The First Adult Coloring Book: See the Subversive Executive Coloring Book From 1961

in Books, Coloring Books, Politics | December 31st, 2015

Exec Coloring 1

Since the Har­ry Pot­ter craze began, we’ve seen young adult fic­tion gain mas­sive pop­u­lar­i­ty with adults, in ways some crit­ics have lament­ed as a trend that infan­tilizes the buy­ing pub­lic. (Some say the same about super­hero films and adult fans of boy bands). Katie Couric iden­ti­fied the phe­nom­e­non as “the rise of so-called Peter Pan activ­i­ties,” throw­ing “adult sum­mer camps and Lego leagues” in the mix. Crit­ics of Peter Panism can add anoth­er trend to their bat­tery of exam­ples: the rise of the adult col­or­ing book. Busi­ness Insid­er report­ed in April that “in Britain, four out of the top 10 Ama­zon best­sellers are col­or­ing (or colour­ing, as the Brits insist) books for adults.” Cur­rent­ly, Amazon’s top 20 best­sellers for 2015 includes three adult col­or­ing books. Among so many oth­er con­sumer signs and por­tents, adult col­or­ing books may indeed her­ald a com­ing apoc­a­lypse, at least for Rus­sell Brand, who won­ders, “What has turned us into ter­ri­fied divs that want to live in child­ish stu­pors?”

Well, whether “child­ish,” art ther­a­py or “Zen,” adult col­or­ing books meet a need mil­lions of grown-ups have to soothe their jan­gled nerves, and it seems almost cru­el to mock peo­ple so anx­i­ety-rid­den they’ve returned to kinder­garten reme­dies. Then again, it’s worth not­ing, as Smith­son­ian did recent­ly, “the adult col­or­ing con­cept is not exact­ly new.”

It dates back to the 1960s, when “book­stores explod­ed” with col­or­ing books geared exclu­sive­ly toward adults. The dif­fer­ence between then and now lies in the fact that those books were adult in con­tent as well as form—“satirical and sub­ver­sive,” offer­ing “a mock­ing look at Amer­i­can soci­ety.” The first of these, The Exec­u­tive Col­or­ing Book, arrived in 1961, fol­lowed by The John Birch Soci­ety Col­or­ing Book and many sim­i­lar titles “sat­i­riz­ing con­formism, John F. Kennedy and the Sovi­et Union,” among oth­er tar­gets. And yet, “Unlike the adult col­or­ing books fly­ing off the shelves today,” Smith­son­ian writes, “these books were not cre­at­ed with the inten­tion to be col­ored in.”

Exec Coloring 2

Take the two pages from The Exec­u­tive Col­or­ing Book above. The first, at the top, shows us our exec­u­tive prepar­ing for his day with the cap­tion “THIS IS MY SUIT. Col­or it gray or I will lose my job.” Above, a line of iden­ti­cal exec­u­tives boards a train. Ham­mer­ing home the point, we’re told “THIS IS MY TRAIN. It takes me to my office every day. You meet lots of inter­est­ing peo­ple on the train. Col­or them all gray.” A notable excep­tion to these drea­ry instruc­tions, below, tells us “THIS IS MY PILL. It is round. It is pink. It makes me not care. Watch me take my round, pink pill… and not care.” The con­tents of the pill may have changed, but the med­icat­ed work­er bee is still very much with us, though the gray flan­nel suit is a thing of the past.

Exec Coloring 3

Rather than giv­ing its tar­get audi­ence a chance to become kids again, The Exec­u­tive Col­or­ing Book pokes fun at the ways in which pam­pered exec­u­tives of the Mad Men-era could them­selves be shal­low man­chil­dren. One page, below, shows the executive’s sec­re­tary with the cap­tion “THIS IS MY SECRETARY. I hate her. She is mean. I used to have a soft, round lady. But my wife called her papa.” Anoth­er (bot­tom), rem­i­nis­cent of the busi­ness card scene in Amer­i­can Psy­cho, shows us the executive’s impor­tant phone: “THIS IS MY TELEPHONE. It has five but­tons. Count them. One, two, three, four, five. Five but­tons. How many but­tons does your tele­phone have? Mine has five.”

Exec Coloring 4

From its faux-leather cov­er to its final page of busi­ness-speak gib­ber­ish, the whole thing is a mas­ter­ful­ly sim­ple, self-con­tained piece of con­cep­tu­al art. The next pub­li­ca­tion by the same authors, The John Birch Col­or­ing Book, made its inten­tions a lit­tle more obvi­ous. A Sun­day Her­ald review quotes from its intro­duc­tion: “This book is respect­ful­ly ded­i­cat­ed to Dwight D. Eisen­how­er and many oth­er loy­al Amer­i­cans who have been maligned by extrem­ist groups.” One cap­tion reads “This is our eagle. We cut off his left wing. Now he is an all Amer­i­can eagle. But he flies only in cir­cles.” The “Birchers will have to learn to smile,” writes the review­er, as the book “spare[s] not their feel­ings.” Not like­ly. Rather than sell­ing relax­ation, the adult col­or­ing books of the 60s were “engaged,” wrote Mil­ton Brack­er in a 1962 New York Times review, “in polit­i­cal war­fare.”

Exec Coloring 5

via Smith­son­ian and Ad to the Bone

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

Read Mar­tin Luther King and The Mont­gomery Sto­ry: The Influ­en­tial 1957 Civ­il Rights Com­ic Book

Dr. Seuss Draws Anti-Japan­ese Car­toons Dur­ing WWII, Then Atones with Hor­ton Hears a Who!

