Violinist Nigel Kennedy Joins Young Palestinian Musicians for an Exotic Version of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons

in Music | October 7th, 2013

You’ve heard it in shop­ping malls. You’ve heard it in ele­va­tors. No doubt you’ve even heard it on the tele­phone, while wait­ing on hold. But you’ve nev­er heard Anto­nio Vivaldi’s The Four Sea­sons like this before.

On August 8, the flam­boy­ant British vio­lin­ist Nigel Kennedy and mem­bers of his Poland-based Orches­tra of Life joined with the Pales­tine Strings ensem­ble at the Roy­al Albert Hall in Lon­don for a very unortho­dox per­for­mance of the Baroque clas­sic for a BBC Proms broad­cast. With musi­cians drawn most­ly from the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the Pales­tine Strings is an orches­tra of the Edward Said Nation­al Con­ser­va­to­ry of Music, a school found­ed in the Israeli-occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries in 1993 and named in 2004 for Said, the influ­en­tial Pales­tin­ian-born writer, the­o­rist and music afi­ciona­do who died the pre­vi­ous year.

The 17 mem­bers of the Pales­tine Strings who trav­eled to Lon­don ranged from 13 to 23 years old. They wore black-and-white check­ered kef­fiyehs over their suits and dress­es as a show of nation­al pride. In the per­for­mance (shown above in its entire­ty), Kennedy and his col­lab­o­ra­tors fol­lowed the basic out­line of Vivaldi’s four-con­cer­to suite, but made fre­quent excur­sions into jazz and Ara­bic music. As Helen Wal­lace writes at BBC Music Mag­a­zine:

Into a basic rhythm sec­tion set-up — the irre­sistible bassist Yaron Stavi and Krzysztof Dziedz­ic on sub­tle per­cus­sion with­out drum kit, the gen­tly agile pianist Gwilym Sim­cock pro­vid­ing a per­fect con­tin­uo foil to Kennedy’s man­ic saw­ing — he wove spaces into which the young Pales­tin­ian soloists could stand and impro­vise in mes­meris­ing Ara­bic style. These were espe­cial­ly suc­cess­ful in the appre­hen­sive slow move­ment of Sum­mer, where the shep­herd boy fears the immi­nent storm: sin­u­ous, silky-toned melis­mas from vio­lin, vio­la and voice rang out, pro­ject­ing like melan­choly muezzin calls into the hall, and suit­ing per­fect­ly Vivaldi’s open struc­ture.

It was­n’t all good: “It Don’t Mean a Thing” cropped up in Sum­mer apro­pos of noth­ing, while Spring opened with infu­ri­at­ing, Shirley Bassey-style crescen­dos on the final notes of every phrase. Kennedy’s own solos were pret­ty rough at times. At one point in Autumn he lost the thread com­plete­ly and had to stop and ask the leader where they were. But he led the con­cer­tante episodes with such charm and wit, adding in birds at spring time, and deliv­er­ing Win­ter’s aria like the purest folk air, you had to for­give the excess­es.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Four­teen-Year-Old Girl’s Blis­ter­ing Heavy Met­al Per­for­mance of Vival­di

Edward Said Speaks Can­did­ly about Pol­i­tics, His Ill­ness, and His Lega­cy in His Final Inter­view (2003)

Quentin Tarantino’s 10 Favorite Films of 2013

in Film | October 7th, 2013

The Quentin Taran­ti­no Archives, which bills itself, per­haps not hyper­bol­i­cal­ly, as the “web’s biggest and most pop­u­lar web­site about Quentin Taran­ti­no and his movies,” has post­ed an exclu­sive — a list of the film­mak­er’s favorite movies of 2013, through the month of Sep­tem­ber.

