Hear the World’s Oldest Instrument, the “Neanderthal Flute,” Dating Back Over 43,000 Years

in History, Music | February 10th, 2015

Back in July of last year, we brought you a tran­scrip­tion and a cou­ple of audio inter­pre­ta­tions of the old­est known song in the world, dis­cov­ered in the ancient Syr­i­an city of Ugar­it and dat­ing back to the 14th cen­tu­ry B.C.E.. Like­ly per­formed on an instru­ment resem­bling an ancient lyre, the so-called “Hur­ri­an Cult Song” or “Hur­ri­an Hymn No. 6” sounds oth­er­world­ly to our ears, although mod­ern-day musi­col­o­gists can only guess at the song’s tem­po and rhythm.

When we reach even fur­ther back in time, long before the advent of sys­tems of writ­ing, we are com­plete­ly at a loss as to the forms of music pre­his­toric humans might have pre­ferred. But we do know that music was like­ly a part of their every­day lives, as it is ours, and we have some sound evi­dence for the kinds of instru­ments they played. In 2008, arche­ol­o­gists dis­cov­ered frag­ments of flutes carved from vul­ture and mam­moth bones at a Stone Age cave site in south­ern Ger­many called Hohle Fels. These instru­ments date back 42,000 to 43,000 years and may sup­plant ear­li­er find­ings of flutes at a near­by site dat­ing back 35,000 years.

Image via the The Archae­ol­o­gy News Net­work

The flutes are metic­u­lous­ly craft­ed, reports Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, par­tic­u­lar­ly the mam­moth bone flute, which would have been “espe­cial­ly chal­leng­ing to make.” At the time of their dis­cov­ery, researchers spec­u­lat­ed that the flutes “may have been one of the cul­tur­al accom­plish­ments that gave the first Euro­pean mod­ern-human (Homo sapi­ens) set­tlers an advan­tage over their now extinct Nean­derthal-human (Homo nean­derthalis) cousins.” But as with so much of our knowl­edge about Nean­derthals, includ­ing new evi­dence of inter­breed­ing with Homo Sapi­ens, these con­clu­sions may have to be revised.

It is per­haps pos­si­ble that the much-under­es­ti­mat­ed Nean­derthals made their own flutes. Or so a 1995 dis­cov­ery of a flute made from a cave bear femur might sug­gest. Found by arche­ol­o­gist Ivan Turk in a Nean­derthal camp­site at Div­je Babe in north­west­ern Slove­nia, this instru­ment (above) is esti­mat­ed to be over 43,000 years old and per­haps as much as 80,000 years old. Accord­ing to musi­col­o­gist Bob Fink, the flute’s four fin­ger holes match four notes of a dia­ton­ic (Do, Re, Mi…) scale. “Unless we deny it is a flute at all,” Fink argues, the notes of the flute “are inescapably dia­ton­ic and will sound like a near-per­fect fit with­in ANY kind of stan­dard dia­ton­ic scale, mod­ern or antique.” To demon­strate the point, the cura­tor of the Sloven­ian Nation­al Muse­um had a clay repli­ca of the flute made. You can hear it played at the top of the post by Sloven­ian musi­cian Ljuben Dimkaros­ki.

The pre­his­toric instru­ment does indeed pro­duce the whole and half tones of the dia­ton­ic scale, so com­plete­ly, in fact, that Dimkaros­ki is able to play frag­ments of sev­er­al com­po­si­tions by Beethoven, Ver­di, Rav­el, Dvořák, and oth­ers, as well as some free impro­vi­sa­tions “mock­ing ani­mal voic­es.” The video’s Youtube page explains his choice of music as “a pot­pour­ri of frag­ments from com­po­si­tions of var­i­ous authors,” select­ed “to show the capa­bil­i­ties of the instru­ment, tonal range, stac­ca­to, lega­to, glis­san­do….” (Dimkaros­ki claims to have fig­ured out how to play the instru­ment in a dream.) Although arche­ol­o­gists have hot­ly dis­put­ed whether or not the flute is actu­al­ly the work of Nean­derthals, as Turk sug­gest­ed, should it be so, the find­ing would con­tra­dict claims that the close human rel­a­tives “left no firm evi­dence of hav­ing been musi­cal.” But what­ev­er its ori­gin, it seems cer­tain­ly to be a hominid arti­fact—not the work of preda­tors—and a key to unlock­ing the pre­his­to­ry of musi­cal expres­sion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to the Old­est Song in the World: A Sumer­ian Hymn Writ­ten 3,400 Years Ago

