How Leonard Cohen’s Stint As a Buddhist Monk Can Help You Live an Enlightened Life

in Graduation Speech, Philosophy, Religion | June 26th, 2015

There is a cer­tain kind of think­ing that the Bud­dha called “mon­key mind,” a state in which our ner­vous habits become com­pul­sions, haul­ing us around this way and that, forc­ing us to jump and shriek at every sound. It was exact­ly this neu­rot­ic state of mind that Leonard Cohen sought to quell when in 1994 he joined Mt. Baldy Zen Cen­ter in Los Ange­les and became a monk: “I was inter­est­ed in sur­ren­der­ing to that kind of rou­tine,” Cohen told The Guardian in 2001, “If you sur­ren­der to the sched­ule, and get used to its demands, it is a great lux­u­ry not to have to think about what you are doing next.”

There at Mt. Baldy the jour­nal­ist and cos­mopoli­tan racon­teur Pico Iyer met Cohen, unaware at first that it was even him. In his short Bac­calau­re­ate speech above to the 2015 grad­u­at­ing class of the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, Iyer describes the meet­ing: After show­ing him fond hos­pi­tal­i­ty and set­tling him into the com­mu­ni­ty, Iyer says, Cohen told him that “just sit­ting still, being unplugged, look­ing after his friends was… the real deep enter­tain­ment that the world had to offer.”

At the time, Iyer was dis­ap­point­ed. He had admired Cohen for exact­ly the oppo­site qualities—for trav­el­ing the world, being plugged into the cul­ture, and liv­ing a rock star life of self-indul­gence. It was this out­ward man­i­fes­ta­tion of Cohen that Iyer found allur­ing, but the poet and song­writer’s inward life, what Iyer calls the “invis­i­ble ledger on which we tab­u­late our lives,” was giv­en to some­thing else, some­thing that even­tu­al­ly brought Cohen out of a life­long depres­sion. Iyer’s the­sis, drawn from his encounter with Leonard Cohen, Zen monk, is that “it is real­ly on the mind that our hap­pi­ness depends.”

Iyer refers not to that per­pet­u­al­ly wheel­ing mon­key mind but what Zen teacher Suzu­ki Roshi called “begin­ner’s mind” or “big mind.” In such a med­i­ta­tive­ly absorbed state, we for­get our­selves, “which to me,” Iyer says, “is almost the def­i­n­i­tion of hap­pi­ness.” Cohen said as much of his own per­son­al enlight­en­ment: “When you stop think­ing about your­self all the time, a cer­tain sense of repose over­takes you.” After his time at Mt. Baldy, he says, “there was just a cer­tain sweet­ness to dai­ly life that began assert­ing itself.” Iyer’s short speech, filled with exam­ple after exam­ple, gives us and his new­ly grad­u­at­ing audi­ence sev­er­al ways to think about how we might find that sense of repose—in the midst of busy, demand­ing lives—through lit­tle more than “just sit­ting still, being unplugged” and look­ing after each oth­er.

Note: You can watch a Euro­pean doc­u­men­tary on Cohen’s stint as a bud­dhist monk here.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ladies and Gen­tle­men… Mr. Leonard Cohen: The Poet-Musi­cian Fea­tured in a 1965 Doc­u­men­tary

Young Leonard Cohen Reads His Poet­ry in 1966 (Before His Days as a Musi­cian Began)

Leonard Cohen Nar­rates Film on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Fea­tur­ing the Dalai Lama (1994)

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

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Hear John Malkovich Read From Breakfast of Champions, Then Hear Kurt Vonnegut Do the Same

in Audio Books, Writing | June 25th, 2015

breakfastofchampionscover2
In high school when I was try­ing to write sur­re­al­is­tic short sto­ries in the vein of Richard Brauti­gan, despite not real­ly under­stand­ing 90 per­cent of Richard Brauti­gan, my Eng­lish teacher rec­om­mend­ed I start read­ing Kurt Von­negut, so lat­er that day I went down to our city’s sci-fi book/comic book store and bought on her rec­om­men­da­tion Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons. A com­ic nov­el, it was breezy and fun, and by gum, had car­toons in it! (One was of a cat’s but­t­hole, the effect of which on a high schooler’s mind can­not be over­stat­ed.)

