Student Asks Noam Chomsky for Dating Advice

in Life, Philosophy | January 30th, 2014

Noam Chom­sky is a pret­ty unlike­ly celebri­ty. As a pre­em­i­nent anar­chist the­o­rist, his polit­i­cal writ­ing is full of pas­sion­ate inten­si­ty, but in his numer­ous pub­lic appear­ances, he con­forms much more to images asso­ci­at­ed with his day job as a pre­em­i­nent aca­d­e­m­ic and lin­guist. He’s very soft-spoken—I’ve nev­er heard him raise his voice above the reg­is­ter of polite cof­fee-shop conversation—and frumpy in that elder schol­ar kind of way: uncombed gray hair, an end­less sup­ply of sweaters and cor­duroy jack­ets…

So, yes, it’s amus­ing when, in the short clip above, a young Chom­sky fan asks the 85-year-old “father of mod­ern lin­guis­tics” for advice on how to talk to women. Chomsky’s non­plussed response is hon­est and heart­felt. He has noth­ing to offer in this regard, he says: “I got out of that busi­ness 70 years ago.” If it seems like Chomsky’s math is a lit­tle off—he was mar­ried in 1949—consider that he and his wife Car­ol met when they were both just five years old.

Theirs was a qui­et­ly charm­ing romance. Chom­sky, who has always pos­sessed an extra­or­di­nary abil­i­ty to keep his per­son­al, polit­i­cal, and pro­fes­sion­al lives sep­a­rate, did not speak much of their mar­riage until after Carol’s death in 2008. In the excerpt above from a Big Think inter­view short­ly after, Chom­sky tells a sto­ry of group of peas­ants in South­ern Colum­bia who plant­ed a for­est in his wife’s mem­o­ry. He’s also asked to define love. This time, he has a much more inter­est­ing response than his reply to the would-be pick up artist above: “I just know it’s—has an unbreak­able grip, but I can’t tell you what it is.  It’s just life’s emp­ty with­out it.”

via Crit­i­cal The­o­ry

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky Schools 9/11 Truther; Explains the Sci­ence of Mak­ing Cred­i­ble Claims

Film­mak­er Michel Gondry Presents an Ani­mat­ed Con­ver­sa­tion with Noam Chom­sky

Noam Chom­sky Spells Out the Pur­pose of Edu­ca­tion

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

Read Ezra Pound’s List of 23 “Don’ts” For Writing Poetry (1913)

in Poetry | January 30th, 2014

1922 image by Alvin Lang­don Coburn, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Ezra Pound was a key fig­ure in 20^th cen­tu­ry poet­ry. Not only did he demon­strate impres­sive poet­ic skill in his Can­tos; he also proved to be a cru­cial ear­ly sup­port­er of sev­er­al famous con­tem­po­raries, cham­pi­oning the likes of Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Ernest Hem­ing­way, and H.D.. Before deserved­ly being con­demned for his fas­cist pol­i­tics and anti­semitism, Pound estab­lished him­self as one of the lead­ing lit­er­ary crit­ics of his time. David Perkins, in A His­to­ry of Mod­ern Poet­ry, wrote, “Dur­ing a cru­cial decade in the his­to­ry of mod­ern lit­er­a­ture, approx­i­mate­ly 1912–1922, Pound was the most influ­en­tial and in some ways the best crit­ic of poet­ry in Eng­land or Amer­i­ca.”

Ear­ly in the 20^th cen­tu­ry, Pound helped found the Imag­ist poet­ry move­ment, which abid­ed by three key laws:

1. Direct treat­ment of the “thing” whether sub­jec­tive or objec­tive.

2. To use absolute­ly no word that does not con­tribute to the pre­sen­ta­tion.

3. As regard­ing rhythm: to com­pose in the sequence of the musi­cal phrase, not in sequence of a metronome.

In 1913, Pound wrote an essay enti­tled “A Few Don’ts.” Its rules, enu­mer­at­ed below, pro­vide young poets with a much-need­ed reminder to reign in their egos and apply them­selves assid­u­ous­ly to their craft.

In a nut­shell, the rules state that each verse should be lean and pur­pose­ful, with no frills or filler to pro­vide padding. They also empha­size the impor­tance of pos­sess­ing an aware­ness of the work of pre­vi­ous poets, and of using this under­stand­ing in the cre­ation of new work.