1. After­noon Delight (Jill Soloway)
2. Before Mid­night (Richard Lin­klater)
3. Blue Jas­mine (Woody Allen)
4. The Con­jur­ing (James Wan)
5. Drink­ing Bud­dies (Joe Swan­berg)
6. Frances Ha (Noah Baum­bach)
7. Grav­i­ty (Alfon­so Cuarón)
8. Kick Ass 2 (Jeff Wad­low)
9. The Lone Ranger (Gore Verbin­s­ki)
10. This Is The End (Seth Rogen, Evan Gold­berg)

There you have the films that touched Taran­ti­no over the past nine months. But are you won­der­ing about the longer term? The past 25 years? The entire his­to­ry of cin­e­ma? If so, see:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists His Favorite Films Since 1992

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

via Fla­vor­wire

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Film­mak­ing Advice from Quentin Taran­ti­no and Sam Rai­mi (NSFW)

Quentin Tarantino’s 75 Minute Inter­view with Howard Stern

Animated Video Explores the Invented Languages of Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones & Star Trek

in Animation, Language Lessons, Literature | October 7th, 2013

“Is there any­thing sad­der than an Esper­an­tist?” a friend once jok­ing­ly asked me. “Two Esper­an­tists” might seem the nat­ur­al response, but hey, at least they could talk to each oth­er. Speak­ers of Esperan­to, the best-known con­struct­ed lan­guage, have wound up as the butt of more than a few jokes since the tongue’s inven­tor Lud­wig Lazarus Zamen­hof first made his utopi­an lin­guis­tic cre­ation pub­lic in 1887, intend­ing it as a tool to unite a frac­tious, nation­al­is­tic mankind. (A noble ori­gin, bal­anced by such less-noble uses such as that William Shat­ner hor­ror movie.) Yet Esperan­to has actu­al­ly enjoyed sin­gu­lar suc­cess, by the stan­dards of con­struct­ed lan­guages. In the five-minute TED Ed les­son above (and the expand­ed one at TED Ed’s own site), lin­guist John McWhort­er tells us about the inven­tion of oth­er, less­er-known “con­langs,” includ­ing Elvish, Klin­gon, Dothra­ki, and Na’vi. If you’ve nev­er heard any of those spo­ken, don’t feel unwor­thy; maybe you just haven’t suf­fi­cient­ly explored con­struct­ed worlds like those in which Game of Thrones, Avatar, Star Trek, and The Lord of the Rings take place.

McWhort­er makes a spe­cial point of Elvish since, in con­struct­ing it for use in The Lord of the Rings’ Mid­dle-Earth, J.R.R . Tolkien made a lin­guis­tic effort with lit­tle prece­dent in mod­ern lit­er­a­ture. He took the pains, in fact, to con­struct not just a plau­si­ble Elvish lan­guage but a plau­si­ble set of Elvish lan­guages. “Tolkien chart­ed out ancient and new­er ver­sions of Elvish. When the first Elves awoke at Cuiv­ié­nen, in their new lan­guage the word for peo­ple was kwen­di, but in the lan­guage of one of the groups that moved away, Teleri, over time kwen­di became pen­di. Just like real lan­guages, con­langs like Elvish split off into many. When the Romans trans­plant­ed Latin across Europe, French, Span­ish, and Ital­ian were born.” Hence, in our real­i­ty, a vari­ety of words for hand like main, manus, and mano, and in Tolkien’s real­i­ty, a vari­ety of words for peo­ple like kwen­di, pen­di, and kin­di. But Elvish now finds itself sur­passed in gram­mat­i­cal com­plex­i­ty and breadth of vocab­u­lary by the likes of Klin­gon, Dothra­ki, and Na’vi, whose fans have put as much ener­gy into expand­ing them as their cre­ators. And those inter­est­ed in sim­i­lar­ly robust “real” con­langs — i.e., those not built for a fic­tion­al realm, but for ours — might take a look at Ithkuil, whose cre­ator John Qui­ja­da was recent­ly pro­filed in the New York­er by Joshua Foer. You’ll also not want to miss this past post on Open Cul­ture where Tolkien Reads Poems from The Fel­low­ship of the Ring, in Elvish and Eng­lish (1952). Or just lis­ten to the read­ing below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of the Eng­lish Lan­guage in Ten Ani­mat­ed Min­utes

Speak­ing in Whis­tles: The Whis­tled Lan­guage of Oax­a­ca, Mex­i­co

Down­load Eight Free Lec­tures on The Hob­bit by “The Tolkien Pro­fes­sor,” Corey Olsen

Find Esperan­to Tips in our col­lec­tion of Free Online For­eign Lan­guage Lessons

