Read J. R. R. Tolkien’s “Letter From Father Christmas” To His Young Children (1925)

in Letters, Literature | December 22nd, 2024

J.R.R. Tolkien is best known for the sweep­ing fan­ta­sy land­scapes of Lord of The Rings and The Hob­bit. Apart from being a cel­e­brat­ed author, the Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor of Anglo-Sax­on was also a devot­ed father who dot­ed on his chil­dren.

In 1920, a few short years after Tolkien returned from World War I, he began an endear­ing fam­i­ly Christ­mas tra­di­tion that would con­tin­ue for the next 23 years. After the birth of his first­born son, John, Tolkien began to write his four chil­dren let­ters from Father Christ­mas. These North Pole tales chiefly con­cern Father Christ­mas’ strug­gles against the north’s bat-rid­ing gob­lins, as well as the mis­chie­vous hijinks of his helper, North Polar Bear. An adept illus­tra­tor whose orig­i­nal draw­ings accom­pa­nied many of his writ­ings (see his book cov­er designs for Lord of the Rings), Tolkien includ­ed with many of his Christ­mas let­ters a set of charm­ing pic­tures.

The many let­ters were even­tu­al­ly col­lect­ed in a beau­ti­ful vol­ume called Let­ters From Father Christ­mas. Thanks to the good work of Let­ters of Note, we bring to you a sam­ple let­ter from 1925:

Cliff House

Top of the World

Near the North Pole

Xmas 1925

My dear boys,

I am dread­ful­ly busy this year — it makes my hand more shaky than ever when I think of it — and not very rich. In fact, awful things have been hap­pen­ing, and some of the presents have got spoilt and I haven’t got the North Polar Bear to help me and I have had to move house just before Christ­mas, so you can imag­ine what a state every­thing is in, and you will see why I have a new address, and why I can only write one let­ter between you both. It all hap­pened like this: one very windy day last Novem­ber my hood blew off and went and stuck on the top of the North Pole. I told him not to, but the N.P.Bear climbed up to the thin top to get it down — and he did. The pole broke in the mid­dle and fell on the roof of my house, and the N.P.Bear fell through the hole it made into the din­ing room with my hood over his nose, and all the snow fell off the roof into the house and melt­ed and put out all the fires and ran down into the cel­lars where I was col­lect­ing this year’s presents, and the N.P.Bear’s leg got bro­ken. He is well again now, but I was so cross with him that he says he won’t try to help me again. I expect his tem­per is hurt, and will be mend­ed by next Christ­mas. I send you a pic­ture of the acci­dent, and of my new house on the cliffs above the N.P. (with beau­ti­ful cel­lars in the cliffs). If John can’t read my old shaky writ­ing (1925 years old) he must get his father to. When is Michael going to learn to read, and write his own let­ters to me? Lots of love to you both and Christo­pher, whose name is rather like mine.

That’s all. Good­bye.

Father Christ­mas

via The Paris Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

110 Draw­ings and Paint­ings by J.R.R. Tolkien: Of Mid­dle-Earth and Beyond

Explore Rarely-Seen Art by J. R. R. Tolkien in a New Web Site Cre­at­ed by the Tolkien Estate

Dis­cov­er J.R.R. Tolkien’s Per­son­al Book Cov­er Designs for The Lord of the Rings Tril­o­gy

Sovi­et-Era Illus­tra­tions Of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hob­bit (1976)

Map of Mid­dle-Earth Anno­tat­ed by Tolkien Found in a Copy of Lord of the Rings

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

The Story Behind the Making of the Iconic Surrealist Photograph, Dalí Atomicus (1948)

in History, Photography | December 20th, 2024

With his cane, his famous waxed mus­tache, and his habit of tak­ing unusu­al ani­mals for walks, Sal­vador Dalí would appear to have cul­ti­vat­ed his own pho­tographa­bil­i­ty. But tak­ing a pic­ture of the man who stood as a liv­ing def­i­n­i­tion of pop­u­lar sur­re­al­ism was­n’t a task to be approached casu­al­ly — espe­cial­ly not for Philippe Hals­man, who did it more than any­one else. Orig­i­nal­ly from what’s now Latvia, he led a tur­bu­lent life that even­tu­al­ly (after a cou­ple of inter­ven­tions by none oth­er than Albert Ein­stein, of whom Hals­man lat­er made a famous por­trait) brought him to the Unit­ed States. It was in New York, in 1941, that he met Dalí, hav­ing been assigned to pho­to­graph one of his exhi­bi­tions in the city.