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Sartre Writes a Tribute to Camus After His Friend-Turned-Rival Dies in a Tragic Car Crash: “There Is an Unbearable Absurdity in His Death”

in Philosophy | December 30th, 2015

The friend­ship of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus end­ed, famous­ly, in 1951. That year, increas­ing­ly frac­tious polit­i­cal ten­sions between the two philoso­pher-writ­ers came to a head over the pub­li­ca­tion of Camus’ The Rebel, a book-length essay that marked a depar­ture from rev­o­lu­tion­ary thought and a turn toward a more prag­mat­ic indi­vid­u­al­ism (as well as recall­ing the anar­cho-syn­di­cal­ism Camus had embraced in the 30s). The doc­tri­naire Sartre and his intel­lec­tu­al coterie took excep­tion, and while Sartre fur­ther pur­sued a Marx­ist polit­i­cal pro­gram, informed by a cri­tique of racism and colo­nial­ism, Camus con­front­ed the absurd; he “begins to sound more like Samuel Beck­ett,” writes Andy Mar­tin at the New York Times’ phi­los­o­phy blog, “all alone, in the night, between con­ti­nents, far away from every­thing.”

The two split not only over ideas, how­ev­er: after the war, Camus became increas­ing­ly dis­il­lu­sioned with Stalin’s total­i­tar­i­an Sovi­et rule, while Sartre made what Camus con­sid­ered weak attempts to defend or excuse the regime’s crimes. At first, writes Volk­er Hage in Der Spiegel, their dis­agree­ments were “lim­it­ed to a rel­a­tive­ly small group of intel­lec­tu­als.” Then Sartre pub­lished Fran­cis Jean­son’s scathing review of The Rebel in the jour­nal Sartre found­ed in 1945, Les Temps Mod­ernes. (See Jean­son dis­cuss the review in the video inter­view below, excerpt­ed from the short doc­u­men­tary on Sartre and Camus at the top of the post). Camus, Hage writes, “made the mis­take of send­ing a long rejoin­der. What fol­lowed was a trag­ic dis­so­lu­tion of what had once been a friend­ship.”

Sartre made his final kiss-off very pub­lic, print­ing in Les Temps Mod­ernes a “mer­ci­less” response, “insid­i­ous and mali­cious, yet also a mag­nif­i­cent mas­ter­piece of per­son­al polemics.” Almost ten years lat­er, in 1960, Camus was killed in a car acci­dent at the age of 46. Though the two nev­er for­mal­ly rec­on­ciled, Sartre penned a heart­felt trib­ute to his for­mer friend in The Reporter that con­tained none of the vit­ri­ol of his past con­dem­na­tions. Instead, he describes their falling out in the terms one might use for a for­mer lover:

He and I had quar­reled. A quar­rel does­n’t mat­ter — even if those who quar­rel nev­er see each oth­er again — just anoth­er way of liv­ing togeth­er with­out los­ing sight of one anoth­er in the nar­row lit­tle world that is allot­ted us. It did­n’t keep me from think­ing of him, from feel­ing that his eyes were on the book or news­pa­per I was read­ing and won­der­ing: “What does he think of it? What does he think of it at this moment?”

Sartre con­fess­es his uneasi­ness with Camus’ moody silence, “which accord­ing to events and my mood I con­sid­ered some­times too cau­tious and some­times too painful.” It was a silence that seem­ing­ly over­took Camus in his final years as he retreat­ed from pub­lic life, and though Camus’ fierce indi­vid­u­al­ism lay at the heart of their falling-out, Sartre wrote in deep appre­ci­a­tion of his friend and antagonist’s soli­tude and stub­born res­olute­ness:

He rep­re­sent­ed in our time the lat­est exam­ple of that long line of moral­istes whose works con­sti­tute per­haps the most orig­i­nal ele­ment in French let­ters. His obsti­nate human­ism, nar­row and pure, aus­tere and sen­su­al, waged an uncer­tain war against the mas­sive and form­less events of the time. But on the oth­er hand through his dogged rejec­tions he reaf­firmed, at the heart of our epoch, against the Machi­avel­lians and against the Idol of real­ism, the exis­tence of the moral issue.

In a way, he was that res­olute affir­ma­tion. Any­one who read or reflect­ed encoun­tered the human val­ues he held in his fist; he ques­tioned the polit­i­cal act. One had to avoid him or fight him-he was indis­pens­able to that ten­sion which makes intel­lec­tu­al life what it is.

Camus’ “silence,” the theme of Sartre’s trib­ute, “had some­thing pos­i­tive about it.” The for­mer harsh­ness of Sartre’s cri­tiques soft­ens as he chides Camus’ refusal “to leave the safe ground of moral­i­ty and ven­ture on the uncer­tain paths of prac­ti­cal­i­ty.” Camus’ con­fronta­tion with the Absurd, writes Sartre, with “the con­flicts he kept hid­den… both requires and con­demns revolt.”

At the bit­ter end of their friend­ship, Sartre vicious­ly con­demned the con­tra­dic­tions of Camus’ polit­i­cal thought as the prod­uct of per­son­al fail­ings, telling him, “You have become the vic­tim of an exces­sive sul­len­ness that masks your inter­nal prob­lems. Soon­er or lat­er, some­one would have told you, so it might as well be me.” In his final trib­ute to Camus, he returns to this idea, in much dif­fer­ent lan­guage, writ­ing that, at the age of 20, Camus had become “sud­den­ly afflict­ed with a mal­a­dy that upset his whole life”; he had “dis­cov­ered the Absurd—the sense­less nega­tion of man.” Rather than suc­cumb­ing, however—Sartre writes—Camus “became accus­tomed to it, he thought out his unbear­able con­di­tion, he came through.”

