David Fincher’s Five Finest Music Videos: From Madonna to Aerosmith

in Film, Music | April 15th, 2015

A whole gen­er­a­tion of film­mak­ers who came to promi­nence in the late 90s and ear­ly 00s got their start in music videos. Spike Jonze, for instance, went from mak­ing the Beast­ie Boys’ best video, “Sab­o­tage,” to mak­ing Being John Malkovich, the great­est film ever about being John Malkovich. Simon West has the dubi­ous dis­tinc­tion of mak­ing Rick Astley’s “Nev­er Gonna Give You Up,” mak­ing him the hand­maid­en to that loath­some of inter­net meme’s, rick­rolling. He then went on to make the over­stuffed spec­ta­cle Con Air, mak­ing him the hand­maid­en of Nico­las Cage’s dread­ful action career. And Michael Bay, Mr. Death-Of-Cin­e­ma him­self, made slick videos for the Divinyls before branch­ing off into explo­sion porn with the Trans­form­ers fran­chise.

Yet the most cel­e­brat­ed film­mak­er to come out of music videos is David Finch­er. Even before he made his green-tint­ed feel-bad mas­ter­pieces like Zodi­ac and The Social Net­work, he already made a deep impact on Amer­i­can pop­u­lar con­scious­ness – espe­cial­ly if you were watch­ing a lot of MTV dur­ing the wan­ing days of the Cold War. Here are five of his most famous and fine­ly-craft­ed vids.

“Vogue,” Madon­na (1990)

Shot in gor­geous black and white, Finch­er makes Madon­na look like a Hol­ly­wood icon of yore while spin­ning one daz­zling image after anoth­er of well-appoint­ed, and remark­ably lim­ber, men vogu­ing. The video was report­ed­ly shot at a break­neck pace, just 16 hours, to accom­mo­date Madonna’s tour sched­ule.

“Straight Up,” Paula Abdul (1989)

Finch­er cap­tures Paula Abdul’s sass and her con­sid­er­able danc­ing prowess in this stark, graph­ic video that is almost com­plete­ly devoid of grey.

“Free­dom! ’90,” George Michael (1990)

George Michael refused to par­tic­i­pate in the shoot for this video. So Finch­er did what I wish I could do — call up a bunch of super­mod­els includ­ing Nao­mi Camp­bell, Lin­da Evan­ge­lista and Cindy Craw­ford and get them to help out. The result feels like a Victoria’s Secret cat­a­logue come to life.

“Janie’s Got a Gun,” Aero­smith (1989)

The song might be catchy but the lyrics are about mur­der and child abuse. Finch­er shoots Aerosmith’s like­ly are­na rock anthem as a crime sto­ry, com­plete with lush col­ors and moody, expres­sion­is­tic depic­tions of the deeds. The video proved to be great train­ing for his sub­se­quent films.

“Express Your­self,” Madon­na (1989)

Madonna’s “Express Your­self” was the most expen­sive music video made up to that point, cost­ing $5 mil­lion. A riff off the Ger­man Expres­sion­ist mas­ter­piece, Metrop­o­lis, this work fea­tures far more corsets, naked men and crotch grabs than Fritz Lang’s film. Madon­na had a great deal of say over the final prod­uct. “I over­saw every­thing — the build­ing of the sets, every­one’s cos­tumes, I had meet­ings with make-up and hair and the cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er, every­body,” she told Rolling Stone mag­a­zine. “Cast­ing, find­ing the right cat — just every aspect.” The suc­cess of this video land­ed Finch­er his first fea­ture film, the trou­bled Alien3.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Film­mak­ing Craft of David Finch­er Demys­ti­fied in Two Video Essays

David Lynch’s Music Videos: Nine Inch Nails, Moby, Chris Isaak & More

Jim Jarmusch’s Anti-MTV Music Videos for Talk­ing Heads, Neil Young, Tom Waits & Big Audio Dyna­mite

Michel Gondry’s Finest Music Videos for Björk, Radio­head & More: The Last of the Music Video Gods

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.