Hals­man had more oppor­tu­ni­ties to pho­to­graph Dalí, and these jobs turned into decades of col­lab­o­ra­tion. Its many fruits include a book con­tain­ing 36 views of the artist’s mus­tache alone, but also the more ambi­tious — and much more sur­re­al — image Dalí Atom­i­cus, from 1948. Inspired by the work-in-progress that would become Leda Atom­i­ca, a por­trait of Dalí’s wife Gala influ­enced by both mythol­o­gy and sci­ence, the pho­to­graph includes not just that paint­ing, but also an arc of water and three fly­ing cats. Or at least they look like they’re fly­ing; in real­i­ty, they were thrown into the frame by a team of assis­tants includ­ing Hals­man­’s wife and his young daugh­ter Irene.

Irene Hals­man recalls the expe­ri­ence in the BBC Time Frame video above, includ­ing the now-wide­ly known detail that Dalí’s own ini­tial con­cept for the pho­to involved blow­ing up a duck with fire­crack­ers. “Oh, no, no, you can’t do that,” she recalls her father respond­ing. “You’re in Amer­i­ca now. You don’t want to be put in jail for ani­mal cru­el­ty.” So fly­ing cats it was, to be visu­al­ly cap­tured in mid-air along with the con­tents of a buck­et of water. Leda Atom­i­ca and a chair were also made to appear as if lev­i­tat­ing, and Dalí him­self was instruct­ed to jump, in an instance of the pho­to­graph­ic prac­tice Hals­man called “jumpol­o­gy” (whose oth­er sub­jects includ­ed Audrey Hep­burn, J. Robert Oppen­heimer, Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe, and Richard Nixon).

Image via Library of Con­gress

Dalí Atom­i­cus was pub­lished in Life mag­a­zine, to which Hals­man was a pro­lif­ic con­trib­u­tor. The same issue includ­ed a few out­takes, which revealed some of what went into the five-to-six-hour-long process of nail­ing the shot. You can see a few such prints at Art­sy, whose labeled faults include “water splash­es Dalí instead of cat,” “Dalí jumps too late,” and “sec­re­tary gets into pic­ture.” But it was­n’t all just about tim­ing: the pic­ture also required a degree of pre-Pho­to­shop edit­ing to per­fect, and the emp­ty can­vas behind the jump­ing Dalí had to be filled in by the rush of the man him­self, who opt­ed to fill the non-exis­tent paint­ing with motifs drawn from the limbs of the cats. Now there was an artist who knew how to seize inspi­ra­tion when it float­ed by.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alfred Hitch­cock Recalls Work­ing with Sal­vador Dali on Spell­bound: “No, You Can’t Pour Live Ants All Over Ingrid Bergman!

A Soft Self-Por­trait of Sal­vador Dali, Nar­rat­ed by the Great Orson Welles

Take a Jour­ney Through 933 Paint­ings by Sal­vador Dalí & Watch His Sig­na­ture Sur­re­al­ism Emerge

Sal­vador Dalí Explains Why He Was a “Bad Painter” and Con­tributed “Noth­ing” to Art (1986)

