The Art of Punk, MOCA’s Series of Punk Documentaries, Begins with Black Flag: Watch It Online

in Art, Music | June 18th, 2013

First you set out to smash all insti­tu­tions, but then you find the insti­tu­tions have enshrined you. Isn’t that always the way? It cer­tain­ly seems to have turned out that way for punk rock, in any case, which vowed in the sev­en­ties to tear it all up and start over again. Now, in the 2010s, we find trib­ute paid to not just the music but the aes­thet­ics, lifestyles, and per­son­al­i­ties of the punk move­ment by two sep­a­rate, and sep­a­rate­ly well-respect­ed, insti­tu­tions. We recent­ly fea­tured the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art’s exhi­bi­tion Punk: Chaos to Cou­ture. Today, you can start watch­ing The Art of Punk, a series of doc­u­men­taries from MOCAtv, the video chan­nel of Los Ange­les’ Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art. Its trail­er, which appears at the top of the post, empha­sizes its focus on, lit­er­al­ly, the visu­al art of punk: its posters, its album art, its T‑shirts, and even — un-punk as this may sound — its logos.

The series opens with the episode just above on Black Flag and Ray­mond Pet­ti­bon, design­er of the band’s well-known four-bar icon. It catch­es up with not just him, but found­ing singer Kei­th Mor­ris and bassist Chuck Dukows­ki, as well as Flea from the Red Hot Chili pep­pers, who grew up a fan of the greater Los Ange­les punk scene from which Black Flag emerged.

The episode con­cludes, need­less to say, with Hen­ry Rollins, who, though not an orig­i­nal mem­ber of the band and now pri­mar­i­ly a spo­ken word per­former, has come to embody their punk ethos in his own high­ly dis­tinc­tive way. In the lat­est episode, just out today, The Art of Punk series takes you inside the world of Crass, the Eng­lish punk band formed in 1977. Watch the remain­ing install­ments at the playlist.

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.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Punk Meets High Fash­ion in Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Exhi­bi­tion PUNK: Chaos to Cou­ture

Hen­ry Rollins Remem­bers the Life-Chang­ing Deci­sion That Brought Him From Häa­gen-Dazs to Black Flag

Mal­colm McLaren: The Quest for Authen­tic Cre­ativ­i­ty

The His­to­ry of Punk Rock

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.

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Chinese Artist Ai Weiwei Releases a “Heavy Metal” Song & Video Recalling His Harsh Imprisonment

in Art, Music, Politics | June 18th, 2013

Burly Chi­nese artist and dis­si­dent Ai Wei­wei has nev­er lost his sense of humor, even when fac­ing harsh repres­sion from his gov­ern­ment. But while the idea of 55-year old Ai record­ing a heavy met­al record might seem like a stunt, the source mate­r­i­al for his first sin­gle, “Dum­b­ass” (above), is any­thing but fun­ny. The furi­ous­ly angry, exple­tive-filled song is inspired by Ai’s harsh treat­ment dur­ing his 81-day impris­on­ment in 2011. He’s call­ing the musi­cal project “a kind of self-ther­a­py” and will release six tracks on June 22—the sec­ond anniver­sary of his release—as an album called The Divine Com­e­dy.

Ai sings (or howls, growls, and bel­lows) in Chi­nese. As you can see from the grim images in the video above—with the artist re-enact­ing and re-imag­in­ing his expe­ri­ences in detention—the mem­o­ries of his incar­cer­a­tion are still raw and painful. While he’s called his music “heavy met­al,” The Guardian points out that “it’s not exact­ly Metal­li­ca” (unless you count that Lou Reed col­lab­o­ra­tion). Ai him­self says of his sound:

After I said it would be heavy met­al I ran back to check what heavy met­al would be like. Then I thought, oh my god, it’s quite dif­fer­ent…. So it’s Chi­nese heavy met­al, or maybe Caochang­di [where his stu­dio is based] heavy met­al.