But, I admit, I haven’t read it since–the world and my tsun­doku is too big for rereadings–and maybe you haven’t read it at all, or per­haps it’s your favorite book. It was the nov­el Von­negut pub­lished four years after his best known work Slaugh­ter­house Five. When he grad­ed his nov­els in his 1981 “Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Col­lage” Palm Sun­day he gave Break­fast a C. It’s cer­tain­ly one of his most ram­bling nov­els, where he brings back Slaugh­ter­house Five’s sci-fi author Kil­go­re Trout and pairs him with the delu­sion­al Dwayne Hoover, and unpacks all the dark parts of Amer­i­can his­to­ry, from racism to cap­i­tal­ism to envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion in pas­sages both sober and bleak­ly com­ic.

John Malkovich does­n’t seem like the obvi­ous choice to read Von­negut for this audio­book, a short excerpt of which can be heard above. (Note: you can down­load the com­plete Malkovich read­ing for free via Audi­ble’s Free Tri­al pro­gram.) But the pas­sage is key in that it intro­duces the mar­ti­ni cock­tail lounge ori­gins of the book’s title, and Malkovich brings out the droll irony of Vonnegut’s writ­ing, espe­cial­ly the way he rolls the word “schiz­o­phre­nia” off his tongue. There’s a bit of the schizoid in every author, let­ting a world of char­ac­ters speak through them like a medi­um.

For com­par­i­son, check out this ear­li­er Open Cul­ture post about Von­negut read­ing a long sec­tion from Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons in 1970. The author chuck­les at some of his more com­ic pas­sages, and the audi­ence roars along. The tim­ing is that of a standup rou­tine, but this opening—one assumes its the opening—would go on to be furi­ous­ly rewrit­ten, drop­ping the first per­son style. It’s an alter­na­tive uni­verse Break­fast that can only leave one to won­der how the rest of the nov­el might have been han­dled.

h/t Ayun

Relat­ed con­tent:

Richard Brautigan’s Sto­ry, ‘One After­noon in 1939,’ Read From a Wood­en Spool

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

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

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

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Watch the First Russian Science Fiction Film, Aelita: Queen of Mars (1924)

in Film | June 25th, 2015

Despite the Sovi­et Union’s sup­pres­sion of a great many writ­ers and film­mak­ers, the com­mu­nist state nonethe­less pro­duced some of the finest film and lit­er­a­ture of the 20th cen­tu­ry. We are lucky, for exam­ple, to have Mikhail Bul­gakov’s The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta, which was nev­er pub­lished dur­ing the author’s life­time and was for many years there­after cen­sored or rel­e­gat­ed to samiz­dat ver­sions. A sim­i­lar fate almost befell the first Russ­ian sci­ence fic­tion film, Aeli­ta: Queen of Mars, a silent from 1924 that inspired such indis­pens­able clas­sics as Flash Gor­don and Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis. The film—which tops a Guardian list of “Sev­en Sovi­et sci-fi films every­one should see”—con­tributed to a rich cin­e­mat­ic vocab­u­lary with­out which it would be hard to imag­ine the aes­thet­ics of much sci­ence fic­tion in gen­er­al.

Direct­ed by Yakov Pro­tazanov in the the­atri­cal, futur­is­tic con­struc­tivist style that Fritz Lang bor­rowed, Aeli­ta tells the sto­ry of Los, an Earth engi­neer who builds a space­ship and trav­els to Mars to meet and fall in love with its queen.

Fur­ther plot devel­op­ments make clear that Lang may owe some­thing to the film’s sto­ry as well, involv­ing a tyran­ni­cal Mar­t­ian ruler, Aeli­ta’s father, who ruth­less­ly exploits his plan­et’s pro­le­tari­at. All­movie describes Aeli­ta as “the Marx­ist strug­gle reach­es out­er space” and indeed the film dra­ma­tizes an alien rev­o­lu­tion very close to the one that took place back on Earth.

Aelita

Part of the rea­son the film fell out of favor with the Sovi­et gov­ern­ment in lat­er decades—and irked crit­ics at the time—is its ambiva­lence about rev­o­lu­tion­ary pol­i­tics through its por­tray­al of Los as a dis­af­fect­ed intel­lec­tu­al. Alex­ei Tol­stoy—author of the film’s source novel—had few­er reser­va­tions. The so-called “Com­rade Count” won three Stal­in prizes after his return from a brief Euro­pean exile. Unlike the dis­si­dent crit­ic Bul­gakov, Tolstoy—a dis­tant rel­a­tive of both Leo Tol­stoy and Ivan Turgenev—has been described by his ene­mies as cyn­i­cal, oppor­tunis­tic and, lat­er, total­ly in thrall to Stal­in. His friends prob­a­bly described him as a loy­al par­ty man. (He is also cred­it­ed with being the first to ascer­tain the Naz­i’s use of gas vans.)

