Hear 46 Versions of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in 3 Minutes: A Classic Mashup

in Music | April 27th, 2015

In 2013, New York’s most pop­u­lar clas­si­cal music sta­tion WQXR cel­e­brat­ed the cen­ten­ni­al of Igor Stravinksy’s The Rite of Spring, with a series of events that cul­mi­nat­ed in Rite of Spring Fever, 24 hours of dif­fer­ent per­for­mances of the work and a live solo inter­pre­ta­tion by Bang on a Can pianist Vicky Chow.

As a pro­mo­tion­al post­ing, WQXR also cre­at­ed this mashup of 46 record­ings in 3 min­utes, show­ing the vary­ing approach­es to Stravinsky’s score, and the wild­ly dif­fer­ent dynam­ics of inter­pre­ta­tion.

Six­teen years after the work’s tumul­tuous live pre­miere in 1913, both Stravin­sky and con­duc­tor Pierre Mon­teux com­pet­ed to record the first ver­sion in 1929 in Paris. That was fol­lowed in 1930 by Leopold Stokows­ki and the Philadel­phia Orches­tra, whose re-record­ed ver­sion would become the most famous when it appeared in Walt Disney’s Fan­ta­sia. That film did more to bring Stravin­sky to wide swathes of soci­ety, from kids to grand­par­ents, than any oth­er per­for­mance. Plus it had frickin’ dinosaurs:

Phil Kline, the com­pos­er and cura­tor of WQXR’s event, notes that it was high-fideli­ty LPs, not 78s, that real­ly brought the dynam­ics of Rites into its own. “Few oth­er clas­sics so des­per­ate­ly need to be heard with a wide dynam­ic range, espe­cial­ly on that big bot­tom end,” he writes.

This mashup is pret­ty schizoid, but shows the per­son­al­i­ties and influ­ences of each con­duc­tor: Leonard Bern­stein cre­ates a col­or­ful and sparkling Rite; Pierre Boulez is like a machine; Kara­jan is thun­der­ous. The var­i­ous piano inter­pre­ta­tions lose none of their bite after being resigned to the key­board. And Stravinsky’s 1960 record­ing with the Colum­bia Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra (aka the New York Phil­har­mon­ic, renamed for con­trac­tu­al rea­sons) is also here, sound­ing just that lit­tle bit sweet­er than the rest.

Via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent

Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Visu­al­ized in a Com­put­er Ani­ma­tion for Its 100th Anniver­sary

Vi Hart Uses Her Video Mag­ic to Demys­ti­fy Stravin­sky and Schoenberg’s 12-Tone Com­po­si­tions

The Avant-Garde Project: An Archive of Music by 200 Cut­ting-Edge Com­posers, Includ­ing Stravin­sky, Schoen­berg, Cage & More

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

A Harrowing Test Drive of Buckminster Fuller’s 1933 Dymaxion Car: Art That Is Scary to Ride

in Design | April 25th, 2015

In the 1930s, the sys­tems the­o­rist, design­er and inven­tor Buck­min­ster Fuller cre­at­ed the Dymax­ion car — an aero­dy­nam­ic con­cept car that man­aged to get 30 miles per gal­lon while top­ping out at 90 miles per hour, and trans­port­ing 11 pas­sen­gers. Like Fuller’s Dymax­ion house, the three-wheel Dymax­ion car could be dis­as­sem­bled and re-assem­bled with ease. You can see vin­tage videos of both here.

The con­cept car did­n’t get much beyond the con­cept stage. Only three orig­i­nal ver­sions were built, one of which rolled over at the 1933 World’s Fair, leav­ing the dri­ver dead, three pas­sen­gers injured, and investors reluc­tant to bring the car to mar­ket. In 2010, the British archi­tect Sir Nor­man Fos­ter built a repli­ca of the Dymax­ion. You can see Dan Neil, of The Wall Street Jour­nal, take the car on a har­row­ing test dri­ve above. And if you’re intrigued enough to learn more, you can hunt down the 2012 doc­u­men­tary called The Last Dymax­ion (watch a trail­er of the film 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:

Every­thing I Know: 42 Hours of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Vision­ary Lec­tures Free Online (1975)

Bet­ter Liv­ing Through Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Utopi­an Designs: Revis­it the Dymax­ion Car, House, and Map

Watch an Ani­mat­ed Buck­min­ster Fuller Tell Studs Terkel All About “the Geo­des­ic Life”