Call it what you want: Chi­nese heavy met­al, prac­ti­cal joke, avant garde per­for­mance piece… it’s still like­ly to get Ai in even fur­ther trou­ble with Chi­nese author­i­ties. As he explained to the New York Times, how­ev­er, he “want­ed to do some­thing impos­si­ble…. I want­ed to show young peo­ple here we can all sing…. It’s our voice.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Who’s Afraid of Ai Wei­wei: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

Ai Weiwei’s Par­o­dy of ‘Gang­nam Style’

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

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Introducing Wireless Philosophy: An Open Access Philosophy Project Created by Yale and MIT

in Philosophy | June 18th, 2013

“Wire­less Phi­los­o­phy,” or Wiphi, is an online project of “open access phi­los­o­phy” co-cre­at­ed by Yale and MIT that aims to make fun­da­men­tal philo­soph­i­cal con­cepts acces­si­ble by “mak­ing videos that are freely avail­able in a form that is enter­tain­ing” to peo­ple “with no back­ground in the sub­ject.” To accom­plish this goal, they have con­tract­ed with an impres­sive range of pro­fes­sors of phi­los­o­phy from pres­ti­gious uni­ver­si­ties across the coun­try. Wiphi is still very much a work-in-progress, but they cur­rent­ly fea­ture some inter­est­ing intro­duc­tions to clas­si­cal philo­soph­i­cal issues. Cur­rent­ly, the site divides into sev­er­al basic cat­e­gories like “Crit­i­cal Think­ing,” “Epis­te­mol­o­gy,” “Meta­physics,” “Ethics,” and “Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy.” Much of these are still unfin­ished, but the few videos on the site, such as those relat­ed to the prob­lem of free will and the exis­tence of God, pro­vide view­ers with much to chew on.

In the video above, MIT phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor Richard Holton explains the basics of the prob­lem of free will. He divides this into two dis­tinct prob­lems: the meta­phys­i­cal and the epis­te­mo­log­i­cal. The first prob­lem states that if the laws of nature are deter­min­is­tic, every­thing that will hap­pen is fixed, and there is in fact no free choice (no mat­ter how we feel about it). Holton choos­es to focus on the sec­ond prob­lem, the prob­lem of fore­knowl­edge. Put sim­ply, if things are deter­mined, then if we know all of the con­di­tions of real­i­ty, and have ade­quate resources, we should be able to pre­dict every­thing that is going to hap­pen.

Holton leaves aside enor­mous­ly com­pli­cat­ed devel­op­ments in physics and opts to illus­trate the prob­lem with what he calls “a sim­ple device.” In his illus­tra­tion, one must pre­dict whether a light­bulb will turn on by turn­ing on anoth­er light­bulb, part of a sys­tem he calls a “frus­tra­tor.” In this sce­nario, even if we have all the knowl­edge and resources to make per­fect­ly accu­rate pre­dic­tions, the prob­lem of “frustrators”—or faulty observers and feed­back loops—complicates the sit­u­a­tion irrev­o­ca­bly

In the video above, Pro­fes­sor Tim­o­thy Yen­ter describes the Cos­mo­log­i­cal argu­ment for the exis­tence of God, clas­si­cal­ly attrib­uted to Aris­to­tle, elab­o­rat­ed by Islam­ic philoso­phers and Thomas Aquinas, and tak­en up in the Enlight­en­ment by Leib­niz as the prin­ci­ple of suf­fi­cient rea­son. One of that argument’s premis­es, that the cos­mos (every­thing that exists) must have a cause, assumes that the causal cir­cum­stances we observe with­in the sys­tem, the uni­verse as a whole, must also apply out­side of it. Pro­fes­sor Yen­ter describes this above in terms of the “fal­la­cy of com­po­si­tion,” which occurs when one assumes that the whole has the same prop­er­ties as its parts. (Such as argu­ing that since all of your body’s atoms are invis­i­ble to the naked eye, your whole body is invis­i­ble. Try head­ing to work naked tomor­row to test this out.)