What Ancient Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Hear a Recon­struc­tion That is ‘100% Accu­rate’

Hear The Epic of Gil­gamesh Read in the Orig­i­nal Akka­di­an and Enjoy the Sounds of Mesopotamia

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

An Ambitious List of 1400 Films Made by Female Filmmakers

in Film | February 10th, 2015

It’s a tru­ism to say that Hol­ly­wood is a boy’s club but Dr. Sta­cy L. Smith of the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia put this say­ing into stark, empir­i­cal terms: a mere 4.4% of the top 100 box-office releas­es in the USA were direct­ed by women. That’s it. It’s a per­cent­age that should be used to describe the amount of cream in whole milk, not half the human race.

The truth is that the film indus­try in gen­er­al, not just Hol­ly­wood, is dom­i­nat­ed by men. In books on cin­e­ma and class­es on film his­to­ry, female direc­tors fre­quent­ly get over­looked.

Over at MUBI, some­one apt­ly named Ally the List­mak­er has tak­en great pains to counter that. She has com­piled an exhaus­tive col­lec­tion of movies by women. The list runs the gamut from pop­corn fare like Amy Heckerling’s Clue­less (1995), to for­eign art house films like Chan­tal Akerman’s The Cap­tive (2000), to chal­leng­ing exper­i­men­tal movies (any­thing by Peg­gy Ahwesh).

Ally’s list con­tains over 1400 movie titles, most­ly films made with­in the past 20 years. Yet with­in this list are oth­ers lists – “Films Direct­ed by Dan­ish Women,” “Actress­es Who Have Tried Their Hand at Direct­ing” – reveal­ing a mind-bog­gling range and diver­si­ty of movies. Here are a few favorites:

• The Glean­ers & I (2000) – Agnes Var­da
  A fas­ci­nat­ing med­i­ta­tion on art, aging and for­ag­ing off left­overs of oth­ers. Var­da turns the act of hunt­ing for pota­toes into a polit­i­cal act. You can watch the first four min­utes of the film above.
• The Apple (1998) – Sami­ra Makhmal­baf
  The daugh­ter of Mohsen Makhmal­baf, one of the true trail­blaz­ers of the Iran­ian new wave, Sami­ra proved to be a cin­e­mat­ic tal­ent in her own right with this movie that blurs the line between doc­u­men­tary and nar­ra­tive.
• Wendy and Lucy (2008) – Kel­ly Reichardt
  A woman at the mar­gins of soci­ety whose life utter­ly comes apart after her car breaks down. Riechardt’s direc­tion is slow, qui­et and ulti­mate­ly dev­as­tat­ing.
• The Pervert’s Guide to Cin­e­ma (2006) – Sophie Fiennes
  Slavoj Zizek, the reign­ing rock star/comedian of the cul­tur­al the­o­ry world, riffs on some of the great­est films ever made.
• Amer­i­can Psy­cho (2000) – Mary Har­ron
  Per­haps the best por­trait out there on the mind­set of the 1%. You’ll nev­er lis­ten to Huey Lewis and the News in the same way.

Check out the full list here. And if you’re inter­est­ed in more, take a look at this sub­list – Female Direc­tors Present on the Jonathan Rosen­baum 1000 Essen­tials List.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch The Hitch-Hik­er by Ida Lupino (the Only Female Direc­tor of a 1950s Noir Film)

Alice Guy-Blaché: The First Female Direc­tor & the Cin­e­mat­ic Trail­blaz­er You Like­ly Nev­er Heard Of

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.

New Video Shows What May Be Michelangelo’s Lost & Now Found Bronze Sculptures

in Art | February 10th, 2015

We all know that Michelan­ge­lo sculpt­ed in mar­ble. What’s less well known is that he worked in bronze too. The his­tor­i­cal record shows that Michelan­ge­lo once made a David in bronze for a French aris­to­crat, and a bronze stat­ue of Pope Julius II. But the David dis­ap­peared dur­ing the French Rev­o­lu­tion, and the Julius was lat­er melt­ed down for mil­i­tary pur­pos­es in Italy. For years, schol­ars thought that Michelan­gelo’s bronze cre­ations were all irre­triev­ably lost to his­to­ry. And then came the big dis­cov­ery.