Martin Scorsese Introduces Filmmaker Hong Sangsoo, “The Woody Allen of Korea”

in Film | April 24th, 2015

In the clip above, Mar­tin Scors­ese talks about a group of films that, in his words, have “enriched me, edu­cat­ed me, dis­turbed me, moved me in a way that have awak­ened me to new pos­si­bil­i­ties in cin­e­ma.” Those words will remind many of us of our expe­ri­ences with Scors­ese’s own pic­tures, which rais­es a big ques­tion: what move­ment could pos­si­bly have enough pow­er to enrich, edu­cate, dis­turb, move, and cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly awak­en a man who has done so much enrich­ing, edu­cat­ing, dis­turb­ing, mov­ing, and cin­e­mat­ic awak­en­ing him­self?

Scors­ese speaks of the cin­e­ma of South Korea, espe­cial­ly the wave that, over the past twen­ty years, has brought the glob­al film scene such auteurs as Park Chan-wook (Joint Secu­ri­ty Area, Old­boy, Stok­er), Lee Chang-dong (Oasis, Secret Sun­shine, Poet­ry), and Kim Ki-duk (Spring, Sum­mer, Fall, Win­ter… and Spring, 3‑Iron, Pietà). But he adds that, “for me, there’s some­thing espe­cial­ly inter­est­ing about the films of Hong Sang­soo. It’s got to do with his mas­ter­ful sense of sto­ry­telling. In each of his films that I’ve man­aged to see, every­thing kind of starts unas­sum­ing­ly” — but then things “unpeel like an orange.”

Only in one respect can I com­pare myself to Mar­tin Scors­ese: a love of Hong Sang­soo movies. I even wrote an essay for The Quar­ter­ly Con­ver­sa­tion a few years back try­ing to explain the artistry of this most pro­lif­ic Kore­an direc­tor, who has put out six­teen alco­hol-soaked, cig­a­rette-cloud­ed, social and sex­u­al awk­ward­ness-sat­u­rat­ed fea­tures to date. Some call Hong “the Kore­an Woody Allen,” which gets at the fact that his many come­dies of man­ners pass through more moods than com­e­dy and deal with more than man­ners, but that does­n’t cap­ture his pen­chant for rich for­mal and struc­tur­al exper­i­men­ta­tion — sto­ries told mul­ti­ple times, through dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives, using clash­ing sets of facts, and so on — which delights cinephiles every­where.

This has made Hong a big name on the fes­ti­val cir­cuit — he usu­al­ly has a project or two mak­ing the rounds at any giv­en time — on which his lat­est movie Hill of Free­dom received much crit­i­cal acclaim. Telling of a Japan­ese man’s trip to Seoul to track down his Kore­an ex-girl­friend through a dis­or­dered pile of let­ters he sent her all at once, the most­ly Eng­lish-lan­guage movie shows the inter­na­tion­al­iza­tion of not just Hong’s appeal, but of his work itself. It allows few of its char­ac­ters to speak their native lan­guage, result­ing in the kind of mean­ing­ful inar­tic­u­la­cy that he’d pre­vi­ous­ly had to get his all-Kore­an casts drunk to achieve.

You can take the plunge into Hong’s cut-up and metic­u­lous­ly rearranged cin­e­mat­ic world of inept, jeal­ous­ly ide­al­is­tic men, women that I’ve else­where described as “eeri­ly unre­pen­tant stud­ies in blank cal­cu­la­tion and frigid pli­a­bil­i­ty,” and the cat­a­stro­phes into which they lead them­selves by start­ing with his debut The Day the Pig Fell into a Well, avail­able free on the Kore­an Film Archive’s Youtube chan­nel.

