In addi­tion to cre­at­ing sin­gle-fam­i­ly dwellings, archi­tects are tasked with design­ing har­mo­nious spaces through which thou­sands of peo­ple might move on a dai­ly basis.

Suc­cess­ful design requires more than an under­stand­ing of the nec­es­sary rela­tion­ships between form and func­tion. “In some ways,” the course trail­er video above tells us, “it’s just what exceeds neces­si­ty that is archi­tec­ture. And it’s the open­ing onto that excess that makes archi­tec­ture a fun­da­men­tal­ly human endeav­or.”

Heal­ing soci­ety? Grasp­ing the big issues in arts, pol­i­tics, and engi­neer­ing? Design­ing for the “fun­da­men­tal­ly human”? These are deep briefs indeed. A more light­heart­ed approach to the field—the tongue-in-cheek “I Am an Archi­tect” rap above—suggests a cou­ple sim­pler pre­req­ui­sites for the aspir­ing archi­tect: a life­long pas­sion for mak­ing things (with blocks, Legos, Jen­ga, etc.), and, of course, a pair of black plas­tic glass­es. If you can relate, sign up for Harvard’s “The Archi­tec­tur­al Imag­i­na­tion” and find many more edX Archi­tec­ture cours­es here.

via Arch Dai­ly

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Roman Archi­tec­ture: A Free Course from Yale 

Archi­tec­ture Stu­dio: Build­ing in Land­scapes (A Free Course from MIT) 

A is for Archi­tec­ture: 1960 Doc­u­men­tary on Why We Build, from the Ancient Greeks to Mod­ern Times 

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

Is Charles Bukowski a Self-Help Guru? Hear Five of His Brutally Honest, Yet Oddly Inspiring, Poems and Decide for Yourself

in Literature, Writing | February 19th, 2018

I don’t know if he’s been replaced as a major influ­ence on young, rest­less (and almost exclu­sive­ly male) aspir­ing writ­ers, but once upon a time—if you weren’t into the roman­tic wan­der­lust of Ker­ouac but still con­sid­ered your­self a fringe character—it might be to the hard-boiled shit-talk­ing of wise old man Charles Bukows­ki that you turned. Upon first learn­ing this, and being a busy col­lege stu­dent, I decid­ed to take a crash course and checked out a doc­u­men­tary.

I did not find myself charmed all at once. But one can fall in love with an author’s per­sona yet loathe them on the page. Bukowski’s crude­ness and bad humor on film could not hide the deep wells of sad­ness in which he seemed to swim, as if—like some ancient cyn­ic philosopher—he knew some­thing pro­found and ter­ri­ble and spared us the telling of it by pos­ing as a drunk­en, half-mad street-cor­ner racon­teur. I had to go and read him.

In his idiom—that of an elo­quent street­wise barfly—Bukowski can be every bit as pas­sion­ate and pro­found as his hero Dos­to­evsky. His unfor­get­table mix­ing of com­ic seed­i­ness and casu­al abuse with a deeply trag­ic mourn­ing over the human con­di­tion, while not to everyone’s taste, make his decades-long strug­gle out of penury and obscu­ri­ty a feat wor­thy of the telling in his semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal prose and poet­ry.

But does it make him a role mod­el? For any­one but cer­tain young, most­ly male, aspir­ing writ­ers maybe spend­ing more time drink­ing than writ­ing, that is?

A fair num­ber of peo­ple seem to think so, and I leave it to you to decide, first by lis­ten­ing to the Bukows­ki poems read here, post­ed on YouTube with heavy, inspi­ra­tional back­ground music. Some are giv­en new titles to sound more like self-help seminars—such as “Rein­vent Your Life” at the top (orig­i­nal­ly “No Lead­ers, Please”). The video read­ing called “Go all the way,” sec­ond from top, changes the title of “Roll the Dice,” a clas­sic pic­ture of Bukowski’s uncom­pro­mis­ing com­mit­ment to “going all the way,” even if it means “freez­ing on a park bench” and “los­ing girl­friends, wives, rel­a­tives, jobs and maybe your mind.”

