The News Is Broken, and Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales Plans to Fix It With His New Site, Wikitribune

in Media | April 27th, 2017

“The news is bro­ken and we can fix it.” That’s the idea dri­ving the cre­ation of Wik­itri­bune, a news plat­form being built by Wikipedia founder Jim­my Wales.

Bor­row­ing tools and con­cepts from the influ­en­tial online ency­clo­pe­dia, Wik­itri­bune will be free and sup­port­ed by read­ers, not ads. It will fea­ture pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­ists and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers, work­ing side by side, to pro­duce fact-checked jour­nal­ism that’s read­i­ly sup­port­ed by evi­dence and sources. And any­one can flag mis­takes or sub­mit revi­sions for review.

Watch Wales out­line the vision for Wik­itri­bune in the Kir­by Fer­gu­son-made video above. Then, con­sid­er mak­ing a finan­cial con­tri­bu­tion to the new news plat­form here. They’re now rais­ing mon­ey to get oper­a­tions start­ed and hire 10 jour­nal­ists.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. 

How Jonathan Demme Put Humanity Into His Films: From The Silence of the Lambs to Stop Making Sense

in Film | April 27th, 2017

“My friend, the direc­tor Jonathan Demme, passed last night,” wrote Talk­ing Heads’ David Byrne on his blog yes­ter­day. “I met Jonathan in the ‘80s when Talk­ing Heads were tour­ing a show that he would even­tu­al­ly film and turn into Stop Mak­ing Sense,” the famous — and in the minds of many, still the very best — con­cert movie. “I loved his films Melvin and Howard and Cit­i­zens Band (AKA Han­dle With Care). From those movies alone, one could sense his love of ordi­nary peo­ple. That love sur­faces and is man­i­fest over and over through­out his career.” Read just a few of the many oth­er trib­utes to Demme made so far, and you’ll encounter the same words over and over again: love, empa­thy, com­pas­sion.

Few film­mak­ers man­age to get those qual­i­ties onscreen as con­sis­tent­ly as Demme did, and even few­er do it at his lev­el of tech­ni­cal mas­tery. The two video essays here exam­ine his cin­e­mat­ic tech­nique, espe­cial­ly as seen in one of his best-known films: 1991’s Silence of the Lambs, the sec­ond in the ongo­ing series fea­tur­ing refined career can­ni­bal Han­ni­bal Lecter. The brief episode of Tony Zhou’s Every Frame a Paint­ing at the top of the post breaks down how Demme han­dles the ques­tion of who “wins” the inter­ac­tion in the first con­ver­sa­tion between Antho­ny Hop­kins’ Lecter and Jodie Fos­ter’s young FBI trainee Clarice Star­ling — two char­ac­ters who enter into this and all their sub­se­quent inter­ac­tions with their own shift­ing moti­va­tions, goals, and sen­si­tiv­i­ties.

In this and oth­er scenes through­out his career, Demme made strong and influ­en­tial use of close-up shots, to the point where Jacob T. Swin­ney could ded­i­cate a super­cut to “The Jonathan Demme Close-Up.” While “most film­mak­ers choose to employ the close-up shot dur­ing scenes of cru­cial dia­logue,” Swin­ney writes, “Demme prefers to line up his char­ac­ters in the cen­ter of the frame and have them look direct­ly into the lens of the cam­era.” And so “when Dr. Han­ni­bal Lecter hiss­es at Agent Clarice Star­ling, we feel equal­ly vic­tim­ized,” or in Philadel­phia “as Andrew Beck­ett suc­cumbs to AIDS, we feel an over­whelm­ing sen­sa­tion of sym­pa­thy. These char­ac­ters seem to be look­ing at us, and we there­fore con­nect on a deep­er lev­el.”