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

Ernest Hemingway’s Delusional Adventures in Boxing: “My Writing is Nothing, My Boxing is Everything.”

in Letters, Life, Literature | October 7th, 2013

In a 1954 inter­view in the Paris Review, Ralph Elli­son said of one of his lit­er­ary heroes: “When [Ernest Hem­ing­way] describes some­thing in print, believe him; believe him even when he describes the process of art in terms of base­ball or box­ing; he’s been there.” I read this think­ing that Elli­son might be a bit too cred­u­lous. Hem­ing­way, after all, has pro­voked no end of eye-rolling for his leg­endary machis­mo, brava­do, and maybe sev­er­al dozen oth­er Latin descrip­tors for mas­cu­line fool­har­di­ness and blus­ter. As for his “box­ing,” we would be wise not to believe him. He may have “been there,” but the real box­ers he encoun­tered, and tried to spar with, would nev­er tes­ti­fy he knew what he was doing

Ernest Hem­ing­way wasn’t a box­er so much as he was a “box­er”… a leg­end in his own mind, a roman­tic. Hemingway’s friend and some­time spar­ring part­ner, nov­el­ist Mor­ley Callaghan tells it this way: “we were two ama­teur box­ers. The dif­fer­ence between us was that he had giv­en time and imag­i­na­tion to box­ing; I had actu­al­ly worked out a lot with good fast col­lege box­ers.” Or, as the author of an arti­cle on the Fine Books & Col­lec­tions site has it, “Hem­ing­way was lost in the romance of a sport that has no romance to those seri­ous­ly pur­su­ing it; the romance strict­ly belongs to spec­ta­tors.”

As a spec­ta­tor with pre­ten­tions to great­ness in the sport, Papa was prone to over­es­ti­mat­ing his abil­i­ties, at the expense of his actu­al skill as a writer. As he would tell Josephine Herb­st, with­out a hint of irony, “my writ­ing is noth­ing, my box­ing is every­thing.”

Click for larg­er image

How did the pros eval­u­ate his self-pro­fessed abil­i­ty? Jack Dempsey, who spent time in Paris in the ‘20s being fet­ed and fawned over, had this to say of Hemingway’s aspi­ra­tions:

There were a lot of Amer­i­cans in Paris and I sparred with a cou­ple, just to be oblig­ing…. But there was one fel­low I would­n’t mix it with. That was Ernest Hem­ing­way. He was about twen­ty-five or so and in good shape, and I was get­ting so I could read peo­ple, or any­way men, pret­ty well. I had this sense that Hem­ing­way, who real­ly thought he could box, would come out of the cor­ner like a mad­man. To stop him, I would have to hurt him bad­ly, I did­n’t want to do that to Hem­ing­way. That’s why I nev­er sparred with him.

Giv­en Hemingway’s pen­chant for self-delu­sion in this mat­ter, he may have inter­pret­ed this as Dempsey’s capit­u­la­tion to his obvi­ous prowess. An even more scathing cri­tique of Hemingway’s bul­ly­ing… I mean box­ing skill … comes to us via Book­tryst’s Stephen J. Gertz, who prof­fers an amus­ing dis­sec­tion of the let­ter above, an unpub­lished cor­re­spon­dence Hem­ing­way sent in 1943 to George Brown, the writer’s “train­er, coach, friend, and fac­to­tum.” Brown, it seems, was kind­ly, or pru­dent, enough to encour­age his employ­er in his delu­sions. How­ev­er, Gertz writes, “the real­i­ty was that any­one who had even the slight­est idea of what they were doing in the ring could take Hem­ing­way, who was noto­ri­ous for fool­ish­ly try­ing to actu­al­ly fight trained box­ers.” He’s lucky, then, that Dempsey prac­ticed such judi­cious restraint. If not, we may nev­er have seen any fic­tion from Hem­ing­way after he tried to go a round or two with the champ.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ernest Hem­ing­way to F. Scott Fitzger­ald: “Kiss My Ass”