After the car acci­dent, Sartre acknowl­edged Camus’ fierce indi­vid­u­al­ism and prin­ci­ple in the face of life’s absur­di­ty as an exis­ten­tial tri­umph rather than a hand­i­cap: “We shall rec­og­nize in that work and in the life that is insep­a­ra­ble from it the pure and vic­to­ri­ous attempt of one man to snatch every instant of his exis­tence from his future death.”

Read the full trib­ute essay in a down­load­able PDF for­mat here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Albert Camus Writes a Friend­ly Let­ter to Jean-Paul Sartre Before Their Per­son­al and Philo­soph­i­cal Rift

Hear Albert Camus Deliv­er His Nobel Prize Accep­tance Speech (1957)

The Absurd Phi­los­o­phy of Albert Camus Pre­sent­ed in a Short Ani­mat­ed Film by Alain De Bot­ton

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

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Discover The Music Vault: A Massive YouTube Archive of 22,000 Live Concert Videos

in Music | December 30th, 2015

Last sum­mer, we high­light­ed an almost unbe­liev­ably rich resource for music fans: the Music Vault, a Youtube archive of 22,000 live con­cert videos from a range of artists, span­ning about four decades into the present. In a time of soar­ing tick­et prices, the Music Vault allows us to catch a show at home for free, and to see bands we missed in their hey­day per­form on stages around the world. Last sum­mer, I wrote, “enjoy revis­it­ing the glo­ry days and rest assured, they aren’t going away any­time soon.” But I spoke too soon, as many Music Vault videos (there were only 13,000 then) began dis­ap­pear­ing, along with the nos­tal­gia and hip cur­ren­cy they offered. Well, now they’re back up and run­ning, and let’s hope it’s for good.

Unsurprisingly—given its asso­ci­a­tion with Wolf­gang’s Vault, a restora­tion and archive project that began with the col­lec­tion of leg­endary con­cert pro­mot­er Bill Gra­ham—the Music Vault’s store­house includes per­haps more Grate­ful Dead mate­r­i­al than any­thing else, like the near­ly six hour Win­ter­land con­cert above from 1978. Check out the intro inter­view with now Sen­a­tor, then come­di­an Al Franken, doing some polit­i­cal humor for radio sta­tion KSAN. (And see Franken do anoth­er Dead intro skit in 1980 at Radio City Music Hall here.) There’s so much Grate­ful Dead in fact, they get their own chan­nel. You’ll also find plen­ty more live clas­sic rock shows from Neil Young, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Van Mor­ri­son, the Stones, Joe Cock­er, and more. (Check out this rare show from a pre-Van Halen Sam­my Hagar in 1978.)

If that’s not what you’re into, there’s also plen­ty of punk and new wave, like the clas­sic Talk­ing Heads per­for­mance of “Life Dur­ing Wartime” above at the Capi­tol The­atre from 1980 (see the com­plete con­cert here). You can also catch Iggy Pop in ’86, Blondie in ’79, the Ramones in ’78, Prince in ’82, or Green Day in ’94. You don’t get the cred from say­ing you were there, what­ev­er that’s worth, but you get the thrill of see­ing these artists in their prime, (almost) live and direct. Fan­cy more con­tem­po­rary fare? Check out the New Music Dis­cov­ery chan­nel with live per­for­mances from cur­rent acts, curat­ed by Daytrot­ter and Paste Mag­a­zine. Dig funk, soul, and reg­gae? They’ve got you cov­ered, with shows from Par­lia­ment-Funkadel­ic, Jim­my Cliff, Cur­tis May­field, and many more. See Bob Mar­ley and the Wail­ers do a stel­lar ren­di­tion of “No Woman, No Cry” at the Oak­land Audi­to­ri­um in 1979, below.

More of a jazz cat? No wor­ries, Music Vault has an exten­sive jazz chan­nel fea­tur­ing every­one from Miles Davis to Her­bie Han­cock to Tony Ben­net, and includ­ing new­er artists like vocal­ist Lizz Wright and trio The Bad Plus. (They’ve even got a sur­pris­ing per­for­mance from Orange is the New Black’s Lea DeLar­ia at the New­port Jazz Fes­ti­val in 2002.) The Music Vault also hosts clas­sic music doc­u­men­taries and inter­views, like the Rolling Stones 1976 Euro­pean Tour doc­u­men­tary below. (Oth­er high­lights include doc­u­men­tary Last Days at the Fill­more and a 1974 inter­view with Bill Gra­ham.) What­ev­er your thing is, you’ll prob­a­bly find a lit­tle bit, or a lot, of it in this enor­mous data­base of live con­cert film and video and oth­er fea­tures (though almost no pop, r&b, or hip-hop). If you don’t, check back lat­er. The Music Vault promis­es to add new “hand-curat­ed” con­cert videos dai­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Grate­ful Dead’s Final Farewell Con­certs Now Stream­ing Online

10,173 Free Grate­ful Dead Con­cert Record­ings in the Inter­net Archive

What Was Your First Live Con­cert? We’ll Show You Ours, Share Yours.