While Demme used his sig­na­ture close-ups and oth­er emo­tion­al­ly charged shots in all his fea­tures, from his ear­ly days work­ing for leg­endary B‑movie pro­duc­er Roger Cor­man on, he brought his human­is­tic style to his var­i­ous doc­u­men­tary and con­cert film projects as well. “Stop Mak­ing Sense was char­ac­ter dri­ven too,” writes Byrne. “Jonathan’s skill was to see the show almost as a the­atri­cal ensem­ble piece, in which the char­ac­ters and their quirks would be intro­duced to the audi­ence, and you’d get to know the band as peo­ple, each with their dis­tinct per­son­al­i­ties. They became your friends, in a sense. I was too focused on the music, the stag­ing and the light­ing to see how impor­tant his focus on char­ac­ter was — it made the movies some­thing dif­fer­ent and spe­cial.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every Frame a Paint­ing Explains the Film­mak­ing Tech­niques of Mar­tin Scors­ese, Jack­ie Chan, and Even Michael Bay

David Byrne Plays Sev­en Char­ac­ters & Inter­views Him­self in Fun­ny Pro­mo for Stop Mak­ing Sense

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Jonathan Demme Narrates I Thought I Told You To Shut Up!!,” a Short Film About the Counterculture Cartoon Reid Fleming

in Comics/Cartoons, Film | April 26th, 2017

Ear­li­er today, we sad­ly learned about the pass­ing of Jonathan Demme, direc­tor of The Silence of the Lambs and Stop Mak­ing Sense. We’ll have more to say about his con­tri­bu­tions to cin­e­ma in the morn­ing. But, for now, I want to share a short film, nar­rat­ed by Demme him­self in 2015, called I Thought I Told You To Shut Up!!.  Fea­tur­ing stop motion ani­ma­tion and inter­views, the short revis­its David Boswell’s 1970s coun­ter­cul­ture car­toon, Reid Flem­ing, World’s Tough­est Milk­man. Per­haps the car­toon nev­er end­ed up on your radar. But it cer­tain­ly influ­enced a num­ber of impor­tant cre­ators you’re famil­iar with. And, hap­pi­ly, you can still pick up copies of Reid Flem­ing: World’s Tough­est Milk­man on Ama­zon or over at the offi­cial Reid Flem­ing web site.

Direct­ed by Char­lie Tyrell, I Thought I Told You To Shut Up!! will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More. You can also down­load it over at Tyrel­l’s vimeo page.

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 Com­ic Biog­ra­phy of Under­ground Pub­lish­er & Polit­i­cal Writer, John Wilcock

In Ani­mat­ed Car­toon, Ali­son Bechdel Sees Her Life Go From Puli­tiz­er Prize Win­ning Com­ic to Broad­way Musi­cal

Car­toon­ist R. Crumb Assess­es 21 Cul­tur­al Fig­ures, from Dylan & Hitch­cock, to Kaf­ka & The Bea­t­les

If You Could Spend Eternity with Your Ashes Pressed Into a Vinyl Record, What Album Would It Be?

in Life, Music | April 26th, 2017

In Feb­ru­ary, Ted Mills wrote about a new com­pa­ny–And Vinyly–which will press your ash­es into a playable vinyl record when your time even­tu­al­ly runs out. The basic ser­vice runs $4,000, and it gets you 30 copies of a record con­tain­ing your ash­es. The rub is that you can’t “use copy­right-pro­tect­ed music to fill up the 12 min­utes per side, so no ‘Free Bird’ or ‘We Are the Cham­pi­ons,’ unfor­tu­nate­ly.”

But it does raise the ques­tion, as I put on Twit­ter yes­ter­day… If you could head into eter­ni­ty pressed into a cher­ished album, which would you choose? This isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly a what-record-would-you-take-to-a-desert­ed island sce­nario, tak­en to the nth degree. Mean­ing, it’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly a ques­tion of what record would you lis­ten to end­less­ly, for eter­ni­ty (although you could choose to make it that). Rather, the ques­tion might be: What album do you have a deep, abid­ing per­son­al con­nec­tion with? Which record cap­tures your spir­it? And, when thrown on the turntable, can keep you son­i­cal­ly in this world?

My pick, Abbey Road. “Come Togeth­er” has a bit of anti-estab­lish­ment bite. “Here Comes the Sun” and “Some­thing” tap into some­thing emo­tion­al and nos­tal­gia-induc­ing for me. And, oh, that med­ley on Side 2! Just click play any time.

Your picks? Please add them to the com­ments 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!