18 (Free) Books Ernest Hem­ing­way Wished He Could Read Again for the First Time

Ernest Hemingway’s Favorite Ham­burg­er Recipe

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

How To Be Creative: PBS’ Off Book Series Explores the Secret Sauce of Great Ideas

in Creativity | October 7th, 2013

How to be cre­ative? There’s no sim­ple answer to that ques­tion, and no short­age of peo­ple offer­ing answers. Com­ic genius John Cleese will tell you it’s all about cre­at­ing “oases for child­like play.” Film­mak­er David Lynch finds a great source of cre­ativ­i­ty in med­i­ta­tion. Nov­el­ist Amy Tan sees cre­ativ­i­ty flow­ing from a kind of cos­mic empa­thy (got­ta watch the video to see what I mean). And Stan­ford edu­ca­tor Tina Seel­ig offers her own set of answers in a recent book, MOOC, and a TED Talk.

Now let us give you a lit­tle more food for thought. The lat­est episode of PBS’ Off Book video series fea­tures four fig­ures — an author, cog­ni­tive psy­chol­o­gist, film­mak­er, and com­put­er sci­en­tist — all try­ing to put their fin­gers on the elu­sive things that make cre­ativ­i­ty hap­pen. Their thoughts and advice are var­ied. But if you put them all togeth­er, you may make strides in your own cre­ative life.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Enhances Our Cre­ativ­i­ty

John Cleese’s Phi­los­o­phy of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Cre­at­ing Oases for Child­like Play

Mal­colm McLaren: The Quest for Authen­tic Cre­ativ­i­ty

Mihaly Czik­szent­mi­ha­lyi Explains Why the Source of Hap­pi­ness Lies in Cre­ativ­i­ty and Flow, Not Mon­ey

Ansel Adams Reveals His Cre­ative Process in 1958 Doc­u­men­tary

The Com­plete His­to­ry of the World (and Human Cre­ativ­i­ty) in 100 Objects

Study Finds That Reading Tolstoy & Other Great Novelists Can Increase Your Emotional Intelligence

in Books, Health, Literature, Psychology, Science | October 4th, 2013

A new study pub­lished this week in Sci­ence con­cludes that you may get some­thing unex­pect­ed from read­ing great lit­er­ary works: more fine­ly-tuned social and emo­tion­al skills. Con­duct­ed by Emanuele Cas­tano and David Com­er Kidd (researchers in the psych depart­ment at the New School for Social Research), the study deter­mined that read­ers of lit­er­ary fic­tion (as opposed to pop­u­lar fic­tion or non-fic­tion) find them­selves scor­ing bet­ter on tests mea­sur­ing empa­thy, social per­cep­tion and emo­tion­al intel­li­gence. In some cas­es, it took read­ing lit­er­ary fic­tion for only a few min­utes for test scores to improve.

The New York Times has a nice overview of the study, where, among oth­er things, it fea­tures a quote by Albert Wend­land, an Eng­lish pro­fes­sor at Seton Hall, who puts the rela­tion­ship between lit­er­a­ture and social intel­li­gence into clear terms: “Read­ing sen­si­tive and lengthy explo­rations of people’s lives, that kind of fic­tion is lit­er­al­ly putting your­self into anoth­er person’s posi­tion — lives that could be more dif­fi­cult, more com­plex, more than what you might be used to in pop­u­lar fic­tion. It makes sense that they will find that, yeah, that can lead to more empa­thy and under­stand­ing of oth­er lives.”

If you’re look­ing to increase your abil­i­ty to nav­i­gate com­plex social sit­u­a­tions — and have a plea­sur­able time doing it — then grab a good book. One place to start is with our recent post: The 10 Great­est Books Ever, Accord­ing to 125 Top Authors (Down­load Them for Free). Or sim­ply dive into our col­lec­tion of 500 Free eBooks, which includes many great clas­sics.