1. Pay no atten­tion to the crit­i­cism of men who have nev­er them­selves writ­ten a notable work. Con­sid­er the dis­crep­an­cies between the actu­al writ­ing of the Greek poets and drama­tists, and the the­o­ries of the Grae­co-Roman gram­mar­i­ans, con­coct­ed to explain their metres.
2. Use no super­flu­ous word, no adjec­tive which does not reveal some­thing.
3. Don’t use such an expres­sion as ‘dim lands of peace’. It dulls the image. It mix­es an abstrac­tion with the con­crete. It comes from the writer’s not real­iz­ing that the nat­ur­al object is always the ade­quate sym­bol.
4. Go in fear of abstrac­tions. Do not retell in mediocre verse what has already been done in good prose. Don’t think any intel­li­gent per­son is going to be deceived when you try to shirk all the dif­fi­cul­ties of the unspeak­ably dif­fi­cult art of good prose by chop­ping your com­po­si­tion into line lengths.
5. What the expert is tired of today the pub­lic will be tired of tomor­row. Don’t imag­ine that the art of poet­ry is any sim­pler than the art of music, or that you can please the expert before you have spent at least as much effort on the art of verse as an aver­age piano teacher spends on the art of music.
6. Be influ­enced by as many great artists as you can, but have the decen­cy either to acknowl­edge the debt out­right, or to try to con­ceal it. Don’t allow ‘influ­ence’ to mean mere­ly that you mop up the par­tic­u­lar dec­o­ra­tive vocab­u­lary of some one or two poets whom you hap­pen to admire. A Turk­ish war cor­re­spon­dent was recent­ly caught red-hand­ed bab­bling in his dis­patch­es of ‘dove-grey’ hills, or else it was ‘pearl-pale’, I can not remem­ber.
7. Use either no orna­ment or good orna­ment.
8. Let the can­di­date fill his mind with the finest cadences he can dis­cov­er, prefer­ably in a for­eign lan­guage, so that the mean­ing of the words may be less like­ly to divert his atten­tion from the move­ment; e.g. Sax­on charms, Hebridean Folk Songs, the verse of Dante, and the lyrics of Shake­speare — if he can dis­so­ci­ate the vocab­u­lary from the cadence. Let him dis­sect the lyrics of Goethe cold­ly into their com­po­nent sound val­ues, syl­la­bles long and short, stressed and unstressed, into vow­els and con­so­nants.
9. It is not nec­es­sary that a poem should rely on its music, but if it does rely on its music that music must be such as will delight the expert.
10. Let the neo­phyte know asso­nance and allit­er­a­tion, rhyme imme­di­ate and delayed, sim­ple and poly­phon­ic, as a musi­cian would expect to know har­mo­ny and coun­ter­point and all the minu­ti­ae of his craft. No time is too great to give to these mat­ters or to any one of them, even if the artist sel­dom have need of them.
11. Don’t imag­ine that a thing will ‘go’ in verse just because it’s too dull to go in prose.
12. Don’t be ‘viewy’ — leave that to the writ­ers of pret­ty lit­tle philo­soph­ic essays. Don’t be descrip­tive; remem­ber that the painter can describe a land­scape much bet­ter than you can, and that he has to know a deal more about it.
13. When Shake­speare talks of the ‘Dawn in rus­set man­tle clad’ he presents some­thing which the painter does not present. There is in this line of his noth­ing that one can call descrip­tion; he presents.
14. Con­sid­er the way of the sci­en­tists rather than the way of an adver­tis­ing agent for a new soap. The sci­en­tist does not expect to be acclaimed as a great sci­en­tist until he has dis­cov­ered some­thing. He begins by learn­ing what has been dis­cov­ered already. He goes from that point onward. He does not bank on being a charm­ing fel­low per­son­al­ly. He does not expect his friends to applaud the results of his fresh­man class work. Fresh­men in poet­ry are unfor­tu­nate­ly not con­fined to a def­i­nite and rec­og­niz­able class room. They are ‘all over the shop’. Is it any won­der ‘the pub­lic is indif­fer­ent to poet­ry?’
15. Don’t chop your stuff into sep­a­rate iambs. Don’t make each line stop dead at the end and then begin every next line with a heave. Let the begin­ning of the next line catch the rise of the rhythm wave, unless you want a def­i­nite longish pause. In short, behave as a musi­cian, a good musi­cian, when deal­ing with that phase of your art which has exact par­al­lels in music. The same laws gov­ern, and you are bound by no oth­ers.
16. Nat­u­ral­ly, your rhyth­mic struc­ture should not destroy the shape of your words, or their nat­ur­al sound, or their mean­ing. It is improb­a­ble that, at the start, you will he able to get a rhythm-struc­ture strong enough to affect them very much, though you may fall a vic­tim to all sorts of false stop­ping due to line ends, and caesurae.
17. The Musi­cian can rely on pitch and the vol­ume of the orches­tra. You can not. The term har­mo­ny is mis­ap­plied in poet­ry; it refers to simul­ta­ne­ous sounds of dif­fer­ent pitch. There is, how­ev­er, in the best verse a sort of residue of sound which remains in the ear of the hear­er and acts more or less as an organ-base.
18. A rhyme must have in it some slight ele­ment of sur­prise if it is to give plea­sure, it need not be bizarre or curi­ous, but it must be well used if used at all.
19. That part of your poet­ry which strikes upon the imag­i­na­tive eye of the read­er will lose noth­ing by trans­la­tion into a for­eign tongue; that which appeals to the ear can reach only those who take it in the orig­i­nal.
20. Con­sid­er the def­i­nite­ness of Dan­te’s pre­sen­ta­tion, as com­pared with Mil­ton’s rhetoric. Read as much of Wordsworth as does not seem too unut­ter­ably dull. If you want the gist of the mat­ter go to Sap­pho, Cat­ul­lus, Vil­lon, Heine when he is in the vein, Gau­ti­er when he is not too frigid; or, if you have not the tongues, seek out the leisure­ly Chaucer. Good prose will do you no harm, and there is good dis­ci­pline to be had by try­ing to write it.
21. Trans­la­tion is like­wise good train­ing, if you find that your orig­i­nal mat­ter ‘wob­bles’ when you try to rewrite it. The mean­ing of the poem to be trans­lat­ed can not ‘wob­ble’.
22. If you are using a sym­met­ri­cal form, don’t put in what you want to say and then fill up the remain­ing vac­u­ums with slush.
23. Don’t mess up the per­cep­tion of one sense by try­ing to define it in terms of anoth­er. This is usu­al­ly only the result of being too lazy to find the exact word. To this clause there are pos­si­bly excep­tions.