Sal­vador Dalí Takes His Anteater for a Stroll in Paris, 1969

When Sal­vador Dalí Cre­at­ed Christ­mas Cards That Were Too Avant Garde for Hall­mark (1960)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The Junky’s Christmas: William S. Burrough’s Dark Claymation Christmas Film Produced by Francis Ford Coppola (1993)

in Film | December 19th, 2024

Back in 1993, the Beat writer William S. Bur­roughs wrote and nar­rat­ed a 21-minute clay­ma­tion Christ­mas film odd­ly pro­duced by Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la. And, as you can well imag­ine, it’s not your nor­mal hap­py Christ­mas flick. Nope, this film – The Junky’s Christ­mas – is all about Dan­ny the Car­wiper, a junkie, who spends Christ­mas Day try­ing to score a fix. Even­tu­al­ly he finds the Christ­mas spir­it when he shares some mor­phine with a young man suf­fer­ing from kid­ney stones, giv­ing him the “immac­u­late fix.” There you have it. Hap­py hol­i­days.…

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 “Priest” They Called Him: A Dark Col­lab­o­ra­tion Between Kurt Cobain & William S. Bur­roughs

William S. Bur­roughs’ Scathing “Thanks­giv­ing Prayer,” Shot by Gus Van Sant

How William S. Bur­roughs Used the Cut-Up Tech­nique to Shut Down London’s First Espres­so Bar (1972)

William S. Bur­roughs Teach­es a Free Course on Cre­ative Read­ing and Writ­ing (1979)

Richard Feynman Enthusiastically Explains How to Think Like a Physicist in His Series Fun to Imagine (1983)

in Science, Television | December 19th, 2024

“It’s inter­est­ing that some peo­ple find sci­ence so easy, and oth­ers find it kind of dull and dif­fi­cult,” says Richard Feyn­man at the begin­ning of his 1983 BBC series Fun to Imag­ine. “One of the things that makes it very dif­fi­cult is that it takes a lot of imag­i­na­tion. It’s very hard to imag­ine all the crazy things that things real­ly are like.” A true sci­en­tist accepts that noth­ing is as it seems, in that noth­ing, when you zoom in close enough or zoom out far enough, behaves in a way that accords with our every­day expe­ri­ence. Even the nec­es­sary scales — in which, for exam­ple, an atom is to an apple as an apple is to Earth itself — are dif­fi­cult to con­ceive.

Despite his much-cel­e­brat­ed bril­liance as a physi­cist, Feyn­man also admit­ted to find­ing the quan­ti­ties with which he had to work unfath­omable, at least when exam­ined out­side their par­tic­u­lar con­texts. At the atom­ic lev­el, he explains, “you’re just think­ing of small balls, but you don’t try to think of exact­ly how small they are too often, or you get kind of a bit nut­ty.”

In astron­o­my, “you have the same thing in reverse, because the dis­tance to these stars is so enor­mous.” We all have an idea of what the term “light year” means — assum­ing we don’t mis­un­der­stand it as a unit of time — but who among us can real­ly envi­sion a galaxy 100,000 light years away, let alone a mil­lion?

Feyn­man dis­cuss­es these mat­ters with char­ac­ter­is­tic under­stand­ing and humor across Fun to Imag­ine’s nine seg­ments, which cov­er phys­i­cal phe­nom­e­na from fire and mag­nets to rub­ber bands and train wheels. Those who know their physics will appre­ci­ate the vivid­ness and con­ci­sion with which he explains this mate­r­i­al, appar­ent­ly right off the top of his head, and any­one can sense the delight he feels in mere­ly putting his mind to the behav­ior of mat­ter and ener­gy and their rela­tion­ship to the world as we know it. And how­ev­er much plea­sure he derived from under­stand­ing, he also got a kick out of how much mys­tery remains: “Nature’s imag­i­na­tion is so much greater than man’s,” he says toward the end. “She’s nev­er going to let us relax.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Life & Work of Richard Feyn­man Explored in a Three-Part Freako­nom­ics Radio Minis­eries

Hear Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds Radio Broadcast from 1938: The Original Tale of Mysterious Objects Flying Over New Jersey

in Current Affairs, History, Radio | December 18th, 2024

A month ago, drones were spot­ted near Mor­ris Coun­ty, New Jer­sey. Since then, reports of fur­ther sight­ings in var­i­ous loca­tions in the region have been lodged on a dai­ly basis, and anx­i­eties about the ori­gin and pur­pose of these uniden­ti­fied fly­ing objects have grown apace. “We have no evi­dence at this time that the report­ed drone sight­ings pose a nation­al secu­ri­ty or pub­lic safe­ty threat or have a for­eign nexus,” declared the FBI and the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty in a joint state­ment. But the very lack of fur­ther infor­ma­tion on the mat­ter has stoked the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion; one New Jer­sey con­gress­man spoke of the drones hav­ing come from an Iran­ian “moth­er­ship” off the coast.