I recent­ly went to Korea to record a pod­cast inter­view with Seoul-based film schol­ar Marc Ray­mond about how Hong’s films reflect mod­ern Kore­an life. It turns out they reflect it pret­ty well, some­thing I’ll see for myself lat­er this year when, after hav­ing stud­ied the Kore­an lan­guage for near­ly a decade, I move to Korea — all out of an inter­est first stoked by Hong Sang­soo.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 98 Kore­an Fea­ture Films Free Online, Thanks to the Kore­an Film Archive

The Five Best North Kore­an Movies: Watch Them Free Online

Mar­tin Scors­ese Cre­ates a List of 39 Essen­tial For­eign Films for a Young Film­mak­er

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Baudelaire, Balzac, Dumas, Delacroix & Hugo Get a Little Baked at Their Hash Club (1844–1849)

in Literature, Poetry | April 24th, 2015

Hôtel de Lauzun, the meet­ing place of the Club des Hachichins

It may be cliché to say so, but there does seem to be a strong cor­re­la­tion between exper­i­ments with mind-alter­ing chem­i­cals and some of the most intrigu­ing exper­i­ments in lit­er­ary style. Samuel Tay­lor Coleridge, Arthur Rim­baud, William S. Bur­roughs, Hunter S. Thomp­son…. Of course, it is nec­es­sary to point out that these tal­ent­ed writ­ers were already that—talented writers—substances or no. As one of Rim­baud’s mod­ern chil­dren, Pat­ti Smith, declares, drugs are “not real­ly how one access­es the imag­i­na­tion. It can be a tool, but when that tool starts to mas­ter you, you’ll lose touch with your craft.”

This seems to have hap­pened to Smith’s lit­er­ary idol. One of Rimbaud’s lit­er­ary heroes, Charles Baude­laire, also even­tu­al­ly suc­cumbed to his exces­sive use of lau­danum, alco­hol, and opi­um. But at one time, Baude­laire dab­bled with a much less destruc­tive drug, hashish, along with a coterie of oth­er artists, includ­ing Alexan­dre Dumas, Gérard de Ner­val, Vic­tor Hugo, Hon­oré de Balzac, and painter Eugène Delacroix. The French greats gath­ered in a goth­ic house, from 1844–1849, under the moniker Club des Hachichins and par­took of the drug, intro­duced to it by med­ical doc­tor Jacques-Joseph More­au and writer and jour­nal­ist Théophile Gau­ti­er. Writes The Guardian:

…rit­u­al­is­ti­cal­ly garbed in Arab cloth­ing, they drank strong cof­fee, lib­er­al­ly laced with hashish, which More­au called dawamesk, in the Ara­bic man­ner. It looked, report­ed the mem­bers, like a green­ish pre­serve, its ingre­di­ents a mix­ture of hashish, cin­na­mon, cloves, nut­meg, pis­ta­chio, sug­ar, orange juice, but­ter and can­tharides. Some of them would write of their “stoned” expe­ri­ences, although not all. Balzac attend­ed the club but pre­ferred not to indulge, though some time in 1845 the great man cracked and ate some. He told fel­low mem­bers he had heard celes­tial voic­es and seen visions of divine paint­ings. 

Baude­laire declared the hash admix­ture “the play­ground of the seraphim” and “a lit­tle green sweet­meat.” And yet, like Balzac, he “rarely, if indeed ever, indulged.” Gau­ti­er would write of the poet, “It is pos­si­ble and even prob­a­ble that Baude­laire did try hascheesh once or twice by way of phys­i­o­log­i­cal exper­i­ment, but he nev­er made con­tin­u­ous use of it. Besides, he felt much repug­nance for that sort of hap­pi­ness, bought at the chemist’s and tak­en away in the vest-pock­et.”

This “repug­nance” did not keep Baude­laire from oth­er drugs. And it did not keep him from writ­ing a short book in 1860 on hash and opi­um, Arti­fi­cial Par­adis­es (Les Par­adis Arti­fi­ciels). The Paris Review reprints an excerpt of one sec­tion, “The Poem of Hashish”—not in fact a poem, but a descrip­tive essay. Trans­lat­ed by Aleis­ter Crow­ley—anoth­er writer whose exper­i­ments with chem­i­cal excess con­tributed to some of the strangest books writ­ten in English—Baudelaire’s prose is almost med­ical in its pre­ci­sion. In part a response to Thomas de Quincy’s 1821 drug mem­oir Confession’s of an Eng­lish Opi­um Eater, the sym­bol­ist poet’s trea­tise does not draw the con­clu­sions one might expect.

Though he writes stun­ning­ly vivid, almost seduc­tive, descrip­tions of hash intox­i­ca­tion, instead of prais­ing the cre­ative effects of drugs, Baude­laire dis­par­ages their use and warns of addic­tion, espe­cial­ly for the artist. At one point, he writes, “He who would resort to a poi­son in order to think would soon be inca­pable of think­ing with­out the poi­son. Can you imag­ine this awful sort of man whose par­a­lyzed imag­i­na­tion can no longer func­tion with­out the ben­e­fit of hashish or opi­um?” Baude­laire rec­og­nized these sti­fling effects even as he lapsed into addic­tion him­self, describ­ing in with­er­ing terms the search “in phar­ma­cy” for an escape from “his habitac­u­lum of mire.”

