The Last Known Photos of Jim Morrison, Taken Days Before His Death in Paris (June 1971)

in Music | July 26th, 2016

It’s got to be one of my favorite ledes of all time: “The Doors leg­end Jim Mor­ri­son ‘faked his own death’ and is liv­ing as an aging home­less hip­py in New York, accord­ing to a con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist.”

This dead­pan gem from wacky UK tabloid Express might con­vince the cred­u­lous, with its pho­to spread com­par­ing white-beard­ed “Richard”—the aged, sup­pos­ed­ly re-sur­faced Morrison—with those of Mor­ri­son in his last years: beard­ed, bloat­ed, and look­ing ten years old­er.

These are often the images we remem­ber, but the pho­tos in the video mon­tage above (set to some inex­plic­a­bly un-Door-sy music that you might want to mute) show us a more youth­ful, clean-shaven, baby-faced, and much health­i­er lizard king, trav­el­ing through Paris with his girl­friend Pamela Cour­son and their friend Alain Ron­ay, who took the pho­tos on June 28th, 1971. (See a pho­to spread here at Vin­tage Every­day.)

Mor­ri­son was “clear­ly not in a good way,” writes Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock, “when he head­ed off for Paris,” but in these images, he appears ful­ly ready to embark on a new career as a pub­lished poet instead of join­ing the “27 Club,” as he would just days lat­er, when Cour­son awoke to find him dead in the bath­tub of their Paris apart­ment on July 3rd.

Part of the rea­son fans have dogged­ly held on to the the­o­ry Mor­ri­son faked his death has to do with the mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing that discovery–the “nag­ging­ly non-spe­cif­ic ‘heart fail­ure’” ascribed as the cause by French author­i­ties, the lack of an autop­sy, and the “dozens of rumors—many of them unfound­ed” that pro­lif­er­at­ed around the mys­tery.

It turns out that cir­cum­stances of Jim Morrison’s death were sor­did­ly pre­dictable, if we believe one­time Doors pub­li­cist Dan­ny Sug­er­man, who wrote in his 1989 mem­oir Won­der­land Avenue about con­ver­sa­tions with Cour­son, who “stat­ed that Mor­ri­son had died of an acci­den­tal hero­in over­dose, hav­ing snort­ed what he believed to be cocaine,” writes The Vin­tage News.

Her account is sup­port­ed by the con­fes­sion of Alain Ronay—in a 1991 issue of Paris Match, where many of these pho­tos appeared—who wrote that Cour­son nod­ded off instead of get­ting help for Mor­ri­son. Ron­ay also describes in his account (read it in full, trans­lat­ed, here), how he and film­mak­er Agnes Var­da helped mis­lead author­i­ties as to Morrison’s iden­ti­ty, cov­ered up his pri­or drug use, threw the press off track, and guid­ed the inves­ti­ga­tion away from the drugs and Courson’s involve­ment.

Ron­ay seems cred­i­ble enough, but what­ev­er the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Morrison’s death, it’s clear he had a lot of writ­ing left in him. In his last inter­view with Rolling Stone, he talked about his poet­ry and his admi­ra­tion for Nor­man Mail­er and revealed he’d been work­ing on a screen­play. While in Paris, he made sev­er­al record­ings of his poet­ry with some unnamed musi­cians. Last year, a hand­writ­ten poem found in his Paris apart­ment went up for auc­tion. Its final, omi­nous line read, “Last words, Last words out.”

via The Vin­tage News/Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“The Lost Paris Tapes” Pre­serves Jim Morrison’s Final Poet­ry Record­ings from 1971

The Doors Play Live in Den­mark & LA in 1968: See Jim Mor­ri­son Near His Charis­mat­ic Peak

A Young, Clean Cut Jim Mor­ri­son Appears in a 1962 Flori­da State Uni­ver­si­ty Pro­mo Film

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

What Are the Most Stolen Books? Bookstore Lists Feature Works by Murakami, Bukowski, Burroughs, Vonnegut, Kerouac & Palahniuk

in Books | July 26th, 2016

In 1971, Abbie Hoff­man pub­lished his coun­ter­cul­tur­al how-to/”hip Boy Scout hand­book,” Steal This Book. Since then, mil­lions of peo­ple have queued up to pay for it. Did they mis­read the very clear instruc­tion in the title? Or did most of Hoffman’s read­ers think of it as anoth­er Yip­pie hoax, not to be tak­en any more seri­ous­ly than Piga­sus, the 145-pound pig Hoff­man and his mer­ry band of pranksters nom­i­nat­ed for pres­i­dent in 1968? Seems to me Hoff­man was dead seri­ous about the pig, and about his call for shoplift­ing, or “inven­to­ry shrink.”

Nev­er­the­less, mil­lions of peo­ple have need­ed no unam­bigu­ous prod­ding from the Andy Kauf­man of polit­i­cal the­ater to steal mil­lions of oth­er books from shops world­wide, to the detri­ment of pub­lish­ers and book­sellers and the edi­fi­ca­tion of penu­ri­ous read­ers. The books most stolen from book­stores hap­pen to also be those that might best appeal to the kind of rad­i­cal anar­cho-hip­pies Hoff­man addressed, includ­ing Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and any­thing by Bukows­ki and Bur­roughs.

Also high on the list is Haru­ki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chron­i­cle, not a nov­el we nec­es­sar­i­ly asso­ciate with dump­ster-divers and box­car-hop­pers, but one of many Murakamis book thieves have tak­en to lift­ing nonethe­less. Kurt Von­negut ranks high­ly, includ­ing his very pop­u­lar Cat’s Cra­dle and Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons. Oth­er favorite authors include hyper-mas­cu­line seers of soci­etal deca­dence, Chuck Palah­niuk and Brett Eas­t­on Ellis.