Watch The Hitch: An Indie-Documentary on The Life & Times of Christopher Hitchens

in Current Affairs, Film, Religion | April 14th, 2015

A quick note: Kristof­fer Seland Helles­mark was look­ing for a doc­u­men­tary on Christo­pher Hitchens to watch, but could nev­er find one. So, after wait­ing a while, he said to him­self, “Why don’t I just make one?” The result is the 80-minute doc­u­men­tary about Hitchens, lov­ing­ly enti­tled The Hitch, which fea­tures clips from his speech­es and inter­views. We’ve added it to our col­lec­tion of 200+ Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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:

Christo­pher Hitchens Revis­es the 10 Com­mand­ments for the 21st Cen­tu­ry

Christo­pher Hitchens: No Deathbed Con­ver­sion for Me, Thanks, But it was Good of You to Ask

Christo­pher Hitchens Cre­ates a Read­ing List for Eight-Year-Old Girl

Mike Leigh’s Five-Minute Films: A Revealing Look at the Director’s Early Cinematic Work (1975)

in Film | April 14th, 2015

Mike Leigh works like few oth­er direc­tors. While most movies start with the script, Leigh devel­ops a sto­ry and char­ac­ters with his actors dur­ing long rehearsals. Leigh then assem­bles these exer­cis­es into a script. He will shoot some of that script and then rehearse some more. The result of this unusu­al style is that the actors know their char­ac­ters down to the mar­row. The film feels alive.

Back in 1975, just as Leigh was begin­ning to devel­op his famed method, the BBC com­mis­sioned him to make a series of five-minute movies. Leigh described the con­cept of the assign­ment to writer Sean O’Sullivan:

I thought it was a crack­ing idea, and I would have done forty of them or fifty – so you’d see them all the time, and some­times you might see a char­ac­ter you nev­er saw again, some­times you might see some­body pop­ping up for a moment and then be a main char­ac­ter in anoth­er one, or there’d be a cou­ple of ones that would run on to a nar­ra­tive. It would be a whole micro­cosm of the world. There was debate about whether they should be shown at the same time or they should be dot­ted around the chan­nel, like cur­rants in the pud­ding, as Tony Gar­nett, the pro­duc­er, called it.

The project, sad­ly, was can­celed before it even aired and only five movies were made. Those five were not broad­cast until 1982 when Leigh had already become a big name in British tele­vi­sion.

In some of his best works like Life is Sweet and Naked, Leigh focused on the small dra­mas of work­ing class life, min­ing the unar­tic­u­lat­ed sad­ness and anger sim­mer­ing just beneath the sur­face of mod­ern Britain. His Five-Minute Films show ear­ly glim­mers of his lat­er great­ness.

The plot of the first film, The Birth of the Goalie of the 2001 F.A. Cup Final, is sim­ple to an extreme. The short, which con­sists of ten vignettes span­ning a half-dozen years, is about a cou­ple decid­ing whether or not to have a baby. The name­less bloke repeat­ed­ly asks his reluc­tant part­ner, “Wouldn’t it be great to have a kid?” At the end of the movie, he’s kick­ing the ball around with his young son. The end. It is almost as if Leigh want­ed to see how lit­tle back­sto­ry and char­ac­ter psy­chol­o­gy he could get away with.

The sec­ond film, Old Chums, is the dia­met­ri­cal oppo­site to the first – it’s all about char­ac­ter. The sto­ry, which unfolds in real-time, shows Bri­an, who is dis­abled and in crutch­es, walk­ing to the car as he par­ries the con­ver­sa­tion­al onslaught of a boor­ish ex-school­mate, Ter­ry. The movie buries you in names and long past events that have lit­tle bear­ing on the sto­ry, but leaves cen­tral ques­tions like “what does Ter­ry actu­al­ly want?” tan­ta­liz­ing­ly vague.