Download 200+ Free Modern Art Books from the Guggenheim Museum

in Art, Books, Internet Archive | April 26th, 2017

For at least half a decade now, New York’s Solomon R. Guggen­heim Muse­um has been dig­i­tiz­ing its exhi­bi­tion cat­a­logs and oth­er art books. Now you can find all of the pub­li­ca­tions made avail­able so far — not just to read, but to down­load in PDF and ePub for­mats — at the Inter­net Archive. If you’ve vis­it­ed the Guggen­heim’s non-dig­i­tal loca­tion on Fifth Avenue even once, you know how much effort the insti­tu­tion puts toward the preser­va­tion and pre­sen­ta­tion of mod­ern art, and that comes through as much in its print­ed mate­r­i­al as it does in its shows.

Among the more than 200 Guggen­heim art books avail­able on the Inter­net Archive, you’ll find one on a 1977 ret­ro­spec­tive of Col­or Field painter Ken­neth Noland, one on the ever-vivid icon-mak­ing pop artist Roy Licht­en­stein, and one on the exis­ten­tial slo­gans — “MONEY CREATES TASTE,” “PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT,” “LACK OF CHARISMA CAN BE FATAL” — sly­ly, dig­i­tal­ly insert­ed into the lives of thou­sands by Jen­ny Holz­er. Oth­er titles, like Expres­sion­ism, a Ger­man Intu­ition 1905–1920, From van Gogh to Picas­so, from Kandin­sky to Pol­lock, and painter Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky’s own Point and Line to Plane, go deep­er into art his­to­ry.

Where to start amid all these books of mod­ern (and even some of pre-mod­ern) art? You might con­sid­er first hav­ing a look at the books in the Inter­net Archive’s Guggen­heim col­lec­tion about the Guggen­heim itself: the hand­book to its col­lec­tion up through 1980, for instance, or 1991’s Mas­ter­pieces from the Guggen­heim Col­lec­tion: From Picas­so to Pol­lock, or the fol­low­ing year’s Guggen­heim Muse­um A to Z, or Art of this Cen­tu­ry: The Guggen­heim Muse­um and its Col­lec­tion from the year after that. But just as when you pay a vis­it to the Guggen­heim itself, you should­n’t wor­ry too much about what order you see every­thing in; the impor­tant thing is to look with inter­est.

Explore the col­lec­tion of 200+ art books and cat­a­logues 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:

Down­load 448 Free Art Books from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

Down­load Over 300+ Free Art Books From the Get­ty Muse­um

The Guggen­heim Puts Online 1600 Great Works of Mod­ern Art from 575 Artists

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Robert Pirsig Reveals the Personal Journey That Led Him to Write His Counterculture Classic, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)

in Literature, Philosophy | April 26th, 2017

I well remem­ber pulling Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motor­cy­cle Main­te­nance from my par­ents’ shelves at age twelve or thir­teen, work­ing my way through a few pages, and stop­ping in true per­plex­i­ty to ask, “what is this?” The book fit no for­mal scheme or genre I had ever encoun­tered before. I under­stood its lan­guage, but I did not know how to read it. I still don’t, though I’ve had decades to study some of Pirsig’s ref­er­ences and influ­ences, from Pla­to to Kant to Dōgen. Is this mem­oir? Fic­tion? Phi­los­o­phy? A med­i­ta­tion on machin­ery, like Hen­ry Adams’ strange essay “The Dynamo and the Vir­gin”? Yes.

Pirsig’s coun­ter­cul­tur­al clas­sic, pub­lished in 1974 after five years of rejec­tions (121 in total) was “not… a mar­ket­ing man’s dream,” as the edi­tor at his even­tu­al pub­lish­er, William Mor­row, wrote to him at the time. Nev­er­the­less, it sold—“50,000 copies in three months,” writes the L.A. Times, “and more than 5 mil­lion in the decades since. The dense tome has been trans­lat­ed into at least 27 lan­guages…. Its pop­u­lar­i­ty made Pir­sig ‘prob­a­bly the most wide­ly read philoso­pher alive,’ one British jour­nal­ist wrote in 2006.’” Pir­sig, who died this past Mon­day, only wrote one oth­er work, the philo­soph­i­cal nov­el Lila: An Inquiry into Morals. But he will be remem­bered as an impor­tant, if quixot­ic, fig­ure in 20th cen­tu­ry thought.

Zen osten­si­bly recounts a motor­cy­cle jour­ney Pir­sig took with his son, Chris, and two friends. They are shad­owed by anoth­er char­ac­ter, Phae­drus, the author’s neu­rot­ic alter ego. Pir­sig poured all of him­self into the book: his unortho­dox philo­soph­i­cal and spir­i­tu­al jour­ney, his strug­gle with schiz­o­phre­nia, his close and fret­ful rela­tion­ship to his son (who lat­er suc­cumbed to drug addic­tion and was mur­dered at age 22, five years after Zen came out). It is a book “filled with unan­swered and, per­haps, unan­swer­able ques­tions.”