How do we know this? One source is sim­ply an image, above, tweet­ed out by Vintage/Anchor Books—a pho­to of a “Most Stolen Books” shelf at an unnamed book­store. We might assume whichev­er store it is has all the evi­dence it needs from a con­sis­tent­ly shrink­ing inven­to­ry of these titles. And anoth­er major book­store con­firms much of the anony­mous shelf above.

Melis­sa MacAulay at The Edit­ing Com­pa­ny blog writes that dur­ing a part-time gig at Cana­di­an giant Indi­go books, Palahniuk’s Fight Club end­ed up behind the counter. Read­ers look­ing for a copy instead found “a small sign direct­ing you to ‘please ask for assis­tance.’” In addi­tion to Palah­niuk, Indigo’s big three most stolen authors are Muraka­mi, Kurt Von­negut, and Bukows­ki, who tops out as the “reign­ing king of ‘Shoplift Lit.’”

In yet anoth­er “Most Stolen” list, blog­ger Can­dice Huber—inspired by Markus Zusak’s 2013 nov­el The Book Thief—under­took her own infor­mal research and came up with sim­i­lar results, with Bukows­ki and Bur­roughs in the top spot and Ker­ouac at num­ber two. “All of the books list­ed,” notes Kot­tke, “are by men and most by ‘man­ly’ men” (what­ev­er that means). See her list, with com­men­tary, below.

Any­thing by Charles Bukows­ki or William S. Bur­roughs. Book sell­ers tend to keep books by these authors behind the counter because they get swiped so often.

On the Road by Jack Ker­ouac. If you notice a theme here, Bukows­ki, Bur­roughs, and Ker­ouac books all share, shall I put it blunt­ly, con­tent of sex and drugs. It seems that those most like­ly to com­mit a reck­less act (steal­ing) are also inter­est­ed in read­ing about reck­less acts.

Graph­ic Nov­els. The major­i­ty of book thieves are young, white males, and this is what they read.

The Great Gats­by by F. Scott Fitzger­ald. Which was actu­al­ly one of the most com­mon­ly stolen books long before the movie came out.

Var­i­ous Selec­tions from Ernest Hem­ing­way, includ­ing A Move­able Feast and The Sun Also Ris­es.

Naked and Me Talk Pret­ty One Day by David Sedaris. David Sedaris? Real­ly?

The New York Tril­o­gy by Paul Auster. I wouldn’t have thought this was the stuff of the five-fin­ger dis­count.

Steal this Book did not crack the top sev­en, though it did receive hon­or­able men­tion, along with Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Jef­frey Eugenides’ The Vir­gin Sui­cides, Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, and “any­thing by Mar­tin Amis.” Hav­ing been a poor col­lege stu­dent myself once (not that I lift­ed my books!), and hav­ing taught many a cash-strapped under­grad, I’d assume a good num­ber of the miss­ing Fitzger­alds and Hem­ing­ways left book­stores in the hands of thieves bear­ing syl­labi.

A 2009 Guardian list gives us an entire­ly dif­fer­ent image of British book thieves with a pen­chant for box­er Lenny McLean’s mem­oirs, Yolan­da Celbridge’s “mod­ern S&M clas­sic” The Tam­ing of Tru­di, com­ic books Tintin and Aster­ix, Banksy’s cof­fee table book Wall and Piece, and Har­ry Pot­ter. Hoff­man comes in at num­ber six.

When it comes to books stolen from libraries, on the oth­er hand, Huber points out this dynam­ic: “library theft leans more toward the prac­ti­cal than the pop­u­lar, where­as book­store theft leans toward the pop­u­lar.” The top sev­en here include expen­sive art books, The Bible, The Guin­ness Book of World Records, textbooks/reference books/exam prep books, and, nat­u­ral­ly, books on uni­ver­si­ty read­ing lists. Also, Sports Illus­trat­ed Swim­suit Edi­tion and “oth­er racy books/magazines”—many stolen, per­haps, to avoid the embar­rass­ment of pry­ing librar­i­an eyes.

We do not assume that you, dear upstand­ing read­er, have ever stolen a book, or any­thing else. And yet, did you find any­thing on these lists sur­pris­ing? (I thought Hen­ry Miller might make the cut.…) What books would you expect to see stolen often that didn’t appear? What about a list of “most bor­rowed” (and maybe nev­er returned) books from friends/acquaintances/family/roommates? Let us know your thoughts below.

via Vintage/Anchor/Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 20 Most Influ­en­tial Aca­d­e­m­ic Books of All Time: No Spoil­ers

28 Impor­tant Philoso­phers List the Books That Influ­enced Them Most Dur­ing Their Col­lege Days

The 10 Great­est Books Ever, Accord­ing to 125 Top Authors (Down­load Them for Free)

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

Replica of an Algerian City, Made of Couscous: Now on Display at The Guggenheim

in Art, Food & Drink | July 26th, 2016

If you head over to The Guggen­heim in New York City, you’re bound to spend time immers­ing your­self in the Moholy-Nagy exhib­it that’s now on dis­play. It’s well worth your time. You can also take a side trip through a small­er exhi­bi­tion fea­tur­ing the work of Mid­dle East­ern and North African artists. And there you’ll dis­cov­er the work of Kad­er Attia, a French-Alger­ian artist whose work “reflects on the impact of West­ern soci­eties on their for­mer colo­nial coun­ter­parts.” Above, we have Atti­a’s repli­ca of an Alger­ian city (Ghardaïa) made out of cous­cous. The Tate explains the con­cep­tu­al thrust of the piece as fol­lows:

The instal­la­tion presents a mod­el of the Alger­ian town Ghardaïa made from cous cous, shown along­side pho­tographs of the Swiss-born archi­tect Le Cor­busier and the French archi­tect Fer­nand Pouil­lon, and a print of the UNESCO dec­la­ra­tion that the town is a World Her­itage site. Dur­ing the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry Ghardaïa was colonised by France, but the build­ings were not altered dur­ing this peri­od and remain char­ac­ter­is­tic of Moz­abite archi­tec­ture. Le Cor­busier vis­it­ed Ghardaïa in 1931, just three years after becom­ing a French cit­i­zen, and made sketch­es of the build­ings. These strong­ly resem­ble the style of mod­ernist archi­tec­ture he sub­se­quent­ly espoused in his trea­tise on urban plan­ning, La cité radieuse.