You can read an excerpt of the Crow­ley-trans­lat­ed “The Poem of Hashish” at The Paris Review’s site and the full trans­la­tion here. Those who have indulged in their own cannabis experiments—legally or otherwise—will sure­ly rec­og­nize the poet­ic accu­ra­cy of his hash por­trait, so per­fect that it’s hard to believe he didn’t par­take at least once or twice at the all-star Club des Hachichins:

Hashish often brings about a vora­cious hunger, near­ly always an exces­sive thirst … Such a state would not be sup­port­able if it last­ed too long, and if it did not soon give place to anoth­er phase of intox­i­ca­tion, which in the case above cit­ed inter­prets itself by splen­did visions, ten­der­ly ter­ri­fy­ing, and at the same time full of con­so­la­tions. This new state is what the East­erns call Kaif. It is no longer the whirl­wind or the tem­pest; it is a calm and motion­less bliss, a glo­ri­ous resignèd­ness. Since long you have not been your own mas­ter; but you trou­ble your­self no longer about that. Pain, and the sense of time, have dis­ap­peared; or if some­times they dare to show their heads, it is only as trans­fig­ured by the mas­ter feel­ing, and they are then, as com­pared with their ordi­nary form, what poet­ic melan­choly is to pro­sa­ic grief.

via The Paris Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan Extols the Virtues of Cannabis (1969)

The Cof­fee Pot That Fueled Hon­oré de Balzac’s Cof­fee Addic­tion

Reefer Mad­ness, 1936’s Most Unin­ten­tion­al­ly Hilar­i­ous “Anti-Drug” Exploita­tion Film, Free Online

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

Shakespearean Actor Brian Cox Teaches Hamlet’s Soliloquy to a 2‑Year-Old Child

in Theatre | April 24th, 2015

Per­haps you’ve seen Scot­tish actor Bri­an Cox in block­buster films like Brave­heart, The Bourne Iden­ti­ty, or Troy. Or, if you’re lucky enough, you’ve seen him per­form with the Roy­al Shake­speare Com­pa­ny in crit­i­cal­ly-acclaimed per­for­mances of The Tam­ing of The Shrew and Titus Andron­i­cus. But there’s per­haps anoth­er role you haven’t seen him in: tutor of tod­dlers. Sev­er­al years back, Cox taught Theo, then only 30 months old, the famous solil­o­quy from Ham­let, hop­ing to show there’s a Shake­speare­an actor in all of us. Lat­er, Cox talked to the BBC about his “mas­ter­class” with Theo and what he took away from the expe­ri­ence. Watch him muse right below:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Shake­speare Sound­ed Like to Shake­speare: Recon­struct­ing the Bard’s Orig­i­nal Pro­nun­ci­a­tion

Orson Welles’ Radio Per­for­mances of 10 Shake­speare Plays

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

Free Online Shake­speare Cours­es: Primers on the Bard from Oxford, Har­vard, Berke­ley & More

Quentin Tarantino Supercuts Explore the Director’s Stylized Use of Sound, Close Ups & Cars in His Films

in Film | April 22nd, 2015

It’s not sur­pris­ing per­haps that we are in a film nerd super­cut gold­en age. After all, all film stu­dents have access to video edit­ing soft­ware, almost all movies are avail­able dig­i­tal­ly, and web­sites, like this one, are per­pet­u­al­ly hun­gry for new con­tent. Great super­cuts reveal some­thing new or unno­ticed about a great direc­tor, like how Yasu­jiro Ozu uses hall­ways or Kubrick favors one-point per­spec­tive. Edi­tor Jacob T. Swin­ney, who won the inter­net last month with his video “First and Final Frames,” just released the third out of a promised four-part super­cut on Quentin Taran­ti­no.