This brings us to the prob­lem of infi­nite regress. In the sec­ond part of his intro­duc­tion to the Cos­mo­log­i­cal Argument—in which he dis­cuss­es the so-called Modal Argument—Professor Yen­ter explains the key prin­ci­ple of Ex nihi­lo nihil fit, or “out of noth­ing, noth­ing comes.” This seems like a bedrock meta­phys­i­cal prin­ci­ple, such that few ques­tion it, and it intro­duces a key dis­tinc­tion between nec­es­sary things—which must exist—and con­tin­gent things, which could be oth­er­wise. The most impor­tant premise in the Modal Argu­ment is that every con­tin­gent thing must be caused by some­thing else. If all caus­es are con­tin­gent (which they seem to us to be) they must pro­ceed from a nec­es­sary, self-exis­tent thing. Whether that thing has all or any of the prop­er­ties clas­si­cal­ly ascribed to the the­is­tic God is anoth­er ques­tion all togeth­er, but Aquinas and the clas­si­cal Islam­ic philoso­phers cer­tain­ly thought so.

While there may be no philo­soph­i­cal nut­crack­er large enough to crack these prob­lems, they remain per­pet­u­al­ly inter­est­ing for many philoso­phers and sci­en­tists, and under­stand­ing the basic issues at stake is fun­da­men­tal to any study of phi­los­o­phy. In that sense, Wiphi pro­vides a nec­es­sary ser­vice to those just begin­ning to wade out into the sea of The Big Ques­tions.

 Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 90 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Lawrence Krauss Explains How You Get ‘A Uni­verse From Noth­ing’

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Lec­tures Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

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

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A Look Inside Mel Blanc’s Throat as He Performs the Voices of Bugs Bunny and Other Cartoon Legends

in Comics/Cartoons, Random | June 18th, 2013

Last month we told you about The Strange Day When Bugs Bun­ny Saved the Life of Mel Blanc. It’s a true tale about how, back in 1971, Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bun­ny and oth­er beloved Looney Tunes char­ac­ters, got into a ter­ri­ble car acci­dent in Los Ange­les and slipped into a coma. Blanc’s wife and son spent two long weeks in the hos­pi­tal try­ing to revive him, but got no response. But then, one day, Blanc’s neu­rol­o­gist walked into the room and said to the patient: “Bugs Bun­ny, how are you doing today?” After a pause, a voice said, “Myeeeeh. What’s up doc?” You can get more on that sto­ry here. In the mean­time, we’ll amuse you with anoth­er short sto­ry. Once upon a time, an ear-nose-and-throat spe­cial­ist want­ed to see how Mel Blanc (1908–1989) per­formed all of those Looney Tunes car­toon voic­es. So he took a fiber optic laryn­go­scope, stuck it down Blanc’s throat, and here’s what he saw. Watch above.

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.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cel­e­brate Superman’s 75th Anniver­sary by Enjoy­ing the Orig­i­nal Super­man Car­toon and Radio Show

The Sto­ry Of Men­stru­a­tion: Watch Walt Disney’s Sex Ed Film from 1946

Don­ald Duck’s Bad Nazi Dream (1942)

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Kickstart Sound Poetry, Ken Berman’s Jazz Album Inspired by Allen Ginsberg & Bob Dylan