That a not­ed French archi­tect should take inspi­ra­tion from an Alger­ian town may not seem sig­nif­i­cant, how­ev­er, as Attia notes, ‘archi­tec­ture has first to do with pol­i­tics, with the polit­i­cal order.’ As Attia is a child of Alger­ian immi­grants and grew up part­ly in a Parisian ban­lieue, this state­ment seems par­tic­u­lar­ly res­o­nant. The use of cous cous as the mate­r­i­al to ‘build’ the mod­el is appro­pri­ate as it will pro­vide an approx­i­ma­tion of the town’s decay over time through­out the exhi­bi­tion, while rep­re­sent­ing one of the region’s most pop­u­lar foods – now a sta­ple of Euro­pean cui­sine.

By repli­cat­ing the town as an archi­tects’ mod­el in this way Attia shows the impact of his native cul­ture, which had oper­at­ed as a non-pow­er­ful host to colo­nial France, on their old colonis­ers, who went on to play host to the artist and his fam­i­ly. As well as high­light­ing the cul­tur­al impact of the colonised onto the colonis­er, revers­ing the nor­mal­ly report­ed direc­tion of influ­ence, this also reveals the com­plex­i­ty of hos­pi­tal­i­ty between peo­ple and nations which often relates to dis­pos­ses­sion and re-appro­pri­a­tion…

Atti­a’s cous­cous instal­la­tion is also on dis­play at The Tate. If you’re in Lon­don, pay them a vis­it.

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

Rijksmu­se­um Dig­i­tizes & Makes Free Online 210,000 Works of Art, Mas­ter­pieces Includ­ed

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

Down­load 448 Free Art Books from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

How Did Hitler Rise to Power? : New TED-ED Animation Provides a Case Study in How Fascists Get Democratically Elected

in Current Affairs, History, Politics | July 25th, 2016

How does one rise to pub­lic office? In part, by flat­ter­ing the sen­si­bil­i­ties of those one seeks to serve.

Do you appeal to their high­er nature, their sense of civic respon­si­bil­i­ty and inter­con­nect­ness?

Or do you cap­i­tal­ize on pre-exist­ing bias­es, stok­ing already sim­mer­ing fears and resent­ments to the boil­ing point?

The world paid a ghast­ly price when Germany’s Chan­cel­lor and even­tu­al Führer Adolf Hitler proved him­self a mas­ter of the lat­ter approach.

It seems like we’ve been hear­ing about Hitler’s rise to pow­er a lot late­ly… and not in antic­i­pa­tion of the fast-approach­ing 80th anniver­sary of the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.

We must always resist the temp­ta­tion to over­sim­pli­fy his­to­ry, espe­cial­ly when doing so serves our own ends. There are way too many con­tribut­ing fac­tors to Hitler’s ascen­dan­cy to squeeze into a five minute ani­ma­tion.

On the oth­er hand, you can’t dump a ton of infor­ma­tion on people’s heads and expect them to absorb it all in one sit­ting. You have to start some­where.

TED-Ed les­son plan­ners Alex Gendler and Antho­ny Haz­ard, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Uncle Gin­ger ani­ma­tion stu­dio, offer a very cogent expla­na­tion of how “a tyrant who orches­trat­ed one of the largest geno­cides in his­to­ry” achieved such a calami­tous­ly pow­er­ful posi­tion. All in a demo­c­ra­t­ic fash­ion.

When view­ers have more than five min­utes to devote to the sub­ject, they can delve into addi­tion­al resources and par­tic­i­pate in dis­cus­sions on the sub­ject.

The video doesn’t touch on Hitler’s men­tal ill­ness or the par­tic­u­lars of Weimar era polit­i­cal struc­tures, but even view­ers with lim­it­ed his­tor­i­cal con­text will walk away from it with an under­stand­ing that Hitler was a mas­ter at exploit­ing the Ger­man majority’s mood in the wake of WWI. (A 1933 cen­sus shows that Jews made up less than one per­cent of the total pop­u­la­tion.)

Hitler’s rep­u­ta­tion as a charis­mat­ic speak­er is dif­fi­cult to accept, giv­en hind­sight, mod­ern sen­si­bil­i­ties, and the herky-jerky qual­i­ty of archival footage. He seems unhinged. How could the crowds not see it?

Per­haps they could, Gendler and Haz­ard sug­gest. They just did­n’t want to. Busi­ness­men and intel­lec­tu­als, want­i­ng to back a win­ner, ratio­nal­ized that his more mon­strous rhetoric was “only for show.”

Quite an atten­tion-get­ting show, as it turns out.

Could it hap­pen again?  Gendler and Haz­ard, like all good edu­ca­tors, present stu­dents with the facts, then open the floor for dis­cus­sion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare 1940 Audio: Thomas Mann Explains the Nazis’ Ulte­ri­or Motive for Spread­ing Anti-Semi­tism

How Jazz-Lov­ing Teenagers–the Swingjugend–Fought the Hitler Youth and Resist­ed Con­for­mi­ty in Nazi Ger­many

Noam Chom­sky on Whether the Rise of Trump Resem­bles the Rise of Fas­cism in 1930s Ger­many

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

Marina Abramović and Ulay’s Adventurous 1970s Performance Art Pieces

in Art | July 25th, 2016

Mari­na Abramović, who in her over forty-year career has put her­self through count­less har­row­ing works of per­for­mance art — involv­ing knives, fire, unpre­scribed med­ica­tion, and ardu­ous­ly long peri­ods of motion­less­ness — does­n’t do things by half mea­sures. “Once you enter into the per­for­mance state,” she once said, “you can push your body to do things you absolute­ly could nev­er nor­mal­ly do.” It makes sense that she would con­nect with peo­ple who think and feel sim­i­lar­ly about the artis­tic poten­tial of endurance (or the endurance poten­tial of art), and no such con­nec­tion has had as dra­mat­ic an impact on her career as that with her fel­low per­for­mance artist Ulay.