To read Pound’s com­plete essay, along­side sev­er­al oth­er works of his crit­i­cism, head over to Poet­ry Foun­da­tion.

Texts and read­ings by Pound can be found in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tions.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Ezra Pound Read From His “Can­tos,” Some of the Great Poet­ic Works of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

Ezra Pound’s Fiery 1939 Read­ing of His Ear­ly Poem, ‘Ses­ti­na: Altaforte’

Pier Pao­lo Pasoli­ni Talks and Reads Poet­ry with Ezra Pound (1967)

Ernest Hem­ing­way Writes of His Fas­cist Friend Ezra Pound: “He Deserves Pun­ish­ment and Dis­grace” (1943)

Free Online Astronomy Courses

in | January 29th, 2014

Get free Astron­o­my cours­es online from the world’s lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties.  You can down­load these audio & video cours­es straight to your com­put­er or mp3 play­er. For more online cours­es, vis­it our com­plete col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

• Astro­bi­ol­o­gy and Space Explo­ration — Free iTunes Video — Free Online Video — Lynn Roth­schild, Stan­ford
• Explor­ing Black Holes: Gen­er­al Rel­a­tiv­i­ty & Astro­physics — Free Online Video — Course Info — Edmund Bertschinger, MIT
• From Chem­istry to Life — Web Video — Dim­i­tar D. Sas­selov, World Sci­ence U/Harvard
• Fron­tiers and Con­tro­ver­sies in Astro­physics - Free Online Video — Free iTunes Audio — Free iTunes Video — Course Mate­ri­als — Charles Bai­lyn, Yale
• Hunt­ing for Life in the Uni­verse — Free Online Video — James Bul­lock, UC Irvine
• Intro­duc­tion to Astro­physics — Free Online Audio — Joshua Bloom, UC Berke­ley
• Intro­duc­tion to Cos­mol­o­gy — Free Online Video - James Bul­lock, UC Irvine
• Intro­duc­tion to Gen­er­al Astron­o­my — Free Online Audio — Alex Fil­ip­penko, UC Berke­ley
• Intro­duc­tion to Gen­er­al Astron­o­my — Free Online Audio —  Joshua Bloom, UC Berke­ley
• Intro­duc­tion Plan­e­tary Sci­ence and Astron­o­my — Free Online Video — Bruce Betts, Plan­e­tary Soci­ety
• Intro­duc­tion to Solar Sys­tem Astron­o­my - Free iTunes Video — Richard Pogge, Ohio State
• Stars, Galax­ies and the Uni­verse — Free iTunes Audio — Richard Pogge, Ohio State
• Life in the Uni­verse — Free Online Audio — Richard Pogge, Ohio State
• Sur­vey of Astron­o­my — Free Online Video — Becky Bak­er, Mis­souri State
• The Accel­er­at­ing Uni­verse — Free Online Video — Adam Riess, Johns Hopkins/World Sci­ence U
• The Plan­ets (Christ­mas Lec­tures for Kids) — Free Online Lec­tures — Carl Sagan, Roy­al Insti­tu­tion

For a com­plete list of online cours­es, please vis­it our com­plete col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

For a list of online cer­tifi­cate pro­grams, vis­it 200 Online Cer­tifi­cate & Micro­cre­den­tial Pro­grams from Lead­ing Uni­ver­si­ties & Com­pa­nies, which fea­tures pro­grams from our part­ners Cours­era, Udac­i­ty, Future­Learn and edX.

And if you’re inter­est­ed in Online Mini-Mas­ters and Mas­ter’s Degrees pro­grams from uni­ver­si­ties, see our col­lec­tion: Online Degrees & Mini Degrees: Explore Mas­ters, Mini Mas­ters, Bach­e­lors & Mini Bach­e­lors from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Environment & Natural Resources: Free Online Courses

in | January 29th, 2014

Get free online cours­es on the Envi­ron­ment & Nat­ur­al Resources from the world’s lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties.  You can down­load these audio & video cours­es straight to your com­put­er or mp3 play­er. For more online cours­es, vis­it our com­plete col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