Aeli­ta the film made a favor­able impres­sion on its first audi­ences (see an orig­i­nal poster above). One of the first full-length films about space trav­el, it enabled ordi­nary Rus­sians to imag­ine what may have seemed to them like the near future of Sovi­et tech­nol­o­gy. And yet, writes Andrew Hor­ton in a lengthy essay on Aeli­ta, despite its rep­u­ta­tion, the sci-fi clas­sic is “nei­ther sci­ence fic­tion nor a pro-rev­o­lu­tion­ary film.” Con­tem­po­rary crit­ics and film­mak­ers felt that Pro­tazanov’s adap­ta­tion not only showed insuf­fi­cient com­mit­ment to the rev­o­lu­tion, but it also man­i­fest­ed “alleged con­ti­nu­ity with the bour­geois cin­e­ma of the Tsarist age”—a seri­ous charge in the age of social­ist real­ism and dis­rup­tive cin­e­mat­ic exper­i­ments like those of Dzi­ga Ver­tov.

In hind­sight, how­ev­er, Aeli­ta turns out to have been a film before its time, and indeed a work of clas­sic sci-fi, in its extreme­ly imag­i­na­tive use of tech­nol­o­gy, cos­tum­ing, and set design. With­out the fas­ci­na­tion it has always held for film buffs, it might have dis­ap­peared, giv­en its oppo­si­tion to Par­ty dog­ma: “The film prais­es domes­tic­i­ty and mar­ried life at a time when soci­ety was exper­i­ment­ing with the nature and mean­ing of rela­tion­ships,” Hor­ton writes, “It is a film that looks to rebuild­ing, con­sol­i­da­tion, progress and the future and rejects rev­o­lu­tion as an unachiev­able Utopi­an ide­al open to hijack.” All of this con­text can seem a bit heavy, but we need­n’t work too hard to untan­gle Aeli­ta’s ide­o­log­i­cal strands. Sim­ply enjoy the movie as an enter­tain­ing tech­ni­cal achieve­ment from which we can draw a line to lat­er sci-fi films like 1957’s Road to the Stars (above) and, from there, to mod­ern mas­ter­pieces like Stan­ley Kubrick­’s 2001.

Aeli­ta will be added to our list of 101 Silent Films, a sub­set of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via Ubuweb

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Metrop­o­lis: Watch a Restored Ver­sion of Fritz Lang’s Mas­ter­piece (1927)

Eight Free Films by Dzi­ga Ver­tov, Cre­ator of Sovi­et Avant-Garde Doc­u­men­taries

Sovi­et Ani­ma­tions of Ray Brad­bury Sto­ries: ‘Here There Be Tygers’ & ‘There Will Comes Soft Rain’

Sovi­et Artists Envi­sion a Com­mu­nist Utopia in Out­er Space

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

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F. Scott Fitzgerald Conjugates “to Cocktail,” the Ultimate Jazz-Age Verb (1928)

in English Language, Food & Drink | June 25th, 2015

fitzgerald conguates cocktail

I reg­u­lar­ly meet up with speak­ing part­ners who help me learn their lan­guages in exchange for my help­ing them learn Eng­lish. Even though they usu­al­ly speak much bet­ter Eng­lish already than I speak Kore­an, Span­ish, Japan­ese, or what have you, I often feel like I’ve got the heav­ier end of the job. Why? Because the Eng­lish lan­guage, for all its advan­tages — its glob­al reach, the ease with which it incor­po­rates for­eign terms and neol­o­gisms, its wealth of descrip­tive pos­si­bil­i­ty — has the major dis­ad­van­tage of sel­dom mak­ing imme­di­ate sense.