A team of inter­na­tion­al experts (from Cam­bridge, the Rijksmu­se­um and the Uni­ver­si­ty of War­wick) recent­ly gath­ered evi­dence sug­gest­ing that two bronze male nudes “are ear­ly works by Michelan­ge­lo, made just after he com­plet­ed the mar­ble David and as he was about to embark on the Sis­tine Chapel ceil­ing,” reports a Cam­bridge blog post. Although the stat­ues aren’t signed by Michelan­ge­lo, Prof Paul Joan­nides (Emer­i­tus Pro­fes­sor of Art His­to­ry at Cam­bridge) “con­nect­ed them to a draw­ing by one of Michelangelo’s appren­tices now in the Musée Fab­re, Mont­pel­li­er, France,” and it turns out that the draw­ing con­tains fig­ures that close­ly resem­ble the stat­ues. What’s more, Cam­bridge reports, the “bronzes were com­pared with oth­er works by Michelan­ge­lo and found to be very sim­i­lar in style and anato­my to his works of 1500–1510.” The Cam­bridge video above gives you a fur­ther intro­duc­tion to this impor­tant dis­cov­ery.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Michelangelo’s Hand­writ­ten 16th-Cen­tu­ry Gro­cery List

Take a 3D Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca and Oth­er Art-Adorned Vat­i­can Spaces

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Hand­writ­ten Resume (1482)

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

in Literature | February 9th, 2015

In a logo­cen­tric culture—as Jacques Der­ri­da defined it—such as has exist­ed in the West for hun­dreds of years, writ­ing occu­pies a hal­lowed space, and lit­er­ary or philo­soph­i­cal writ­ing all the more so. The rhythms of every­day speech, the ges­tures and sig­nif­i­cant looks that char­ac­ter­ize our quo­tid­i­an inter­ac­tions are deemed less impor­tant than the pre­sum­ably indeli­ble marks on the page. Of course, before the writ­ten word, or at least the print­ed word and wide­spread lit­er­a­cy, speech was pri­ma­ry, and no lit­er­ary cul­ture exist­ed with­out it. From philoso­phers con­duct­ing peri­patet­ic dia­logues, to priests recit­ing scrip­ture, to bards recit­ing poet­ry in tav­erns, the nuances of voice and ges­ture were insep­a­ra­ble from the text.

Of the many rev­o­lu­tion­ary qual­i­ties of the inter­net, one of them has been to restore to lit­er­a­ture its voice, as lit­er­ary read­ings (pre­vi­ous­ly the pre­serve of a priv­i­leged few able to attend spe­cial­ized events and con­fer­ences) become avail­able to all. Whether through Youtube video and audio or mp3, lovers of lit­er­a­ture around the world can access the voic­es and vis­ages of authors like Maya Angelou (top, read­ing “Still I Rise,” with some ad libs), whose total­ly dis­tinc­tive face and voice don’t sim­ply sup­ple­ment her work but seem to com­plete it. We can hear W.H. Auden him­self read “As I Walked Out One Evening” (above, from a 1937 record­ing) in his deep bari­tone. We can hear Sylvia Plath read “Ariel” (below) and many more poems from her final col­lec­tion of the same name.

We also have the plea­sure of hear­ing, and see­ing, oth­er read­ers inter­pret the work of authors we love, such as the per­fect con­flu­ence of text and voice in the Tom Waits’ read­ing of Charles Bukowski’s “The Laugh­ing Heart,” below. Oth­er notable poet­ry read­ings by some­one oth­er than the author include James Earl Jones’ ren­di­tion of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” and Allen Ginsberg’s reading—or singing, rather—of the poet­ry of William Blake. And while poet­ry should always be read aloud, it can be equal­ly rev­e­la­to­ry to hear great prose works read, by their authors and oth­ers.

In the list of 90 read­ings below, excerpt­ed from our col­lec­tion of 630 Free Audio Books, you can find works by Faulkn­er and Hem­ing­way, read by Faulkn­er and Hem­ing­way, and Melville’s Moby Dick, read by a host of celebri­ty voic­es. And much, much more. So take some time and recon­nect with the voic­es and faces of lit­er­a­ture, which are as impor­tant as the words they pro­duce. And if you know of any read­ings online that aren’t on our list, feel free to leave a link to them in the com­ments.