If this real-life news sto­ry sounds famil­iar, con­sid­er the fact that Mor­ris Coun­ty lies only about an hour up the road from Grovers Mill, the famous site of the fic­tion­al Mar­t­ian inva­sion dra­ma­tized in Orson Welles’ 1938 radio adap­ta­tion of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. Pre­sent­ed like a gen­uine emer­gency broad­cast, it “fooled many who tuned in late and believed the events were real­ly hap­pen­ing,” writes Space.com’s Eliz­a­beth Fer­nan­dez.

The unset­tled nature of Amer­i­can life in the late nine­teen-thir­ties sure­ly played a part, giv­en that, “wedged between two World Wars, the nation was in the midst of the Great Depres­sion and mass unem­ploy­ment.” Some lis­ten­ers assumed that the Mar­tians were in fact Nazis, or that “the crash land­ing was tied to some oth­er envi­ron­men­tal cat­a­stro­phe.”

In the 86 years since The War of the Worlds aired, the sto­ry of the nation­wide pan­ic it caused has come in for revi­sion: not that many peo­ple were lis­ten­ing in the first place, many few­er took it as real­i­ty, and even then, dras­tic respons­es were uncom­mon. But as Welles him­self recounts in the video above, he heard for decades there­after from lis­ten­ers recount­ing their own pan­ic at the sud­den­ly believ­able prospect of Mars attack­ing Earth.“In fact, we weren’t as inno­cent as we meant to be when we did the Mar­t­ian broad­cast,” he admits. “We were fed up with the way in which every­thing that came over this new, mag­ic box — the radio — was being swal­lowed,” and thus inclined to make “an assault on the cred­i­bil­i­ty of that machine.” What a relief that we here in the 21st cen­tu­ry are, of course, far too sophis­ti­cat­ed to accept every­thing new tech­nol­o­gy con­veys to us.

Relat­ed con­tent:

When Orson Welles Met H. G. Wells in 1940: Hear the Leg­ends Dis­cuss War of the Worlds, Cit­i­zen Kane, and WWII

Edward Gorey Illus­trates H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds in His Inim­itable Goth­ic Style (1960)

Hear Orson Welles’ Radio Per­for­mances of 10 Shake­speare Plays (1936–1944)

Hor­ri­fy­ing 1906 Illus­tra­tions of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds

Carl Jung’s Fas­ci­nat­ing 1957 Let­ter on UFOs

The CIA Has Declas­si­fied 2,780 Pages of UFO-Relat­ed Doc­u­ments, and They’re Now Free to Down­load

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Watch the Sex Pistols’ Christmas Party for Kids–Which Happened to Be Their Final Gig in the UK (1977)

in Music | December 17th, 2024

I’m not sure the Sex Pis­tols had “avail­able for children’s par­ties” on their press release, but on a cold and grim Christ­mas in 1977, that’s exact­ly what hap­pened. While many Britons were set­tling in for a warm yule­tide, the Pis­tols decid­ed to host a party/benefit for the chil­dren of strik­ing fire­men and min­ers at a venue called Ivanhoe’s in Hud­der­s­field, UK.

It turned out that this after­noon gig, along with an evening con­cert with full-grown punks in the audi­ence, would be the Pis­tols’ final UK appear­ance. In a few weeks the band would fly to Amer­i­ca for a set of ill-fat­ed gigs and then break up. Soon after that Sid Vicious would be dead.