After meet­ing in Ams­ter­dam in 1976, Abramović and Ulay entered into a twelve-year roman­tic rela­tion­ship and artis­tic col­lab­o­ra­tion that brought them togeth­er into what they for a time described as a “two-head­ed body.” In the form of this “col­lec­tive, androg­y­nous being,” says one blog devot­ed to Abramović’s work, they “ques­tioned the social­ly defined iden­ti­ties of both fem­i­nin­i­ty and mas­culin­i­ty, and encour­aged view­ers to par­tic­i­pate through their own explo­ration of gen­der rela­tion­ships.” At the top of the post, you can see a video of their 1977 piece Rela­tion in Time, which shows a cou­ple min­utes of the six­teen hours they spent tied togeth­er by their hair, nev­er mov­ing. The video just above shows a few moments of that same year’s Impon­der­abil­ia, in which they naked­ly formed a nar­row human cor­ri­dor through which every audi­ence mem­ber want­i­ng to enter the gallery must pass.

“ ‘We are kneel­ing face to face, press­ing our mouths togeth­er,” say Abramović and Ulay by way of intro­duc­tion to Breath­ing In/Breathing Out. “Our noses are blocked with cig­a­rette fil­ters.” This piece, which they also put on in their evi­dent­ly pro­duc­tive year of 1977, had them pass­ing one anoth­er’s breath back and forth, breath­ing noth­ing else, for as long as they found human­ly pos­si­ble. The fol­low­ing year’s AAA AAA, rather than begin­ning with mouth-to-mouth con­tact, cul­mi­nates in it: “Abramović and Ulay stand oppo­site of each oth­er and make long sounds with their mouths open. Grad­u­al­ly, they move clos­er and clos­er to one anoth­er, until even­tu­al­ly they are yelling direct­ly into each oth­er’s open mouths” in an “explo­ration of aggres­sion between phys­i­cal­ly present fig­ures.”

Back in 2013, we fea­tured a clip of Abramović’s The Artist Is Present, a much-pub­li­cized 2010 piece in which, for a total of 736 and a half hours, she sat silent­ly in the atri­um of New York’s Muse­um of Mod­ern Art, oppo­site a chair in which any­one who cared to could sit across from her. 1,545 peo­ple, some hav­ing stood in line overnight, seized the oppor­tu­ni­ty, one of the ear­li­est par­tic­i­pants being Ulay him­self. Alas, things have since soured. Ulay and Abramović have had a con­tract meant, accord­ing to The Guardian’s Noah Char­ney, “to man­age their joint oeu­vre.” It’s owned by Abramović with 20 per­cent of the prof­its for all “saleable work” derived from it going to Ulay. But last year, sus­pect­ing that the for­mer oth­er half of the “col­lec­tive, androg­y­nous being” has vio­lat­ed that con­tract and “is try­ing to write him out of art his­to­ry,” Ulay mount­ed the ulti­mate endurance test: a law­suit.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In Touch­ing Video, Artist Mari­na Abramović & For­mer Lover Ulay Reunite After 22 Years Apart

Yoko Ono Lets Audi­ence Cut Up Her Clothes in Con­cep­tu­al Art Per­for­mance (Carnegie Hall, 1965)

Watch Chris Bur­den Get Shot for the Sake of Art (1971)

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.

Allen Ginsberg Teaches You How to Meditate with a Rock Song Featuring Bob Dylan on Bass

in Music, Poetry, Politics, Religion | July 25th, 2016

Image via Elisa Dor­man, Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

What­ev­er oth­er cri­te­ria we use to lump them together—shared aims of psy­che­del­ic con­scious­ness-expand­ing through drugs and East­ern reli­gion, frank explo­rations of alter­na­tive sex­u­al­i­ties, anti-estab­lish­ment cred—the Beats were each in their own way true to the name in one very sim­ple way: they all col­lab­o­rat­ed with musi­cians, wrote song or poems as songs, and saw lit­er­a­ture as a pub­lic, per­for­ma­tive art form like music.

And though I sup­pose one could call some of their for­ays into record­ed music gim­micky at times, I can’t imag­ine Jack Kerouac’s career mak­ing a whole lot of sense with­out Bebop, or Bur­roughs’ with­out psy­che­del­ic rock and tape and noise exper­i­men­ta­tion, or Gins­berg’ with­out… well, Gins­berg got into a lit­tle bit of every­thing, didn’t he? Whether writ­ing calyp­sos about the CIA, per­form­ing and record­ing with The Clash, show­ing up on MTV with Philip Glass and Paul McCart­ney…. He nev­er worked with Kanye, but I imag­ine he prob­a­bly would have.

For each of these artists, the medi­um deliv­ered a mes­sage. Kerouac’s odes to jazz, lone­li­ness, and wan­der­lust; Bur­roughs’ dark, para­noid prophe­cies about gov­ern­ment con­trol; and Ginsberg’s anti-war jere­mi­ads and insis­tent pleas for peace, free­dom, tol­er­ance, and enlight­en­ment. Ever the trick­ster and teacher, Gins­berg often used humor to dis­arm his audi­ence, then went in for the kill, so to speak. We may find no more point­ed an exam­ple of this comedic ped­a­gogy than his 1981 song, “Do the Med­i­ta­tion Rock,” record­ed in 1982 as a sham­bling folk-rock jam below with gui­tarist Steven Tay­lor, and mem­bers of Bob Dylan’s tour­ing band—including Dylan him­self mak­ing a rare appear­ance on bass.