via Peter Kauf­man, mas­ter­mind of The Intel­li­gent Chan­nel

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie’s List of Top 100 Books

18 (Free) Books Ernest Hem­ing­way Wished He Could Read Again for the First Time

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

550 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

R. Crumb’s Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Country Features 114 Illustrations of the Artist’s Favorite Musicians

in Books, Comics/Cartoons, Music | October 4th, 2013

It was one of my favorite gifts of Christ­mas 2006. No, all apolo­gies to every­one who bought me thought­ful gew­gaws, but it was, with­out a doubt, the favorite. A hum­ble, unas­sum­ing pack­age con­tained a ver­i­ta­ble ency­clo­pe­dia of Amer­i­cana: over one hun­dred por­traits of jazz, blues, and coun­try artists from the gold­en eras of Amer­i­can music, all drawn by a fore­most anti­quar­i­an of pre-WWII music, R. Crumb. Beside each portrait—some made with Crumb’s exag­ger­at­ed pro­por­tions and thick-lined shad­ing, some soft­er and more realist—was a brief, one-para­graph bio, just enough to sit­u­ate the singer, play­er, or band with­in the pan­theon.

Though a fan of this sort of thing may think that it could get no bet­ter, glued to the back cov­er was a slip­case con­tain­ing a CD with 21 tracks—seven from each genre. A quick scan showed a few famil­iar names: Skip James, Char­lie Pat­ton, Jel­ly Roll Mor­ton. Then there were such unknown enti­ties as Mem­phis Jug Band, Crockett’s Ken­tucky Moun­taineers, and East Texas Ser­e­naders, culled from Crumb’s enor­mous, library-size archive of rare 78s. Joy to the world.

Crumb’s Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Coun­try began in the 80s with a series of illus­trat­ed trad­ing cards, as you can see in the video above (which only cov­ers the blues and jazz cor­ners of the tri­an­gle). The first cards, “Heroes of the Blues,” came attached to old-time reis­sues from the Yazoo record com­pa­ny. Even­tu­al­ly expand­ing the cards to include jazz and coun­try, work­ing in each cat­e­go­ry from old pho­tos or news­reel footage, Crumb cov­ered quite a lot of musi­co-his­tor­i­cal ground. Archivists and authors Stephen Calt, David Jasen, and Richard Nevins wrote the short blurbs. Final­ly Yazoo, rather than issu­ing the cards indi­vid­u­al­ly with each record, com­bined them into boxed sets.

The book—which val­i­dates my sense that this music belongs togeth­er cheek by jowl, even if some of its par­ti­sans can’t stand each other’s company—evolved through a painstak­ing process in which Crumb redrew and recol­ored the orig­i­nal illus­tra­tions from the print­ed trad­ing cards (the orig­i­nal art­work hav­ing dis­ap­peared). You can fol­low one step of that process in a detailed descrip­tion of Crumb’s con­ver­sion of the blues cards to a silkscreened poster. Crumb’s process is as thor­ough as his peri­od knowl­edge. But Crumb fans know that the com­ic artist’s rev­er­ence for Amer­i­cana goes beyond his col­lect­ing and extends to his own ver­sion of kitchen-sink blue­grass, blues, and jazz. Lis­ten to Crumb on the ban­jo above with his Cheap Suit Ser­e­naders. And if any­one feels like get­ting me a Christ­mas present this year, I’d like a copy of their record Chasin Rain­bows. On vinyl of course.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Short His­to­ry of Amer­i­ca, Accord­ing to the Irrev­er­ent Com­ic Satirist Robert Crumb

Record Cov­er Art by Under­ground Car­toon­ist Robert Crumb

The Con­fes­sions of Robert Crumb: A Por­trait Script­ed by the Under­ground Comics Leg­end Him­self (1987)

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

Watch World War II Rage Across Europe in a 7 Minute Time-Lapse Film: Every Day From 1939 to 1945

in Animation, History, Maps, Politics | October 4th, 2013

The Sec­ond World War was waged over six long years on every con­ti­nent save South Amer­i­ca and Antarc­ti­ca. Sev­en­ty-some years lat­er, the dai­ly shifts of the Euro­pean The­ater’s front lines can be tracked in under sev­en min­utes, thanks to a mys­te­ri­ous, map-lov­ing ani­ma­tor known var­i­ous­ly as Emper­or Tiger­star or Kaiser Tiger­star (the lat­ter accounts for the hel­met-wear­ing kit­ten grac­ing the upper cor­ner of his World War I time-lapse).