At the children’s con­cert John Lydon hand­ed out t‑shirts, but­tons, records, and posters. There was a pogo danc­ing com­pe­ti­tion with a skate­board as a prize, dis­co music on the sound sys­tem, and a gigan­tic cake with “Sex Pis­tols” writ­ten on it. (A food fight not only broke out, but was encour­aged.)

Under­stand that by Decem­ber 1977, the Pis­tols were pret­ty much banned from play­ing any­where in Britain, so the announce­ment of this ben­e­fit show was a big deal, and what we would now call “com­mu­ni­ty out­reach” was the oppo­site of the mon­strous image that the British gut­ter press had whipped up against the band.

But Lydon knew they weren’t mon­sters or any threat at all, except towards the estab­lish­ment. And his mem­o­ry of the day is noth­ing but sweet.

Fan­tas­tic. The ulti­mate reward. One of my all-time favourite gigs. Young kids, and we’re doing Bod­ies and they’re burst­ing out with laugh­ter on the ‘f*ck this f*ck that’ verse. The cor­rect response: not the shock hor­ror ‘How dare you?’ Adults bring their own filthy minds into a thing. They don’t quite per­ceive it as a child does. Oh, Johnny’s used a naughty word. ‘Bod­ies’ was from two dif­fer­ent points of view. You’ll find that theme runs through a lot of things I write like ‘Rise’ – “I could be wrong, I could be right”. I’m con­sid­er­ing both sides of the argu­ment, always.

Film direc­tor Julian Tem­ple caught the entire gig on a “big old crap­py U‑matic low-band cam­era” and while clips from the footage have been used in var­i­ous docs before­hand, it was only in 2013 that the entire footage was shown on British tele­vi­sion, along with rem­i­nis­cences from the adults who were chil­dren at the time of the gig.

In the Guardian inter­view with Tem­ple, he looked back at the footage and com­ment­ed on the strange­ness of a UK Christ­mas in 1977:

“In a way, the Pis­tols seem the only thing that’s con­nect­ed with today. Every­thing else seems halfway into the Vic­to­ri­an peri­od, where­as the Pis­tols seem very mod­ern and aware of what’s going to hap­pen. Hope­ful­ly, there’s res­o­nance in the fuel bills and fire­men’s strikes of today. Even though it’s a dif­fer­ent plan­et, peo­ple face the same prob­lems.
“The sound with just one cam­era is raw and sear­ing. I hope kids watch­ing it today will go: ‘Fuck me, bands like that just don’t exist.’ ”

via The Guardian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sex Pis­tols Riotous 1978 Tour Through the U.S. South: Watch/Hear Con­certs in Dal­las, Mem­phis, Tul­sa & More

Watch the Sex Pis­tols’ Very Last Con­cert (San Fran­cis­co, 1978)

The Sex Pis­tols’ 1976 Man­ches­ter “Gig That Changed the World,” and the Day the Punk Era Began

When the Sex Pis­tols Played at the Chelms­ford Top Secu­ri­ty Prison: Hear Vin­tage Tracks from the 1976 Gig

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.

The Ingenious Engineering of Leonardo da Vinci’s Self-Supporting Bridge, Explained with Animation

in History, Technology | December 17th, 2024

The video above from Sabins Civ­il Engi­neer­ing promis­es to reveal “the MAGIC behind Da Vinci’s Self Sup­port­ing Bridge.” That sounds like a typ­i­cal exam­ple of YouTube hyper­bole, though on first glance, it isn’t at all obvi­ous how the frag­ile-look­ing struc­ture can stay up, much less sup­port the weight of a cross­ing army. Not only does the design use no per­ma­nent joints, says the nar­ra­tor, “the more weight on the bridge, the stronger it becomes.” The key is the dis­tinc­tive man­ner in which the pieces inter­lock, and how it directs force to cre­ate a “fric­tion lock” that ensures sta­bil­i­ty.

Remove just one piece of the bridge, how­ev­er, and it all comes crash­ing down, which is more fea­ture than bug: designed to facil­i­tate troop move­ments, the struc­ture could be dis­man­tled to pre­vent use by the ene­my even more eas­i­ly than it was put up in the first place.