The direc­tor of Pulp Fic­tion and Death Proof is, of course, known for his dia­logue – razor-sharp, obscen­i­ty-laden repar­tee crammed with ref­er­ences to pop cul­ture or obscure movies. What is a Taran­ti­no movie with­out a rant about the true mean­ing of “Like a Vir­gin,” say, or a lengthy dis­course on the dif­fer­ence between McDonald’s menus in Amer­i­can and in Europe? Swin­ney strips away all that dia­logue to explore some of the recur­ring visu­al and audi­al motifs that lard Tarantino’s films. What you real­ize after watch­ing these is just how styl­ized his movies are. Taran­ti­no loves expres­sion­is­tic sound effects, flashy insert shots, gen­er­al­ly aping the look and feel of his cin­e­mat­ic heroes like Ser­gio Leone or King Hu. You can watch the first film above and the next two below.

The first film called “Hear­ing Taran­ti­no” is about all the pun­gent, styl­ized sounds the QT has used. As you can imag­ine, there are lots of gur­gling of blood and clank­ing of swords. What you might not have noticed is how many car­toony whoosh­es and zings he has fold­ed into the sound mix.

The sec­ond vid, “Tarantino’s Extreme Close Ups,” shows lots of eyes bear­ing expres­sions some­where along the ter­ri­fied-pissed off spec­trum.

And the third piece, “Taran­ti­no: Dri­ving Shots,” shows just how much of his movies take place in cars.

The fourth film has yet to come out, but I hope it’s on Tarantino’s not-at-all creepy obses­sion with women’s feet. You can prob­a­bly fill a cou­ple min­utes just on Uma Thur­man’s alone.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists the 12 Great­est Films of All Time: From Taxi Dri­ver to The Bad News Bears

Quentin Taran­ti­no Tells You About The Actors & Direc­tors Who Pro­vid­ed the Inspi­ra­tion for “Reser­voir Dogs”

Watch Free Online My Best Friend’s Birth­day, Quentin Tarantino’s 1987 Debut Film

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Hear Orson Welles Read Edgar Allan Poe on a Cult Classic Album by The Alan Parsons Project

in Literature, Music | April 21st, 2015

If some­one asks whether you like Tales of Mys­tery and Imag­i­na­tion, you’d bet­ter clar­i­fy which Tales of Mys­tery and Imag­i­na­tion they mean: the first com­plete col­lec­tion of hor­ror and sus­pense sto­ries by mas­ter of psy­cho­log­i­cal unease Edgar Allan Poe, or the first album by pro­gres­sive rock band The Alan Par­sons Project? But if you like one, you might well like the oth­er, giv­en that Par­sons based his group’s debut, which con­tains such tracks as “The Raven,” “The Cask of Amon­til­la­do,” and “The Fall of the House of Ush­er,” direct­ly on Poe’s work.

Not only do Par­sons’ com­po­si­tions use Poe’s themes, they use Poe’s words. “How impor­tant the Poe con­cept is is ques­tion­able,” declared the con­tem­po­rary Bill­board review, “but the LP as a whole holds up well as a viable musi­cal work.” It hav­ing been 1976, the writer does note its “strong FM poten­tial,” but time has much increased Tales of Mys­tery and Imag­i­na­tion’s sta­tus in rock, pro­gres­sive or oth­er­wise. All Music Guide’s Mike DeGagne more recent­ly called the album “an extreme­ly mes­mer­iz­ing aur­al jour­ney” and “a vivid pic­ture of one of the most allur­ing lit­er­ary fig­ures in his­to­ry.”

Of course, those two reviews don’t eval­u­ate quite the same pro­duc­tion, since, in 1987, Par­sons, a born stu­dio tin­ker­er, went back and remixed Tales of Mys­tery and Imag­i­na­tion. He added a good deal of not just 1980s-style reverb, but new gui­tar bits and pieces of Poe recital, this time per­formed by no less an ide­al read­er than Orson Welles, who’d sent Par­sons a tape of his Poe per­for­mance short­ly after the orig­i­nal album appeared. You can hear his con­tri­bu­tion on the tracks “A Dream With­in a Dream” and “Fall of the House of Ush­er.” Both above. The com­plete album is avail­able below on Spo­ti­fy.