The Clash Live in Tokyo, 1982: Watch the Com­plete Con­cert

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

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Hear Jeremy Irons Read T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Naming of Cats’ (For a Limited Time)

in Audio Books, Poetry | December 30th, 2015

Briefly not­ed: For a lim­it­ed time (for the next 23 days, to be pre­cise), you can hear Jere­my Irons read­ing “The Nam­ing of Cats,” a poem from T.S. Eliot’s Old Pos­sum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats (1939). The poem will cer­tain­ly sound famil­iar to any­one who has ever seen Andrew Lloyd Web­ber’s musi­cal, Cats.

As a bonus, if you revis­it this post in our archive, you can hear Eliot, him­self, read­ing poems from the very same col­lec­tion. And this oth­er Open Cul­ture post fea­tures Eliot’s own cov­er design for Old Pos­sum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats. What angle haven’t we cov­ered?

The clip above comes cour­tesy of BBC Radio 4.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

T.S. Eliot Reads Old Possum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats & Oth­er Clas­sic Poems (75 Min­utes, 1955)

T.S. Eliot Illus­trates His Let­ters and Draws a Cov­er for Old Possum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats

Lis­ten to T.S. Eliot Recite His Late Mas­ter­piece, the Four Quar­tets

T.S. Eliot Reads His Mod­ernist Mas­ter­pieces “The Waste Land” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

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How to Get Started: John Cage’s Approach to Starting the Difficult Creative Process

in Creativity, Music | December 30th, 2015

john cage 65 hours

Image by WikiArt, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

You know what they say: eighty per­cent of the work you do on a project, you do get­ting the last twen­ty per­cent of that project right. But most of that oth­er twen­ty per­cent of the work must go toward get­ting start­ed in the first place; you’ve got to get over a pret­ty big hill just to get to the point of writ­ing the first sen­tence, paint­ing the first stroke, shoot­ing the first shot, or play­ing the first chords. Avant-garde com­pos­er John Cage knew well the chal­lenges of just get­ting start­ed, and his thoughts on the sub­ject moti­vat­ed him, toward the end of his career, to do the writ­ten, per­formed, and record­ed project we fea­ture today, How to Get Start­ed.

Cage him­self only put on How to Get Start­ed once, at an inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence on sound design at George Lucas’ Sky­walk­er Ranch on August 31, 1989. It worked like this: he brought with him ten note cards, each of which con­tained notes for a par­tic­u­lar “idea” he want­ed to talk about. On went a tape recorder, and he began speak­ing impro­vi­sa­tion­al­ly about the first idea. Then he flipped to the next card, and as he talked about its idea, the record­ing of the first one played in the back­ground. He con­tin­ued with this pro­ce­dure until, by the tenth idea on the tenth card, he had his impromp­tu speech­es on all nine pre­vi­ous ideas play­ing simul­ta­ne­ous­ly behind him. You can get an idea of what his read­ings sound­ed like in the three clips (from howtogetstarted.org) embed­ded here [first, sec­ond, third].

The ten ideas Cage jot­ted down on his note­cards come inspired by, and inspired him to dis­cuss fur­ther, his own cre­ative expe­ri­ences. In the first, he describes a new com­po­si­tion­al process that came to him in a dream, which involves crum­pling a score into a ball and unfold­ing it again. In the third, he thinks back to his work Roara­to­rio, an Irish cir­cus on Finnegans Wake, which con­vert­ed Joyce’s nov­el into music, and imag­ines a way for­ward that would involve turn­ing into music not one book at a time but sev­er­al. In the fifth, he ref­er­ences Mar­cel Ducham­p’s “The Cre­ative Act,” which brought home for him the notion of how audi­ences “fin­ish the work by lis­ten­ing,” which led to his cre­at­ing works of “musi­cal sculp­ture,” includ­ing one par­tic­u­lar­ly mem­o­rable exam­ple involv­ing “between 150 and 200” Yugosla­vian high school stu­dents, all play­ing their instru­ments in dif­fer­ent places.

Cage’s oth­er sto­ries of cre­ative epiphany in How to Get Start­ed involve a trip to an ane­choic cham­ber; find­ing out what made one dance per­for­mance at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na School of the Arts so “tawdry, shab­by, mis­er­able”; dis­cov­er­ing the artist’s “inner clock” in Leningrad; and how he works around what no less a musi­cal mind than Arnold Schoen­berg diag­nosed as his absent sense of har­mo­ny. You can read a tran­script of all of them in a PDF of How to Get Start­ed’s com­pan­ion book­let. And depend­ing upon how inspired you find your­self (or how close you live to Philadel­phia), you might con­sid­er mak­ing the trip to the Slought Foun­da­tion, who have built a room spe­cial­ly designed for the piece. You might not come out of it feel­ing like you’ve absorbed all the cre­ativ­i­ty of John Cage, but he him­self points us toward the impor­tant thing: not the amor­phous qual­i­ty of cre­ativ­i­ty, but the action of get­ting start­ed.

via Mono­skop

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Uni­ver­sal Mind of Bill Evans: Advice on Learn­ing to Play Jazz & The Cre­ative Process

Cre­ativ­i­ty, Not Mon­ey, is the Key to Hap­pi­ness: Dis­cov­er Psy­chol­o­gist Mihaly Csikszentmihaly’s The­o­ry of “Flow”

Albert Ein­stein Tells His Son The Key to Learn­ing & Hap­pi­ness is Los­ing Your­self in Cre­ativ­i­ty (or “Find­ing Flow”)