in Music | June 17th, 2013

Here’s a chance to be a patron of the arts on what­ev­er scale you can afford. Last week Ken Berman, a San Fran­cis­co-based jazz musi­cian (and the teacher of an excel­lent Bob Dylan class at Stan­ford) launched a Kick­starter cam­paign to fund the record­ing of an album called Sound Poet­ry. Born out of Berman’s friend­ship with the late poet Eythan Klam­ka (1967–2011), the project builds on Klamka’s notion that “any good musi­cian is a sound poet.” “Con­vinced that the finest impro­vi­sa­tion is essen­tial­ly a lyri­cal art,” Berman draws “inspi­ra­tion from a range of diverse sources, whether Zen prac­ti­tion­er Thich Nhat Hanh, W.B. Yeats, Langston Hugh­es, George Gersh­win, Bob Dylan, and of course the jazz greats from Duke Elling­ton, Lester Young, Bil­ly Stray­horn, Miles Davis to Bill Frisell – all of whose unique con­tri­bu­tions con­tin­ue to be guide­posts and indi­cate the realm of pos­si­bil­i­ty in impro­visato­ry art.” To date, sup­port­ers of the Sound Poet­ry project have pledged $4,956 of the $11,150 goal, and the fund­ing peri­od still has 25 days to go. Con­tri­bu­tions will help pay for every­thing from stu­dio time, mix­ing and mas­ter­ing, to cre­at­ing cov­er art, man­u­fac­tur­ing CDs & DVDs, pub­lic­i­ty for the album, and a three con­ti­nent tour. You can learn more about Sound Poet­ry from the video above and make your own con­tri­bu­tions here. If you pledge $15 or more, you’ll get a copy of the album upon its com­ple­tion.

You can also sam­ple Ken’s ear­li­er com­po­si­tions here or vis­it his web site here. And if you live in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area, I’d encour­age you to check out Ken’s course Like a Rolling Stone: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan. It will be offered in July through Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies and it’s open to the pub­lic.

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Want to Know What Makes the Troops Laugh? Comedian Louis CK in Afghanistan (Quite NSFW)

in Comedy, Video - Politics/Society | June 17th, 2013

The oth­er day, a teenaged friend asked me if the war in Afghanistan is still going on. The answer is yes. Pre­sum­ably, it won’t be when he reach­es draft age.

In the mean­time, here’s some extreme­ly NSFW footage of Louis CK enter­tain­ing the troops at Bagram Air­field in Afghanistan a few years back. Look­ing for a quick overview of what makes the troops laugh? Cinnabon, schlub­by mid­dle aged dudes com­par­ing them­selves unfa­vor­ably to the audi­ence’s rock hard lean­ness, and the F word. The one whose non-slang def­i­n­i­tion is “a bun­dle of sticks.”

Giv­en the make up of the crowd, it made me uneasy. This was most assured­ly not a preach­ing-to-the-choir sit­u­a­tion, though the young audi­ence mem­ber who filmed the rou­tine with­out the ben­e­fit of a tri­pod notes: ” I did­n’t even know who he was before this set. He’s one of my top 3 favorites now. I just want­ed oth­er peo­ple to see him like I did. I wish I could have a con­ver­sa­tion with him!”

Hope­ful­ly, by now, hero wor­ship will have steered him to the sec­ond episode of CK’ s semi­au­to­bi­o­graph­i­cal show, in which extreme­ly forth­com­ing gay come­di­an, Rick Crom, schools a table­ful of straight pok­er bud­dies on var­i­ous sex­u­al prac­tices. His mat­ter-of-fact demeanor leads CK to ask how a queer crowd might react to his “fag­got” rou­tine. The fact that CK also pro­duced and script­ed this show is enough to con­vince me that his aim is true.

It’s worth not­ing that the pre­sum­ably straight (watch his oth­er videos) Youtu­ber who filmed and hosts this video liked ‘Louis CK — Laugh­ing at Gay Peo­ple” but also the Fred­die Mer­cury Google Doo­dle.

Giv­en CK’s mad respect for any­one serv­ing in the mil­i­tary, per­haps this young man can con­vince him that it’s time to retire “retard” as a pejo­ra­tive … even if he’s talk­ing about his own kids.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sur­re­al Short Films of Louis C.K., 1993–1999