A third film, Pro­ba­tion, appears above. You can watch the remain­der of Leigh’s Five-Minute Shorts here. We’ll also add them to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tim Burton’s Ear­ly Stu­dent Films:King and Octo­pus & Stalk of the Cel­ery Mon­ster

Mar­tin Scorsese’s Very First Films: Three Imag­i­na­tive Short Works

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.

Brian May Shows You How to Play Licks & Solos from 18 Queen Songs, and Reveals the Joy of the Guitar Riff

in Music | April 14th, 2015

In the world of rock gui­tar, gear is king. And tech­nique, one might say, is queen. Both rule, but the equip­ment can receive an unfair share of roy­al treat­ment. There is good rea­son for this. Elec­tri­fied instru­ments play­ing elec­tric music require heaps of wires, cir­cuits, spe­cial­ized effects, and ampli­fiers to make the sounds we’ve come to asso­ciate with hard rock and heavy met­al. But those sounds didn’t come about by acci­dent. They were designed at par­tic­u­lar times by par­tic­u­lar gui­tarists and engineers—serious gear­heads. Per­haps the most obses­sive of them all is Bri­an May, whose flashy but taste­ful play­ing with Queen set the bar for pyrotech­nics artists and fel­low gear­heads like Eddie Van Halen. Maybe it’s his work as an astro­physi­cist (no, real­ly!) that inspired his sci­en­tif­ic approach to mak­ing music. Wher­ev­er it comes from, no one plays, and sounds, quite like Bri­an May.

In the video above from 1984, May gives lessons on how to play his famous licks and solos from eigh­teen Queen songs. But first, he gets into the tech­ni­cal specs of his ampli­fiers, effects, and his gui­tar, “Red Spe­cial,” an instru­ment of his own design and build that func­tioned like no oth­er at the time. Even today, no gui­tar but a Bri­an May sig­na­ture gui­tar—now mass-pro­duced—sounds like a Bri­an May gui­tar. At one point, May says, “I’ve had this gui­tar for 20 years, and it’s pret­ty much the only thing I can play to get the right sound.” He still feels the same way, as you can see in his much more recent “Rig Run­down,” that peri­od­ic delight of gui­tar geeks every­where in which famous gui­tarists show­case the gear that gets them “the right sound.”

May’s full immer­sion in the tech­ni­cal details of elec­tric gui­tars and ampli­fiers is rivaled only by his com­plex and intri­cate gui­tar lines. If you can keep up with him in the instruc­tion­al video at the top, you might just learn a thing or two about the so-called “lick.” Just above, how­ev­er, May helps guide us through an explo­ration of a much more direct and prim­i­tive means of expression—the riff. The BBC spe­cial also fea­tures such mas­ters of this repet­i­tive, rhyth­mic motif as Joan Jett, Wayne Kramer, Nile Rodgers, Tony Iom­mi, and Dave Davies, as well as—in archival footage—riff pio­neers Chuck Berry and Link Wray, each of them demon­strat­ing the ear­worms they’re known for. Bri­an May’s riffs—in “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” for example—may be more clas­si­cal than most, but they’re no less mem­o­rable. And after watch­ing his extend­ed les­son, you now know exact­ly how he built them, piece by piece.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bri­an May’s Home­made Gui­tar, Made From Old Tables, Bike and Motor­cy­cle Parts & More

Gui­tarist Bri­an May Explains the Mak­ing of Queen’s Clas­sic Song, ‘Bohemi­an Rhap­sody’

Queen Doc­u­men­tary Pays Trib­ute to the Rock Band That Con­quered the World

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

The Contributions of Women Philosophers Recovered by the New Project Vox Website

in Philosophy | April 14th, 2015

“If I am con­demned, I shall be anni­hi­lat­ed to noth­ing: but my ambi­tion is such, as I would either be a world, or noth­ing.” — Mar­garet Cavendish (1623–1673)

A phi­los­o­phy can­di­date or fem­i­nist schol­ar ven­tur­ing into Duke Uni­ver­si­ty’s new Project Vox web­site may expe­ri­ence a sen­sa­tion akin to dis­cov­er­ing King Tut’s tomb.