Isaac Asi­mov Explains the Ori­gins of Good Ideas & Cre­ativ­i­ty in Nev­er-Before-Pub­lished Essay

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

David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Enhances Our Cre­ativ­i­ty

Jump Start Your Cre­ative Process with Bri­an Eno’s “Oblique Strate­gies” Deck of Cards (1975)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Hear Tom Lehrer Sing the Names of 102 Chemical Elements to the Tune of Gilbert & Sullivan

in Math, Music | December 29th, 2015

Tom Lehrer earned a BA and MA in math­e­mat­ics from Har­vard dur­ing the late 1940s, then taught math cours­es at MIT, Har­vard, Welles­ley, and UC-San­ta Cruz. Math was his voca­tion. But, all along, Lehrer nur­tured an inter­est in music. And, by the mid 1950s, he became best known for his satir­i­cal songs that touched on some­times polit­i­cal, some­times aca­d­e­m­ic themes.

Today we’re pre­sent­ing one of his clas­sics: “The Ele­ments.” Record­ed in 1959, the song fea­tures Lehrer recit­ing the names of the 102 chem­i­cal ele­ments known at the time (we now have 115), and it’s all sung to the tune of Major-Gen­er­al’s Song from The Pirates of Pen­zance by Gilbert and Sul­li­van. You can hear a stu­dio ver­sion below, and watch a nice live ver­sion taped in Copen­hagen, Den­mark, in Sep­tem­ber 1967.

Decades lat­er, this clas­sic piece of “Tom­fool­ery” stays with us, pop­ping up here and there in pop­u­lar cul­ture. For exam­ple, Daniel Rad­cliffe (of Har­ry Pot­ter fame) per­formed Lehrer’s song on the BBC’s Gra­ham Nor­ton Show in 2010. Enjoy.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Math Cours­es

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

Math­e­mat­ics in Movies: Har­vard Prof Curates 150+ Scenes

Cal­cu­lus Life­saver: A Free Online Course from Prince­ton

 

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Music from Star Wars, Kubrick, Scorsese & Tim Burton Films Played by the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra: Stream Full Albums

in Film, Music | December 29th, 2015

Movies and music go way back — back, even, to the era of silent films, when music, pro­vid­ed by any per­for­mance out­fit, from a full orches­tra to a hum­ble upright piano play­er, con­sti­tut­ed the only accom­pa­ny­ing sound of any kind. Often, kids who begin choos­ing music for them­selves (at least this held for the kids of my gen­er­a­tion) start with movie sound­tracks, since they’ll usu­al­ly have done at least a lit­tle film­go­ing before they come to life as con­sumers of record­ed sound. And mod­ern sound­tracks, so often com­posed in whole or in part of orches­tral pieces, also offer a non-intim­i­dat­ing entrée into the wide world of clas­si­cal music.

Movies and the City of Prague Orches­tra also go way back. Found­ed in the 1940s as the Film Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra, in-house orches­tra of Bar­ran­dov Film Stu­dios, it even­tu­al­ly went its own way as the Czech Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra, and it has worked, post-Vel­vet Rev­o­lu­tion, under the name we know it by today. We know that name because of the sheer amount of music the City of Prague Orches­tra plays, doing 250 record­ing ses­sions every year for not just clas­si­cal albums but a vari­ety of oth­er media as well, includ­ing tele­vi­sion shows, video games, ring­tones, and espe­cial­ly movies. Today we’ve round­ed up a vari­ety of albums on Spo­ti­fy (whose free soft­ware you can down­load here) that col­lect the City of Prague Orches­tra’s work with movie music, which spans scores they first laid down them­selves to their inter­pre­ta­tions of clas­sic favorites.

First, in cel­e­bra­tion of the recent con­tin­u­a­tion of the Star Wars saga with its new sev­enth film, the City of Prague Orches­tra plays the music from the first six. But if you pre­fer a dif­fer­ent sort of space odyssey, have a lis­ten to the playlist just above fea­tur­ing, the music from the films of Stan­ley Kubrick, who said that he did­n’t need to com­mis­sion new music for his pic­tures, since he could hard­ly do bet­ter than sim­ply using the finest clas­si­cal pieces already in exis­tence — which, as any­one who’s seen 2001 knows, he could use suit­ably indeed. Below, you can hear the Orches­tra take on selec­tions from the work of Tim Bur­ton and Mar­tin Scors­ese, auteurs well known for their visu­al inven­tive­ness.

If you enjoy all of those, much more awaits your ears on Spo­ti­fy from the City of Prague Orches­tra’s cin­e­mat­ic cat­a­logue, includ­ing playlists of music from the films of Steven Spiel­berg, whose big Hol­ly­wood visions depend on their scores for a good deal of their impact; of music from pic­tures star­ring icon­ic actors like John Wayne, Paul New­man, and John­ny Depp; of the pieces that have giv­en the James Bond series their sig­na­ture (some­times so-uncool-it’s-cool) cool; and even of orches­tral work from a swath of Ital­ian film, includ­ing movies like La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2, and of course, Cin­e­ma Par­adiso. If we find the cin­e­ma a par­adise, after all, that owes as much to the music we’ve heard there as the visions we’ve seen there.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Clas­si­cal Music in Stan­ley Kubrick’s Films: Lis­ten to a Free, 4 Hour Playlist

A Playlist of 172 Songs from Wes Ander­son Sound­tracks: From Bot­tle Rock­et to The Grand Budapest Hotel