The kind of deep ambi­gu­i­ty and uncer­tain­ty Zen explores is not easy to write about, unsur­pris­ing­ly, and in the NPR inter­view above from 1974, Pir­sig describes his strug­gles as a writer—the dis­trac­tions and intru­sions, the self-doubt and con­fu­sion. Pir­sig seclud­ed him­self for much of the writ­ing of the book, and for much of it worked a day job writ­ing tech­ni­cal man­u­als, which explains quite a lot about its intri­cate lev­els of tech­ni­cal detail.

Pirsig’s descrip­tions of the hard-won self-dis­ci­pline (and exhaus­tion) that the writer’s life requires will ring true for any­one who has tried to write a book. He sums up his moti­va­tion suc­cinct­ly: “this was real­ly a com­pul­sive book. If I didn’t do it, I’d feel worse than if I did do it.” But Pir­sig found he couldn’t make any progress as a writer until he gave up try­ing to be “in quotes, a ‘writer,’” or play the role of one any­way. “It was always a sep­a­ra­tion of my real self from the act of writ­ing,” he says.

His process sounds like the freewrit­ing of Ker­ouac’s road nov­el or the auto­mat­ic writ­ing of the Sur­re­al­ists: “I could almost watch my hand mov­ing on the page; there was almost no voli­tion one way or the oth­er, it was just hap­pen­ing.” What he iden­ti­fies as the “sin­cer­i­ty” of the book’s voice helps steady read­ers who must trust a very unre­li­able nar­ra­tor to guide them through a phi­los­o­phy of what Pir­sig calls “quality”—a meta­phys­i­cal con­di­tion that under­lies reli­gions and philoso­phies East and West. “One can med­i­tate,” he wrote, “on the fact that the old Eng­lish roots for the Bud­dha and Qual­i­ty, God and good, appear to be iden­ti­cal.” Pir­sig sub­ject­ed all human endeav­or to the scruti­ny of “qual­i­ty,” includ­ing so-called “val­ue free” sci­ence, a char­ac­ter­i­za­tion he found dubi­ous.

In the BBC radio inter­view above, you can hear Pir­sig describe his per­son­al and intel­lec­tu­al jour­ney, which took him through a trou­bled child­hood in Min­neso­ta, a tour in the Kore­an War, an aca­d­e­m­ic career, and even­tu­al­ly a cen­tral role in the “whole attempt to reform Amer­i­ca” begun by “beat­niks” and “hip­pies” in San Fran­cis­co. (Both words, he wrote, were “clich­es and stereo­types… invent­ed for the antitech­nol­o­gists, the anti­sys­tem peo­ple.”) Urged by a uni­ver­si­ty col­league to pur­sue the ques­tion “what is qual­i­ty?,” Pir­sig under­took an obses­sive inves­ti­ga­tion. His will­ing­ness and courage to fol­low wher­ev­er it led defined the rest of his life as a writer and thinker.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

What Are Lit­er­a­ture, Phi­los­o­phy & His­to­ry For? Alain de Bot­ton Explains with Mon­ty Python-Style Videos

12 Clas­sic Lit­er­ary Road Trips in One Handy Inter­ac­tive Map

Phi­los­o­phy of Reli­gion: A Free Online Course

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

Watch Teeny Tiny Japanese Meals Get Made in a Miniature Kitchen: The Joy of Cooking Mini Tempura, Sashimi, Curry, Okonomiyaki & More

in Food & Drink | April 25th, 2017

Every time I go to Japan, I mar­vel at the arti­fi­cial sand­wich­es, omelets, bowls of noo­dles, and par­faits dis­played out­side even the hum­blest shop­ping-arcade cafés, all made to give the cus­tomer a more vivid sense of the dish­es on offer than would any two-dimen­sion­al pho­to­graph. But while those fake foods, made to scale with polyvinyl chlo­ride and oth­er ined­i­ble mate­ri­als, do reflect Japan’s long tra­di­tion of high-qual­i­ty hand-crafts­man­ship, they don’t reflect some of the cul­ture’s oth­er virtues: the advanced Japan­ese skills of minia­tur­iza­tion (remarked upon by even the ear­li­est West­ern vis­i­tors to the once-closed coun­try), not to men­tion the deli­cious­ness of actu­al Japan­ese food.