• Adap­ta­tion to Cli­mate Change — Free iTunes Video — Char­lie Ken­nel, Cam­bridge
• Aus­tralian Envi­ron­men­tal His­to­ry — Free iTunes Audio — Richard Broome & Katie Holmes, La Trobe Uni­ver­si­­ty-Aus­­tralia
• Blue Plan­et: Intro­duc­tion to Oceanog­ra­phy - Free Online Video — Edwin Schauble, UCLA
• Edu­ca­tion for Sus­tain­able Liv­ing: Envi­ron­ment — Free Online Video — Mul­ti­ple profs, UCLA
• Envi­ron­men­tal Eco­nom­ics & Pol­i­cy — Free Online Video — David Zet­land, UC Berke­ley
• Envi­ron­men­tal Law and Pol­i­cy - Free Online Video — Bob Infe­lise, UC Berke­ley, UC Berke­ley
• Envi­ron­men­tal Pol­i­tics and Law - Free Online Video — Free iTunes Video — Free iTunes Audio — Free Video & Course Mate­ri­als — John P. War­go, Yale
• Food and the Envi­ron­ment — Free Online Audio — Nathan Sayre, UC Berke­ley
• Glob­al Warm­ing: Under­stand­ing the Fore­cast - Free Online Videos — David Archer, Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go
• How Cli­mate Works — Free Online Video — Mul­ti­ple Profs, Prince­ton
• Intro­duc­tion to Lit­er­a­ture and the Envi­ron­ment — Free Online Video — Ken Hilt­ner, Prince­ton
• Mit­i­gat­ing Agri­cul­ture’s Impact — Free Online Video —  Gor­don Geballe, Yale
• Oceans in Per­il — Free Online Video — Sylvia Ear­le, Mis­sion Blue/World Sci­ence U
• On Thin Ice: Cli­mate Change and the Cryos­phere — Free Online Video + Course Info — Free Online Video — Julie Fer­gu­son, UC Irvine
• Our Earth­’s Future — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Amer­i­can Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry
• Radar — Free iTunes Video — Kevin Kloe­sel, Uni­ver­si­ty of Okla­homa
• Sus­tain­able Liv­ing — Free Online Video — Mul­ti­ple profs, UCLA
• Syn­thet­ic Biology’s Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion — Free Online Video — Drew Endy, Stanford/World Sci­ence U
• The Atmos­phere, the Ocean, and Envi­ron­men­tal Change — Free Online Video — Free iTunes Audio — Free Online Video & Course Info — Ronald B. Smith, Yale
• The Hab­it­able Plan­et: A Sys­tems Approach to Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence — Free Online Video — Harvard/Smithsonian
• Tip­ping Points: Cli­mate Change and Soci­ety — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Uni­ver­si­ty of Exeter
• Woods Ener­gy Sem­i­nar — Free Online Video — Mul­ti­ple Pro­fes­sors, Stan­ford

For a com­plete list of online cours­es, please vis­it our com­plete col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

For a list of online cer­tifi­cate pro­grams, vis­it 200 Online Cer­tifi­cate & Micro­cre­den­tial Pro­grams from Lead­ing Uni­ver­si­ties & Com­pa­nies, which fea­tures pro­grams from our part­ners Cours­era, Udac­i­ty, Future­Learn and edX.

And if you’re inter­est­ed in Online Mini-Mas­ters and Mas­ter’s Degrees pro­grams from uni­ver­si­ties, see our col­lec­tion: Online Degrees & Mini Degrees: Explore Mas­ters, Mini Mas­ters, Bach­e­lors & Mini Bach­e­lors from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Learn Latin, Old English, Sanskrit, Classical Greek & Other Ancient Languages in 10 Lessons

in Books, Language Lessons | January 29th, 2014

I receive week­ly reminders of my lin­guis­tic igno­rance when­ev­er I read any­thing by authors flu­ent in Latin. How could I not, when­ev­er Clive James starts to pon­tif­i­cate on the great­ness of, say, Tac­i­tus?

“For stu­dents acquir­ing Latin in adult life, the lan­guage is most eas­i­ly approached through those his­to­ri­ans who real­ly wrote chron­i­cles — Cor­nelius Nepos, Sal­lust, Sue­to­nius and Livy — but with the His­to­ries of Tac­i­tus you get the best rea­son for approach­ing it at all… What Sainte-Beuve said of Mon­taigne — that his prose is like one con­tin­u­ous epi­gram — is even more true of Tac­i­tus.”

Fan­tas­tic! So, which trans­la­tion should I read?

“There are innu­mer­able trans­la­tions but the orig­i­nal gives you [Tac­i­tus]’ unri­valled pow­ers of com­pres­sion.”

As with Latin clas­sics, so with oth­er Indo-Euro­pean lan­guage texts, includ­ing Beowulf, orig­i­nal­ly in Old Eng­lish, Homer’s Ili­ad and Odyssey, in Clas­si­cal Greek, and the ancient Vedic hymns of the Rigve­da, in San­skrit.

For those will­ing to take up the chal­lenge of read­ing these canon­ic texts in their orig­i­nal form, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas’ Lin­guis­tics Research Cen­ter pro­vides an excel­lent resource. In addi­tion to host­ing a mul­ti­tude of Indo-Euro­pean vol­umes in their entire­ty, the LRC has made 10-les­son crash cours­es, devel­oped by sev­er­al UT-Austin aca­d­e­mics. Lessons include a brief guide to the alpha­bet, back­ground knowl­edge on the lan­guage’s devel­op­ment, and a gram­mar guide, all  avail­able for the fol­low­ing lan­guages:

• Alban­ian
• Armen­ian
• Baltic
• Old Eng­lish
• Old French
• Goth­ic
• Greek (Clas­si­cal)
• Greek (New Tes­ta­ment)
• Hit­tite
• Old Iran­ian
• Old Irish
• Latin
• Old Norse
• Old Russ­ian
• Vedic San­skrit
• Old Slavon­ic
• Tochar­i­an