Solid­ly mid­dle-class par­ents might approve of the first poem’s sen­ti­ments, which could be wedged into a suit­ably vague, yet bold-sound­ing com­mence­ment speech or a job recruiter’s pep talk. But “Roll the Dice” sim­ply goes too far. “It could mean jail, it could mean deri­sion, mock­ery, iso­la­tion”? This won’t do at all. Hear anoth­er read­ing of “Roll the Dice” by inspi­ra­tional rock star Bono fur­ther up, just after the more Bukows­ki-like Tom Waits reads “The Laugh­ing Heart,” fre­quent­ly ref­er­enced for its inten­si­ty of feel­ing. Like Thomas Hardy or Leonard Cohen, the bard of the barstools could look life straight in the eye, see all of its bleak­ness and vio­lence, and still man­age at times to catch a divine glim­mer.

And for the many aspi­rants to whom Bukows­ki has appealed, we have, fur­ther up, “So, You Want to Be a Writer?” Before you hear, or read, this poem, be advised: these are not warm words of encour­age­ment or help­ful life-coach­ing in verse. It is the kind of raw talk no respectable writ­ing teacher will give you, and maybe they’re right not to, who’s to say? Except a man who went all the way, froze on park bench­es, went to jail, lost girl­friends, wives, rel­a­tives, jobs and maybe his mind? Read an excerpt of Bukowski’s writ­ing advice below, and just above, hear the author him­self read “Friend­ly Advice to a Lot of Young Men,” which urges them to do vir­tu­al­ly any­thing they like, “But don’t write poet­ry.”

don’t be like so many writ­ers,
don’t be like so many thou­sands of
peo­ple who call them­selves writ­ers,
don’t be dull and bor­ing and
pre­ten­tious, don’t be con­sumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned them­selves to
sleep
over your kind.
don’t add to that.
don’t do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rock­et,
unless being still would
dri­ve you to mad­ness or
sui­cide or mur­der,
don’t do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burn­ing your gut,
don’t do it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Har­ry Dean Stan­ton (RIP) Reads Poems by Charles Bukows­ki

Charles Bukows­ki Reads His Poem “The Secret of My Endurance” 

Inspi­ra­tion from Charles Bukows­ki: You Might Be Old, Your Life May Be “Crap­py,” But You Can Still Make Good Art

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

Finding Meaning in Music: A Short Documentary on How a Young Tech Pioneer, Confronting His Mortality, Prepared for His Final Violin Performance

in Life, Music | February 19th, 2018

The doc­tor breaks the news. You have ter­mi­nal can­cer, and you might have only a few months to live. How would you spend those final days? That’s a ques­tion that Eric Sun had to con­front when doc­tors told him he had a glioblas­toma, an aggres­sive form of brain can­cer, in 2016. Only 32 years old, Sun had stud­ied com­put­er sci­ence and eco­nom­ics at Stan­ford, then went to work at Face­book in 2008. Every­thing was on track. Until it was­n’t. Then big deci­sions had to be made.

Last month, the New York­er pub­lished a poignant pro­file on Sun, doc­u­ment­ing how, fac­ing mor­tal­i­ty, he found refuge–and maybe some kind of deep­er meaning–in music. The relat­ed video above, “Find­ing Mean­ing in Music,” lets you see Sun return­ing to his life­long passion–playing violin–and get­ting ready for his final per­for­mance. In the end, it’s art that nour­ish­es the soul.

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:

Death: A Free Phi­los­o­phy Course from Yale Helps You Grap­ple with the Inescapable

Why Vio­lins Have F‑Holes: The Sci­ence & His­to­ry of a Remark­able Renais­sance Design

Holo­caust Sur­vivor Vik­tor Fran­kl Explains Why If We Have True Mean­ing in Our Lives, We Can Make It Through the Dark­est of Times

The Brian Eno Discography: Stream 29 Hours of Recordings by the Master of Ambient Music

in Music | February 19th, 2018

45 years have passed since Bri­an Eno left Roxy Music to strike out on his own, launch­ing a more or less unprece­dent­ed career spread across music pop­u­lar and exper­i­men­tal as well as oth­er forms of art entire­ly. It seems to have worked out for him: young stars like James Blake, Owen Pal­lett, and Seun Kuti con­tin­ue to seek out the bound­ary-push­ing cre­ative over­sight he pre­vi­ous­ly brought as pro­duc­er to acts like David Bowie and U2, and his own work as a “non-musi­cian” (which began with him twist­ing knobs and push­ing but­tons almost at ran­dom with Roxy Music) con­tin­ues apace, his lat­est album Reflec­tion hav­ing come out just last year.