At a stroke, the Youtube chan­nel Minia­ture Space com­bines all of those into a sin­gle project: its cre­ators repli­cate a vari­ety of clas­sic Japan­ese, West­ern, and Japan­ese-West­ern dish­es like shrimp tem­pu­ra, cur­ry, and okonomiya­ki on video, all at what seems an impos­si­bly small scale. Not only that, but they use only minia­ture kitchen tools, right down to wee knives, spat­u­las, and rolling pins as well as tea can­dle-pow­ered stoves.

Some of these, writes iDig­i­tal­Times’ ND Med­i­na, “come from Re-Ment, a Japan­ese com­pa­ny not­ed for the impres­sive detail of its minia­tures. How­ev­er, many of the tools used have long been out of pro­duc­tion, like any­thing by Kon­a­pun, a brand which made fun minia­ture cook­ing sets for kids to expe­ri­ence the joys of cook­ing.”

Minia­ture cook­ing at this lev­el of rig­or requires not just con­sid­er­able man­u­al dex­ter­i­ty but a cer­tain knack for cre­ative sub­sti­tu­tion: tooth­picks instead of stan­dard skew­ers, quail eggs instead of chick­en eggs, spe­cial shrimp from the aquar­i­um sup­ply store small enough to fit inside one’s thim­ble-sized cook­ing pot. Though aes­thet­i­cal­ly sat­is­fy­ing on many lev­els and tech­ni­cal­ly edi­ble to boot, these mini-meals would­n’t sat­is­fy any nor­mal human appetite. Nev­er­the­less, watch­ing enough Minia­ture Space videos in a row will almost cer­tain­ly get you hun­ger­ing for a reg­u­lar-sized grill of yak­i­tori, bowl of spaghet­ti, or plate of pan­cakes — and leave you with some of the know-how need­ed to make such dish­es, even in a non-minia­ture kitchen.

You can view a playlist of minia­ture Japan­ese cook­ing here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cook­pad, the Largest Recipe Site in Japan, Launch­es New Site in Eng­lish

How Japan­ese Things Are Made in 309 Videos: Bam­boo Tea Whisks, Hina Dolls, Steel Balls & More

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

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

David Mamet Teaches Dramatic Writing in a New Online Course

in Online Courses, Writing | April 25th, 2017

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

David Mamet, one of Amer­i­ca’s pre­em­i­nent play­wrights and screen­writ­ers, is now offer­ing an online course on Dra­mat­ic Writ­ing over at Mas­ter­Class. Fea­tur­ing 26 video lessons and a down­load­able work­book, the course will take you through Mamet’s “process for turn­ing life’s strangest moments into dra­mat­ic art. He’ll teach you the rules of dra­ma, the nuances of dia­logue, and the skills to devel­op your own voice and cre­ate your mas­ter­piece.” The cost is $90. It’s not every day that you can get inside the cre­ative process of the Pulitzer Prize-win­ning writer of Glen­gar­ry Glen Ross. So per­haps it’s mon­ey well spent. (If you want to give this course as a gift, just click here.)

As we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned, Mas­ter­Class has enlist­ed oth­er accom­plished fig­ures to teach cours­es on their craft–eg, Steve Mar­tin does com­e­dy; Wern­er Her­zog, film­mak­ing; Aaron Sorkin, screen­writ­ing; Christi­na Aguil­era, singing, and Frank Gehry, archi­tec­ture, to name a few. You can browse their com­plete list of cours­es here. And, for $180, you can now get a year-long pass to all Mas­ter­class cours­es.

If you’re look­ing for free cours­es, check out our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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!