• Angelou, Maya – Still I Rise & On the Pulse of the Morn­ing (read by author) – YouTube
• Apol­li­naire, Guil­laume – Le pont Mirabeau (Read by author in 1913) – Free MP3
• Auden, W.H. - As I Walked Out One Evening (read by author) – YouTube
• Auster, Paul – Free MP3 – The Red Note­book (read by the author)
• Barthelme, Don­ald - “Con­cern­ing the Body­guard” (read by Salman Rushdie) – Free MP3
• Blake, William - Songs of Inno­cence and Songs of Expe­ri­ence, as read by Allen Gins­berg — Free Stream/MP3
• Borges, Jorge Luis – The Gospel Accord­ing to Mark (read by Paul Ther­oux) – Free MP3
• Brad­bury, Ray – If Only We Had Taller Been (read by the author) – YouTube

• Brad­bury, Ray – The Veldt (Read by Stephen Col­bert) – YouTube
• Brad­bury, Ray – Sto­ries Read by Leonard Nimoy – YouTube
• Brod­key, Harold – Spring Fugue (read by Jef­frey Eugenides) – Free MP3
• Brod­key, Harold – The State of Grace (read by Richard Ford ) – Free Stream
• Brown, Mar­garet Wise – Good Night Moon (Read by Susan Saran­don) – YouTube
• Bukows­ki, Charles – The Laugh­ing Heart (read by Tom Waits) – YouTube Audio
• Bukows­ki, Charles – The Crunch and Roll The Dice (read by Bono) – YouTube Audio
• Bukows­ki, Charles – The Secret to My Endurance (read by the author) – YouTube Audio
• Calvi­no, Ita­lo – Invis­i­ble Cities (excerpts read by Calvi­no) – Free Stream
• Car­roll, Lewis – Alice in Won­der­land – Alter­na­tive ver­sion read by Cory Doc­torow of Boing­Bo­ing
• Carv­er, Ray­mond - “Fat” (read by Anne Enright) – Free MP3
• Carv­er, Ray­mond – “The Stu­dents’ Wife (read by Richard Ford) – Free MP3
• Carv­er, Ray­mond – “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” (Read by Carv­er) – Free MP3
• Cheev­er, John – “The Death of Justi­na” (read by John Cheev­er) – Free Stream/Download
• Cheev­er, John ” The Enor­mous Radio” (read by Nathan Eng­lan­der) –Free Stream
• Cheev­er, John - “The Reunion” (read by Richard Ford) – Free MP3
• Cheev­er, John – “The Swim­mer” (read by Anne Enright) – Free MP3
• Cheev­er, John – “The Swim­mer” (read by Cheev­er) – Free Stream/Download
• Chabon, Michael – “S Angel” (read by author) – Free Stream/Download
• Coleridge, Samuel – Rime of the Ancient Mariner – Ver­sion read by Orson Welles
• Cum­mings, EE - Some­where I Have Nev­er Trav­elled – (read by author) – YouTube
• Cum­mings, EE - Any­one Lived in a Pret­ty How Town – (read by author) – YouTube
• Dan­ti­cat, Edwidge - Water Child (read by Junot Diaz) – Free MP3 – Free iTunes
• DeLillo’s, Don – “Baad­er-Mein­hof” (read by Chang-rae Lee) – MP3
• Dick­ens, Charles – A Christ­mas Car­ol (Read by Neil Gaiman) – Free Stream
• Faulkn­er, William – Faulkn­er Reads – Free Stream
• Fer­linghet­ti, Lawrence – Selec­tions from A Coney Island of the Mind (read by author) – Free MP3 – Free Stream
• Frost, Robert – Stop­ping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (read by author) – YouTube
• Frost, Robert – The Gift Out­right (read by author) – YouTube
• Gins­berg, Allen – A Super­mar­ket in Cal­i­for­nia (read by Gins­berg) – Free MP3
• Gins­berg, Allen – Amer­i­ca (read by Gins­berg) – Free YouTube Stream
• Gins­berg, Allen - Howl, A Strange New Cot­tage in Berke­ley, and Super­mar­ket in Cal­i­for­nia (read by Gins­berg) – Free MP3/Stream
• Gordimer, Nadine – “A Style of Her Own” and “The Bride­groom” (read by the author, 1961) – Free Stream/Download
• Gordimer, Nadine – “Loot” (read by author) – YouTube
• Hem­ing­way, Ernest – Ernest Hem­ing­way Reads Ernest Hem­ing­way –Free Stream
• Hem­ing­way, Ernest - Homage to Switzer­land (read by Julian Barnes) – Free MP3
• Hem­ing­way, Ernest – “In Harry’s Bar in Venice” (a short sto­ry read by Hem­ing­way: .au for­mat, .gsm for­mat, .ra for­mat)