As the sto­ry goes, accord­ing to Hank Shteam­er at Rolling Stone, Gins­berg was in Los Ange­les and “eager to book some stu­dio time. Dylan oblig­ed, and agreed to foot the bill for the stu­dio costs on the con­di­tion that Gins­berg would pay the musi­cians. The two met at Dylan’s San­ta Mon­i­ca stu­dio and, as Tay­lor remem­bers it, jammed for 10 hours.” Many more record­ings from that ses­sion made it onto the recent­ly released The Last World on First Blues, which also includes con­tri­bu­tions from Jack Kerouac’s musi­cal part­ner David Amram, folk leg­end Hap­py Traum, and exper­i­men­tal cel­list, singer, and dis­co pro­duc­er Arthur Rus­sell.

See Gins­berg, Tay­lor, Rus­sell, and Ginsberg’s part­ner Peter Orlovsky (med­i­tat­ing), per­form the song above on a PBS spe­cial called “Good Morn­ing, Mr. Orwell,” cre­at­ed in 1984 by Kore­an video artist Naim June Paik. As Gins­berg explains it in the lin­er notes to his col­lec­tion Holy Soul, Jel­ly Roll, the song came togeth­er after his own med­i­ta­tion train­ing in the late sev­en­ties, when the poet got the okay from his Bud­dhist teacher Chogyam Trung­pa Rin­poche (founder of Naropa Uni­ver­si­ty) to “show basic med­i­ta­tion in his tra­di­tion­al class­rooms or groups at poet­ry readings”—his goal, he says, to “knock all the poets out with sug­ar-coat­ed dhar­ma.”

Christ­mas Eve, I stopped in the mid­dle of the block at a stoop and wrote the words down, note­book on my knee. I fig­ured that if any­one lis­tened to the words, they’d find com­plete instruc­tions for clas­si­cal sit­ting prac­tice, Samatha-Vipas­sana (“Qui­et­ing the mind and clear see­ing”). Some humor in the form, it does­n’t have to be tak­en over-seri­ous­ly, yet it’s pre­cise.

You may have noticed the famil­iar cadence of the cho­rus; it’s a take-off, he says, on “I Fought the Law,” record­ed in 1977 by his soon-to-be musi­cal part­ners, The Clash. In the live ver­sion below at New York’s Ukran­ian Nation­al Home, the song gets a more stripped-down, punk rock treat­ment with Tom Rogers on gui­tar. Like many a wan­der­ing bard, Gins­berg changes and adapts the lyrics slight­ly to the venue and occa­sion. See the Allen Gins­berg Project for sev­er­al pub­lished ver­sions of the lyrics and his changes in this ren­di­tion.

Apart from the basic med­i­ta­tion instruc­tions, which are easy to fol­low in writ­ing and song, Ginsberg’s “Do the Med­i­ta­tion Rock” had anoth­er mes­sage, spe­cif­ic to his under­stand­ing of the pow­er of med­i­ta­tion; it can change the world, in spite of “a holo­caust” or “Apoc­a­lypse in a long red car.” As Gins­berg speak/sings, “If you sit for an hour or a minute every day / you can tell the Super­pow­er, sit the same way / you can tell the Super­pow­er, watch and wait.” No mat­ter how bad things seem, he says, “it’s nev­er too late to stop and med­i­tate.” Hear anoth­er record­ed ver­sion of the song below from Holy Soul, Jel­ly Roll, record­ed live in Kansas City by William S. Bur­roughs in 1989.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Allen Gins­berg Record­ings Brought to the Dig­i­tal Age. Lis­ten to Eight Full Tracks for Free

Allen Gins­berg & The Clash Per­form the Punk Poem “Cap­i­tal Air,” Live Onstage in Times Square (1981)

‘The Bal­lad of the Skele­tons’: Allen Ginsberg’s 1996 Col­lab­o­ra­tion with Philip Glass and Paul McCart­ney

Hear All Three of Jack Kerouac’s Spo­ken-World Albums: A Sub­lime Union of Beat Lit­er­a­ture and 1950s Jazz

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

Hear Maggie Gyllenhaal Read the Opening Lines of Anna Karenina: The Beginning of a 36-Hour, New Audio Book

in Books | July 24th, 2016

Back in 2007, J. Ped­er Zane asked 125 top writers–everyone from Stephen King and Jonathan Franzen, to Claire Mes­sud, Annie Proulx, and Michael Chabon–to name their favorite 10 books of all time. Zane then pub­lished each author’s list in his edit­ed col­lec­tion, The Top Ten: Writ­ers Pick Their Favorite Books. And he capped it off with one meta list, “The Top Top Ten.”  When you boil 125 lists down to one, it turns out [SPOILER ALERT] that Leo Tol­stoy’s Anna Karen­i­na is the very best of the best. If you’ve read the nov­el, you’ll like­ly under­stand the pick. If you haven’t, you’re miss­ing out.