Just one of the var­i­ous tools of war Leonar­do came up with, this bridge was con­ceived under the patron­age of the famous states­man Cesare Bor­gia (a chief inspi­ra­tion for Nic­colò Machi­avel­li’s The Prince), who employed him as an archi­tect and mil­i­tary engi­neer in the ear­ly fif­teen-hun­dreds.

Though Leonar­do’s bridge designs have proven influ­en­tial in the half-mil­len­ni­um since his death — think of him next time you cross the Gala­ta Bridge in Istan­bul — no evi­dence remains that he ever built one in his life­time. But unlike most of his inven­tions, real­ized or the­o­ret­i­cal, you can build it your­self today with­out much dif­fi­cul­ty. The video presents an exam­ple large enough to walk across, which may make it feel rather less sta­ble than it actu­al­ly is. Luck­i­ly for stu­dents look­ing to under­stand the self-sup­port­ing bridge in a hands-on man­ner, the same engi­neer­ing prin­ci­ples apply just as well on the more man­age­able scale of pop­si­cle sticks — a mod­ern build­ing mate­r­i­al at which Leonar­do him­self would sure­ly have mar­veled.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How to Build Leonar­do da Vinci’s Inge­nious Self-Sup­port­ing Bridge: Renais­sance Inno­va­tions You Can Still Enjoy Today

MIT Researchers 3D Print a Bridge Imag­ined by Leonar­do da Vin­ci in 1502— and Prove That It Actu­al­ly Works

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Inven­tions Come to Life as Muse­um-Qual­i­ty, Work­able Mod­els: A Swing Bridge, Scythed Char­i­ot, Per­pet­u­al Motion Machine & More

The Inge­nious Inven­tions of Leonar­do da Vin­ci Recre­at­ed with 3D Ani­ma­tion

Leonar­do da Vin­ci Draws Designs of Future War Machines: Tanks, Machine Guns & More

Built to Last: How Ancient Roman Bridges Can Still With­stand the Weight of Mod­ern Cars & Trucks

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Watch The Insects’ Christmas from 1913: A Stop Motion Film Starring a Cast of Dead Bugs

in Film | December 16th, 2024

Kind Read­er,

Will you do us the hon­or of accept­ing our hol­i­day invi­ta­tion?

Carve five min­utes from your hol­i­day sched­ule to spend time cel­e­brat­ing The Insects’ Christ­mas, above.

In addi­tion to offer­ing brief respite from the chaos of con­sumerism and mod­ern expec­ta­tions, this sim­ple stop-motion tale from 1913 is sur­pris­ing­ly effec­tive at chas­ing away hol­i­day blues.

Not bad for a short with a sup­port­ing cast of dead bugs.

Ani­ma­tor Ladis­las Stare­vich began his cin­e­mat­ic manip­u­la­tions of insect car­cass­es ear­ly in the 20th cen­tu­ry while serv­ing as Direc­tor of Kau­nas, Lithuania’s Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry. He con­tin­ued the exper­i­ment after mov­ing to Moscow, where he added such titles as Insects’ Avi­a­tion Week, Amus­ing Scenes from the Life of Insects and famous­ly, The Cameraman’s Revenge, a racy tale of pas­sion and infi­deli­ty in the insect world.

The Insects’ Christ­mas is far gen­tler.

Think Frog­gy Went a Courtin’, or Miss Spider’s Wed­ding with an old-time Christ­mas spin.

Shades too of John­ny Gruelle’s Raggedy Ann and oth­er sto­ries where­in toys wait for their human own­ers to retire, so they may spring to life—though Starevich’s sleepy doll seems to have more in com­mon with the Christ­mas tree’s absent own­ers than the tiny Father Christ­mas orna­ment who clam­ors down to par­ty al fres­co with the insects.