If you looked for Reflec­tion at the record store, phys­i­cal or dig­i­tal, you might well find it filed under “ambi­ent,” a genre Bri­an Eno often gets cred­it­ed with, though nev­er seems to claim cred­it for, invent­ing.

Whether or not he came up with that atmos­pher­ic, almost spa­tial form of music sin­gle-hand­ed­ly — or its com­put­er-com­posed cousin gen­er­a­tive music, which you can expe­ri­ence with Reflec­tion in app form — mat­ters less than the intel­lec­tu­al frame­work he’s built, and that he con­tin­u­al­ly dis­man­tles and rebuilds, around it.

Though Eno has always insist­ed on the impor­tance of deep feel­ing in music, per­ceiv­ing a kind of sacred­ness in acts like singing and danc­ing, the cre­ation of his own music has also involved no small amount of cog­i­ta­tion, the fruits of which you can hear in the 29-hour Spo­ti­fy playlist above. (If you don’t have Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, you can down­load it here.) If you got into Eno through his ambi­ent work, what you hear on much of this son­ic jour­ney through his discog­ra­phy might sur­prise you: the jagged­ness of a “Sky Saw” from Anoth­er Green World, the cyber­punk beats of Nerve Net, or the nervy grooves on his col­lab­o­ra­tions with for­mer Talk­ing Heads David Byrne. All of it evi­dences that Eno nev­er runs out of musi­cal ideas, nor the fas­ci­na­tion to exe­cute them; no won­der Roxy Music leader Bryan Fer­ry, near­ly half a cen­tu­ry lat­er, wants to col­lab­o­rate with him again.

The playlist starts with Eno’s first album, 1974’s Here Come the Warm Jets, and then moves through the rest of his discog­ra­phy chrono­log­i­cal­ly. It may not include every album Eno ever made. But it cer­tain­ly seems to include every Eno album cur­rent­ly avail­able on the stream­ing ser­vice.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The “True” Sto­ry Of How Bri­an Eno Invent­ed Ambi­ent Music

Bri­an Eno Presents a Crash Course on How the Record­ing Stu­dio Rad­i­cal­ly Changed Music: Hear His Influ­en­tial Lec­ture “The Record­ing Stu­dio as a Com­po­si­tion­al Tool” (1979)

Bri­an Eno Explains the Loss of Human­i­ty in Mod­ern Music

Bri­an Eno Cre­ates a List of His 13 Favorite Records: From Gospel to Afrobeat, Shoegaze to Bul­gar­i­an Folk

Bri­an Eno on Why Do We Make Art & What’s It Good For?: Down­load His 2015 John Peel Lec­ture

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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.

Tim Minchin Presents “9 Rules to Live By” in a Funny and Wise Commencement Speech (2013)

in Graduation Speech, Life | February 19th, 2018

Tim Minchin isn’t much of a role mod­el in the hair brush­ing depart­ment, but in every oth­er way the pro­lif­ic comedian/actor/writer/musician/director inspires.

He’s unabashed­ly enthu­si­as­tic about sci­ence, a life­long learn­er who’s a strong believ­er in the pow­er of exer­cise, trav­el, and thank you notes….

He uses his star­dom and tal­ent for pen­ning con­tro­ver­sial lyrics to raise aware­ness and mon­ey for such caus­es as the UK’s Nation­al Autis­tic Soci­ety and a local char­i­ty formed to send adults who, as chil­dren, were sex­u­al­ly abused by Catholic cler­gy, to Rome.

His cre­ative out­put is prodi­gious.

And he’s one hel­lu­va com­mence­ment speak­er.

In 2013, his alma mater, the Uni­ver­si­ty of West­ern Aus­tralia, award­ed him an Hon­orary Degree of Doc­tor of Let­ters and invit­ed him to address the grad­u­at­ing class.

The speak­er insist­ed up front that an “inflat­ed sense of self impor­tance” born of address­ing large crowds was the only thing that posi­tioned him to give such an address, then went on to share a fun­ny 9‑point guide to life that stressed the impor­tance of grat­i­tude, edu­ca­tion, intel­lec­tu­al rig­or, and kind­ness toward oth­ers.

If you haven’t the time to watch the entire 12-minute speech, above, be sure to cir­cle back lat­er. His advice is hilar­i­ous, heart­warm­ing, and mem­o­rable.

In extrap­o­lat­ing the essence of each of his nine “life lessons” below, we dis­cov­ered many bonus lessons con­tained there­in (one of which we include below.)