Jim Jar­musch: The Art of the Music in His Films

Quentin Taran­ti­no Explains The Art of the Music in His Films

Hear 2.5‑Hours of Great Jazz Songs Fea­tured in Woody Allen Films: Sid­ney Bechet in Mid­night in Paris, Louis Arm­strong in Star­dust Mem­o­ries & More

A 56-Song Playlist of Music in Haru­ki Murakami’s Nov­els: Ray Charles, Glenn Gould, the Beach Boys & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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David Bowie Sings “Changes” in 2006: The Last Time He Performed Live, and Maybe His Last Live Performance Ever

in Music | December 29th, 2015

The man of a thou­sand hair­cuts, David Bowie has been the van­guard for cre­ative rein­ven­tion for longer than many of his fans have been alive. As soon as he’s made us think he’s exhaust­ed his imag­i­na­tion, he reap­pears with yet anoth­er album, anoth­er look, anoth­er the­atri­cal tour. Except that last bit isn’t like­ly to hap­pen again. We may have seen the end of Bowie the per­former some time ago, accord­ing to such sources as long­time Bowie pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti (who worked with him on 2013’s The Next Day) and British con­cert pro­mot­er John Gid­dings.

“David is one of the best artists I’ve ever worked with,” said Gid­dings in Octo­ber, ”but every time I see him now, before I even speak to him, he goes, ‘I’m not tour­ing.’” Does this rule out the odd one-off appear­ance? Who knows. Noth­ing is for cer­tain with Bowie. But it may well be that the per­for­mance above, a duet of “Changes” with Ali­cia Keys from 2006, rep­re­sents the leg­endary shape shifter’s last gig. (And if so, we hope some bet­ter-qual­i­ty video of it sur­faces.)

Bowie appeared with Keys, Dami­an Mar­ley, and come­di­an Wan­da Sykes at New York’s Ham­mer­stein Ball­room for a fundrais­er and sang Sta­tion to Sta­tion’s “Wild is the Wind” and Lodger’s “Fan­tas­tic Voy­age” in addi­tion to “Changes,” all fit­ting notes to end on, if this is indeed the end of his live per­form­ing career. He had rarely tak­en the stage since his 2004 heart attack dur­ing the Real­i­ty tour, but, Rolling Stone points out, “that didn’t stop him from play­ing with Arcade Fire twice in 2005 and David Gilmour the fol­low­ing year.”

But that was ten years ago. Dur­ing the record­ing of The Next Day, Vis­con­ti report­ed that Bowie insist­ed there would be no live shows, and there weren’t. Now, Bowie’s sur­prised us again with a new album, Black­star, and a ten-minute video, above, that looks like all the para­noid dystopi­an visions in 90s albums like Out­side, Earth­ling, and Hea­then come ter­ri­fy­ing­ly true. I can imag­ine this most recent, per­haps final, entry in the Bowie canon would make for a hell of a stage show, but it looks like he will pass that torch to the younger artists who con­tin­ue to inspire him as he ages grace­ful­ly. Black­star will be released on Jan­u­ary 8th, Bowie’s 69th birth­day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

50 Years of Chang­ing David Bowie Hair Styles in One Ani­mat­ed GIF

A 17-Year-Old David Bowie Defends “Long-Haired Men” in His First TV Inter­view (1964)

David Bowie and Cher Sing Duet of “Young Amer­i­cans” and Oth­er Songs on 1975 Vari­ety Show

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

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How a Good Night’s Sleep — and a Bad Night’s Sleep — Can Enhance Your Creativity

in Creativity, Health, Neuroscience, Psychology | December 29th, 2015

Sleep

Cre­ative Com­mons image, “Sleep,” by Masha Kras­no­va-Shabae­va

You decide you need some med­ical advice, so you take to the inter­net. Whoops! There’s your first mis­take. Now you are bom­bard­ed with con­tra­dic­to­ry opin­ions from ques­tion­able sources and you begin to devel­op symp­toms you nev­er knew exist­ed. It’s all down­hill from there. So I’ll say this upfront: I have no med­ical qual­i­fi­ca­tions autho­riz­ing me to dis­pense infor­ma­tion about sleep dis­or­ders. The only advice I’d ven­ture, should you have such a prob­lem, is to go see a doc­tor. It might help, or not. I can cer­tain­ly sym­pa­thize. I am a chron­ic insom­ni­ac.

The down­side to this con­di­tion is obvi­ous. I nev­er get enough sleep. When­ev­er I con­sult the inter­net about this, I learn that it’s prob­a­bly very dire and that I may lose my mind or die young(ish). The upside—which I learned to mas­ter after years of try­ing and fail­ing to sleep like nor­mal people—is that the nights are qui­et and peace­ful, and thus a fer­tile time cre­ative­ly.

Med­ical issues aside, what do we know about sleep, insom­nia, and cre­ativ­i­ty? Let us wade into the fray, with the pro­vi­so that we will like­ly reach few con­clu­sions and may have to fall back on our own expe­ri­ence to guide us. In sur­vey­ing this sub­ject, I was pleased to have my expe­ri­ence val­i­dat­ed by an arti­cle in Fast Com­pa­ny. Well, not pleased, exact­ly, as the author, Jane Porter, cites a study in Sci­ence that links a lack of sleep to Alzheimer’s and the accu­mu­la­tion of “poten­tial­ly neu­ro­tox­ic waste prod­ucts.”