You might won­der what work of Poe’s, exact­ly, you hear Welles read­ing from, since none of it sounds like the writer’s best-known pas­sages. The words spo­ken in “A Dream With­in a Dream” come from a reflec­tion Poe wrote in his Mar­gin­a­lia, and those in “The Fall of the House of Ush­er” per­form some­thing of a remix them­selves, com­bin­ing more non­fic­tion from the Mar­gin­a­lia with the intro­duc­tion to his Poems of Youth. Only a ded­i­cat­ed Poe enthu­si­ast indeed would rec­og­nize all these pas­sages, but sure­ly such a per­son would love both Tales of Mys­tery and Imag­i­na­tion and Tales of Mys­tery and Imag­i­na­tion. If you, per­son­al­ly, don’t go in for Poe in the prog-rock treat­ment, might I sug­gest Par­sons’ take on Asi­mov?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lou Reed Rewrites Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.” See Read­ings by Reed and Willem Dafoe

James Earl Jones Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” and Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”

Iggy Pop, Deb­bie Har­ry, Jeff Buck­ley & Oth­er Celebs Read Tales by Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” Read by Christo­pher Walken, Vin­cent Price, and Christo­pher Lee

Watch the 1953 Ani­ma­tion of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Nar­rat­ed by James Mason

Down­load The Com­plete Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Macabre Sto­ries as Free eBooks & Audio Books

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Library of Congress Launches New Online Poetry Archive, Featuring 75 Years of Classic Poetry Readings

in Books, Literature, Museums, Poetry | April 20th, 2015

Image by Fred Palum­bo, made avail­able by the Library of Con­gress.

Put THIS in your pock­et. The Library of Con­gress is cel­e­brat­ing Nation­al Poet­ry Month by launch­ing its new Archive of Record­ed Poet­ry and Lit­er­a­ture. It debuts with 50 choice poet­ry record­ings, span­ning 75 years of time. In the past, you’d have had to vis­it the library in per­son to lis­ten to these good­ies on reel-to-reel tape. Now you can take them to the gym, plug in as you wash dish­es, post online links for your min­ions to enjoy.

New­ly ensconced Con­sul­tant in Poet­ry Gwen­dolyn Brooks (was there ever a more rec­og­niz­able voice?) pref­aces her read­ing by pledg­ing her inten­tion to reg­is­ter “on the pub­lic con­scious­ness and con­science the gen­er­al­ly neglect­ed rich­ness of ‘minor­i­ty poet­ry.’”

Robert Frost tells Ran­dall Jar­rell of his desire to iden­ti­fy Amer­i­can antiq­ui­ty — to fea­ture in his poet­ry a woodchopper’s hut that looks “as old as Baby­lon.”

Paul Mul­doon shares the sto­ry of how he came to own the eel­skin bag that is the star of “The Brief­case.”

Arm­chair trav­el­ers who still yearn to make that trip to DC in their minds will enjoy Eliz­a­beth Bish­op’s “View of the Capi­tol from the Library of Con­gress” (at the 4:02 mark), read at the Library of Con­gress’s own Coolidge Audi­to­ri­um. Vis­i­tors can also stream read­ings by Ray Brad­bury (below), Mar­garet Atwood, and Kurt Von­negut.

As part of its ongo­ing com­mit­ment to the form, the Library will be adding to the online archive on a month­ly basis. Let every month be Poet­ry Month! You can stream the com­plete col­lec­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Penn Sound: Fan­tas­tic Audio Archive of Mod­ern & Con­tem­po­rary Poets

Stream Clas­sic Poet­ry Read­ings from Harvard’s Rich Audio Archive: From W.H. Auden to Dylan Thomas

Lis­ten to 90 Famous Authors & Celebri­ties Read Great Sto­ries & Poems

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

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

in Art | April 20th, 2015

In this fas­ci­nat­ing over-the-shoul­der film of the artist/designer Mil­ton Glaser, we watch as the man behind the “I Heart NY” logo, the Bob Dylan psy­che­del­ic sil­hou­ette, and the Brook­lyn Brew­ery logo draws Shake­speare and deliv­ers his thoughts about draw­ing.

He only talks for five minutes–and before you know it, he’s pro­duced a sketch of The Bard. We wish it was more, but his obser­va­tions make for some good inspi­ra­tional quotes, whether you dab­ble in art or not. He cri­tiques art schools for drop­ping draw­ing from their cur­ricu­lums because draw­ing does­n’t jibe with their com­put­er-based, career focus. “While peo­ple have what they need, per­haps, for their pro­fes­sion­al life, what they don’t have is a fun­da­men­tal instru­ment for under­stand­ing the real­i­ty of that life,” he opines.