Tim Minchin’s 9 Rules To Live By

1. You don’t have to have a dream. Be micro-ambi­tious and see what hap­pens as you pur­sue short-term goals…
2. Rather than chas­ing hap­pi­ness for your­self, keep busy and aim to make some­one else hap­py.
3. Remem­ber that we are lucky to be here, and that most of us — espe­cial­ly those of us with a col­lege edu­ca­tion, or those active­ly seek­ing to edu­cate them­selves to a sim­i­lar degree—will achieve a lev­el of wealth that “most humans through­out his­to­ry could not have dreamed of.”
4. Exer­cise. Among oth­er things, it helps com­bat depres­sion. 
5. Iden­ti­fy your bias­es, prej­u­dices, and priv­i­leges and do not exempt your own beliefs and opin­ions from intel­lec­tu­al rig­or.
6. Be a teacher!  Swell the ranks of this noble pro­fes­sion.
7. Define your­self by what you love, rather than what you despise, and lav­ish praise on the peo­ple and things that move you.
8. Respect those with less pow­er than your­self, and be wary of those who do not. 
9. Don’t be in a rush to suc­ceed. It might come at a cost. 

BONUS.  Uphold the notion that art and sci­ence are not an either/or choice, but rather com­pli­ment each oth­er. “If you need proof—Twain, Dou­glas Adams, Von­negut, McE­wan, Sagan and Shake­speare, Dick­ens for a start. …The arts and sci­ences need to work togeth­er to improve how knowl­edge is com­mu­ni­cat­ed. “

Read the full tran­script of Minchin’s com­mence­ment speech here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

NPR Launch­es Data­base of Best Com­mence­ment Speech­es Ever

David Lynch Gives Uncon­ven­tion­al Advice to Grad­u­ates in an Unusu­al Com­mence­ment Address

Jon Stewart’s William & Mary Com­mence­ment Address: The Entire World is an Elec­tive

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Stream the “Complete” John Coltrane Playlist: A 94-Hour Journey Through 700+ Transformative Tracks

in Music | February 16th, 2018

In a con­trar­i­an take on the lega­cy of John Coltrane on the 50th anniver­sary of his death last year, Zack Gra­ham at GQ did not rec­om­mend Giant Steps nor A Love Supreme nor Blue Train nor My Favorite Things as the most impor­tant album in the artist’s career, but a record most casu­al jazz fans may nev­er encounter, and which even the hard­est-core Coltrane fans nev­er heard in his life­time. Record­ed in the year of his death, Inter­stel­lar Space—a fre­net­ic suite of free jazz duets with drum­mer Rashied Ali—didn’t appear until 1974. The album has since received wide­spread crit­i­cal acclaim, and stands, Gra­ham argues, as “Coltrane’s most influ­en­tial record, its echoes still heard today in every­thing from elec­tron­ic music to some of the world’s biggest hip hop acts.”

Gra­ham makes a com­pelling case. It’s hard­ly an acces­si­ble album, but dis­cern­ing lis­ten­ers will nonethe­less hear the sound of now in Ali’s stut­ter­ing, rapid fire beats and Coltrane’s modal bleats. Look­ing back, it can almost seem like he knew he was run­ning out of time, and rushed to leave behind a blue­print for the music of the future.

“In his last months,” writes Stephen Davis at Rolling Stone, “Coltrane had changed every­thing about his music,” and, per­haps, every­thing about music in gen­er­al, jazz and oth­er­wise. His evo­lu­tion as a musi­cian and explor­er of the mys­ti­cal poten­tial­i­ties of artis­tic expres­sion was so rad­i­cal that from a cer­tain point of view we are forced to work back­ward when approach­ing his cat­a­log, as we might do with biogra­phies of saints.

Should we pur­sue this line of think­ing, how­ev­er, we might have to grant that the posthu­mous Inter­stel­lar Space and its fol­low-up Stel­lar Regions—com­piled from tapes Alice Coltrane dis­cov­ered in 1994—are the result of Coltrane’s final musi­cal apoth­e­o­sis and thus can sound nigh-incom­pre­hen­si­ble to most mere mor­tals. Inter­stel­lar Space “is a musi­cians’ album, for sure,” Gra­ham admits, and an album for those ful­ly open to the unknown: “the dis­so­nance and enhar­mon­ic exper­i­men­ta­tion… is oth­er­world­ly.”