Con­tem­po­rary com­pos­er Tom Peters under­scores the whole­some vin­tage action—skiing, skat­ing, squab­bling over a Christ­mas cracker—with a mix of tra­di­tion­al car­ols and orig­i­nal music per­formed on ukulele, drum, and a six-string elec­tric bass with a 5‑octave range.

And the moment when Father Christ­mas con­jures fes­tive dec­o­ra­tions for a Char­lie Brown-ish tree is tru­ly mag­i­cal. See if your lit­tlest Hayao Miyaza­ki fan does­n’t agree.

Enjoy more of Ladis­las Starevich’s stop-motion ouevre on YouTube.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Cameraman’s Revenge (1912): The Tru­ly Weird Ori­gin of Mod­ern Stop-Motion Ani­ma­tion

The Tale of the Fox: Watch Ladis­las Starevich’s Ani­ma­tion of Goethe’s Great Ger­man Folk­tale (1937)

The His­to­ry of Stop-Motion Films: 39 Films, Span­ning 116 Years, Revis­it­ed in a 3‑Minute Video

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

How Keith Jarrett Played on a Broken Piano & Turned a Potentially Disastrous Concert Into the Best-Selling Piano Album of All Time (1975)

in Music | December 16th, 2024

Near­ly fifty years ago, the cel­e­brat­ed young pianist Kei­th Jar­rett arrived in the West Ger­man city of Köln (bet­ter known in Eng­lish as Cologne). Hav­ing just come off a 500-mile-long road trip from Switzer­land, where he’d played a con­cert the pre­vi­ous day, he was left with bare­ly any time to recov­er before going onstage at the Köln Opera House that night — at 11:30 that night, to be pre­cise, the only time that august cul­tur­al insti­tu­tion would give a jazz musi­cian. Because the restau­rant where he attempt­ed to have din­ner before­hand mixed up his order, he could bare­ly eat a thing before show­time. And his back was act­ing up.

Yet all of those dif­fi­cul­ties were as noth­ing against the mis­er­able instru­ment await­ing Jar­rett at the opera house. He’d request­ed a Bösendor­fer 290 Impe­r­i­al grand piano, but a series of errors led to the staff set­ting up a dilap­i­dat­ed, frail-sound­ing baby grand of the same make.

Unable to pro­cure a replace­ment, the con­cert’s teenage orga­niz­er Vera Bran­des called in a tuner to do his best to bring the piano up to playa­bil­i­ty and man­aged to per­suade Jar­rett to go on with the show. All the seats were sold, after all, and the record­ing engi­neers had their gear ready to roll; in the worst case sce­nario, he’d end up with anoth­er tape for the archives.

In the event, the con­cert was more of a best-case sce­nario. “What Kei­th Jar­rett did so bril­liant­ly was to take this bro­ken piano and use it to play music that only that piano could have played,” says Youtu­ber David Hart­ley in the video above. “He did­n’t hide away from the faults of the piano; instead, he embraced them and put them in the music. This is the very essence of impro­vi­sa­tion.” A clas­si­cal musi­cian with a defined set of pieces could nev­er have worked at all under these con­di­tions, but Jar­rett end­ed up putting on quite a suc­cess­ful show — and, with the record­ing, putting out a huge­ly suc­cess­ful album.

After it came out in Novem­ber that same year, The Köln Con­cert went on to become both the best-sell­ing solo jazz album and the best-sell­ing piano album. For decades, it was eas­i­ly found even in the record col­lec­tions of those who owned no oth­er releas­es from ECM, the Ger­man jazz and avant-garde label with which Jar­rett has long been asso­ci­at­ed, and heard on the sound­tracks of films by auteurs like Nico­las Roeg and Nan­ni Moret­ti. Still today, it stands in sup­port of any num­ber of proverbs about neces­si­ty being the moth­er of inven­tion, play­ing the hand you’re dealt, and not wait­ing for ide­al con­di­tions. If we lis­ten to it enough, we may even find our­selves wait­ing for ter­ri­ble ones.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Brains of Jazz and Clas­si­cal Musi­cians Work Dif­fer­ent­ly, New Research Shows