Such trea­sures! Not just a scrap here and a morsel there, but a seri­ous trove of infor­ma­tion about phi­los­o­phy writ by females!

Lady Damaris Masham (1658–1708), Mar­garet Cavendish (1623–1673), Vis­count­ess Anne Con­way (1631–1679), and Émi­lie Du Châtelet were high­ly thought of in their day, and praised by male con­tem­po­raries includ­ing John Locke.

Project Vox seeks to res­ur­rect their over­looked-to-the-point-of-undis­cov­ered con­tri­bu­tions by pub­lish­ing their long out of print texts, some trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish for the first time. Bio­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion and sec­ondary resources will pro­vide a sense of each philoso­pher as well as her phi­los­o­phy.

Even­tu­al­ly, the site will include a forum where teach­ers can share les­son plans and arti­cles. Male phi­los­o­phy doc­tor­ates cur­rent­ly out­num­ber their female coun­ter­parts by an over­whelm­ing num­ber, but that may change as young women begin to see them­selves reflect­ed in the cur­ricu­lum.

Edu­ca­tors! Edu­cate thy­selves! Project Vox is the Guer­ril­la Girl of ear­ly mod­ern phi­los­o­phy!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

Down­load 110 Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks: From Aris­to­tle to Niet­zsche & Wittgen­stein

44 Essen­tial Movies for the Stu­dent of Phi­los­o­phy

Han­nah Arendt Dis­cuss­es Phi­los­o­phy, Pol­i­tics & Eich­mann in Rare 1964 TV Inter­view

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

The Shortest-Known Paper Published in a Serious Math Journal: Two Succinct Sentences

in Math | April 13th, 2015

Euler’s con­jec­ture, a the­o­ry pro­posed by Leon­hard Euler in 1769, hung in there for 200 years. Then L.J. Lan­der and T.R. Parkin came along in 1966, and debunked the con­jec­ture in two swift sen­tences. Their arti­cle — which is now open access and can be down­loaded here — appeared in the Bul­letin of the Amer­i­can Math­e­mat­i­cal Soci­ety. If you’re won­der­ing what the con­jec­ture and its refu­ta­tion are all about, you might want to ask Cliff Pick­over, the author of 45 books on math and sci­ence. He brought this curi­ous doc­u­ment to the web last week.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

60 Free Online Math Cours­es

Free Math Text­books

The Math in Good Will Hunt­ing is Easy: How Do You Like Them Apples?

Does Math Objec­tive­ly Exist, or Is It a Human Cre­ation? A New PBS Video Explores a Time­less Ques­tion

T.S. Eliot, Edith Wharton & Gertrude Stein Tell F. Scott Fitzgerald That Gatsby is Great, While Critics Called It a Dud (1925)

in Books, Literature | April 13th, 2015

This month marks the 90th anniver­sary of the pub­li­ca­tion of F. Scott Fitzger­ald’s mas­ter­piece, The Great Gats­by. Per­haps no oth­er book so embod­ies the ide­al of the Great Amer­i­can Nov­el as Gats­by — and yet, when it first came out 90 years ago, it was regard­ed as a flop. As a head­line writer for the New York World put it, “F. SCOTT FITZGERALD’S LATEST A DUD.”