Work­ing back­ward, we see Coltrane’s trans­fig­u­ra­tion into an avant-garde pio­neer in 1966’s Ascen­sion, an album that “still man­ages to con­found as many lis­ten­ers as it con­vinces,” Derek Tay­lor writes at All About Jazz. A Love Supreme is Coltrane’s gospel, a spir­i­tu­al clas­sic that draws every­one in with its mes­sage of tran­scen­dence and one­ness. Ear­li­er mile­stones My Favorite Things, Giant Steps, and Blue Train are each mirac­u­lous feats of musi­cian­ship that drew huge crowds of admir­ers and imi­ta­tors, and then there are the years of appren­tice­ship, when the young Coltrane stud­ied under mas­ters like Miles Davis and Dizzy Gille­spie, and prac­ticed the dhar­ma of Char­lie Park­er.

A nar­ra­tive of Coltrane as a kind of musi­cal mes­si­ah explains the lit­er­al ven­er­a­tion of his work by the Church of Saint John Coltrane, but it is only one con­ve­nient means of Coltrane appre­ci­a­tion. In truth, his oeu­vre is too vast and var­ied in scope to neat­ly sum up in any ful­ly sat­is­fy­ing way. We might just as well start at the begin­ning, when Coltrane was a most­ly unknown, but very hip, side­man, play­ing with the greats through­out the fifties. “From his Bird-emu­lat­ing begin­nings to his flights into the unknown in his last years,” writes Fer­nan­do Ortiz, com­pil­er of the “Com­plete” John Coltrane playlist above, “the stan­dard of his music and his pas­sion are always at the top or very close to it.”

Com­pris­ing over 700 tracks, “or four straight days of lis­ten­ing,” this playlist list is still “far from per­fect,” Ortiz admits, “since it is sub­ject to avail­abil­i­ty and to the non-sys­tem­at­ic approach to data on Spo­ti­fy, but it’s not that far this time.”

…no stu­dio record­ing he made between 1955 and 1965 is miss­ing (his pre­vi­ous years are well rep­re­sent­ed, start­ing with his 1946 record­ings while in the Navy), which includes all his stu­dio work as a leader dur­ing those years, as well as all his record­ings as a side­man with Miles and Monk.

The weight­ing toward live record­ings, “both from offi­cial and boot­leg sources,” pro­vides a very mul­ti­fac­eted view of the artist’s onstage devel­op­ment, and the inclu­sion of box sets like Heavy­weight Cham­pi­on: The Com­plete Atlantic Record­ings offer panoram­ic sur­veys of his stu­dio work. While we don’t get every­thing here, and some of the omis­sions are key, you will, if you spend qual­i­ty time delv­ing into this trea­sure house, under­stand why the name Coltrane con­jures such inten­si­ty of awe, praise, and devo­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Orga­nized Reli­gion Got You Down? Dis­cov­er The Church Of Saint John Coltrane

John Coltrane Draws a Mys­te­ri­ous Dia­gram Illus­trat­ing the Math­e­mat­i­cal & Mys­ti­cal Qual­i­ties of Music

John Coltrane’s Hand­writ­ten Out­line for His Mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme (1964)

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

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

Amanda Palmer Sings a Heartfelt Musical Tribute to YA Author Judy Blume on Her 80th Birthday

in Books, Life, Literature, Music | February 16th, 2018

Art saves lives, and so does author Judy Blume. While some of her nov­els are intend­ed for adult read­ers, and oth­ers for the ele­men­tary school set, her best known books are the ones that speak to the expe­ri­ence of being a teenage girl.

For many of us com­ing of age in the ‘70s and ‘80s, Blume was our best—sometimes only—source when it came to sex, men­stru­a­tion, mas­tur­ba­tion, and oth­er top­ics too taboo to dis­cuss. She answered the ques­tions we were too shy to ask. Her char­ac­ters’ inte­ri­or mono­logues mir­rored our own.

The hon­esty of her writ­ing earned her mil­lions of grate­ful young fans, and plen­ty of atten­tion from those who still seek to keep her titles out of libraries and schools.

While her sto­ries are not auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal, her com­pas­sion is born of expe­ri­ence.