• Hem­ing­way, Ernest – “The Snows of Kil­i­man­jaro” (read by Charleston Hes­ton) – Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4
• Joyce, James – “The Dead” (Read by Cyn­thia Nixon & Colum McCann) – Free Stream
• July, Miran­da - “Ron Spivey” (read by David Sedaris) – Free MP3
• Kaf­ka, Franz – “A Hunger Artist” (read by Hanif Kureishi) – Free MP3
• Kin­caid, Jamaica - “Fig­ures in the Dis­tance” (read by Chi­ma­man­da Ngozi Adichie) – Free Stream
• Kin­caid, Jamaica – “Girl” and “Wing­less” (read by Edwidge Dan­ti­cat) – Free Stream
• McCann, Colum – “Transat­lantic” (read by author) – Free MP3
• Melville, Her­man – Moby Dick read by Celebri­ties – Free iTunes – Sound­cloud – Big Read – More details
• Moore, Lor­rie – “Paper Loss­es” (read by Gary Shteyn­gart) – Free Stream
• Nabokov, Vladimir - My Russ­ian Edu­ca­tion (Read by Orhan Pamuk) – Free MP3 – Free iTunes
• O’Connor, Flan­nery – “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” (Read by author in 1959) – Stream/Download
• Oates, Joyce Car­ol - “Mas­tiff” (read by Louise Erdrich) – Free Stream
• Ozick, Cyn­thia – “The Shawl” (read by Joyce Car­ol Oates) – Free Stream
• Paley, Grace – “Love” (read by George Saun­ders) – Free Stream
• Plath, Sylvia – Ariel (read by author) – YouTube Stream
• Poe, Edgar Allan - The Raven (as read by Christo­pher Walken) – Free YouTube Audio
• Poe, Edgar Allan - The Raven (as read by James Earl Jones) – Free YouTube Audio
• Pound, Ezra – Ses­ti­na: Altaforte (read by author) – YouTube
• Pritch­ett, V.S. – The Res­cue (Read by Jonathan Lethem) – Free Stream
• Rich, Adri­enne – Mourn­ing Poem, Spring Thun­der, White Night and oth­er poems (read by author) – Free Stream/Download
• Rumi – Like This (read by Til­da Swin­ton) – YouTube
• Sara­m­a­go, José - “The Cen­taur” (Read by Nadine Gordimer) – Free MP3
• Seuss, Dr. – Green Eggs and Ham (read by Neil Gaiman) – YouTube
• Sex­ton, Anne – Wait­ing to Die (read by author) – YouTube
• Shake­speare, William – The Son­nets (read by Sir John Giel­gud) – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
• Shel­ley, Per­cy Bysshe – Ozy­man­dias (read by Bryan Cranston) – Free YouTube
• Singer, Isaac Bashe­vis – Dis­guised – Free MP3 (read by Nathan Eng­lan­der)
• Stevens, Wal­lace – “Cre­dences of Sum­mer” and “An Ordi­nary Evening in New Haven” (read by the author) – Free Stream/Download
• Thomas, Dylan – A Child’s Christ­mas in Wales (read by Thomas) –Youtube
• Thomas, Dylan – Do Not Go Gen­tle Into That Good Night (read by the author) – Free MP3/Stream
• Thomas, Dylan – Do Not Go Gen­tle Into That Good Night (read by the Sir Antho­ny Hop­kins) – Free YouTube
• Thomas, Dylan – The Wild West (read by the author) – Free MP3/Stream
• Thomas, Dylan – Under Milk Wood (read by the author) – Free MP3/Stream
• Updike, John - “Play­ing with Dyna­mite” (read by Roger Angell) – Free MP3
• Updike, John – “A & P.” (read by Alle­gra Good­man) – Free MP3
• Wal­lace, David Fos­ter - “Con­sid­er the Lob­ster” (read by DFW) – Free MP3
• Wal­lace, David Fos­ter - “The View from Mrs. Thompson’s” (read by DFW) – Free MP3
• Wel­ty, Eudo­ra - “Where Is the Voice Com­ing From?” (read by Joyce Car­ol Oates) (MP3)
• Whit­man, Walt – Song of Myself (read by James Earl Jones) – Free Stream/Download
• Wilde, Oscar – The Hap­py Prince read by Stephen Fry – YouTube
• Williams, Willam Car­los – The Red Wheel­bar­row, Tract, The Defec­tive Record, To a Poor Old Woman, A Coro­nal, To Elsie, The Wind Increas­es, Clas­sic Scene (read by poet 1954) – Free
• Wolff, Tobias – “Bul­let in the Brain” (read by T. Cor­aghes­san Boyle) (MP3)
• Wolff, Tobias – “The Night in Ques­tion” (read by Akhil Shar­ma) (MP3)
• Yeats, William But­ler – The Fid­dler of Dooney (read by the author) – Free MP3
• Yeats, William But­ler – The Song of the Old Moth­er (read by the author) Free MP3