Fitzger­ald had a lot rid­ing on Gats­by. He and his wife Zel­da were liv­ing beyond their means, and he was des­per­ate­ly hop­ing the book would bring finan­cial secu­ri­ty as well as crit­i­cal respect. On April 10, 1925 he wrote a let­ter to his edi­tor, Maxwell Perkins:

Dear Max
The book comes out today and I am over­come with fears and fore­bod­ings. Sup­pos­ing women did­n’t like the book because it has no impor­tant woman in it, and crit­ics did­n’t like it because it dealt with the rich and and con­tained no peas­ants bor­rowed out of Tess in it and set to work in Ida­ho? Sup­pose it did­n’t even wipe out my debt to you — why it’ll have to sell 20,000 copies even to do that!

The author’s fears and fore­bod­ings were more or less real­ized. The first print run of 20,870 copies sold slow­ly. A sec­ond run of 3,000 was ordered a few months lat­er, but many of those copies were still gath­er­ing dust on the ware­house shelves when Fitzger­ald died in 1940. And while a few crit­ics rec­og­nized Gats­by’s bril­liance, many missed it. H.L. Menck­en, for exam­ple, praised Fitzger­ald’s matur­ing crafts­man­ship as a prose styl­ist but sav­aged the sto­ry itself, call­ing it “no more than a glo­ri­fied anec­dote.”

It must have cheered the author up, then, to receive let­ters of praise from sev­er­al of the most influ­en­tial writ­ers of his time. Fitzger­ald had sent inscribed copies of the book to Edith Whar­ton, Gertrude Stein and T.S. Eliot — all of whom respond­ed. Of the three, Whar­ton was the most tepid in her praise, with echoes of Menck­en run­ning through her com­ments:

Dear Mr. Fitzger­ald,
   I have been wan­der­ing for the last weeks and found your nov­el — with it’s friend­ly ded­i­ca­tion — await­ing me here on my arrival, a few days ago.
   I am touched at your send­ing me a copy, for I feel that to your gen­er­a­tion, which has tak­en such a fly­ing leap into the future, I must rep­re­sent the lit­er­ary equiv­a­lent of tuft­ed fur­ni­ture and gas chan­de­liers. So you will under­stand that it is in the spir­it of sin­cere dep­re­ca­tion that I shall ven­ture, in a few days, to offer you in return the last prod­uct of my man­u­fac­to­ry.
   Mean­while, let me say at once how much I like Gats­by, or rather His Book, & how great a leap I think you have tak­en this time — in advance upon your pre­vi­ous work. My present quar­rel with you is only this: that to make Gats­by real­ly Great, you ought to have giv­en us his ear­ly career (not from the cra­dle — but from his vis­it to the yacht, if not before) instead of a short résumé of it. That would have sit­u­at­ed him, and made his final tragedy a tragedy instead of a “fate divers” for the morn­ing papers.
   But you’ll tell me that’s the old way, and con­se­quent­ly not your way…

Whar­ton made it clear she thought of Gats­by as a lit­er­ary advance only in respect to Fitzger­ald’s own ear­li­er work. Gertrude Stein allowed only that the new book was “dif­fer­ent and old­er”:

My dear Fitzger­ald:
   Here we are and have read your book and it is a good book. I like the melody of your ded­i­ca­tion and it shows that you have a back­ground of beau­ty and ten­der­ness and that is a com­fort. The next good thing is that you write nat­u­ral­ly in sen­tences and that too is a com­fort. You write nat­u­ral­ly in sen­tences and one can read all of them and that among oth­er things is a com­fort. You are cre­at­ing the con­tem­po­rary world much as Thack­er­ay did his in Pen­den­nis and Van­i­ty Fair and this isn’t a bad com­pli­ment. You make a mod­ern world and a mod­ern orgy strange­ly enough it was nev­er done until you did it in This Side of Par­adise. My belief in This Side of Par­adise was alright. This is as good a book and dif­fer­ent and old­er and that is what one does, one does not get bet­ter but dif­fer­ent and old­er and that is always a plea­sure. Best of luck to you always, and thanks so much for the very gen­uine plea­sure you have giv­en me.