Here she is on Are You There, God? It’s Me, Mar­garet, a tat­tered paper­back copy of which made the rounds of my 6th grade class, like the pre­cious con­tra­band it was:

When I was in sixth grade, I longed to devel­op phys­i­cal­ly like my class­mates. I tried doing exer­cis­es, resort­ed to stuff­ing my bra, and lied about get­ting my peri­od. And like Mar­garet, I had a very per­son­al rela­tion­ship with God that had lit­tle to do with orga­nized reli­gion. God was my friend and con­fi­dant. But Mar­garet’s fam­i­ly is very dif­fer­ent from mine, and her sto­ry grew from my imag­i­na­tion.

On It’s Not the End of the World:

…in the ear­ly sev­en­ties I lived in sub­ur­ban New Jer­sey with my hus­band and two chil­dren, who were both in ele­men­tary school. I could see their con­cern and fear each time a fam­i­ly in our neigh­bor­hood divorced. What do you say to your friends when you find out their par­ents are split­ting up? If it could hap­pen to them, could it hap­pen to us?

At the time, my own mar­riage was in trou­ble but I was­n’t ready or able to admit it to myself, let alone any­one else. In the hope that it would get bet­ter I ded­i­cat­ed this book to my hus­band. But a few years lat­er, we, too, divorced. It was hard on all of us, more painful than I could have imag­ined, but some­how we mud­dled through and it was­n’t the end of any of our worlds, though on some days it might have felt like it.

And on For­ev­er, which won an A.L.A. Mar­garet A. Edwards Award for Out­stand­ing Lit­er­a­ture for Young Adults, 20 years after its orig­i­nal pub­li­ca­tion:

My daugh­ter Randy asked for a sto­ry about two nice kids who have sex with­out either of them hav­ing to die. She had read sev­er­al nov­els about teenagers in love. If they had sex the girl was always punished—an unplanned preg­nan­cy, a hasty trip to a rel­a­tive in anoth­er state, a gris­ly abor­tion (ille­gal in the U.S. until the 1970’s), some­times even death. Lies. Secrets. At least one life ruined. Girls in these books had no sex­u­al feel­ings and boys had no feel­ings oth­er than sex­u­al. Nei­ther took respon­si­bil­i­ty for their actions. I want­ed to present anoth­er kind of story—one in which two seniors in high school fall in love, decide togeth­er to have sex, and act respon­si­bly.

The heart­felt lyrics of Aman­da Palmer’s recent paean to Blume, who turned 80 this week, con­firm that the singer-song­writer was among the legions of young girls for whom this author made a dif­fer­ence.

In her essay, “Why Judy Blume Mat­ters,” Palmer recalls com­ing up with a list of influ­ences to sat­is­fy the sort of ques­tion a ris­ing indie musi­cian is fre­quent­ly asked in inter­views. It was a “care­ful­ly curat­ed” assort­ment of rock and roll pedi­gree and obscu­ri­ties, and she lat­er real­ized, almost exclu­sive­ly male.

This song, which name checks so many beloved char­ac­ters, is a pas­sion­ate attempt to cor­rect this over­sight:

Per­haps the biggest com­pli­ment you could give a writer ― or a writer of youth fic­tion ― is that they’re so indeli­ble they van­ish into mem­o­ry, the way a dream slips away upon wak­ing because it’s so deeply knit­ted into the fab­ric of your sub­con­scious. The expe­ri­ences of her teenage char­ac­ters ― Dee­nie, Dav­ey, Tony, Jill, Mar­garet ― are so thor­ough­ly enmeshed with my own mem­o­ries that the line between fact and fic­tion is deli­cious­ly thin. My mem­o­ries of these char­ac­ters, though I’d pre­fer to call them “peo­ple” ― of Dee­nie get­ting felt up in the dark lock­er room dur­ing the school dance; of Dav­ey list­less­ly mak­ing and stir­ring a cup of tea that she has no inten­tion of drink­ing; of Jill watch­ing Lin­da, the fat girl in her class, being tor­ment­ed by gig­gling bul­lies ― are all as vivid, if not more so, as my own mem­o­ries…

Palmer’s hus­band, Neil Gaiman, puts in a cameo in the video’s final moments as one of many read­ers immersed in Blume’s oeu­vre.

Read­ers, did a spe­cial book cov­er from your ado­les­cence put in an appear­ance?

For more on Judy Blume’s approach to char­ac­ter and sto­ry, con­sid­er sign­ing up for her $90 online Mas­ter Class.