Above, you can hear actress Mag­gie Gyl­len­haal (The Dark Knight, The Hon­ourable Woman, etc.) read the open­ing lines of Anna Karen­i­na, which famous­ly begins “All hap­py fam­i­lies are alike; each unhap­py fam­i­ly is unhap­py in its own way.” Gyl­len­haal spent 120 hours in the stu­dio, mak­ing a record­ing that runs close to 36 hours in total. A lot more than she orig­i­nal­ly bar­gained for. Although avail­able for pur­chase online, you can down­load the read­ing for free if you sign up for a 30-Day Free Tri­al with Audi­ble. We have more infor­ma­tion on that pro­gram here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 10 Great­est Books Ever, Accord­ing to 125 Top Authors (Down­load Them for Free)

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

Hear Albert Camus Read the Famous Opening Passage of The Stranger (1947)

in Literature | July 22nd, 2016

It is clos­ing-time in the gar­dens of the West and from now on an artist will be judged only by the res­o­nance of his soli­tude or the qual­i­ty of his despair –Cyril Con­nol­ly

My mind has been drawn to late­ly Albert Camus’ The Stranger, in which an alien­at­ed French-Alger­ian man, sim­ply called Meur­sault, shoots a name­less “Arab,” for no par­tic­u­lar rea­son that he can divine. He thinks, per­haps, it may have been the sun in his eyes. Meur­sault is not a police offi­cer, he has not been called to a scene. He ambles into a scene, sees a stranger com­ing toward him, and fires five shots, commenting—in lan­guage that recalls the imper­son­al cop­s­peak of a “dis­charged weapon”—that “the trig­ger gave.”

The import of Camus’ 1942 novel—translated as The Out­sider in the first British edi­tion, with its intro­duc­tion by despair­ing lit­er­ary crit­ic Cyril Connolly—became such a hob­by horse for crit­ics that Louis Hudon wrote in 1960, “L’Etranger no longer exists…. Almost every­one has approached Camus and L’Etranger bound by his own tra­di­tion, prej­u­dices, or crit­i­cal appa­ra­tus.” But maybe we can­not do oth­er­wise. Maybe there is nev­er the “mag­nif­i­cent­ly naked puri­ty of the text” Hudon eulo­gizes.

Part of the dif­fi­cul­ty, Hudon alleged, was down to Camus him­self, who made avail­able his jour­nals and man­u­scripts, thus encour­ag­ing over-inter­pre­ta­tion. In 1955, Camus remarked, “I sum­ma­rized The Stranger a long time ago, with a remark I admit was high­ly para­dox­i­cal: ‘In our soci­ety any man who does not weep at his mother’s funer­al runs the risk of being sen­tenced to death.’” The book has been read and taught in light of this gen­er­al state­ment ever since.

Recent com­men­tary on The Stranger in Eng­lish has turned, almost obses­sive­ly, on the trans­la­tion of the novel’s first sen­tence: Aujour­d’hui, maman est morte. Typ­i­cal­ly, as in that first British edi­tion, the line has been ren­dered “Moth­er died today”—using a “sta­t­ic, arche­typ­al term… like call­ing the fam­i­ly dog ‘Dog’ or a hus­band ‘Hus­band,’” writes Ryan Bloom in The New York­er. For decades, Anglo­phone read­ers have come to know Meur­sault “through the detached for­mal­i­ty of his state­ment.”

Per­haps if trans­la­tors were to leave the word in its orig­i­nal French—maman—which con­notes some­thing between the for­mal “Moth­er” and child­ish “Mommy”—we would see Meur­sault dif­fer­ent­ly. (French-speak­ing read­ers, of course, are not faced with this par­tic­u­lar inter­pre­tive chal­lenge.) But whether or not it makes a dif­fer­ence, and no mat­ter how we have imag­ined Meursault’s inter­nal voice, we can hear it the way Camus heard it, in the audio above from 1947, in which the author reads the open­ing sec­tion of the nov­el in French. (See the French pas­sage and Eng­lish trans­la­tion at the bot­tom of the post.)

Does it mat­ter whether we trans­late maman as “Moth­er” or leave it be? “Mom­my” may be inap­pro­pri­ate, and while “mom” might “seem the clos­est fit… there’s still some­thing off-putting and abrupt about the sin­gle-syl­la­ble word.” (Some trans­la­tions have opt­ed for the equal­ly jar­ring, one-syl­la­ble “Ma.”) If the debate seems ago­niz­ing­ly scholas­tic, keep in mind that Meursault’s fate, his very life, as Camus remarked, turns on whether a jury views him as a sym­pa­thet­ic fel­low human or a psy­chopath, based on exact­ly this kind of scruti­ny.

But what of the mur­der? The mur­der vic­tim? A man who is giv­en no name, no his­to­ry, no fam­i­ly, and no funer­al that we see. Leav­ing maman in French, writes Bloom, serves anoth­er purpose—reminding read­ers “that they are in fact enter­ing a world dif­fer­ent from their own”—that of Camus’ native colo­nial French Alge­ria. (Though in some ways not so dif­fer­ent.) Here, “the like­li­hood of a French­man in colo­nial Alge­ria get­ting the death penal­ty for killing an armed Arab was slim to nonex­is­tent.” This his­tor­i­cal con­text is often elid­ed.

Many of us were taught that the mur­der is all of a piece with Meursault’s cal­lous detach­ment from the world. But that inter­pre­ta­tion itself betrays a pro­found cal­lous­ness, one that takes for grant­ed Meursault’s objec­ti­fi­ca­tion of the face­less “Arab.” Absent in such a read­ing is the fact that Meur­sault is “a cit­i­zen of France domi­ciled in North Africa,” as Con­nol­ly writes, “an homme du midi yet one who hard­ly par­takes of the tra­di­tion­al Mediter­ranean cul­ture” …a colonist, who, because of his race and nation­al­i­ty, has like­ly been taught to view the Alger­ian “Arabs” as sub-human, oth­er, out­side, strange, undif­fer­en­ti­at­ed, an ene­my….

The shoot­ing is a reflex born of that train­ing. Why does he do it? He doesn’t know.

The fresh­est response to Camus’ nov­el hap­pens to be a nov­el itself, Alger­ian writer Kamel Daoud’s 2013 The Meur­sault Inves­ti­ga­tion, nar­rat­ed by “the Arab”’s younger broth­er, Harun, who notes that in Camus’ book “the world ‘Arab’ appears twen­ty-five times, but not a sin­gle name, not once.” Here, writes Claire Mes­sud in her review, “Harun wants his lis­ten­er to under­stand that the dead man had a name [“Musa”] and a fam­i­ly.” In his metafic­tion­al com­men­tary, Harun rumi­nates: “Just think, we’re talk­ing about one of the most read books in the world. My broth­er might have been famous if your author had mere­ly deigned to give him a name.”