The strongest and least equiv­o­cal praise came from Eliot:

Dear Mr. Scott Fitzger­ald,
   The Great Gats­by with your charm­ing and over­pow­er­ing inscrip­tion arrived the very morn­ing I was leav­ing in some haste for a sea voy­age advised by my doc­tor. I there­fore left it behind and only read it on my return a few days ago. I have, how­ev­er, now read it three times. I am not in the least influ­enced by your remark about myself when I say that it has inter­est­ed and excit­ed me more than any new nov­el I have seen, either Eng­lish or Amer­i­can, for a num­ber of years.
   When I have more time I should like to write to you more ful­ly and tell you exact­ly why it seems to me such a remark­able book. In fact it seems to me to be the first step that Amer­i­can fic­tion has tak­en since Hen­ry James.

Fitzger­ald was espe­cial­ly pleased with that last line. “I can’t express just how good your let­ter made me feel,” he wrote back to Eliot “– it was eas­i­ly the nicest thing that’s hap­pened to me in con­nec­tion with Gats­by.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Hand­writ­ten Man­u­scripts for The Great Gats­by, This Side of Par­adise & More

Sylvia Plath Anno­tates Her Copy of The Great Gats­by

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Trans­lates The Great Gats­by, the Nov­el That Influ­enced Him Most

83 Years of Great Gats­by Book Cov­er Designs: A Pho­to Gallery 

Down­load 55 Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es: From Dante and Mil­ton to Ker­ouac and Tolkien

Teacher Calls Jacques Derrida’s College Admission Essay on Shakespeare “Quite Incomprehensible” (1951)

in Philosophy | April 13th, 2015

Click here for larg­er image, then click again to zoom in.

Back­sto­ries of famous­ly accom­plished peo­ple seem incom­plete with­out some past dif­fi­cul­ty or fail­ure to be over­come. In nar­ra­tive terms, these inci­dents pro­vide biogra­phies with their dra­mat­ic ten­sion. We see Abra­ham Lin­coln rise to the high­est office in the land despite the hum­blest of ori­gins; Albert Ein­stein rewrites the­o­ret­i­cal physics against all aca­d­e­m­ic odds, giv­en his sup­posed ear­ly child­hood hand­i­caps. In many cas­es, these sto­ries are apoc­ryphal, or exag­ger­at­ed for effect. But what­ev­er their accu­ra­cy, they always seem to reflect unde­ni­able char­ac­ter traits of the per­son in ques­tion.

In the case of influ­en­tial philoso­pher Jacques Der­ri­da, prog­en­i­tor of the both beloved and reviled crit­i­cal the­o­ry known as “Decon­struc­tion,” the sto­ries of aca­d­e­m­ic strug­gle and great men­tal suf­fer­ing are well-doc­u­ment­ed. Fur­ther­more, their details accord per­fect­ly well with the mature thinker who, remarks the site Crit­i­cal The­o­ry, “can’t answer a sim­ple god-damned ques­tion.” The good-natured snark on dis­play in this descrip­tion more or less sums up the feed­back Der­ri­da received dur­ing some for­ma­tive years of school­ing while he pre­pared for his entrance exams to France’s uni­ver­si­ty sys­tem in 1951 at the age of 20.

Der­ri­da may have “left as big a mark on human­i­ties depart­ments as any sin­gle thinker of the past forty years,” writes The New York Review of Books, but dur­ing this peri­od of his life, he failed his exams twice before final­ly gain­ing admit­tance. Once, he “choked and turned in a blank sheet of paper. The same month, he was award­ed a dis­mal 5 out of 20 on his qual­i­fy­ing exam for a license in phi­los­o­phy.” One essay he sub­mit­ted on Shake­speare, writ­ten in Eng­lish (above), received a 10 out of 20. The feed­back from Derrida’s instruc­tor will sound very famil­iar to per­plexed read­ers of his work. “Quite unin­tel­li­gi­ble,” writes the eval­u­a­tor in one mar­gin­al com­ment. The main com­ment at the top of the paper reads in part:

In this essay you seem to be con­stant­ly on the verge of some­thing inter­est­ing but, some­what, you always fail to explain it clear­ly. A few para­graphs are indeed total­ly incom­pre­hen­si­ble.