Name your own price to down­load Judy Blume by Aman­da Palmer here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Judy Blume Now Teach­ing an Online Course on Writ­ing

Hear Aman­da Palmer’s Cov­er of “Pur­ple Rain,” a Gor­geous Stringfelt Send-Off to Prince

Aman­da Palmer Ani­mates & Nar­rates Hus­band Neil Gaiman’s Uncon­scious Mus­ings

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

The Strange, Sci-Fi Sounds of Skating on Thin Black Ice

in Nature, Sci Fi | February 16th, 2018

This gives new mean­ing to “skat­ing on thin ice.” In Swe­den, a film­mak­er named Hen­rik Trygg likes to take his chances skat­ing on pris­tine sheets of black ice, mea­sur­ing only five centimeters/two inch­es thick. It’s a risk. A nat­ur­al thrill. It’s also quite a sen­so­ry expe­ri­ence. Just lis­ten to the “high-pitched, laser-like sounds,” of which sci-fi films could be made.

Watch Tryg­g’s film, “The Sound of Ice,” above. And, below, a ver­sion anno­tat­ed in Eng­lish by Nation­al Geo­graph­ic.

via The Kids Should See This

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:

240 Hours of Relax­ing, Sleep-Induc­ing Sounds from Sci-Fi Video Games: From Blade Run­ner to Star Wars

42 Hours of Ambi­ent Sounds from Blade Run­ner, Alien, Star Trek and Doc­tor Who Will Help You Relax & Sleep

The Sounds of Blade Run­ner: How Music & Sound Effects Became Part of the DNA of Rid­ley Scott’s Futur­is­tic World

The Science of Well-Being: Take a Free Online Version of Yale University’s Most Popular Course

in Online Courses, Psychology | February 15th, 2018

Don’t lis­ten to peo­ple who tell you they’ve found the one true path to hap­pi­ness — but do lis­ten to peo­ple who seem seri­ous­ly in search of it. One such per­son, Yale psy­chol­o­gy and cog­ni­tive sci­ence pro­fes­sor Lau­rie San­tos, teach­es a whole course on the sub­ject: Psych 157, also known as “Psy­chol­o­gy and the Good Life.” And even though col­lege stu­dents are liv­ing the best time of their lives — or so the cul­ture keeps insist­ing to them — enough of them desire its insights to make it the most pop­u­lar class at the uni­ver­si­ty, with more than 1,180 stu­dents cur­rent­ly enrolled.

“The course focus­es both on pos­i­tive psy­chol­o­gy — the char­ac­ter­is­tics that allow humans to flour­ish, accord­ing to Dr. San­tos — and behav­ioral change, or how to live by those lessons in real life,” writes The New York Times’ David Shimer. “Stu­dents must take quizzes, com­plete a midterm exam and, as their final assess­ment, con­duct what Dr. San­tos calls a ‘Hack Yo’Self Project,’ a per­son­al self-improve­ment project.” The body of knowl­edge under­ly­ing it all is hard­ly obvi­ous: “Sci­en­tists didn’t real­ize this in the same way 10 or so years ago, that our intu­itions about what will make us hap­py, like win­ning the lot­tery and get­ting a good grade — are total­ly wrong,” the arti­cle quotes San­tos as say­ing.

So what, accord­ing to the up-to-date research of San­tos and oth­ers, does make us hap­py? Now, you don’t need to go Yale to find out: you can sim­ply take “The Sci­ence of Well-Being,” the new online ver­sion of San­tos’ course, on Cours­era. “The first half of the course reveals mis­con­cep­tions we have about hap­pi­ness and the annoy­ing fea­tures of the mind that lead us to think the way we do,” says its descrip­tion. “The sec­ond half of the course focus­es on activ­i­ties that have been proven to increase hap­pi­ness along with strate­gies to build bet­ter habits.”

Now open for enroll­ment, “The Sci­ence of Well-Being” can be tak­en any time, and its num­ber of stu­dents cer­tain­ly won’t be lim­it­ed by the capac­i­ty of Woolsey Hall. If you’d like to get a sense of the learn­ing expe­ri­ence on offer, have a look at the course’s trail­er above, in which San­tos explains the ori­gin and devel­op­ment of the course, which began in her own home and now, with a poten­tial­ly world­wide audi­ence, uses not just the lat­est sci­ence but a spe­cial­ly devel­oped app to help its stu­dents devel­op the ele­ments of their own good life. Will you fin­ish the course per­fect­ly hap­py? She does­n’t promise that, but nobody ever lost their way to hap­pi­ness by know­ing a bit about it.