Daoud’s nov­el does not exist to upbraid Camus or sup­plant The Stranger but to human­ize the fig­ure of “the Arab,” tell the com­pli­cat­ed sto­ries of Alger­ian iden­ti­ty, and ask some very Camus-inspired ques­tions about the moral­i­ty of killing. Per­haps, as the con­sid­er­a­tion of maman sug­gests to us Eng­lish read­ers, Meur­sault is not a sociopath, or an emo­tion­al vac­u­um, or a sym­bol of the amoral absurd, but a per­son who had a cer­tain vague fond­ness for his moth­er, just not in the false­ly sen­ti­men­tal way his judges would like. This is what we often take away from the novel—Meursault’s con­dem­na­tion of a social order that insists on an inau­then­tic per­for­mance of human­i­ty. Per­haps also Meur­sault’s seem­ing­ly sense­less, casu­al mur­der of “the Arab” is not an out­come of his exis­ten­tial empti­ness but a reflex­ive­ly ordi­nary act that makes him more like his peers than we would like to admit.

Here’s the full text, in French and Eng­lish, that Camus reads:

Aujourd’hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas. J’ai reçu un télé­gramme de l’asile : « Mère décédée. Enter­re­ment demain. Sen­ti­ments dis­tin­gués. » Cela ne veut rien dire. C’était peut-être hier. (See full text below)

L’asile de vieil­lards est à Maren­go, à qua­tre-vingts kilo­mètres d’Alger. Je prendrai l’autobus à deux heures et j’arriverai dans l’après-midi. Ain­si, je pour­rai veiller et je ren­tr­erai demain soir. J’ai demandé deux jours de con­gé à mon patron et il ne pou­vait pas me les refuser avec une excuse pareille. Mais il n’avait pas l’air con­tent. Je lui ai même dit : « Ce n’est pas de ma faute. » Il n’a pas répon­du. J’ai pen­sé alors que je n’aurais pas dû lui dire cela. En somme, je n’avais pas à m’excuser. C’était plutôt à lui de me présen­ter ses con­doléances. Mais il le fera sans doute après-demain, quand il me ver­ra en deuil. Pour le moment, c’est un peu comme si maman n’était pas morte. Après l’enterrement, au con­traire, ce sera une affaire classée et tout aura revê­tu une allure plus offi­cielle.

J’ai pris l’autobus à deux heures. Il fai­sait très chaud. J’ai mangé au restau­rant, chez Céleste, comme d’habitude. Ils avaient tous beau­coup de peine pour moi et Céleste m’a dit : « On n’a qu’une mère. » Quand je suis par­ti, ils m’ont accom­pa­g­né à la porte. J’étais un peu étour­di parce qu’il a fal­lu que je monte chez Emmanuel pour lui emprunter une cra­vate noire et un bras­sard. Il a per­du son oncle, il y a quelques mois.

J’ai cou­ru pour ne pas man­quer le départ. Cette hâte, cette course, c’est à cause de tout cela sans doute, ajouté aux cahots, à l’odeur d’essence, à la réver­béra­tion de la route et du ciel, que je me suis assoupi. J’ai dor­mi pen­dant presque tout le tra­jet. Et – 5 – quand je me suis réveil­lé, j’étais tassé con­tre un mil­i­taire qui m’a souri et qui m’a demandé si je venais de loin. J’ai dit « oui » pour n’avoir plus à par­ler.

MOTHER died today. Or, maybe, yes­ter­day; I can’t be sure. The telegram from the Home says: YOUR MOTHER PASSED AWAY. FUNERAL TOMORROW. DEEP SYMPATHY. Which leaves the mat­ter doubt­ful; it could have been yes­ter­day.

The Home for Aged Per­sons is at Maren­go, some fifty miles from Algiers. With the two o’clock bus I should get there well before night­fall. Then I can spend the night there, keep­ing the usu­al vig­il beside the body, and be back here by tomor­row evening. I have fixed up with my employ­er for two days’ leave; obvi­ous­ly, under the cir­cum­stances, he couldn’t refuse. Still, I had an idea he looked annoyed, and I said, with­out think­ing: “Sor­ry, sir, but it’s not my fault, you know.”

After­wards it struck me I needn’t have said that. I had no rea­son to excuse myself; it was up to him to express his sym­pa­thy and so forth. Prob­a­bly he will do so the day after tomor­row, when he sees me in black. For the present, it’s almost as if Moth­er weren’t real­ly dead. The funer­al will bring it home to me, put an offi­cial seal on it, so to speak. …

I took the two‑o’clock bus. It was a blaz­ing hot after­noon. I’d lunched, as usu­al, at Céleste’s restau­rant. Every­one was most kind, and Céleste said to me, “There’s no one like a moth­er.” When I left they came with me to the door. It was some­thing of a rush, get­ting away, as at the last moment I had to call in at Emmanuel’s place to bor­row his black tie and mourn­ing band. He lost his uncle a few months ago.