Anoth­er exam­in­er—points out the NYRB—left a com­ment on his work “that has since become a com­mon­place”:

An exer­cise in vir­tu­os­i­ty, with unde­ni­able intel­li­gence, but with no par­tic­u­lar rela­tion to the his­to­ry of phi­los­o­phy… Can come back when he is pre­pared to accept the rules and not invent where he needs to be bet­ter informed.

As it turns out, Der­ri­da was not par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in the rules, but in invent­ing a new method. Even if his “apos­ta­sy” caused him great men­tal anguish—“nausea, insom­nia, exhaus­tion, and despair” (all nor­mal fea­tures of any high­er edu­ca­tion­al experience)—it’s prob­a­bly fair to say he could not do oth­er­wise. Although his intel­lec­tu­al biog­ra­phy, like the his­to­ry of any revered fig­ure, is unlike­ly to offer a blue­print for suc­cess, there is per­haps at least one les­son we may draw: What­ev­er the dif­fi­cul­ties, you’re prob­a­bly bet­ter off just being your­self.

via Crit­i­cal The­o­ry

Relat­ed Con­tent:

130+ Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Philoso­pher Jacques Der­ri­da Inter­views Jazz Leg­end Ornette Cole­man: Talk Impro­vi­sa­tion, Lan­guage & Racism (1997)

8‑Bit Phi­los­o­phy: Pla­to, Sartre, Der­ri­da & Oth­er Thinkers Explained With Vin­tage Video Games

Jacques Der­ri­da Decon­structs Amer­i­can Atti­tudes

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

The Rolling Stones Release a Soulful, Never-Heard Acoustic Version of “Wild Horses”

in Music | April 12th, 2015

By the time Char­lie Watts’ snare drum cracks into the recent­ly unearthed alter­nate acoustic take of “Wild Hors­es,” above, the song has already gath­ered as much momen­tum as the album ver­sion, its soul­ful minor chords fill­ing what­ev­er room you hap­pen to be lis­ten­ing to it in. Released with the video above as a teas­er for the extras-packed reis­sue of 1971’s Sticky Fin­gers, due out this May, the track replaces Mick Taylor’s elec­tric gui­tar with well-placed acoustic pluck­ing and almost jaun­ty rhythm play­ing by Kei­th. As Jag­ger belts them out, the lyrics “unzip” across the screen in a taste­ful homage to Andy Warhol’s expert­ly sleazy Sticky Fin­gers cov­er art.

Part boast, part lament, it’s no won­der “Wild Hors­es” is one of the Stones’ most pop­u­lar tunes. It seems that no mat­ter what gets added, or tak­en away, from it, the song remains a com­plete­ly trans­port­ing state­ment of loss and defi­ance. The song, stripped down to just vocals and acoustic gui­tars above, is utter­ly cap­ti­vat­ing with or with­out its elec­tric slide swells, honky-tonk piano, and vocal har­monies, a tes­ta­ment to Richards’ skill with coun­try song­writ­ing, much of which he’d picked up while hang­ing out with for­mer Byrd Gram Par­sons.

The song owes much to Par­sons’ 1968 “Hick­o­ry Wind,” and Par­sons even cov­ered “Wild Hors­es” as a most­ly acoustic coun­try bal­lad in 1970, the year before Sticky Fin­gers’ release. The Stones record­ed the song in 1969, and clear­ly knew they had some­thing spe­cial on their hands imme­di­ate­ly after­ward. Just above—starting at 0:40—see the band lis­ten back to anoth­er stripped down ver­sion of the album take at Mus­sel Shoals stu­dio in footage from the Maysles broth­ers’ Gimme Shel­ter.