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Crash Course on Lit­er­a­ture: Watch John Green’s Fun Intro­duc­tions to Gats­by, Catch­er in the Rye & Oth­er Clas­sics

Thug Notes Demys­ti­fies 60 Lit­er­ary Clas­sics (from Shake­speare to Gats­by) with a Fresh Urban Twist

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

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

Joni Mitchell’s Application for a Tenure Track Philosophy Position

in Comedy, Philosophy | February 9th, 2015

Image by Asy­lum Records (Bill­board page 2) [Pub­lic domain], via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Michael Stipe has a teach­ing gig at NYU. Lyn­da Bar­ry has one at UW-Madi­son. Sun Ra gave a clas­sic lec­ture at UC-Berke­ley. So why can’t we imag­ine Joni Mitchell land­ing a job at a uni­ver­si­ty too? That’s what Jedidi­ah Ander­son did, when he wrote a satir­i­cal piece over at McSweeney’s called “Joni Mitchell Applies for a Tenure Track Phi­los­o­phy Posi­tion.” It begins:

Dear Search Com­mit­tee:

I am apply­ing for the posi­tion of Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor in Phi­los­o­phy. I am an advanced doc­tor­al can­di­date in Phi­los­o­phy (with minors in Urban Stud­ies and Eng­lish), and expect to defend my dis­ser­ta­tion in May, 2015.

My dis­ser­ta­tion, Both Sides Now applies a bilat­er­al, hylo­mor­phic analy­sis to the phe­nom­e­non that is described by the sig­ni­fi­er “clouds.” Hav­ing been con­sti­tut­ed in West­ern dis­course both pos­i­tive­ly as “rows and flows of angel hair,” “ice cream cas­tles in the air,” “feath­er canyons every­where,” and neg­a­tive­ly as objects that exist sole­ly to obscure the sun, express rain and snow, and hin­der the achieve­ment of var­i­ous goals, we can con­clude that after the appli­ca­tion of this bilat­er­al, hylo­mor­phic analy­sis that due to these con­tra­dic­to­ry “up” and “down” epis­te­molo­gies of cloud tropes, the real­i­ty of clouds is some­how still under­stud­ied, hav­ing been ignored in favor of their Pla­ton­ic form/sign, and that we real­ly don’t “know” clouds at all.

You can read the rest of her “appli­ca­tion” here and then spend the evening dream­ing about tak­ing Joni’s class­es on Pla­to, Exis­ten­tial­ism, and Urban Devel­op­ment. I know I will.

You can find more great Joni Mitchell mate­r­i­al below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vin­tage Video of Joni Mitchell Per­form­ing in 1965 — Before She Was Even Named Joni Mitchell

James Tay­lor and Joni Mitchell, Live and Togeth­er (1970)

The Music, Art, and Life of Joni Mitchell Pre­sent­ed in a Superb 2003 Doc­u­men­tary

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

What Films Should Get Into The Criterion Collection? Video Series “Three Reasons” Makes the Case

in Film | February 9th, 2015

Most film fans I know have played this game: which movie, if you called the shots over there, would you bring into the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion? While the fun con­ver­sa­tions that result nec­es­sar­i­ly elide all the dif­fi­cul­ties — acquir­ing the rights, find­ing restor­able mate­ri­als, design, dis­tri­b­u­tion — of actu­al­ly get­ting a film onto Cri­te­ri­on’s ros­ter of high-qual­i­ty, fea­ture-inten­sive home video releas­es, they do illu­mi­nate one’s own cin­e­mat­ic val­ues, even if only with idle talk.

Japan-based film­mak­er, artist, design­er, and gal­lerist Robert Nishimu­ra plays the game too, but he does­n’t do it idly. On his blog, he fea­tures the high­ly con­vinc­ing DVD cas­es he’s designed for such dream Cri­te­ri­on releas­es as Kim Ki-young’s The House­maid, Akio Jissoji’s Life of a Court Lady, and Wern­er Her­zog’s Fitz­car­ral­do. He also has a Vimeo chan­nel called For Cri­te­ri­on Con­sid­er­a­tion, where he goes so far as to craft new “trail­ers” of the films he’d like to see in the Col­lec­tion, each offer­ing three rea­sons why they qual­i­fy. His pitch for Bar­ry Son­nen­feld’s 1997 Men in Black cites its sta­tus as a “galac­ti­cal­ly fun­ny block­buster,” visu­als enhanced by “Rick Bak­er’s spe­cial FX,” and a script even more enhanced with “Ed Solomon’s one-lin­ers.”