Louis CK Ridicules Avant-Garde Art on 1990s MTV Show

Sein­feld, Louis C.K., Chris Rock, and Ricky Ger­vais Dis­sect the Craft of Com­e­dy (NSFW)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is also sick of epilep­sy as punch­line or short­cut. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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The Ramones in Their Heyday, Filmed “Live at CBGB” (1977)

in Music | June 17th, 2013

Here’s clas­sic footage of the Ramones in their prime, per­form­ing at a club in 1977. The film’s open­ing title says it was shot on June 10, 1977 at CBGB, but that is appar­ent­ly not true. Singer Joey Ramone tells the audi­ence that the band’s third album, Rock­et to Rus­sia, will be com­ing out “in about two weeks” as the band launch­es into a song from the album. But Rock­et to Rus­sia was­n’t record­ed until late August of 1977, and was released on Novem­ber 4. So per­haps the film was shot dur­ing one of the band’s Octo­ber 1977 shows. What­ev­er the exact date and place, the Ramones were clear­ly at the top of their form when this film was made. In the two clips pre­sent­ed here, they burn through the fol­low­ing songs:

Part one (above)

  1. “Blitzkrieg Bop”
  2. “Sheena is a Punk Rock­er”
  3. “Beat on the Brat”
  4. “Now I Wan­na Sniff Some Glue”

Part two (below):

  1. “Rock­away Beach”
  2. “Cretin Hop”
  3. “Oh,Oh, I Love Her So”
  4. “Today Your Love, Tomor­row the World”

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Ramones Play a New Year’s Eve Con­cert in Lon­don, 1977

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Hear Charlton Heston Read Ernest Hemingway’s Classic Story, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”

in Literature | June 17th, 2013

snows hemingway2

“ ‘The mar­velous thing is that it’s pain­less,’ he said. ‘That’s how you know when it starts.’

‘Is it real­ly?’

‘Absolute­ly. I’m awful­ly sor­ry about the odor though. That must both­er you.’ ”

Most Amer­i­can read­ers sure­ly rec­og­nize these lines, though it may take a moment to remem­ber where they rec­og­nize them from. They open “The Snows of Kil­i­man­jaro,” a short sto­ry by Ernest Hem­ing­way that first ran in Esquire in 1936, then, two years lat­er, appeared in the col­lec­tion The Fifth Col­umn and the First Forty-Nine Sto­ries. (Find in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks.) Deal­ing with the mem­o­ries and regrets of a writer on safari dying of a gan­grenous thorn wound, the sto­ry has over the past 76 years become one of the most respect­ed works in Hem­ing­way’s oeu­vre and an essen­tial piece of twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture. As often hap­pens with essen­tial pieces of Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture, Hol­ly­wood got to it, adapt­ing it into a 1952 block­buster fea­tur­ing Gre­go­ry Peck, Susan Hay­ward, and Ava Gard­ner. (Find in our col­lec­tion of 535 Free Movies Online.)

Though the star­ring role of Har­ry, the fast-fad­ing rough-and-tum­ble man of let­ters who sees him­self as ruined by afflu­ence and hedo­nism, went to Peck, I could also imag­ine it played by Charl­ton Hes­ton. Even if you could­n’t quite place that bit of dia­logue from “The Snows of Kil­i­man­jaro,” you’d be imme­di­ate­ly able to place Hes­ton’s voice read­ing the sto­ry aloud in the record­ing avail­able on this Harper­Au­dio Hem­ing­way site. Lis­ten below and see for your­self if the actor’s deliv­ery, so often asso­ci­at­ed with sil­ver-screen roles meant to project a grand stern­ness, can also deliv­er the bit­ter­ness of Hem­ing­way’s pro­tag­o­nist, who cer­tain­ly shares with his cre­ator the con­vic­tion that “pol­i­tics, women, drink, mon­ey and ambi­tion” bring writ­ers tru­ly low, down to the point where they can declare, as Har­ry so mem­o­rably does, “The only thing I’ve nev­er lost is curios­i­ty.”

Bonus: Here you can also lis­ten to Don­ald Suther­land read an excerpt from Old Man and the Sea.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ernest Hem­ing­way Reads “In Harry’s Bar in Venice”

The Span­ish Earth, Writ­ten and Nar­rat­ed by Ernest Hem­ing­way

Sev­en Tips From Ernest Hem­ing­way on How to Write Fic­tion

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.