From Eng­lish’s great flex­i­bil­i­ty flows great frus­tra­tion: how many times have for­eign friends put up a piece of text to me — often from respect­ed, canon­i­cal works of Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture — and demand­ed an expla­na­tion? They’ve usu­al­ly stum­bled over some obscure usage that qual­i­fies as at least unortho­dox and per­haps down­right ungram­mat­i­cal, but nonethe­less intu­itive­ly under­stand­able — if only to a native speak­er like me. Here we have one exam­ple of just such a lin­guis­tic inven­tion refined by no less a respect­ed, canon­i­cal writer than F. Scott Fitzger­ald: the verb “to cock­tail.”

“As ‘cock­tail,’ so I gath­er, has become a verb, it ought to be con­ju­gat­ed at least once,” wrote the author of The Great Gats­by in a 1928 let­ter to Blanche Knopf, the wife of pub­lish­er Alfred A. Knopf. Who bet­ter to first lay out its full con­ju­ga­tion than the man who, as the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin’s Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter puts it, “gave the Jazz Age its name”? Giv­en that his fame “was for many years based less on his work than his personality—the soci­ety play­boy, the speakeasy alco­holic whose career had end­ed in ‘crack-up,’ the bril­liant young writer whose ear­ly lit­er­ary suc­cess seemed to make his life some­thing of a roman­tic idyll,” he found him­self well placed to offer the lan­guage a new “taste of Roar­ing Twen­ties excess.”

And so Fitzger­ald breaks it down:

Present: I cock­tail, thou cock­tail, we cock­tail, you cock­tail, they cock­tail.

Imper­fect: I was cock­tail­ing.

Per­fect or past def­i­nite: I cock­tailed.

Past per­fect: I have cock­tailed.

Con­di­tion­al: I might have cock­tailed.

Plu­per­fect: I had cock­tailed.

Sub­junc­tive: I would have cock­tailed.

Vol­un­tary sub­junc­tive: I should have cock­tailed.

Preter­it: I did cock­tail.

If you, too, decide to teach this advanced verb to your Eng­lish-learn­ing friends, why not sup­ple­ment the les­son with the audio clip just above, a read­ing of the let­ter from the Ran­som Cen­ter? Lan­guage-learn­ing, no mat­ter the lan­guage, inevitably gets to be a grind from time to time, but vary­ing the types of instruc­tion­al media can help alle­vi­ate the inevitable headaches. And when the day’s stud­ies end, of course, an actu­al cock­tail­ing ses­sion could­n’t hurt. After all, they always say you speak a for­eign lan­guage bet­ter after a drink or two.

via the great Lists of Note book

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Drink­ing with William Faulkn­er: The Writer Had a Taste for The Mint Julep & Hot Tod­dy

Film­mak­er Luis Buñuel Shows How to Make the Per­fect Dry Mar­ti­ni

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 13 Pre­pos­ter­ous Ideas for Your Left­over Turkey

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

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Climb Virtually Up “El Capitan,” Yosemite’s Iconic Rock Wall, With Google Street View

in Google, Travel | June 25th, 2015

Google has used its Street View tech­nol­o­gy to let you take vir­tu­al tours of some far-flung places — places like Shackleton’s Antarc­tic, Mt. Ever­est and oth­er high moun­tain peaks, The Ama­zon Riv­er, and The Grand Canyon. Now you can add to the list, El Cap­i­tan, the icon­ic rock wall in the mid­dle of Yosemite Nation­al Park.

Yes­ter­day, Google’s offi­cial blog declared, “Today we’re launch­ing our first-ever ver­ti­cal Street View col­lec­tion, giv­ing you the oppor­tu­ni­ty to climb 3,000 feet up the world’s most famous rock wall: Yosemite’s El Cap­i­tan. To bring you this new imagery, we part­nered with leg­endary climbers Lynn Hill, Alex Hon­nold and Tom­my Cald­well.” Above, you can see this trio in action, talk­ing about what makes El Cap a mec­ca for rock climbers every­where.