Evi­dent­ly a lover of less­er-seen Japan­ese pic­tures and the idio­syn­crat­ic qua­si-Hol­ly­wood releas­es of the 1970s (but then again, aren’t all cinephiles?), he’s also made videos argu­ing for films like Hiroshi Teshi­ga­hara’s Kobo Abe nov­el adap­ta­tion The Man With­out a Map (the log­i­cal fol­low-up to Cri­te­ri­on­s’s real box set of Teshi­ga­hara-Abe col­lab­o­ra­tions) and Michael Cimi­no’s faint­ly homo­erot­ic heist pic­ture Thun­der­bolt and Light­foot. And all the way on the oth­er end of the spec­trum from Men in Black, he advo­cates for the likes of Per­fumed Night­mare, Kid­lat Tahimik’s “play­ful cri­tique of Amer­i­can cul­tur­al dom­i­nance,” “exer­cise in mag­i­cal real­ism,” “semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal explo­ration of inno­cence,” and cor­ner­stone of inde­pen­dent Philip­pine cin­e­ma.

Nishimu­ra’s out­put of videos and cov­er designs seems to have slowed in recent years, and I hope for one expla­na­tion and one expla­na­tion only: that he’s spent the time nego­ti­at­ing a healthy salary from peo­ple at Cri­te­ri­on eager to hire him.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Slavoj Žižek Names His Favorite Films from The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion

Steve Buscemi’s Top 10 Film Picks (from The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion)

120 Artists Pick Their Top 10 Films in the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion

The Art of Restor­ing Clas­sic Films: Cri­te­ri­on Shows You How It Refreshed Two Hitch­cock Movies

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

All You Need is Love: The Keys to Happiness Revealed by a 75-Year Harvard Study

in Health, Life, Psychology | February 9th, 2015

The lat­est install­ment from PBS’ Brain­Craft video series intro­duces us to two sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies that teach us a thing or two about what brings us hap­pi­ness. One set of results comes from Dr. John Gottman’s Fam­i­ly Research Lab­o­ra­to­ry (a.k.a. the “Love Lab”); the oth­er from the Har­vard Grant Study, a 75-year study that has traced the lives and devel­op­ment of 268 Har­vard sopho­mores from the class­es of 1939–1944. Although the study focus­es on priv­i­leged white men (the demo­graph­ic that attend­ed Har­vard Col­lege dur­ing the 1930s and 40s), the Har­vard Grant Study has yield­ed con­clu­sions that apply to a broad­er pop­u­la­tion.

One of the longest-run­ning stud­ies of adult devel­op­ment, the study has found, for exam­ple, that alco­holism has some of the most ruinous effects on mar­riages, fam­i­ly finances and per­son­al health. Like­wise, it reveals that lib­er­als have sex much fur­ther into old age than their con­ser­v­a­tive peers.

But those aren’t the big take­aways — the con­clu­sions that talk about hap­pi­ness. If you watch the inter­view below with George Vail­lant, the long­time direc­tor of the study, you will hear him con­clude that hap­pi­ness isn’t about “con­form­ing, keep­ing up with the Jone­ses. It is about play­ing, and work­ing, and lov­ing. And lov­ing is prob­a­bly the most impor­tant. Hap­pi­ness is love.”

Accord­ing to Vail­lant, “warmth of rela­tion­ships through­out life have the great­est pos­i­tive impact on ‘life sat­is­fac­tion.’ ” When we have warm rela­tion­ships with our par­ents, spous­es, friends and fam­i­ly, we expe­ri­ence less dai­ly anx­i­ety and a greater sense of over­all plea­sure; we have bet­ter health (includ­ing low­er lev­els of demen­tia lat­er in life); and we’re more effec­tive at work and make more mon­ey.

Essen­tial­ly The Bea­t­les had it right, “All you need is love. Love is all you need.”

You can read more about the Har­vard study over at The Atlantic.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Guide to Hap­pi­ness: Alain de Bot­ton Shows How Six Great Philoso­phers Can Change Your Life

Take the ‘Hap­pi­ness Exper­i­ment’

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es

A Crash Course on Psy­chol­o­gy: A 30-Part Video Series from Hank Green

Rare Interview: Tim Curry Discusses The Rocky Horror Picture Show, During the Week of Its Release (1975)

in Film, Television | February 9th, 2015

A defin­ing role can be both bless­ing and curse. In August of 1975, the week the The Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show opened, its 29-year-old star, Tim Cur­ry gave an inter­view to STOIC, the Stu­dent Tele­vi­sion Of Impe­r­i­al Col­lege.