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Google Wants to Provide Internet Access to Remote Parts of the World with Solar-Powered Balloons

in Google, Technology | June 17th, 2013

Per­haps you live in a devel­oped nation, or a pock­et of a devel­op­ing nation, where inter­net access is a rel­a­tive­ly cheap com­mod­i­ty. Count your­self lucky. Right now, 5 bil­lion peo­ple — or two thirds of the world’s pop­u­la­tion — lack access to an afford­able and reli­able Inter­net con­nec­tion. Which means they lack access to crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion — med­ical infor­ma­tion that can save lives; sci­en­tif­ic infor­ma­tion that can improve farm­ing; tech­ni­cal infor­ma­tion nec­es­sary to build a mod­ern econ­o­my; and edu­ca­tion­al resources that can cul­ti­vate young minds.

With Project Loon, Google is launch­ing an auda­cious exper­i­ment that will hope­ful­ly make a dent in this seri­ous prob­lem. The exper­i­ment involves putting a fleet of high-alti­tude bal­loons into the air. Pow­ered sole­ly by the wind and the sun, the bal­loons will fly high into the stratos­phere, well above where com­mer­cial planes fly, and they’ll beam Inter­net access back to the ground “at speeds sim­i­lar to today’s 3G net­works or faster,” claims Google’s main blog. (The clip below explains the gist of the tech­nol­o­gy.) Right now, they’re run­ning a small scale test in New Zealand (in Christchurch and Can­ter­bury, to be exact) and you can mon­i­tor the progress over at Project Loon’s Google Plus page. In the mean­time, we’ll keep our fin­gers crossed and hope the entire world can soon enjoy our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es, not to men­tion the oth­er ran­dom curiosi­ties found on the web.

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Watch the World Record for the Largest Domino Chain Made of 2,131 Books

in Books, Random | June 16th, 2013

http://youtu.be/Np450xMSncE

In late May, The Seat­tle Pub­lic Library set a world record for the Longest Book Domi­no Chain, accord­ing to the World Record Acad­e­my. Watch as 2,131 books — all part of an upcom­ing book sale — fall one by one. Appar­ent­ly, it took 27 vol­un­teers sev­en hours — and five failed attempts — to pull off this feat for the ages. h/t Metafil­ter

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Spike Jonze Presents a Stop Motion Film for Book Lovers

Por­trait of a Book­store as an Old Man (a 52 minute doc­u­men­tary that pays homage to Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny)

Books Lov­ing­ly Savored in Stop Motion Film

Going West: A Stop Motion Nov­el

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James Joyce Reads a Passage From Ulysses, 1924

in Books, Literature | June 16th, 2013

Today is “Blooms­day,” the tra­di­tion­al day for book lovers to cel­e­brate James Joyce’s mas­ter­piece, Ulysses (text — audio). To mark the occa­sion we bring you this rare 1924 record­ing of Joyce read­ing from the Aeo­lus episode of the nov­el. The record­ing was arranged and financed by the author’s friend and pub­lish­er Sylvia Beach, who brought him by taxi to the HMV (His Mas­ter’s Voice) gramo­phone stu­dio in the Paris sub­urb of Bil­lan­court. The first ses­sion did­n’t go well. Joyce was ner­vous and suf­fer­ing from his recur­ring eye trou­bles. He and Beach returned anoth­er day to fin­ish the record­ing. In her mem­oir, Shake­speare & Com­pa­ny, Beach writes:

Joyce had cho­sen the speech in the Aeo­lus episode, the only pas­sage that could be lift­ed out of Ulysses, he said, and the only one that was “declam­a­to­ry” and there­fore suit­able for recital. He had made up his mind, he told me, that this would be his only read­ing from Ulysses.

I have an idea that it was not for declam­a­to­ry rea­sons alone that he chose this pas­sage from Aeo­lus. I believe that it expressed some­thing he want­ed said and pre­served in his own voice. As it rings out–“he lift­ed his voice above it boldly”–it is more, one feels, than mere ora­to­ry.