To cre­ate this Street View of El Cap­i­tan, Hill, Hon­nold and Cald­well worked with Google engi­neers to fig­ure out how to haul a cam­era up this sheer rock face. And what you ulti­mate­ly get are some amaz­ing 360-degree panoram­ic images. Accord­ing to Cald­well, these “are the clos­est thing I’ve ever wit­nessed to actu­al­ly being thou­sands of feet up a ver­ti­cal rock face—better than any video or pho­to.” Which, hat­ing heights, is good enough for me.

via Google Blog

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1.5 Million Slavery Era Documents Will Be Digitized, Helping African Americans to Learn About Their Lost Ancestors

in History | June 24th, 2015

discoverfreedmen

The Freedmen’s Bureau Project — a new ini­tia­tive spear­head­ed by the Smith­son­ian, the Nation­al Archives, the Afro-Amer­i­can His­tor­i­cal and Genealog­i­cal Soci­ety, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Lat­ter-Day Saints — will make avail­able online 1.5 mil­lion his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments, final­ly allow­ing descen­dants of for­mer African-Amer­i­can slaves to learn more about their fam­i­ly roots. Near the end of the US Civ­il War, The Freedmen’s Bureau was cre­at­ed to help new­ly-freed slaves find their foot­ing in post­bel­lum Amer­i­ca.

The Bureau “opened schools to edu­cate the illit­er­ate, man­aged hos­pi­tals, rationed food and cloth­ing for the des­ti­tute, and even sol­em­nized mar­riages.” And, along the way, the Bureau gath­ered hand­writ­ten records on rough­ly 4 mil­lion African Amer­i­cans. Now, those doc­u­ments are being dig­i­tized with the help of vol­un­teers, and, by the end of 2016, they will be made avail­able in a search­able data­base at discoverfreedmen.org.

Accord­ing to Hol­lis Gen­try, a Smith­son­ian geneal­o­gist, this archive “will give African Amer­i­cans the abil­i­ty to explore some of the ear­li­est records detail­ing peo­ple who were for­mer­ly enslaved,” final­ly giv­ing us a sense “of their voice, their dreams.”

You can learn more about the project by watch­ing the video below, and you can vol­un­teer your own ser­vices here.

via The Guardian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Visu­al­iz­ing Slav­ery: The Map Abra­ham Lin­coln Spent Hours Study­ing Dur­ing the Civ­il War

The Civ­il War and Recon­struc­tion: A Free Course

Twelve Years a Slave: Free eBook and Audio Book of the Mem­oir Behind the Film (1853)

“Ask a Slave” by Azie Dungey Sets the His­tor­i­cal Record Straight in a New Web Series

Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es

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Animated Introductions to Three Sociologists: Durkheim, Weber & Adorno

in Economics, Education, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology | June 24th, 2015

Is soci­ol­o­gy an art or a sci­ence? Is it phi­los­o­phy? Social psy­chol­o­gy? Eco­nom­ics and polit­i­cal the­o­ry? Sur­vey­ing the great soci­ol­o­gists since the mid-19th cen­tu­ry, one would have to answer “yes” to all of these ques­tions. Soci­ol­o­gists like Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Theodor Adorno con­duct­ed seri­ous schol­ar­ly and social-sci­en­tif­ic analy­ses, and wrote high­ly spec­u­la­tive the­o­ry. Though it may seem like we’re all soci­ol­o­gists now, mak­ing crit­i­cal judg­ments about large groups of peo­ple, the soci­ol­o­gists who cre­at­ed and car­ried on the dis­ci­pline gen­er­al­ly did so with sound evi­dence and well-rea­soned argu­ment. Unlike so much cur­rent knee-jerk com­men­tary, even when they’re wrong they’re still well worth read­ing.

Hav­ing already sur­veyed Marx in his series on Euro-Amer­i­can polit­i­cal philoso­phers, School of Life founder Alain de Bot­ton now tack­les the oth­er three illus­tri­ous names on the list above, start­ing with Durkheim at the top, then Weber above, and Adorno below. The first two fig­ures were con­tem­po­raries of Marx, the third a lat­er inter­preter. Like that beard­ed Ger­man scourge of cap­i­tal­ism, these three—in more mea­sured or pes­simistic ways—levied cri­tiques against the dom­i­nant eco­nom­ic sys­tem. Durkheim took on the prob­lem of sui­cide, Weber the anx­ious reli­gious under­pin­nings of cap­i­tal­ist ide­ol­o­gy, and Adorno the con­sumer cul­ture of instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion.

That’s so far, at least, as de Bot­ton’s very cur­so­ry intro­duc­tions get us. As with his oth­er series, this one more or less ropes the thinkers rep­re­sent­ed here into the School of Life’s pro­gram of pro­mot­ing a very par­tic­u­lar, mid­dle class view of hap­pi­ness. And, as with the oth­er series, the thinkers sur­veyed here all seem to more or less agree with de Bot­ton’s own views. Per­haps oth­ers who most cer­tain­ly could have been includ­ed, like W.E.B. Dubois, Jane Addams, or Han­nah Arendt, would offer some very dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives.