The sing-along cho­rus­es and over­all camp­fire vibe of The Glim­mer Twins’ bal­lad makes it an ide­al can­di­date for unplugged ses­sions, and the new­ly-debuted ver­sion at the top isn’t the only time The Stones have re-released an alter­nate acoustic take. Just above, see them live in the stu­dio record­ing a new ver­sion of “Wild Hors­es” for 1995’s Stripped, an album of most­ly-live, often acoustic rework­ings of songs like “Street Fight­ing Man” and “Let It Bleed” and cov­ers of Bud­dy Holly’s “Not Fade Away” and Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.” Stripped may be an uneven album (hear on Youtube here), but Jag­ger and Richards’ bril­liant imi­ta­tions of coun­try music—like “Dead Flow­ers” and, espe­cial­ly, “Wild Horses”—shine as bright­ly as ever.

via Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Rolling Stones Write “Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il”: From Jean-Luc Godard’s ’68 Film One Plus One

Rare Print of Cen­sored 1972 Rolling Stones Con­cert Film Cock­suck­er Blues Goes on Sale for £25,000

The Rolling Stones Sing the Bea­t­les’ “Eight Days a Week” in a Hotel Room (1965)

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

Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Tips on How to Write a Good Short Story

in Literature, Writing | April 10th, 2015

When it came to giv­ing advice to writ­ers, Kurt Von­negut was nev­er dull. He once tried to warn peo­ple away from using semi­colons by char­ac­ter­iz­ing them as “trans­ves­tite her­maph­ro­dites rep­re­sent­ing absolute­ly noth­ing.” And, in a mas­ter’s the­sis reject­ed by The Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, he made the tan­ta­liz­ing argu­ment that “sto­ries have shapes which can be drawn on graph paper, and that the shape of a giv­en society’s sto­ries is at least as inter­est­ing as the shape of its pots or spear­heads.” In this brief video, Von­negut offers eight essen­tial tips on how to write a short sto­ry:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wast­ed.
2. Give the read­er at least one char­ac­ter he or she can root for.
3. Every char­ac­ter should want some­thing, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sen­tence must do one of two things–reveal char­ac­ter or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as pos­si­ble.
6. Be a sadist. No mat­ter how sweet and inno­cent your lead­ing char­ac­ters, make awful things hap­pen to them–in order that the read­er may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one per­son. If you open a win­dow and make love to the world, so to speak, your sto­ry will get pneu­mo­nia.
8. Give your read­ers as much infor­ma­tion as pos­si­ble as soon as pos­si­ble. To heck with sus­pense. Read­ers should have such com­plete under­stand­ing of what is going on, where and why, that they could fin­ish the sto­ry them­selves, should cock­roach­es eat the last few pages.

Von­negut put down his advice in the intro­duc­tion to his 1999 col­lec­tion of mag­a­zine sto­ries, Bagom­bo Snuff Box. But for every rule (well, almost every rule) there is an excep­tion. “The great­est Amer­i­can short sto­ry writer of my gen­er­a­tion was Flan­nery O’Con­nor,” writes Von­negut. “She broke prac­ti­cal­ly every one of my rules but the first. Great writ­ers tend to do that.”

Now if you want to learn to write with style, that’s anoth­er sto­ry. And Von­negut has advice on that too here.

via Brain­Pick­ings

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Wear Sun­screen”: The Sto­ry Behind the Com­mence­ment Speech That Kurt Von­negut Nev­er Gave

Kurt Von­negut Dia­grams the Shape of All Sto­ries in a Master’s The­sis Reject­ed by U. Chica­go

Kurt Von­negut Explains “How to Write With Style”

22-Year-Old P.O.W. Kurt Von­negut Writes Home from World War II: “I’ll Be Damned If It Was Worth It”