The pow­er-shift­ing col­ors (blue for Allies, red for Axis) are mes­mer­iz­ing, as is a relent­less timer tick­ing off the days between Ger­many’s inva­sion of Poland on Sep­tem­ber 1, 1939 and VE Day, May 8, 1945. Roy­al­ty-free music by Kevin MacLeod and audio sam­ples rang­ing from Hitler and Mus­soli­ni’s dec­la­ra­tions of war to Roo­sevelt’s Day of Infamy speech add import.

I def­i­nite­ly felt like throw­ing some tick­er tape around when blue tri­umphed, but most­ly I was curi­ous about this Emper­or Tiger­star, who relied on such dis­parate sources as Chris Bish­op’s Mil­i­tary Atlas of World War II and Wikipedia to cre­ate this extra­or­di­nary record in Win­dows Paint.

Care­ful read­ing of his blog reveals a diehard his­to­ry buff with a weak­ness for met­al music, whole­some CGI movies, and sta­tis­tics.

He’s also a worka­holic. His YouTube chan­nel boasts a bog­gling assort­ment of map ani­ma­tions. This in addi­tion to an alter­nate YouTube channel where he remaps his­to­ry in response to his own “what if” type prompts. Some­how he finds the time to pre­side over  The Blank Atlas, a site whose mem­bers con­tribute unla­beled, non-copy­right­ed maps avail­able for free pub­lic down­load. And he may well be a brony, as evi­denced by the video he was pur­port­ed­ly work­ing on this sum­mer, World War II: As Told by Ponies.

Only time will tell.

Mean­while, let us hope that he makes good on his threat to make a uni­ver­sal World War II map ani­ma­tion. Could that be the secret project he’s aim­ing to launch on Jan­u­ary 1, 2014? I can’t wait to find out.

via io9

Relat­ed Con­tent:

132 Years of Glob­al Warm­ing Visu­al­ized in 26 Dra­mat­i­cal­ly Ani­mat­ed Sec­onds

53 Years of Nuclear Test­ing in 14 Min­utes: A Time Lapse Film by Japan­ese Artist Isao Hashimo­to

5,000 Years of Reli­gion in 90 Sec­onds

Ayun Hal­l­i­day did­n’t know she’d be keep­ing things fresh by fail­ing to lis­ten to a sin­gle sec­ond of 8th grade Geog­ra­phy. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Debussy’s Clair de lune: The Classical Music Visualization with 21 Million Views

in Music | October 4th, 2013

Not long ago, we fea­tured soft­ware engi­neer and mas­ter of music visu­al­iza­tion Stephen Mali­nows­ki’s graph­i­cal ren­di­tion of Igor Stravin­sky’s The Rite of Spring. Ear­li­er this year, we also offered up a video of the piano-roll record­ing that cap­tured not just the music but the play­ing of Claude Debussy. It so hap­pens that, if you peruse Malinkowski’s Youtube archive of music-visu­al­iza­tion videos, you’ll find more Debussy there­in: a graph­i­cal­ly scored ver­sion of Clair de lune. You see above a high-res­o­lu­tion remake, but do note that the orig­i­nal has by now racked up very near­ly 22 mil­lion views, which, even for such a well-known piece of music (not just the most famous move­ment of Debussy’s Suite berga­masque which con­tains it, but sure­ly one of the most famous works of 19th-cen­tu­ry French music in exis­tence) must count as some­thing of a high score.

You’ll almost cer­tain­ly rec­og­nize the piece itself. But what have we on the screen? Clear­ly each block rep­re­sents a sound from the piano, but what do their col­ors sig­ni­fy? “Each pitch class (C, C‑sharp, D, D‑sharp, etc.) has its own col­or, and the col­ors are cho­sen by map­ping the musi­cian’s ‘cir­cle of fifths’ to the artist’s ‘col­or wheel,’ ” Mali­nows­ki writes in the FAQ below the video, link­ing to a more detailed expla­na­tion of the process on his site. He also rec­om­mends watch­ing not just the Youtube ver­sion, improved its res­o­lu­tion though he has, but the new­er iPad ver­sion: “Because the iPad can sup­port 60 frames per sec­ond (instead of the usu­al 30), the scrolling is silky smooth (the way it’s sup­posed to be), and you can watch it at night, in the dark, in bed. You can get the video here.” The Music Ani­ma­tion Machine cre­ator also address­es per­haps the most impor­tant ques­tion about this piece, orig­i­nal­ly titled Prom­e­nade Sen­ti­men­tale, which has both sig­ni­fied and elicit­ed so much emo­tion over the past cen­tu­ry: “Is it just me, or does this piece make every­one cry?” Mali­nowski’s reply: “Maybe not every­one, but lots of peo­ple…”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Debussy Plays Debussy: The Great Composer’s Play­ing Returns to Life