In between clips of Curry’s Frank-n-Furter sashay­ing through such des­tined-to-become cult favorites as “Sweet Trans­ves­tite” and “The Time Warp,” in fish­nets, mer­ry wid­ow, and maquil­lage designed by David Bowie’s per­son­al make­up artist, the actor enter­tained questions…in lus­cious black and white!

Kudos to the young inter­view­er, Mark Cald­well, for nev­er inter­rupt­ing or try­ing to elbow his way into the spot­light with jokey asides or dou­ble enten­dres. The reward is a seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion of the film­mak­ing process and the actor’s craft.

(Bear in mind that it would be at least a year until mid­night audi­ences at New York’s Waver­ly The­ater start­ed throw­ing toast, rice, and toi­let paper at the screen, thus ini­ti­at­ing an entire script’s worth of audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion.)

Hav­ing orig­i­nat­ed the role on the Lon­don stage (he audi­tioned with Lit­tle Richard’s “Tut­ti Frut­ti”) and reprised it in L.A., Cur­ry was clear­ly ready to put some space between him­self and his icon­ic cre­ation, announcing—correctly, as it turns out—that any sequels would have to pro­ceed with­out him.

Then he clammed up for three decades, refus­ing to dis­cuss his most icon­ic role until 2005, when he broke the silence dur­ing an inter­view on NPR’s Fresh Air .

It’s clear that Cur­ry saw the mak­ing of the film as a seri­ous busi­ness, but Rocky Hor­ror fans will find plen­ty of juicy morsels to feed their obses­sion. Even vir­gins will enjoy the sto­ry of Frank’s evolv­ing accent —from mid­dle Euro­pean to “Bel­gravia Host­ess with the Mostest.”

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

Watch 570 Million Years of Evolution on Earth in 60 Seconds

in Biology | February 8th, 2015

570 mil­lions years of evo­lu­tion. That’s a lot of ground to cov­er. And it could be like watch­ing paint dry. But not when it flies by in 60 sec­onds, with a groovy sound­track by I‑Konic. First come the arthro­pods. Next some friend­ly fish, all fol­lowed by land plants, fly­ing insects, amphib­ians, and rep­tiles. Way down the line, at the very end, the first humans arrive on the scene. But don’t blink, you might miss it.

To get a lit­tle more detail on how this all hap­pened, I’d sug­gest watch­ing Carl Sagan explain evo­lu­tion in a clas­sic 8‑minute ani­ma­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New Ani­mat­ed Web Series Makes the The­o­ry of Evo­lu­tion Easy to Under­stand

Richard Dawkins Explains Why There Was Nev­er a First Human Being

Free Online Biol­o­gy Cours­es

16,000 Pages of Charles Darwin’s Writ­ing on Evo­lu­tion Now Dig­i­tized and Avail­able Online

B.B. King Explains in an Animated Video Whether You Need to Endure Hardship to Play the Blues

in Music | February 6th, 2015

George Har­ri­son had a beloved gui­tar named Lucy. B.B. King has one named Lucille. Curi­ous, that.

Above, in a new ani­mat­ed video by Blank on Blank, B.B. explains the sto­ry behind the nam­ing of his leg­endary gui­tar, and then answers the big ques­tion: Do you real­ly need to endure hard times to play the blues?  No spoil­ers here.

The audio was record­ed in Sep­tem­ber, 1985 by Warn­er Bros. A&R man­ag­er Joe Smith. While writ­ing a book on the music indus­try, Smith taped inter­views with leg­endary fig­ures like Dave Brubeck, Lou Reed, Paul McCart­ney, Joan Baez, Her­bie Han­cock, David Bowie, George Har­ri­son, Yoko Ono, James Brown, Bo Did­dley, Jer­ry Gar­cia, Chris­tine McVie, Mick Jag­ger, Lin­da Ron­stadt and more. Each inter­view runs 30–60 good min­utes. They’re fas­ci­nat­ing to lis­ten to, and you can find them on iTunes and the web.

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:

Free Archive of Audio Inter­views with Rock, Jazz & Folk Leg­ends Now on iTunes

Maya Angelou Tells Studs Terkel How She Learned to Count Cards & Hus­tle in a New Ani­mat­ed Video

Blank on Blank Ani­ma­tions Revive Lost Inter­views with David Fos­ter Wal­lace, Jim Mor­ri­son & Dave Brubeck