The Piano Played with 16 Increas­ing Lev­els of Com­plex­i­ty: From Easy to Very Com­plex

Neu­ro­science & Jazz Impro­vi­sa­tion: How Impro­vi­sa­tion Shapes Cre­ativ­i­ty and What Hap­pens Inside Our Brain

The Uni­ver­sal Mind of Bill Evans: Advice on Learn­ing to Play Jazz & The Cre­ative Process

Hear the Exper­i­men­tal Piano Jazz Album by Come­di­an H. Jon Ben­jamin — Who Can’t Play Piano

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

How Medieval Islamic Engineering Brought Water to the Alhambra

in Architecture, History | December 13th, 2024

Between 711 and 1492, much of the Iber­ian Penin­su­la, includ­ing mod­ern-day Spain, was under Mus­lim rule. Not that it was easy to hold on to the place for that length of time: after the fall of Tole­do in 1085, Al-Andalus, as the ter­ri­to­ry was called, con­tin­ued to lose cities over the sub­se­quent cen­turies. Cór­do­ba and Seville were recon­quered prac­ti­cal­ly one right after the oth­er, in 1236 and 1248, respec­tive­ly, and you can see the inva­sion of the first city ani­mat­ed in the open­ing scene of the Pri­mal Space video above. “All over the land, Mus­lim cities were being con­quered and tak­en over by the Chris­tians,” says the com­pan­ion arti­cle at Pri­mal Neb­u­la. “But amidst all of this, one city remained uncon­quered, Grana­da.”

“Thanks to its strate­gic posi­tion and the enor­mous Alham­bra Palace, the city was pro­tect­ed,” and there the Alham­bra remains today. A “thir­teenth-cen­tu­ry pala­tial com­plex that’s one of the world’s most icon­ic exam­ples of Moor­ish archi­tec­ture,” writes BBC.com’s Esme Fox, it’s also a land­mark feat of engi­neer­ing, boast­ing “one of the most sophis­ti­cat­ed hydraulic net­works in the world, able to defy grav­i­ty and raise water from the riv­er near­ly a kilo­me­ter below.”

The jew­el in the crown of these elab­o­rate water­works is a white mar­ble foun­tain that “con­sists of a large dish held up by twelve white myth­i­cal lions. Each beast spurts water from its mouth, feed­ing four chan­nels in the patio’s mar­ble floor that rep­re­sent the four rivers of par­adise, and then run­ning through­out the palace to cool the rooms.”

The fuente de los Leones also tells time: the num­ber of lions cur­rent­ly indi­cates the hour. This works thanks to an inge­nious design explained both ver­bal­ly and visu­al­ly in the video. Any­one vis­it­ing the Alham­bra today can admire this and oth­er exam­ples of medieval opu­lence, but trav­el­ers with an engi­neer’s cast of mind will appre­ci­ate even more how the palace’s builders got the water there at all. “The hill was around 200 meters above Granada’s main riv­er,” says the nar­ra­tor, which entailed an ambi­tious project of damming and redi­rec­tion, to say noth­ing of the pool above the palace designed to keep the whole hydraulic sys­tem pres­sur­ized. The Alham­bra’s heat­ed baths and well-irri­gat­ed gar­dens rep­re­sent the lux­u­ri­ous height of Moor­ish civ­i­liza­tion, but they also remind us that, then as now, beneath every lux­u­ry lies an impres­sive feat of tech­nol­o­gy.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Did Roman Aque­ducts Work?: The Most Impres­sive Achieve­ment of Ancient Rome’s Infra­struc­ture, Explained

The Bril­liant Engi­neer­ing That Made Venice: How a City Was Built on Water

How Toi­lets Worked in Ancient Rome and Medieval Eng­land

The Amaz­ing Engi­neer­ing of Roman Baths

A 13th-Cen­tu­ry Cook­book Fea­tur­ing 475 Recipes from Moor­ish Spain Gets Pub­lished in a New Trans­lat­ed Edi­tion

His­toric Spain in Time Lapse Film

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.