New Film Project Features Citizens of Alabama Reading Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” a Poetic Embodiment of Democratic Ideals

in Poetry, Travel | April 25th, 2017

In times of nation­al anx­i­ety, many of us take com­fort in the fact that the U.S. has endured polit­i­cal crises even more severe than those at hand. His­to­ry can be a teacher and a guide, and so too can poet­ry, as Walt Whit­man reminds us again and again. Whit­man wit­nessed some of the great­est upheavals and rev­o­lu­tion­ary changes the coun­try has ever expe­ri­enced: the Civ­il War and its after­math, the assas­si­na­tion of Abra­ham Lin­coln, the fail­ure of Recon­struc­tion, the mas­sive indus­tri­al­iza­tion of the coun­try at the end of the 19th cen­tu­ry.…

Per­haps this is why we return to Whit­man when we make what crit­ics call a “poet­ic turn.” His expan­sive, mul­ti­va­lent verse speaks for us when beau­ty, shock, or sad­ness exceed the lim­its of every­day lan­guage. Whit­man con­tained the nation’s war­ring voic­es, and some­how rec­on­ciled them with­out dilut­ing their unique­ness. This was, indeed, his lit­er­ary mis­sion, to “cre­ate a uni­fied whole out of dis­parate parts,” argues Karen Swal­low Pri­or at The Atlantic. “For Whit­man, poet­ry wasn’t just a vehi­cle for express­ing polit­i­cal lament; it was also a polit­i­cal force in itself.” Poetry’s impor­tance as a bind­ing agent in the frac­tious, frag­ile coali­tion of states, meant that for Whit­man, the country’s “Pres­i­dents shall not be their com­mon ref­er­ee so much as their poets shall.”

Whit­man wrote as a gay man who, by the time he pub­lished the first edi­tion of Leaves of Grass in 1855, had gone from being an “ardent Free-Soil­er” to ful­ly sup­port­ing abo­li­tion. His poet­ry pro­claimed a “rad­i­cal­ly egal­i­tar­i­an vision,” writes Mar­tin Klam­mer, “of an ide­al, mul­tira­cial repub­lic.” A coun­try that was, itself, a poem. “The Unit­ed States them­selves are essen­tial­ly the great­est poem,” wrote Whit­man in his pref­ace. The nation’s con­tra­dic­tions inhab­it us just as we inhab­it them. The only way to resolve our dif­fer­ences, he insist­ed, is to embody them ful­ly, with open­ness toward oth­er peo­ple and the nat­ur­al world. Under­stand­ing Whitman’s mis­sion makes film­mak­er Jen­nifer Crandall’s project Whit­man, Alaba­ma all the more poignant.

For two years, Cran­dall “criss­crossed this deep South­ern state, invit­ing peo­ple to look into a cam­era and share part of them­selves through the words of Walt Whit­man.” To the ques­tion “Who is Amer­i­can?,” Crandall—just as Whit­man before her—answers with a mul­ti­tude of voic­es, weav­ing in and out of a col­lab­o­ra­tive read­ing of the epic “Song of Myself,” begin­ning with 97-year-old Vir­ginia Mae Schmitt of Birm­ing­ham, at the top, who reads Whitman’s lines, “I, now thir­ty-sev­en years old in per­fect health begin / Hop­ing to cease not till death.” No one watch­ing the video, Cran­dall remarks, should ask, “Why isn’t’ a thir­ty-sev­en year old man read­ing this?” To do so is to ignore Whitman’s design for the uni­ver­sal in the par­tic­u­lar.

When Whit­man penned the first lines of “Song of Myself,” the coun­try had not yet “Unlimber’d” the can­nons “to begin the red busi­ness,” as he would lat­er write, but the 1850 Fugi­tive Slave Act had clear­ly lain the foun­da­tion for civ­il war. The poet­’s many revi­sions, addi­tions, and sub­se­quent edi­tions of Leaves of Grass after his first small run in 1855 con­tin­ued until his death in 1892. He was obsessed with the huge­ness and dynamism of the coun­try and its peo­ple, in their dark­est, blood­i­est moments and at their most flour­ish­ing. His vision lets every­one in, with­out qual­i­fi­ca­tion, con­stant­ly rewrit­ing itself to meet new faces in the ever-chang­ing nation.

As Mari­am Jal­loh, a 14-year old Mus­lim girl from Guinea, recites in her short por­tion of the read­ing fur­ther up, “every atom belong­ing to me as good belongs to you.” Jol­lah quite lit­er­al­ly makes Whitman’s lan­guage her own, trans­lat­ing into her native Fulani the line, “If they are not just as close as they are dis­tant, they are noth­ing.” Jal­loh “may seem like a sur­pris­ing con­duit for the writ­ing of Whit­man, a long-dead queer social­ist poet from Brook­lyn,” writes Chris­t­ian Kerr at Hyper­al­ler­gic, “but such incon­gruity is the active agent in Whit­man, Alaba­ma’s ther­a­peu­tic salve.” It is also, Whit­man sug­gest­ed, the matrix of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy.