The pas­sage par­al­lels the episode in Home­r’s Odyssey fea­tur­ing Aeo­lus, god of the winds. As a pun, Joyce sets it in a news­pa­per office where his hero Leopold Bloom stops by to place an ad, only to be stymied by the blus­tery noise of the print­ing press­es and of the var­i­ous “wind­bags” in the office.

One char­ac­ter tries to enter­tain a cou­ple of his friends with a mock­ing recital of a politi­cian’s speech print­ed in the day’s news­pa­per. Here is the pas­sage Joyce reads:

He began:

–Mr. Chair­man, ladies and gen­tle­men: Great was my admi­ra­tion in lis­ten­ing to the remarks addressed to the youth of Ire­land a moment since by my learned friend. It seemed to me that I had been trans­port­ed into a coun­try far away from this coun­try, into an age remote from this age, that I stood in ancient Egypt and that I was lis­ten­ing to the speech of a high­priest of that land addressed to the youth­ful Moses.

His lis­ten­ers held their cig­a­rettes poised to hear, their smoke ascend­ing in frail stalks that flow­ered with his speech…Noble words com­ing. Look out. Could you try your hand at it your­self?

–And it seemed to me that I heard the voice of that Egypt­ian high­priest raised in a tone of like haugh­i­ness and like pride. I heard his words and their mean­ing was revealed to me.

From the Fathers
It was revealed to me that those things are good which yet are cor­rupt­ed which nei­ther if they were supreme­ly good nor unless they were good could be cor­rupt­ed. Ah, curse you! That’s saint Augus­tine.

–Why will you jews not accept our lan­guage, our reli­gion and our cul­ture? You are a tribe of nomad herds­men; we are a mighty peo­ple. You have no cities nor no wealth: our cities are hives of human­i­ty and our gal­leys, trireme and quadrireme, laden with all man­ner mer­chan­dise fur­row the waters of the known globe. You have but emerged from prim­i­tive con­di­tions: we have a lit­er­a­ture, a priest­hood, an age­long his­to­ry and a poli­ty.

Nile.

Child, man, effi­gy.

By the Nile­bank the babe­maries kneel, cra­dle of bul­rush­es: a man sup­ple in com­bat: stone­horned, stonebeard­ed, heart of stone.

–You pray to a local and obscure idol: our tem­ples, majes­tic and mys­te­ri­ous, are the abodes of Isis and Osiris, of Horus and Ammon Ra. Yours serf­dom, awe and hum­ble­ness: ours thun­der and the seas. Israel is weak and few are her chil­dren: Egypt is an host and ter­ri­ble are her arms. Vagrants and day­labour­ers are you called: the world trem­bles at our name.

A dumb belch of hunger cleft his speech. he lift­ed his voice above it bold­ly:

–But, ladies and gen­tle­men, had the youth­ful Moses lis­tened to and accept­ed that view of life, had he bowed his head and bowed his will and bowed his spir­it before that arro­gant admo­ni­tion he would nev­er have led the cho­sen peo­ple out of their house of bondage nor fol­lowed the pil­lar of the cloud by day. He would nev­er have spo­ken with the Eter­al amid light­nings on Sinai’s moun­tain­top nor even have come down with the light of inspi­ra­tion shin­ing in his coun­te­nance and bear­ing in his arms the tables of the law, graven in the lan­guage of the out­law.

For more of Ulysses, click here to find out how you can down­load it as a free audio book. And to hear a clear­er record­ing of Joyce’s voice made five years after this one, see our 2012 post: “James Joyce Reads ‘Anna Livia Plura­belle’ from Finnegans Wake.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hen­ri Matisse Illus­trates 1935 Edi­tion of James Joyce’s Ulysses

Stephen Fry Explains His Love for James Joyce’s Ulysses

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Reads Joyce’s Ulysses at the Play­ground (1955)

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