De Bot­ton again makes his points with pithy gen­er­al­iza­tions, num­bered lists, and quirky, cut-out ani­ma­tions, breezi­ly reduc­ing life­times of work to a few obser­va­tions and moral lessons. I doubt Adorno would approach these less-than-rig­or­ous meth­ods char­i­ta­bly, but those new to the field of soci­ol­o­gy or the work of its prac­ti­tion­ers will find here some tan­ta­liz­ing ideas that will hope­ful­ly inspire them to dig deep­er, and to per­haps improve their own soci­o­log­i­cal diag­noses.

Note: For those inter­est­ed, Yale has a free open course on Soci­ol­o­gy called “Foun­da­tions of Mod­ern Social The­o­ry,” which cov­ers most of the fig­ures list­ed above. You can always find it in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

6 Polit­i­cal The­o­rists Intro­duced in Ani­mat­ed “School of Life” Videos: Marx, Smith, Rawls & More

Niet­zsche, Wittgen­stein & Sartre Explained with Mon­ty Python-Style Ani­ma­tions by The School of Life

Theodor Adorno’s Rad­i­cal Cri­tique of Joan Baez and the Music of the Viet­nam War Protest Move­ment

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

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Take a Visual Walking Tour of Franz Kafka’s Prague with Will Self (Then Read His Digital Essay, “Kafka’s Wound”)

in Literature, Travel | June 24th, 2015

“There is noth­ing intrin­si­cal­ly imag­i­na­tive about the idea of ‘gold,’ nor the idea of ‘moun­tain,’” writes Will Self, cit­ing an idea of the philoso­pher David Hume, “but join them togeth­er and you have a fan­tas­ti­cal­ly gleam­ing ‘gold moun­tain.’ And might not that gold moun­tain be the Lau­ren­z­iberg in Prague? After all, it looms over con­tem­po­rary Prague just as it loomed in the con­scious­ness of Franz Kaf­ka, whose ear­li­est sur­viv­ing nar­ra­tive frag­ment, ‘Descrip­tion of a Strug­gle,’ is in part an account of a phan­tas­magor­i­cal ascent of its slopes.”

This asso­ci­a­tion comes from “Kafka’s Wound,” Will Self­’s new essay in the Lon­don Review of Books — or rather, a new “dig­i­tal essay” from the LRB on the BBC and Arts Coun­cil Eng­land’s new site The Space, one which takes full advan­tage of the mul­ti­me­dia future, much enthused over back in the 1990s, in which we now find our­selves. For some read­ers, myself includ­ed, the asso­ci­a­tion of the author of The Meta­mor­pho­sis and The Tri­al with Hume, the author of so many vol­umes fic­tion­al, non­fic­tion­al, and psy­cho­geo­graph­i­cal (find some in our col­lec­tion of Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks), con­sti­tutes rea­son enough to min­i­mize all oth­er win­dows and get read­ing.

But Self has tak­en on an even more ambi­tious project than that: the mind-map­pish inter­face of “Kafka’s Wound” offers a wealth of audio, video, and oth­er tex­tu­al mate­r­i­al to sup­ple­ment the expe­ri­ence of the main text, all of which con­nects in some way to the essay’s sub­ject: Will Self­’s “per­son­al rela­tion­ship to Kafka’s work through the lens of the short sto­ry ‘A Coun­try Doc­tor’ (1919), and in par­tic­u­lar through the aper­ture of the wound described in that sto­ry.” Self­’s own site describes the essay as “ ‘through com­posed’ with Will’s own thoughts, as he works, being respond­ed to by dig­i­tal-con­tent providers,” with more of that con­tent to come through July.