See more read­ings from the project above from Lau­ra and Bran­don Reed­er of Cull­man, the Sul­li­van fam­i­ly of Mobile, and by Demetrius Leslie and Fred­er­ick George, and Patri­cia Mar­shall and Tam­my Coop­er, inmates at mens’ and wom­ens’ pris­ons in Mont­gomery. Whitman’s voice winds through these bod­ies and voic­es, set­tling in, find­ing a home, then, rest­less, mov­ing on, invit­ing us all to join in the cho­rus, yet also—in its con­trar­i­an way—telling us to find our own paths. “You shall no longer take things at sec­ond or third hand.…,” wrote Whit­man, “nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spec­tres in books, / You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, / You shall lis­ten to all sides and fil­ter them from your­self.”

Find many more read­ings at the Whit­man, Alaba­ma web­site. And stay tuned for new read­ings as they come online.

Also find works by Walt Whit­man on our lists of Free Audio Books and Free eBooks.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Iggy Pop Reads Walt Whit­man in Col­lab­o­ra­tions With Elec­tron­ic Artists Alva Noto and Tar­wa­ter

Walt Whit­man Gives Advice to Aspir­ing Young Writ­ers: “Don’t Write Poet­ry” & Oth­er Prac­ti­cal Tips (1888)

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

The Civ­il War & Recon­struc­tion: A Free Course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

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

Milton Glaser’s 10 Rules for Life & Work: The Celebrated Designer Dispenses Wisdom Gained Over His Long Life & Career

in Creativity, Design, Life | April 24th, 2017

“None of us has real­ly the abil­i­ty to under­stand our path until it’s over,” the cel­e­brat­ed graph­ic design­er Mil­ton Glaser mus­es less than a minute into the above video.

The 86-year-old Glaser’s many con­tri­bu­tions to pop culture—the  I ❤ NY logo, the psy­che­del­ic por­trait of a rain­bow-haired Bob Dylan, DC Comics’ clas­sic bul­let logo—con­fer unde­ni­able author­i­ty. To the out­side eye, he seems to have a pret­ty firm han­dle on the path he’s been trav­el­ing for lo these many decades. Aspi­rant design­ers would do well to give extra con­sid­er­a­tion to any advice he might share.

As would the rest of us.

His “Ten Things I Have Learned,” orig­i­nal­ly deliv­ered as part of a talk to the AIGA—a ven­er­a­ble mem­ber­ship orga­ni­za­tion for design professionals—qualifies as sol­id life advice of gen­er­al inter­est.

Yes, the Inter­net spawns bul­let-point­ed tips for bet­ter liv­ing the way spring rains yield mush­rooms, but Glaser, a self-described “child of mod­ernism” who’s still a con­tender, does not truck in pithy Insta­gram-friend­ly apho­risms. Instead, his list is born of reflec­tion on the var­i­ous turns of a long and most­ly sat­is­fy­ing cre­ative career.

We’ve excerpt­ed some of his most essen­tial points below, and sug­gest that those read­ers who are still in train­ing give spe­cial empha­sis to num­ber sev­en. Don’t place too much weight on num­ber nine until you’ve estab­lished a sol­id work eth­ic. (See num­ber four for more on that.)

MILTON GLASER”S TEN RULES FOR WORK AND LIFE (& A BONUS JOKE ABOUT A RABBIT).

1. YOU CAN ONLY WORK FOR PEOPLE THAT YOU LIKE

Some years ago I real­ized that… all the work I had done that was mean­ing­ful and sig­nif­i­cant came out of an affec­tion­ate rela­tion­ship with a client.

2. IF YOU HAVE A CHOICE NEVER HAVE A JOB

Here, Glaser quotes com­pos­er John Cage: Nev­er have a job, because if you have a job some­day some­one will take it away from you and then you will be unpre­pared for your old age. 

3. SOME PEOPLE ARE TOXIC AVOID THEM.

Glaser rec­om­mends putting a ques­tion­able com­pan­ion to a gestalt ther­a­py test. If, after spend­ing time with that per­son “you are more tired, then you have been poi­soned. If you have more ener­gy, you have been nour­ished. The test is almost infal­li­ble and I sug­gest that you use it for the rest of your life.”