Draw­ing is how Glaser under­stands the world, and how it keeps him present in real­i­ty. It’s the basis for all art that is to come, no mat­ter if the stu­dent goes on to abstrac­tion. It’s also essen­tial, he says, for child devel­op­ment, and any child not giv­en the tools to make art is being done a dis­ser­vice.

For those won­der­ing about that book Glaser men­tions writ­ing, Draw­ing Is Think­ing, you can get it here.

And if you’re curi­ous about Frank R. Wilson’s The Hand, which Glaser com­pli­ments, it’s here.

And final­ly, if you need a quick primer on the man, here’s a quick overview of Mil­ton Glaser by the New York Times. “Draw­ing is my great­est plea­sure,” he says, and it shows.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Sketch­es of Artists by the Late New Media Design­er Hill­man Cur­tis

Mick­ey Mouse In Viet­nam: The Lost Anti-War Ani­ma­tion from 1968

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Discover Haruki Murakami’s Advertorial Short Stories: Rare Short-Short Fiction from the 1980s

in Literature | April 20th, 2015

No pro­file of Haru­ki Muraka­mi, the most glob­al­ly pop­u­lar nov­el­ist alive, fails to refer to the high num­ber of lan­guages (as of this writ­ing, the count has reached 50) in which his 14 Japan­ese-lan­guage nov­els have appeared in trans­la­tion. But out­side Japan, monoglot Murakamists (espe­cial­ly read­ers of only Eng­lish) have a prob­lem: they still can’t read a wealth of Murakami’s oth­er, non-nov­el­is­tic writ­ing, includ­ing the full-length, two-vol­ume ver­sion of Under­ground, his study of the 1995 Tokyo sarin gas attack; his Por­trait in Jazz books on his favorite music; and most of his many essays and movie reviews.

Even some of Murakami’s fic­tion has remained more or less off-lim­its to glob­al read­ers. I dis­cov­ered this when I came across a col­lec­tion of his I’d nev­er even heard of while book-shop­ping in Seoul. Real­iz­ing that of course more Muraka­mi mate­r­i­al would find its way into Kore­an, a gram­mat­i­cal­ly sim­i­lar lan­guage to Japan­ese, than Eng­lish, I set about check­ing every book­store in the city I knew for oth­er unknown vol­umes. One book of short sto­ries, titled in Kore­an 밤의 원숭이 (Spi­der Mon­key of the Night), par­tic­u­lar­ly delight­ed me with its strange and extreme­ly brief tales, each accom­pa­nied by charm­ing illus­tra­tions.

But where did these sto­ries, with their titles like “Hotel Lob­by Oys­ters,” “Julio Igle­sias,” and “Takaya­ma Noriko and My Libido,” come from? They came, as Neo­japon­is­me’s post on them explains, from the world of adver­tis­ing, and specif­i­cal­ly from a com­pa­ny called “Onward,” which mar­ket­ed the Amer­i­can Ivy League fash­ion label J. Press in Japan:

In the late 1970s and ear­ly 1980s, Onward spent mas­sive sums on adver­tis­ing J. Press in the print media. The clas­sic ad for­mat, often seen on the back cov­er of lifestyle mag­a­zine Pop­eye, showed a Japan­ese or Amer­i­can man telling a col­or­ful sto­ry about their favorite trad cloth­ing item. In 1985, as Japan­ese pop cul­ture went in more avant-garde direc­tions, Onward came up with a new idea — ask­ing up-and-com­ing nov­el­ist Muraka­mi Haru­ki to write a very short sto­ry inside each month’s adver­tise­ment for mag­a­zines Pop­eye, Box, and Men’s Club.

“So once a month from April 1985 to Feb­ru­ary 1987, Muraka­mi wrote a ‘short short’ (短い短編), which was set on its own page with an illus­tra­tion by famed artist Anzai Mizu­maru at the top and a small J. Press logo in the low­er left cor­ner.” Dur­ing that time, out came Murakami’s hit nov­el Nor­we­gian Wood, which rock­et­ed him to a lev­el of fame that effec­tive­ly put him in exile from his home­land. But the adver­to­r­i­al short-short form still appealed to him, and in 1993 he got famous pen­mak­er Park­er to spon­sor 24 new ones.