Enroll in “The Sci­ence of Well-Being” here. And if there’s any con­fu­sion, select the “Audit” option to take the course for free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy & Neu­ro­science Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Albert Camus Explains Why Hap­pi­ness Is Like Com­mit­ting a Crime—”You Should Nev­er Admit to it” (1959)

What Are the Keys to Hap­pi­ness? Lessons from a 75-Year-Long Har­vard Study

A Guide to Hap­pi­ness: Alain de Bot­ton Shows How Six Great Philoso­phers Can Change Your Life

The Keys to Hap­pi­ness: The Emerg­ing Sci­ence and the Upcom­ing MOOC by Raj Raghu­nathan

Har­vard Course on Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy: Watch 30 Lec­tures from the University’s Extreme­ly Pop­u­lar Course

Albert Einstein’s Ele­gant The­o­ry of Hap­pi­ness: It Just Sold for $1.6 Mil­lion at Auc­tion, But You Can Use It for Free

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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.

A One-Man Pink Floyd Band Creates Note-Perfect Covers of “Echoes,” “Comfortably Numb,” “Mother” & Other Classics: Watch 19-Year-Old Wunderkind Ewan Cunningham in Action

in Music | February 15th, 2018

If you’re a 19-year-old wun­derkind like Ewan Cun­ning­ham, who can play any num­ber of instru­ments, it’s a great time to be alive. Record­ing is cheap, video is just as cheap, and YouTube pro­vides a venue to share a slew of his home­made cov­ers of rock clas­sics.

Above is one of his most ambi­tious ven­tures: a full note-for-note cov­er of Pink Floyd’s “Echoes,” all 20 min­utes, that uses video trick­ery to have four Ewans side-by-side play­ing at Dob­bie Hall. (From what we can tell, Dob­bie Hall is locat­ed in Lar­bert, Scot­land, a town about equidis­tant between Glas­gow and Edin­burgh.)

Div­ing down into all six years of Ewan’s videos and we find, at first, not a 13-year-old Ewan, but his dad, play­ing and singing an acoustic cov­er of Coldplay’s “Par­adise”. So we know where Ewan got the music bug.

In fact, he tells us “I start­ed play­ing drums at the age of 4 and con­tin­ued to only play drums until I start­ed branch­ing out into oth­er instru­ments such as gui­tar, bass, key­boards and vocals. I’ve been teach­ing myself to mix, record and film music since I was 10 years old and this is my pas­sion.”

Ewan start­ed upload­ing drum cov­ers at 14, play­ing along to every­one from Evanes­cence to Foo Fight­ers. At 16 he uploaded his first Floyd drum cov­er (“Brain Damage/Eclipse”) and, like many a teen before him, fell hard for the band.

Then the cov­ers begin in earnest, with him shar­ing duties with his dad (“Wot’s…Uh the Deal” and “Brain Dam­age”) and then on to “Grantch­ester Mead­ows” (from Pink Floyd’s Ummagum­ma) and final­ly on Jan­u­ary 1, 2017, when Ewan pre­miered his three song set from Dob­bie Hall, fea­tur­ing “A Saucer­ful of Secrets,” “Care­ful with that Axe, Eugene,” and the afore­men­tioned “Echoes.”

After a suc­cess­ful Indiegogo cam­paign, he returned lat­er in 2017 to Dob­bie Hall for three cov­ers from “The Wall,” which cheek­i­ly includ­ed a papi­er-mache air­plane crash­ing into the stage at the end of “In the Flesh?”.

The ques­tion this rais­es is obvi­ous: does Ewan record any­thing orig­i­nal? Indeed, a few months ago he start­ed a new YouTube chan­nel of his own songs. It’s up to you, dear read­er, to check them out.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Scenes from the “Pink Floyd Bal­let:” When the Exper­i­men­tal Rock Band Col­lab­o­rat­ed with Bal­let Chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Roland Petit (1972)

Hear Lost Record­ing of Pink Floyd Play­ing with Jazz Vio­lin­ist Stéphane Grap­pel­li on “Wish You Were Here”

Pink Floyd Plays in Venice on a Mas­sive Float­ing Stage in 1989; Forces the May­or & City Coun­cil to Resign

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.