4. PROFESSIONALISM IS NOT ENOUGH (or THE GOOD IS THE ENEMY OF THE GREAT)

Glaser con­cedes that a record of depend­able excel­lence is some­thing to look for in a brain sur­geon or auto mechan­ic, but for those in the arts, “con­tin­u­ous trans­gres­sion” is the qual­i­ty to cul­ti­vate. Pro­fes­sion­al­ism does not allow for that because trans­gres­sion has to encom­pass the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fail­ure and if you are pro­fes­sion­al your instinct is not to fail, it is to repeat suc­cess. 

5. LESS IS NOT NECESSARILY MORE

I have an alter­na­tive to the propo­si­tion that I believe is more appro­pri­ate. ‘Just enough is more.’

6. STYLE IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED

Style change is usu­al­ly linked to eco­nom­ic fac­tors, as all of you know who have read Marx. Also fatigue occurs when peo­ple see too much of the same thing too often.

7. HOW YOU LIVE CHANGES YOUR BRAIN

The brain is the most respon­sive organ of the body…. Thought changes our life and our behav­ior. I also believe that draw­ing works in the same way…. Draw­ing also makes you atten­tive. It makes you pay atten­tion to what you are look­ing at, which is not so easy.

8. DOUBT IS BETTER THAN CERTAINTY

One of the signs of a dam­aged ego is absolute cer­tain­ty. Schools encour­age the idea of not com­pro­mis­ing and defend­ing your work at all costs. Well, the issue at work is usu­al­ly all about the nature of com­pro­mise…. Ide­al­ly, mak­ing every­one win through acts of accom­mo­da­tion is desir­able.

9. IT DOESN’T MATTER

Glaser cred­its essay­ist Roger Rosenblatt’s Rules for Aging (misiden­ti­fy­ing the title as Aging Grace­ful­ly) with help­ing him artic­u­late his phi­los­o­phy here.  It doesn’t mat­ter what you think. It does not mat­ter if you are late or ear­ly, if you are here or there, if you said it or didn’t say it, if you are clever or if you were stu­pid. If you were hav­ing a bad hair day or a no hair day or if your boss looks at you cock­eyed or your boyfriend or girl­friend looks at you cock­eyed, if you are cock­eyed. If you don’t get that pro­mo­tion or prize or house or if you do – it doesn’t mat­ter.

10. TELL THE TRUTH

It’s inter­est­ing to observe that in the new AIGA’s code of ethics there is a sig­nif­i­cant amount of use­ful infor­ma­tion about appro­pri­ate behav­ior towards clients and oth­er design­ers, but not a word about a designer’s rela­tion­ship to the pub­lic. If we were licensed, telling the truth might become more cen­tral to what we do.

BONUS JOKE

A butch­er was open­ing his mar­ket one morn­ing and as he did a rab­bit popped his head through the door. The butch­er was sur­prised when the rab­bit inquired ‘Got any cab­bage?’ The butch­er said ‘This is a meat mar­ket – we sell meat, not veg­eta­bles.’ The rab­bit hopped off. The next day the butch­er is open­ing the shop and sure enough the rab­bit pops his head round and says ‘You got any cab­bage?’ The butch­er now irri­tat­ed says ‘Lis­ten you lit­tle rodent, I told you yes­ter­day we sell meat, we do not sell veg­eta­bles and the next time you come here I am going to grab you by the throat and nail those flop­py ears to the floor.’ The rab­bit dis­ap­peared hasti­ly and noth­ing hap­pened for a week. Then one morn­ing the rab­bit popped his head around the cor­ner and said ‘Got any nails?’ The butch­er said ‘No.’ The rab­bit said ‘Ok. Got any cab­bage?’’

Read Mil­ton Glaser’s “Ten Things I Have Learned” in its entire­ty here.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mil­ton Glaser Draws Shake­speare & Explains Why Draw­ing is the Key to Under­stand­ing Life

Mick­ey Mouse In Viet­nam: The Under­ground Anti-War Ani­ma­tion from 1968, Co-Cre­at­ed by Mil­ton Glaser

World-Renowned Graph­ic Design­er Mil­ton Glaser Has a Laugh on Old Jews Telling Jokes

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