To give you a fla­vor of all this, below is one of the Eng­lish-lan­guage trans­la­tions float­ing around of “Hotel Lob­by Oys­ters,” Murakami’s first J. Press sto­ry. (You can also read “Miss Noriko Takaya­ma and My Libido,” anoth­er J. Press sto­ry here):

At the time I was sit­ting on the hotel lob­by sofa and vague­ly think­ing about oys­ters. Not lemon souf­flé, not pen­cil sharp­en­ers – oys­ters. I don’t know why. I just sud­den­ly real­ized that I was think­ing about oys­ters.

The oys­ters I was think­ing about on the hotel lob­by sofa were dif­fer­ent from oys­ters thought about any­where else. They were shaped dif­fer­ent­ly, they smelled dif­fer­ent­ly, and their col­or was dif­fer­ent, too. They weren’t oys­ters har­vest­ed in some cove. They were pure oys­ters har­vest­ed in a hotel lob­by.

After think­ing about oys­ters for a while, I went to the sink to wash my face, then retied my tie and returned to the sofa. When I got back, the oys­ters had already dis­ap­peared from inside my head. Again, I don’t know why. Maybe it was because I washed my faced or because I retied my tie. Or maybe the hotel oys­ter sea­son is extreme­ly short.

When the girl came 17 min­utes after our appoint­ed time, I told her about the hotel lob­by oys­ters. The image was so dis­tinct I felt like I had to tell some­one about them.

“You want to eat oys­ters?” she asked.

“No, these oys­ters, they were pure­ly oys­ters as a con­cept, unre­lat­ed to my appetite,” I explained. “The oys­ters came into being as the very essence of oys—“

“But you do want to eat some, right?” she said.

When she men­tioned it and I set­tled down to think about it, I cer­tain­ly had devel­oped an incred­i­ble desire to eat oys­ters. We went to the hotel restau­rant and ate 25 oys­ters while drink­ing wine. Some­times I think my appetite orig­i­nates from a real­ly strange place.

And, for Park­er, Muraka­mi wrote, “Spi­der Mon­key of the Night”:

I was sit­ting at my desk at 2:00 in the morn­ing and writ­ing. I pushed my win­dow open and a spi­der mon­key came in.

“Oh, hey, who are you?” I asked.

“Oh, hey, who are you,” the spi­der mon­key said.

“Don’t copy me,” I said.

“Don’t copy me,” the mon­key said.

“Don’t copy me,” I copied him.

“Don’t copy me,” he copied me in ital­ics.

Man, this is real­ly annoy­ing, I thought. If I get caught up with this copy­cat-crazed night mon­key, who knows when this will end. I’ll just have to trip him up some­where. I had a job that I had to fin­ish by morn­ing, and I couldn’t very well keep doing this all night.

“Hep­poku rakurashi man­ga tote­muya, kuri­ni kama­su toki­mi wako­ru, paco­pa­co,” I said quick­ly.

“Hep­poku rakurashi man­ga tote­muya, kuri­ni kama­su toki­mi wako­ru, paco­pa­co,” the spi­der mon­key said.

Since I had said some­thing com­plete­ly ran­dom, I couldn’t actu­al­ly tell if the mon­key had copied me cor­rect­ly or not. Well, that was point­less.

“Leave me alone,” I said.

“Leave me alone,” the mon­key said.

“You got it wrong, I didn’t say it in ital­ics that time.”

“You got it wrong, I didn’t say it in ītal­ics that time.”

“I didn’t put a macron over the i.”

“I didn’t put a macron over the eye.”

I sighed. No mat­ter what I said, the spi­der mon­key wouldn’t under­stand. I decid­ed to not say any­thing and just keep doing my work. Still, when I pressed a key on my word proces­sor, the mon­key silent­ly pressed the copy key. Click. Still, when I pressed a key on my word proces­sor, the mon­key silent­ly pressed the copy key. Click. Leave me alone. Leave me alone.

via Neo­japon­isme

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 3 Sto­ries from Haru­ki Murakami’s Short Sto­ry Col­lec­tion Pub­lished in Japan Last Year

Read 6 Sto­ries By Haru­ki Muraka­mi Free Online

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Reads in Eng­lish from The Wind-Up Bird Chron­i­cle in a Rare Pub­lic Read­ing (1998)

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Lists the Three Essen­tial Qual­i­ties For All Seri­ous Nov­el­ists (And Run­ners)

In Search of Haru­ki Muraka­mi: A Doc­u­men­tary Intro­duc­tion to Japan’s Great Post­mod­ernist Nov­el­ist

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.