I had to run to catch the bus. I sup­pose it was my hur­ry­ing like that, what with the glare off the road and from the sky, the reek of gaso­line, and the jolts, that made me feel so drowsy. Any­how, I slept most of the way. When I woke I was lean­ing against a sol­dier; he grinned and asked me if I’d come from a long way off, and I just nod­ded, to cut things short. I wasn’t in a mood for talk­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Albert Camus’ His­toric Lec­ture, “The Human Cri­sis,” Per­formed by Actor Vig­go Mortensen

Albert Camus: The Mad­ness of Sin­cer­i­ty — 1997 Doc­u­men­tary Revis­its the Philosopher’s Life & Work

Albert Camus Wins the Nobel Prize & Sends a Let­ter of Grat­i­tude to His Ele­men­tary School Teacher (1957)

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

Stanley Kubrick’s Daughter Vivian Debunks the Age-Old Moon Landing Conspiracy Theory

in Film, History | July 22nd, 2016

All moon-land­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists refuse to believe that the Unit­ed States land­ed on that much-mythol­o­gized rock 250,00 miles away in 1969. As to why the rest of us believe that it did hap­pen, moon-land­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists vary in the specifics of their sto­ries. Per­haps the most inter­est­ing ele­ment of the lore — inter­est­ing to cinephiles, at least — holds that Stan­ley Kubrick, fresh off the pro­duc­tion of 2001: A Space Odyssey, secret­ly shot the land­ing video seen across Amer­i­ca in a stu­dio, lat­er cash­ing in on the favor by bor­row­ing one of NASA’s cus­tom-made Zeiss lens­es to shoot 1975’s Bar­ry Lyn­don.

Kubrick died in 1999, and so can’t clear up the mat­ter him­self, unless you believe the “con­fes­sion” video that cir­cu­lat­ed last year, con­vinc­ing nobody but the already-con­vinced. But his daugh­ter Vivian took to Twit­ter just this month to put the mat­ter to rest her­self, embed­ding an impas­sioned defense of her father’s integri­ty (and an encour­age­ment to focus on the more plau­si­ble abus­es of pow­er quite pos­si­bly going on right this moment) that goes way beyond 140 char­ac­ters:

“Vivian Kubrick worked on the set of The Shin­ing with her father where she shot a behind-the-scenes mak­ing-of doc­u­men­tary about the film,” adds Vari­ety’s Lamar­co McClen­don. “The­o­rists have pur­port­ed [Stan­ley] even used the film to admit to shoot­ing the hoax by leav­ing behind clues. One such clue was Dan­ny Lloyd wear­ing an Apol­lo 11 sweater.” The Shin­ing has giv­en rise to a fair few the­o­ries, con­spir­a­cy and oth­er­wise, of its own, prov­ing that Kubrick fans can get obses­sive, watch­ing and re-watch­ing his work while seek­ing out sym­bols and pat­terns, see­ing con­nec­tions and draw­ing con­clu­sions by build­ing elab­o­rate inter­pre­tive struc­tures atop thin evi­dence. Come to think of it, you’d think they and the moon-land­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists would have a lot to talk about.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick Faked the Apol­lo 11 Moon Land­ing in 1969, Or So the Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry Goes

“Moon Hoax Not”: Short Film Explains Why It Was Impos­si­ble to Fake the Moon Land­ing

Michio Kaku & Noam Chom­sky School Moon Land­ing and 9/11 Con­spir­a­cy The­o­rists

Neil Arm­strong, Buzz Aldrin & Michael Collins Go Through Cus­toms and Sign Immi­gra­tion Form After the First Moon Land­ing (1969)

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.

In Touching Video, People with Alzheimer’s Tell Us Which Memories They Never Want to Forget

in Biology, Health, Life, Science | July 22nd, 2016

Direc­tor Hirokazu Kore-eda’s 1999 film After­life tasks its recent­ly deceased char­ac­ters with choos­ing a sin­gle mem­o­ry to take with them, as they move into the great unknown.

The sub­jects of “On Mem­o­ry,” above, are all very much alive, but they too, have great cause to sift through a life­time’s worth of mem­o­ries. All have been diag­nosed with Alzheimer’s dis­ease. They range in age from 48 to 70. Two have been liv­ing with their diag­noses for six years. The baby of the group received hers just last year.

Those who have no per­son­al con­nec­tion to Alzheimer’s are like­ly to have a clear­er pic­ture of the disease’s advanced stage than its ear­ly pre­sen­ta­tion. A few min­utes with Myr­i­am Mar­quez, Lon Cole, Frances Smersh, Irene Japha, Nan­cy John­son, and Bob Welling­ton should rem­e­dy that.

All six are able to recall and describe the sig­nif­i­cant events of their youth. At the interviewer’s request, they reflect on the pain of los­ing beloved par­ents and the plea­sure of first kiss­es. Their pow­ers of sen­so­ry recall bring back their ear­li­est mem­o­ries, includ­ing what the weath­er was like that day.

The recent past? Much hazier. At present, these indi­vid­u­als’ mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment resem­ble benign age-relat­ed mem­o­ry slips quite close­ly. Their diag­noses are what lends urgency to their answers. The prospect of for­get­ting chil­dren and spouse’s names is very real to them.

Knowl­edge of the inter­vie­wees’ diag­noses can’t but help sharp­en view­ers’ eyes for dis­tinct facial expres­sions, speech pat­terns, and indi­vid­ual tem­pera­ments. They share a com­mon diag­no­sis, but for now, there’s no dif­fi­cul­ty dis­tin­guish­ing between the six unique per­son­al­i­ties, each informed by a wealth of expe­ri­ence.

The video is a step up for viral video pro­duc­er Cut, cre­ator of such inter­net sen­sa­tions as the Truth or Drink series and Grand­mas Smok­ing Weed for the First Time. This video, which directs view­ers to the Alzheimer’s Asso­ci­a­tion for more infor­ma­tion, deserves an even wider audi­ence.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Exis­ten­tial­ist Psy­chol­o­gist Vik­tor Fran­kl Explains How to Find Mean­ing in Life, No Mat­ter What Chal­lenges You Face

Dai­ly Med­i­ta­tion Boosts & Revi­tal­izes the Brain and Reduces Stress, Har­vard Study Finds

Play­ing an Instru­ment Is a Great Work­out For Your Brain: New Ani­ma­tion Explains Why

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