The envi­ron­ment inter­net, which facil­i­tates our nat­ur­al ten­den­cy to drift from sub­ject to at least semi-relat­ed sub­ject with an addic­tive vengeance, encour­ages asso­ci­a­tion­al think­ing. But so do cities, as a psy­cho­geo­g­ra­ph­er like Will Self knows full well. And so part of this rich lit­er­ary inves­ti­ga­tion takes the form of an hour­long doc­u­men­tary (click here or the image above to view), in which Self takes a walk­ing tour of Kafka’s Prague, seek­ing out the writer’s “genius loci,” the sites that gave set­tings to the mile­stones of his life and shape to his artis­tic and intel­lec­tu­al sen­si­bil­i­ties. He also takes the oppor­tu­ni­ty to do a Kaf­ka read­ing right there in Kafka’s home­town. It’s one thing to read Kaf­ka with the Lau­ren­z­iberg in mind, but still quite anoth­er to do it with the Lau­ren­z­iberg in sight.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kafka’s Night­mare Tale, ‘A Coun­try Doc­tor,’ Told in Award-Win­ning Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion

Franz Kafka’s Kafkaesque Love Let­ters

Vladimir Nabokov Makes Edi­to­r­i­al Tweaks to Franz Kafka’s Novel­la The Meta­mor­pho­sis

The Art of Franz Kaf­ka: Draw­ings from 1907–1917

Four Franz Kaf­ka Ani­ma­tions: Enjoy Cre­ative Ani­mat­ed Shorts from Poland, Japan, Rus­sia & Cana­da

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

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Watch an Animation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s New Story, “Love Is Blind and Deaf”

in Animation, Literature | June 24th, 2015

Briefly not­ed: Jonathan Safran Foer (Extreme­ly Loud and Incred­i­bly Close and Every­thing Is Illu­mi­nat­ed) has a new short sto­ry, “Love Is Blind and Deaf,” in the Sum­mer Fic­tion Issue of The New York­er. And, by short, I mean short. His quirky Adam and Eve sto­ry runs 592 words.

You can read the sto­ry free online here (if you haven’t exceed­ed the month­ly quo­ta of The New York­er’s pay­wall). Or, if you’re more visu­al, you can watch an ani­mat­ed adap­ta­tion of the sto­ry above. Direct­ed by Gur Ben­twich and ani­mat­ed by Ofra Koblin­er, the video was pro­duced by Sto­ryvid, a non­prof­it pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny that aspires to cre­ate “the lit­er­ary equiv­a­lent of a music video.”

For more Foer, lis­ten to him read Amos Oz’s sto­ry, “The King of Oz,” which oth­er­wise appears in our col­lec­tion of 630 Free Audio Books.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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Relat­ed Con­tent

700 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

Jonathan Safran Foer, Toni Mor­ri­son & Steven Pinker Cul­ti­vate Thought on Chipotle’s Cups and Bags

The New Yorker’s Fic­tion Pod­cast: Where Great Writ­ers Read Sto­ries by Great Writ­ers

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Cambridge University to Create a Lego Professorship

in Education | June 24th, 2015

cambridge lego

Image by Julochka/Flickr Com­mons

So it turns out that my two-year old son might be qual­i­fied for a pro­fes­sor­ship at an elite uni­ver­si­ty. No, he’s not some Doo­gie Hows­er-style savant. He just real­ly likes Legos. And Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty – the school of Isaac New­ton, Charles Dar­win and Stephen Hawk­ing – has announced that it’s get­ting ready to cre­ate a Lego pro­fes­sor­ship this fall.

The posi­tion, which is slat­ed to start in Octo­ber 2015, came about fol­low­ing a £4 mil­lion dona­tion from the Lego Foun­da­tion. The Den­mark-based orga­ni­za­tion, which owns 25% of the Lego toy com­pa­ny, states that their mis­sion is to “make chil­dren’s lives bet­ter — and com­mu­ni­ties stronger — by mak­ing sure the fun­da­men­tal val­ue of play is under­stood, embraced and act­ed upon.” The Foun­da­tion already has ties with MIT and Tsinghua Uni­ver­si­ty in Chi­na, among oth­ers.

Who ever lands the pro­fes­sor­ship will also head the Research Cen­tre on Play in Edu­ca­tion, Devel­op­ment and Learn­ing and will explore the con­nec­tion between learn­ing and play.

The qual­i­fi­ca­tions for the job seem remark­ably broad. As the uni­ver­si­ty says: “The can­di­da­ture should be open to all those whose work falls with­in the gen­er­al field of the title of the office.” They don’t, how­ev­er, specif­i­cal­ly men­tion that can­di­dates have to be pot­ty trained. I’m get­ting my son’s resume ready.