Best of all, lessons are based on sem­i­nal texts from each lan­guage: Latin lessons rely on Tac­i­tus’ Ger­ma­nia, Livy’s His­to­ry of Rome, and Virgil’s Aeneid, while Homer, Hesiod’s Works and Days, and Plato’s Repub­lic fea­ture promi­nent­ly in the Clas­si­cal Greek class­es. Stu­dents progress through each les­son by read­ing the orig­i­nal pas­sages, and using the pro­vid­ed guides to trans­late them to Eng­lish.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

Hear Homer’s Ili­ad Read in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

Hear The Epic of Gil­gamesh Read in the Orig­i­nal Akka­di­an, the Lan­guage of Mesopotamia

The Tom Waits Map: A Mapping of Every Place Waits Has Sung About, From L.A. to Africa’s Jungles

in Maps, Music | January 29th, 2014

“And what becomes of all the lit­tle boys who nev­er comb their hair? They’re lined up all around the block, on the Nick­el over there.” So sings Tom Waits on 1980’s “On the Nick­el,” which he orig­i­nal­ly com­posed for Ralph Wait­e’s epony­mous fea­ture film, a sto­ry of shame, degra­da­tion, and good times in the sketchi­est part of down­town Los Ange­les, through which runs 5th Street — the “Nick­el” of the title. That part of town has man­aged an aston­ish­ing cleanup since 1980 (then again, most parts of town have, includ­ing the once-seething cor­ner ref­er­enced by Heartat­tack and Vine, the title of Waits’ album from that year) to the point that you’ll now find, just off 5th, the new-wave retro, hip­ster-friend­ly Nick­el Din­er: a favorite eatery of mine, inci­den­tal­ly, but hard­ly one describ­able with Waits’ sig­na­ture rasp, a force­ful­ly resigned instru­ment tuned to evoke the clas­si­cal­ly, near-mytho­log­i­cal­ly ragged Amer­i­can life.

Still, you can find the old Nick­el on The Tom Waits Map, which marks out all the lyri­cal­ly iden­ti­fi­able places in Waits’ Amer­i­ca, from Min­neapo­lis’ 9th Street (“Hey Char­lie, I’m preg­nant and liv­ing on the 9th street,” goes “Christ­mas Card From A Hook­er In Min­neapo­lis”) to the state of Ida­ho (“Dan­ny says we got­ta go, got­ta go to Ida­ho, but we can’t go surf­ing ’cause it’s 20 below,” on “Dan­ny Says”).

We may think of Waits’ artis­tic per­sona as a cer­tain low­er slice of Amer­i­ca made song, but this map, when zoomed out to a glob­al lev­el, reveals ref­er­ences to many exot­ic lands, as when he sings about “a Hong Kong driz­zle on Cuban heels,” from the per­spec­tive of a char­ac­ter who “drank with all the Chi­na­men, walked the sew­ers of Paris” and of “Radion the human tor­so, deep from the jun­gles of Africa.”

The Tom Waits map itself, in fact, comes from an obvi­ous­ly die-hard Swedish fan by the name of Jonas Nord­ström. As he and the rest of the Waits faith­ful know, the man does­n’t just speak to an askew sen­si­bil­i­ty in Amer­i­ca; he speaks to askew sen­si­bil­i­ties all through­out human­i­ty.

via @sheerly

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:

Watch Big Time, the Con­cert Film Cap­tur­ing Tom Waits on His Best Tour Ever (1988)

Tom Waits’ Clas­sic Appear­ance on Aus­tralian TV, 1979

Tom Waits Reads Charles Bukows­ki

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

Quentin Tarantino & Steve Buscemi Rehearse Scenes for Reservoir Dogs in 1991 (NSFW)

in Film | January 29th, 2014

Think about the actors and direc­tors who stood as pil­lars of the 1990s “indiewood” move­ment, and the dis­tinc­tive images of Quentin Taran­ti­no and Steve Busce­mi will sure­ly cross your mind. Both deliv­ered much of inter­est in that cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly fruit­ful decade. Busce­mi, whom Roger Ebert deemed “the house act of Amer­i­can inde­pen­dent films,” played high­ly mem­o­rable roles in movies like Alexan­dre Rock­well’s In the Soup, Tom DiCil­lo’s Liv­ing in Obliv­ion, and the Coen broth­ers’ Far­go and The Big Lebows­ki. Taran­ti­no direct­ed three fea­tures that need no intro­duc­tion, the first of which, 1991’s Reser­voir Dogs, brought them togeth­er. In the clip above, you can watch Taran­ti­no and Buscemi’s video­taped rehearsal ses­sions, where­in, among oth­er things, they work out their respec­tive char­ac­ters, the would-be dia­mond thieves Mr. Brown and Mr. Pink.

Before Reser­voir Dogs, Taran­ti­no had attempt­ed only the incom­plete My Best Friend’s Birth­day. Before shoot­ing what would become his first fin­ished movie for real, he put togeth­er mock-ups of these scenes at the Sun­dance Insti­tute Direc­tor’s Work­shop and Lab, which then sub­ject­ed them to frank eval­u­a­tions from a rotat­ing pan­el of vet­er­an film­mak­ers. As much as we enjoy his act­ing, let’s not for­get his own con­tri­bu­tions as a direc­tor; his 1996 debut Trees Lounge, in which he also stars, eas­i­ly ranks among the finest prod­ucts of that era’s inde­pen­dent cin­e­ma. And as for Taran­ti­no’s own sub­se­quent for­ays into act­ing… well, nobody can argue that they don’t enter­tain.