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

The Daily Habits of Highly Productive Philosophers: Nietzsche, Marx & Immanuel Kant

in Creativity, Life, Philosophy, Productivity | October 3rd, 2013

Ever won­der how famous philoso­phers from the past spent their many hours of tedi­um between par­a­digm-smash­ing epipha­nies? I do. And I have learned much from the bio­graph­i­cal morsels on “Dai­ly Rou­tines,” a blog about “How writ­ers, artists, and oth­er inter­est­ing peo­ple orga­nize their days.” (The blog has also now yield­ed a book, Dai­ly Rit­u­als: How Artists Work.) While there is much fas­ci­nat­ing vari­ety to be found among these descrip­tions of the quo­tid­i­an habits of celebri­ty human­ists, one quote found on the site from V.S. Pritch­ett stands out: “Soon­er or lat­er, the great men turn out to be all alike. They nev­er stop work­ing. They nev­er lose a minute. It is very depress­ing.” But I urge you, be not depressed. In these pré­cis of the mun­dane lives of philoso­phers and artists, we find no small amount of med­i­ta­tive leisure occu­py­ing every day. Read these tiny biogra­phies and be edi­fied. The con­tem­pla­tive life requires dis­ci­pline and hard work, for sure. But it also seems to require some time indulging car­nal plea­sures and much more time lost in thought.

Let’s take Friedrich Niet­zsche (above). While most of us couldn’t pos­si­bly reach the great heights of icon­o­clas­tic soli­tude he scaled—and I’m not sure that we would want to—we might find his dai­ly bal­ance of the kinet­ic, aes­thet­ic, gus­ta­to­ry, and con­tem­pla­tive worth aim­ing at. Though not fea­tured on Dai­ly Rou­tines, an excerpt from Cur­tis Cate’s epony­mous Niet­zsche biog­ra­phy shows us the curi­ous habits of this most curi­ous man:

With a Spar­tan rigour which nev­er ceased to amaze his land­lord-gro­cer, Niet­zsche would get up every morn­ing when the faint­ly dawn­ing sky was still grey, and, after wash­ing him­self with cold water from the pitch­er and chi­na basin in his bed­room and drink­ing some warm milk, he would, when not felled by headaches and vom­it­ing, work unin­ter­rupt­ed­ly until eleven in the morn­ing. He then went for a brisk, two-hour walk through the near­by for­est or along the edge of Lake Sil­va­plana (to the north-east) or of Lake Sils (to the south-west), stop­ping every now and then to jot down his lat­est thoughts in the note­book he always car­ried with him. Return­ing for a late lun­cheon at the Hôtel Alpen­rose, Niet­zsche, who detest­ed promis­cu­ity, avoid­ed the mid­day crush of the table d’hôte in the large din­ing-room and ate a more or less ‘pri­vate’ lunch, usu­al­ly con­sist­ing of a beef­steak and an ‘unbe­liev­able’ quan­ti­ty of fruit, which was, the hotel man­ag­er was per­suad­ed, the chief cause of his fre­quent stom­ach upsets. After lun­cheon, usu­al­ly dressed in a long and some­what thread­bare brown jack­et, and armed as usu­al with note­book, pen­cil, and a large grey-green para­sol to shade his eyes, he would stride off again on an even longer walk, which some­times took him up the Fex­tal as far as its majes­tic glac­i­er. Return­ing ‘home’ between four and five o’clock, he would imme­di­ate­ly get back to work, sus­tain­ing him­self on bis­cuits, peas­ant bread, hon­ey (sent from Naum­burg), fruit and pots of tea he brewed for him­self in the lit­tle upstairs ‘din­ing-room’ next to his bed­room, until, worn out, he snuffed out the can­dle and went to bed around 11 p.m.