You can read Cam­bridge’s back­ground doc­u­men­ta­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Pro­fes­sor Risk” at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Says “One of the Biggest Risks is Being Too Cau­tious”

J.K. Rowl­ing Tells Har­vard Grads Why Suc­cess Begins with Fail­ure

Find Cours­es from Cam­bridge in our Col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es Online

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 vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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How German Expressionism Influenced Tim Burton: A Video Essay

in Film | June 23rd, 2015

Cin­e­ma Sem Lei has made a nice super­cut video essay that explores the influ­ence of Ger­man Expres­sion­ism on the films of Tim Bur­ton. There’s unde­ni­ably some direct quotes: The first shot com­par­ing the cityscapes of Metrop­o­lis and Bat­man Returns, the shad­ows on the wall of both The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari and The Corpse Bride, and the sim­i­lar­i­ties in the hair­cuts of Metrop­o­lis’ Rot­wang and Christo­pher Walken’s Max Shreck (the name a trib­ute to the title actor in Nos­fer­atu) again in Bat­man Returns. (Beetle­juice is noto­ri­ous­ly absent.)

But there’s also a sense that Cin­e­ma Sem Lei’s video is cut­ting off a crab’s legs to make it fit in a box. Not every­thing in Burton’s films has a direct link to Ger­man Expres­sion­ism, and to do so is to pre­tend that this silent movie style lie dor­mant between the 1920s and 1982, when Bur­ton cre­at­ed his first ani­mat­ed short, Vin­cent. (Watch it here.) It’s to ignore that Bur­ton most like­ly got his Expres­sion­ism, like many oth­er ’80s film­mak­ers, sec­ond and third hand.

Ger­man Expres­sion­ism didn’t result in that many films, but the ones that did have become famous for their vision­ary aes­thet­ic, stand­ing out visu­al­ly and intel­lec­tu­al­ly against the oth­er films of the day. When many of its direc­tors fled the Nazis and moved to Hol­ly­wood, the style began to influ­ence hor­ror movies and film noir. One oth­er place where Expres­sion­ism popped up was in the ani­mat­ed films of Warn­er Broth­ers, Dis­ney, and MGM, some­thing Bur­ton def­i­nite­ly grew up watch­ing. The com­ic exag­ger­a­tions in Tex Avery are noth­ing but expres­sion­ist, and the design of both the desert vis­tas of Chuck Jones’ Road Run­ner films, and his wild sci-fi designs bear the dis­tor­tions of Cali­gari’s sets.

So while we can see the angled rooftops and spindly stairs of Cali­gari in the shot of Burton’s Vin­cent sulk­i­ly climb­ing the stairs to his room, a more direct influ­ence was the art of Dr. Seuss, and while a skele­ton might play a bone as a flute in Murnau’s Faust, it’s Burton’s child­hood love of Ray Har­ry­hausen that you can see in the skele­ton band from Corpse Bride.

Also, it’s not known when Bur­ton may have seen these clas­sic silent films. Grow­ing up in the ‘70s he would have had to seek out prints, or look at stills in books about the his­to­ry of hor­ror. Once he got to CalArts to study, his access to films would have expand­ed beyond what was on tele­vi­sion.

But it’s inter­est­ing that in most inter­views, Bur­ton quick­ly diverts the dis­cus­sion if and rarely when asked about Ger­man Expres­sion­ism, but indulges when asked about what he watched as a child.

Once work­ing in the film indus­try, no doubt those Bur­ton brought on for his art direc­tors and cos­tume design­ers came with their own knowl­edge of his­to­ry, while music videos in the ear­ly ‘80s were also awash with Expres­sion­ist influ­ence mixed with mod­ernist design. Not to say that Bur­ton isn’t a sin­gu­lar vision­ary with a stack of influ­ences, but one who had grown up lone­ly, he soon found him­self among many who shared his par­tic­u­lar tastes, the film pro­duc­tion as a sec­ond fam­i­ly.

via Slate

Relat­ed con­tent:

Six Ear­ly Short Films By Tim Bur­ton

Watch 10 Clas­sic Ger­man Expres­sion­ist Films: From Fritz Lang’s M to The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari

Vin­cent: Tim Burton’s Ear­ly Ani­mat­ed Film

Tim Burton’s The World of Stain­boy: Watch the Com­plete Ani­mat­ed Series

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

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