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Best of Quentin Taran­ti­no: Cel­e­brat­ing the Director’s 50th Birth­day with our Favorite Videos

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

Kansas City Con­fi­den­tial: Did This 1952 Noir Film Inspire Quentin Tarantino’s Reser­voir Dogs?

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

Watch Documentaries on the Making of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here

in Music | January 29th, 2014

Pink Floyd had to find its way again after found­ing singer Syd Bar­rett had a men­tal break­down and left the band in 1968. The new group became intro­spec­tive, explor­ing a range of effects and sound­scapes that increas­ing­ly trend­ed toward (or invent­ed) New Age music. For exam­ple the open­ing instru­men­tal, “Shine On You Crazy Dia­mond (Part 1)” from 1975’s Wish You Were Here sounds for all the world like Van­ge­lis. At this point in their career, the band seemed like it would be per­fect­ly at home scor­ing sci-fi films, which—given the gold­en age of far out space-glam futur­ism that was the 1970s—I con­sid­er a won­der­ful thing. What this also means how­ev­er, is that Wish You Were Here is an album short on songs, fea­tur­ing only five prop­er­ly list­ed, though the first and last tracks are over ten minute long rock operettas.

Musi­cal­ly, it’s a tremen­dous­ly accom­plished piece of work, lush and expan­sive but curi­ous­ly restrained. The cen­ter­piece, “Have a Cig­ar”— sure­ly a pre­cur­sor of bit­ter show­biz rant dis­guised as dou­ble con­cept album, The Wall—is in fact sung by a ringer, Roy Harp­er. (The only oth­er time the band fea­tured a guest vocal­ist was on the soar­ing, word­less “Great Gig in the Sky” from the pre­vi­ous album, Dark Side of the Moon.) Though the col­lab­o­ra­tion was a fluke—Harper sim­ply hap­pened to be record­ing in the next stu­dio over—his pres­ence seems essen­tial in hind­sight. The band were big fans of Harper’s, an eccen­tric folk singer who has released 22 albums to date. It’s easy to see why. He’s like a psy­che­del­ic British Neil Young, an artist whom, I would argue, some­times has a lot in com­mon with Pink Floyd, such as a will­ing­ness to release albums almost ful­ly com­posed of extend­ed jams.

Wish You Were Here was writ­ten around the song “Shine on You Crazy Dia­mond,” an extend­ed jam bro­ken into two extend­ed sequences that book­end the album. The song is about their trag­i­cal­ly befud­dled for­mer singer, and the album has some of the sad­dest lyrics in the band’s oeu­vre, which I sup­pose says quite a lot (I attend­ed many an ado­les­cent par­ty where someone—yes, some­times that some­one was me—picked up the acoustic gui­tar and led a maudlin sin­ga­long of the title track.) Fans of the band will need no fur­ther per­suad­ing to watch the above doc­u­men­tary about the mak­ing of Wish You Were Here, but if my tout­ing does­n’t sway you, con­sid­er it then a rare oppor­tu­ni­ty to see some of the most tal­ent­ed musi­cians of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry at work, shin­ing even into their very Eng­lish old­er years (though rarely in the same room), with a dig­ni­ty and ded­i­ca­tion that is dif­fi­cult to find in mod­ern pop music. I say this with full aware­ness of how cranky it may sound, but so be it. They don’t make bands like this any­more.

Peo­ple do still occa­sion­al­ly make records like Pink Floyd’s, espe­cial­ly like 1973’s Dark Side of the Moon—which more or less per­fect­ed the sound of space rock—but no one has ever made one so per­fect­ly real­ized. And yet if asked to choose between that album and Wish You Were Here, I could not do it. They are far too dif­fer­ent in their approach­es. In the Mak­ing of Dark Side of the Moon doc­u­men­tary, Roger Waters char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly says that Dark Side was made at a time when the band “still had a com­mon goal—that is to become rich and famous.” And for all its acid satire of wealth and fame and its often mor­bid themes, it’s the sound of a band full of youth­ful self-con­fi­dence and ambi­tion, where the follow-up’s orches­tral pieces speak of deep­er and sad­der realms.

The songs on Dark Side of the Moon were part­ly fin­ished live as the band debuted exper­i­men­tal ver­sions of the songs in a 1972 tour, and the album’s suc­cess the fol­low­ing year saw the band real­ize their dreams. Pink Floyd became a sta­di­um act overnight. One can imag­ine the toll the Dark Side of the Moon tour­ing took on the band, who—despite their renown for stage spectacles—have always seemed like very retir­ing indi­vid­u­als, except for the fre­quent­ly grandiose Waters.