This comes to us via A Piece of Mono­logue, who also pro­vide some pho­tographs of Nietzsche’s favorite Swiss vis­tas and his aus­tere accom­mo­da­tions. No doubt this life, how­ev­er lone­ly, led to the pro­duc­tion of some of the most world-shak­ing philo­soph­i­cal texts ever pro­duced, per­haps rivaled in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry only by the work of the prodi­gious Karl Marx.

So how did Marx’s dai­ly life com­pare to the morose and monk­ish Niet­zsche? Accord­ing to Isa­iah Berlin, Marx also had his dai­ly habits, though not quite so well-bal­anced.

His mode of liv­ing con­sist­ed of dai­ly vis­its to the British Muse­um read­ing-room, where he nor­mal­ly remained from nine in the morn­ing until it closed at sev­en; this was fol­lowed by long hours of work at night, accom­pa­nied by cease­less smok­ing, which from a lux­u­ry had become an indis­pens­able ano­dyne; this affect­ed his health per­ma­nent­ly and he became liable to fre­quent attacks of a dis­ease of the liv­er some­times accom­pa­nied by boils and an inflam­ma­tion of the eyes, which inter­fered with his work, exhaust­ed and irri­tat­ed him, and inter­rupt­ed his nev­er cer­tain means of liveli­hood. “I am plagued like Job, though not so God-fear­ing,” he wrote in 1858.

Marx’s mon­ey wor­ries con­tributed to his phys­i­cal com­plaints, sure­ly, as much as Nietzsche’s social anx­i­ety did to his. Not all philoso­phers have had such dra­mat­ic emo­tion­al lives, how­ev­er.

Smok­ing plays a sig­nif­i­cant role as a dai­ly aid, for good or ill, in the dai­ly lives of many philoso­phers, such as that of giant of 18th cen­tu­ry thought, Immanuel Kant. But Kant suf­fered from nei­ther penury nor some severe case of unre­quit­ed love. He seems, indeed, to have been a rather dull per­son, at least in the bio­graph­i­cal sketch below by Man­fred Kuehn.

His dai­ly sched­ule then looked some­thing like this. He got up at 5:00 A.M. His ser­vant Mar­tin Lampe, who worked for him from at least 1762 until 1802, would wake him. The old sol­dier was under orders to be per­sis­tent, so that Kant would not sleep longer. Kant was proud that he nev­er got up even half an hour late, even though he found it hard to get up ear­ly. It appears that dur­ing his ear­ly years, he did sleep in at times. After get­ting up, Kant would drink one or two cups of tea — weak tea. With that, he smoked a pipe of tobac­co. The time he need­ed for smok­ing it “was devot­ed to med­i­ta­tion.” Appar­ent­ly, Kant had for­mu­lat­ed the max­im for him­self that he would smoke only one pipe, but it is report­ed that the bowls of his pipes increased con­sid­er­ably in size as the years went on. He then pre­pared his lec­tures and worked on his books until 7:00. His lec­tures began at 7:00, and they would last until 11:00. With the lec­tures fin­ished, he worked again on his writ­ings until lunch. Go out to lunch, take a walk, and spend the rest of the after­noon with his friend Green. After going home, he would do some more light work and read.

For all of their var­i­ous com­plaints and ail­ments, through­out their most pro­duc­tive years these high­ly pro­duc­tive writ­ers embraced Gus­tave Flaubert’s max­im, “Be reg­u­lar and order­ly in your life, so that you may be vio­lent and orig­i­nal in your work.” I have always believed that these are words to live and work by, with the addi­tion of a lit­tle vice or two to spice things up.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Updike’s Advice to Young Writ­ers: ‘Reserve an Hour a Day’

John Cleese’s Phi­los­o­phy of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Cre­at­ing Oases for Child­like Play

Read­ing Marx’s Cap­i­tal with David Har­vey (Free Course)

Wal­ter Kaufmann’s Clas­sic Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre (1960)

Down­load 90 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Sartre, Hei­deg­ger, Niet­zsche: Three Philoso­phers in Three Hours

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