And yet, in praise of sleep­less­ness, Porter also rec­om­mends turn­ing insom­nia into a “pro­duc­tiv­i­ty tool,” nam­ing famous insom­ni­acs like Mar­garet Thatch­er, Bill Clin­ton, Charles Dick­ens, Mar­cel Proust, and Madon­na (not all of whom I’d like to emu­late). She then quotes psy­chol­o­gist Tomas Chamor­ro-Pre­muz­ic of Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don, who made the dubi­ous-sound­ing claim in Psy­chol­o­gy Today that “insom­nia is to excep­tion­al achieve­ment what men­tal ill­ness is to cre­ativ­i­ty.” Every­thing about this anal­o­gy sounds sus­pect to me.

But there are more sub­stan­tive views on the mat­ter. Anoth­er study, pub­lished in Cre­ativ­i­ty Research Jour­nal, sug­gests insom­nia may be a symp­tom of “notable cre­ative poten­tial,” though the authors only go as far as say­ing the two phe­nom­e­non are “asso­ci­at­ed.” The arrow of causal­i­ty may point in either direc­tion. Per­haps the most prag­mat­ic view on the sub­ject comes from Michael Perlis, psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, who says, “What is insom­nia, but the gift of more time?”

Den­nis Dra­belle at The Wash­ing­ton Post, also an insom­ni­ac, refers to a recent study (as of 2007) from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Can­ter­bury that sug­gests “insom­nia and orig­i­nal­i­ty may go hand in hand.” He also points out that the notion of sleep­less­ness as pro­duc­tive, though “coun­ter­in­tu­itive,” has plen­ty of prece­dent. Dra­belle men­tions many more famous cas­es, from W.C. Fields to Theodore Roo­sevelt to Franz Kaf­ka. The list could go on and on.

Actor and musi­cian Matt Berry tells The Guardian how, after years of toss­ing and turn­ing, he final­ly har­nessed his sleep­less hours to write and record an album, Music for Insom­ni­acs. “I knew that this was dead time,” says Berry, “and I could be doing some­thing instead of sit­ting wor­ry­ing about not being asleep.” Anoth­er musi­cian, Dave Bay­ley of band Glass Ani­mals, “owes his career in music to insom­nia,” The Guardian writes, then notes a phe­nom­e­non sleep researchers call—with some skep­ti­cism—“cre­ative insom­nia.” Oth­er musi­cians like Chris Mar­tin, Moby, Tricky, and King Krule have all suf­fered the con­di­tion and turned it to good account.

The Guardian also notes that each of these poor souls has found “sleep­less nights inspir­ing as well as tor­ment­ing.” Insom­nia is not, in fact a gift or tal­ent, but a painful con­di­tion that Porter and Dra­belle both acknowl­edge can be asso­ci­at­ed with depres­sion, addic­tion, and oth­er seri­ous med­ical con­di­tions. One might make good use of the time—but per­haps only for a time. A site called Sleep­dex—-which offers “resources for bet­ter sleep”—puts it this way:

Occa­sion­al insom­nia appears to help some peo­ple pro­duce new art and work, but is a detri­ment to oth­ers. It is per­haps true that more peo­ple find it a detri­ment than find it use­ful. Long-term insom­nia and the accom­pa­ny­ing sleep debt are almost sure­ly neg­a­tive for cre­ativ­i­ty.

This brings us to the sub­ject of sleep—good, rest­ful sleep—and its rela­tion­ship to cre­ativ­i­ty. Sleep­dex cites sev­er­al research stud­ies from Swiss and Ital­ian uni­ver­si­ties, UC San Diego, and UC Davis. The gen­er­al con­clu­sion is that REM sleep—that peri­od dur­ing which dreams “are the most nar­ra­tive­ly coher­ent of any dur­ing the night”—is also an impor­tant stim­u­lus for cre­ativ­i­ty. There are the numer­ous anec­dotes from artists like Sal­vador Dali, Paul McCart­ney, and count­less oth­ers about famous works of art tak­ing shape in dream states (Kei­th Richards says he heard the riff from “Sat­is­fac­tion” in a dream).

And there are the exper­i­men­tal data, pur­port­ed­ly con­firm­ing that REM sleep enhances “cre­ative prob­lem solv­ing.” Euro­pean sci­en­tists have found that peo­ple were more like­ly to have cre­ative insights after a long peri­od of rest­ful sleep, when the right brain gets a boost. Like­wise, Tom Stafford at the BBC describes the “post-sleep, dream­like men­tal state—known as sleep iner­tia or the hypnopom­pic state” that infus­es our “wak­ing, direct­ed thoughts with a dust­ing of dream­world mag­ic.” It isn’t that insom­ni­acs don’t expe­ri­ence this, of course, but we have less of it, as peri­ods of REM sleep can be short­er and often inter­rupt­ed by the need to scram­ble out of bed and get to work or get the kids to school not long after hit­ting the pil­low.

Stafford points us toward a UC Berke­ley study (appar­ent­ly the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia has some sort of monop­oly on sleep research) “that helps illus­trate the pow­er of sleep to fos­ter unusu­al con­nec­tions, or ‘remote asso­ciates’ as psy­chol­o­gists call them.” Like near­ly all of the sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­ture on sleep, this study express­es lit­tle doubt about the impor­tance of sleep to mem­o­ry func­tion and prob­lem solv­ing. Big Think col­lects sev­er­al more stud­ies that con­firm the find­ings.