Waters has tak­en a lot of flack for his part in the long­stand­ing ani­mos­i­ty between him­self and co-leader, gui­tarist David Gilmour, but see­ing him mas­ter­mind Dark Side of the Moon—through ret­ro­spec­tive inter­views mainly—reminds us of what an enor­mous tal­ent he had. Speak­ing of retir­ing per­son­al­i­ties, Waters, for a time the band’s pri­ma­ry lyri­cist, penned the unfor­get­table line, “hang­ing on in qui­et des­per­a­tion is the Eng­lish way” from “Time”—a line cribbed from Thore­au but that could have been writ­ten by Eve­lyn Waugh or Som­er­set Maugh­am, says gui­tarist Nigel Williamson. It’s a “descrip­tion of the Eng­lish char­ac­ter,” says Williamson, that “permeate[s] the whole record, and indeed the whole of Pink Floyd’s career.”

H/T and thanks goes to @BrainPicker for send­ing the top film our way.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Syd Bar­rett: Under Review, a Full Doc­u­men­tary About Pink Floyd’s Bril­liant and Trou­bled Founder

Dark Side of the Rain­bow: Pink Floyd Meets The Wiz­ard of Oz in One of the Ear­li­est Mash-Ups

Watch Pink Floyd Play Live in the Ruins of Pom­peii (1972)

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

David Foster Wallace Talks About Literature (and More) in an Internet Chatroom: Read the 1996 Transcript

in Books, Technology | January 28th, 2014

Reddit’s Ask Me Any­thing (AMA) series, where users get the chance to pose ques­tions to the likes of Neil deGrasse Tyson, Stephen King, and Bill Nye the Sci­ence Guy, pro­vides a sur­pris­ing­ly sim­ple way to inter­act with celebri­ties. Before Reddit’s arrival in 2005, how­ev­er, real-time exchanges between your gar­den-vari­ety Inter­net user and famous per­son­al­i­ties were occa­sion­al­ly con­duct­ed in Inter­net cha­t­rooms. One such ear­ly case appears to be a chat between the read­ers of WORD Mag­a­zine and David Fos­ter Wal­lace (read 30 of his essays free online), which seems to have tak­en place in May of 1996.

If AMAs are an order­ly, if vast, Q & A ses­sion, this chat is more like a boozy group meet­ing with your favorite Eng­lish lit pro­fes­sor in a smoky bar. (Read the tran­script here.) Wal­lace, using the han­dle “dfw,” is on a refresh­ing­ly lev­el field with the oth­er chat par­tic­i­pants, and the con­ver­sa­tion nat­u­ral­ly drifts from one top­ic to anoth­er. Things, as they often do, begin with a bit of ban­ter:

dfw: I’ve had some unpleas­ant nick­naames and monikers in my time, but nobody’s ever hung “fos­ty” on me before.

Keats: You know, I still think it should be spelled Fos­tie, or Fos­tey.
Keats: Fos­ty looks too much like “Frosty” and “sty” to me.

Keats: And makes me think of eye­balls packed in ice.

dfw: “Sty” as in an impact­ed eye­lash or a pig­pen, you mean?

Keats: Yeah. Is that what a sty as in “sty in your eye” is?

Marisa: I used to think the word “sty” was pro­nounced “stee”.

Keats: I had no idea exact­ly, just an unpleas­ant feel­ing about it.

dfw: Yes. Mas­sive­ly painful and embar­rass­ing, too. Like a car­bun­cle on the exact tip of your nose — that sort of thing.

Keats: I used to think the word “trough” was pro­nounced “troff.”

Keats: You know, I hap­pen to have a car­bun­cle on the tip of my nose right now.

Keats: Except it’s not a car­bun­cle, it’s more like a welt. It’s still embar­rass­ing.

dfw: In my very first sem­i­nar in col­lege, I pro­nounced facade “fakade.” The mem­o­ry’s still fresh and raw.

Soon, things take a turn for the seri­ous, and read­ers begin to ask Wal­lace about irony:

dfw: I don’t think irony’s meant to syn­er­gize with any­thing as heart­felt as sad­ness. I think the main func­tion of con­tem­po­rary irony is to pro­tect the speak­er from being inter­pret­ed as naive or sen­ti­men­tal.

Marisa: Why are peo­ple afraid to be seen as naive and sen­ti­men­tal?

dfw: Marisa: I think that’s a very deep, very hard ques­tion. One answer is that com­mer­cial com­e­dy’s often set up to fea­ture an iro­nist mak­ing dev­as­tat­ing sport of some­one who’s naive or sen­ti­men­tal or pre­ten­tious or pompous.

Keats: I’m start­ing to see a lot of irony in Hol­ly­wood and in adver­tis­ing, but its func­tion seems to be to let them talk out of both sides of their mouths.

dfw: Keats: adver­tis­ing that makes fun of itself is so pow­er­ful because it implic­it­ly con­grat­u­lates both itself and the view­er (for mak­ing the joke and get­ting the joke, respec­tive­ly).

Wal­lace also drops a few men­tions of some of his favorite authors:

DaleK: Mr. Wal­lace, I’m curious…who among cur­rent nov­el­ists do you find the most inter­est­ing?

dfw: Dalek — DeLil­lo, Ozick, R. Pow­ers, AM Homes, Denis John­son, David Mark­son, (old) JA Phillips and Louise Erdrich.

While we can’t con­clu­sive­ly con­firm that this was indeed the real DFW con­duct­ing the chat, it’s hard to deny that “dfw” sounds very much like the author. Cer­tain­ly, the com­plete exchange is as much fun to read for its mid-90s inter­net cha­t­room nos­tal­gia as it is for Wallace’s thoughts on irony, Infi­nite Jest, and the sound of one hand clap­ping. The whole tran­script is avail­able here.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web

David Fos­ter Wallace’s Love of Lan­guage Revealed by the Books in His Per­son­al Library

The David Fos­ter Wal­lace Audio Archive: A Lit­tle Gift For the Novelist’s 50th Birth­day

David Lynch’s Perfume Ads Based on the Works of Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald & D.H. Lawrence

in Film | January 28th, 2014

As we wrote last week, David Lynch is not only one of the great cin­e­mat­ic spe­lunk­ers of the uncon­scious, cre­at­ing images and sto­ry­lines that have dis­turbed movie­go­ers for almost four decades, but he’s also had a suc­cess­ful run as a com­mer­cial direc­tor, mak­ing ads for among oth­er com­pa­nies Alka-Seltzer, Bar­il­la Pas­ta and Geor­gia Cof­fee.

In 1988, fresh off his suc­cess with Blue Vel­vet and just before he start­ed pro­duc­tion on his land­mark TV series Twin Peaks, he made his first com­mer­cials — a quar­tet of adver­tise­ments for Calvin Klein’s per­fume Obses­sion fea­tur­ing pas­sages from such lit­er­ary titans as F. Scott Fitzger­ald, D.H. Lawrence and Ernest Hem­ing­way. (Lynch’s ad fea­tur­ing Gus­tave Flaubert is mys­te­ri­ous­ly unavail­able on Youtube.)

The com­mer­cials have all the pre­ten­sion, the lus­cious black and white pho­tog­ra­phy and the vacant-eyed beau­ti­ful peo­ple that you might expect from a Calvin Klein ad. Yet they also show glim­mers of Lynch’s aes­thet­ic – a noirish, dream-like tone, an odd­ly framed close up, a fond­ness for flash­ing lights. Lynch dialed down the weird to serve the text. The result is far more roman­tic and beau­ti­ful than you might expect from the direc­tor. If you’re hop­ing to see a David Lynch com­mer­cial that will give night­mares, check this one out instead.

The ad for F. Scott Fitzger­ald, which you can see above, uses one of the more famous pas­sages from The Great Gats­by.

He knew that when he kissed this girl, and for­ev­er wed his unut­ter­able visions to her per­ish­able breath, his mind would nev­er romp again like the mind of God. So he wait­ed, lis­ten­ing for a moment longer to the tun­ing-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blos­somed for him like a flower and the incar­na­tion was com­plete.

Sharp-eyed view­ers might have caught that the ad stars future Oscar-win­ning actor Beni­cio Del Toro and Heather Gra­ham, who would lat­er appear in Twin Peaks. The com­mer­cial dis­solves back and forth between Del Toro and Gra­ham until the inevitable kiss when the ad cuts, with sur­pris­ing­ly lit­er­al­ness, to a bloom­ing flower.

The D.H. Lawrence ad uses a quo­ta­tion from Women in Love:

Her fin­gers went over the mould of his face, over his fea­tures. How per­fect and for­eign he was—ah how dan­ger­ous! Her soul thrilled with com­plete knowl­edge. This was the glis­ten­ing, for­bid­den apple … She kissed him, putting her fin­gers over his face, his eyes, his nos­trils, over his brows and his ears, to his neck, to know him, to gath­er him in by touch.

Lynch shows a blonde in a bro­cade dress loom­ing over her improb­a­bly beau­ti­ful para­mour who is lying on a divan. She paws at his chis­eled fea­tures before lean­ing in for a kiss.

And final­ly, the Ernest Hem­ing­way ad – the spook­i­est and most Lynchi­an of the bunch — fea­tures a pas­sage from The Sun Also Ris­es:

I lay awake think­ing and my mind jump­ing around. Then I could­n’t keep away from it, and I start­ed to think about Brett. I was think­ing about Brett and my mind start­ed to go in sort of smooth waves. Then all of a sud­den I start­ed to cry. After a while it was bet­ter and I lay in bed and lis­tened to the heavy trams go by.. and then I went to sleep.

This ad opens with a half-naked man lying awake in a dark­ened room filled with grotesque shad­ows. He’s haunt­ed by the specter of an androg­y­nous woman in a tank top. There’s a flash of light­en­ing and then the woman kiss­es his cheek. Lynch clos­es up on his eye, which is welling up with a sin­gle tear.

As a side note: the half-naked guy in the ad is James Mar­shall who went on to star in Twin Peaks, as did Lara Fly­nn Boyle who appears in the miss­ing Flaubert com­meri­cial. Lynch has a rep­u­ta­tion of being very loy­al to his actors.

The Obses­sion ads proved to be such a suc­cess that he start­ed get­ting requests to do com­mer­cials for oth­er lux­u­ry per­fume com­pa­nies like Gior­gio Armani’s Gio and Yves Saint Laurent’s Opi­um.

As Lynch told Chris Rod­ley in Lynch on Lynch, he thinks of com­mer­cials as “lit­tle bit­ty films, and I always learn some­thing by doing them.”

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.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch’s Unlike­ly Com­mer­cial for a Home Preg­nan­cy Test (1997)

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Weird, Sur­re­al­ist Video

What David Lynch Can Do With a 100-Year-Old Cam­era and 52 Sec­onds of Film