On the whole, when it comes to the links between sleep—or sleeplessness—and cre­ativ­i­ty, the data and the sto­ries point in dif­fer­ent direc­tions. This is hard­ly sur­pris­ing giv­en the slip­per­i­ness of that thing we call “cre­ativ­i­ty.” Like “love” it’s an abstract qual­i­ty every­one wants and no one knows how to make in a lab­o­ra­to­ry. If it’s extra time you’re after—and very qui­et time at that—I can’t rec­om­mend insom­nia enough, though I wouldn’t rec­om­mend it at all as a vol­un­tary exer­cise. If it’s the spe­cial cre­ative insights only avail­able in dream states, well, you’d best get lots of sleep. If you can, that is. Cre­ative insomniacs—like those wan­der­ing in the con­fines of a dream world—know all too well they don’t have much choice in the mat­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why You Do Your Best Think­ing In The Show­er: Cre­ativ­i­ty & the “Incu­ba­tion Peri­od”

The Psy­chol­o­gy of Messi­ness & Cre­ativ­i­ty: Research Shows How a Messy Desk and Cre­ative Work Go Hand in Hand

David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Enhances Our Cre­ativ­i­ty

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

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The Overlook Hotel from The Shining Recreated with Gingerbread & Rice Krispies

in Film, Food & Drink | December 29th, 2015

Gin­ger­bread Over­look Hotel from ‘The Shin­ing’

From “eudi­cotyle­don” on Red­dit comes a hol­i­day project you, too, can maybe try at home. He says: “My fam­i­ly made a gin­ger­bread ren­di­tion of the Over­look Hotel from Kubrick­’s “The Shin­ing,” com­plete with a Rice Krispies treat maze and inte­ri­or rooms depict­ing famous scenes.” You can flip through 29 images in the gallery above, show­ing the edi­ble cre­ation from dif­fer­ent points of view. Then see a “mak­ing-of” gallery here. Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Doc­u­men­tary View from the Over­look: Craft­ing The Shin­ing Looks at How Kubrick Made “the World’s Scari­est Movie”

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Anno­tat­ed Copy of Stephen King’s The Shin­ing

The Hedge Maze from The Shin­ing Gets Recre­at­ed by Mythbuster’s Adam Sav­age

The Mak­ing of The Shin­ing

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The British Museum Is Now Open To Everyone: Take a Virtual Tour and See 4,737 Artifacts, Including the Rosetta Stone

in Art | December 28th, 2015

rosetta stone

“I met a girl at the British Muse­um once,” a fel­low said to me at a par­ty last week­end. “Her name was Roset­ta. Roset­ta Stone.” A groan­er indeed, but also a reminder of how far we’ve come: where­as you once real­ly would have had to go all the way to the British Muse­um (in Lon­don) to run into good old Roset­ta, now you can get acquaint­ed with her, and 4,633 of the oth­er fas­ci­nat­ing arti­facts of human civ­i­liza­tion held there, with­out even step­ping away from your com­put­er.

The British Muse­um charges noth­ing for admis­sion, of course, but now the inter­net has freed it in the geo­graph­i­cal sense as well.

temple relief

“The British Muse­um recent­ly unveiled the results of its part­ner­ship with the Google Cul­tur­al Insti­tute (GCI),” writes Nation­al Geo­graph­ic’s Kristin Rom­ney, “the world’s largest Google Street View of an inte­ri­or space, cov­er­ing nine floors and 85 per­ma­nent gal­leries of the muse­um.” Have a vir­tu­al walk­through, and you’ll pass dis­plays of about 80,000 notable objects; the high­lights Rom­ney names include the Lewis Chess­men and cat mum­mies, the Elgin Mar­bles, and even archi­tec­tur­al fea­tures of the muse­um itself such as the “the yawn­ing expanse of the museum’s Great Court, the largest pub­lic square in Europe, with ear­ly morn­ing light fil­ter­ing through the 3,312 glass roof panes.”

royal game of ur

After you’ve enjoyed this Street View stroll, you’ll sure­ly want to exam­ine some of these items in greater depth. You can do just that at the vir­tu­al exhibits of the Google Cul­tur­al Insti­tute’s British Muse­um col­lec­tion, where you’ll find high-res­o­lu­tion images of and back­ground infor­ma­tion on 4,737 arti­facts, the Roset­ta Stone includ­ed. Or you can take a close look at a seg­ment of the Elgin Mar­bles, a scene from the Parthenon show­ing “the sacred robe or pep­los of Athena that was escort­ed to the Acrop­o­lis by the pro­ces­sion of the Great Pana­thenaic Fes­ti­val, held in Athens every four years.” Not old enough for you? Then behold the Roy­al Game of Ur, an ear­ly board game of sorts dis­cov­ered in the Roy­al Ceme­tery of the Mesopotami­an city-state of Ur. And even fur­ther illu­mi­na­tion of the ancient world awaits you beyond that, all thanks to this most mod­ern sort of project. You can enter the col­lec­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Vis­it The Muse­um of Online Muse­ums (MoOM): A Mega Col­lec­tion of 220 Online Exhi­bi­tions

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Puts 400,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use

LA Coun­ty Muse­um Makes 20,000 Artis­tic Images Avail­able for Free Down­load

Rijksmu­se­um Dig­i­tizes & Makes Free Online 210,000 Works of Art, Mas­ter­pieces Includ­ed!

Whit­ney Muse­um Puts Online 21,000 Works of Amer­i­can Art, By 3,000 Artists

Google Gives You a 360° View of the Per­form­ing Arts, From the Roy­al Shake­speare Com­pa­ny to the Paris Opera Bal­let

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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