Peeling Back the Paint to Discover Bruegel’s Secrets

A woman drags a cart in a detail of “The Battle Between Carnival and Lent,” 1559.
"What would happen if you peeled back the layers of a masterpiece by one of art history’s greatest painters? Dead bodies might suddenly appear. Take, for example, Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s large-scale festival scene, 'The Battle Between Carnival and Lent,' which he painted in 1559. If we look at his first drafts of the painting, using X-ray photography, we can see a corpse inside a cart that an old woman is dragging behind her. Then we see another dead body on the ground, its face turned to the viewer; he is lying ominously close to a sick child. ... The project was developed along with the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, for 'Bruegel' a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition, featuring 87 of the painter’s works, and which runs through Jan. 13, 2019. ..."
NY Times

Detail of “The Battle Between Carnival and Lent,” which shows two fish on a baker’s peel.

2010 May: Peasant, 2011 March: "The Harvesters", Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 2012 February: The Mill and the Cross - Lech Majewski, 2012 December: The Lord of Misrule and the Feast of Fools., 2013 July: Netherlandish Proverbs, 2014 August: Children's Games (1560), 2016 May: The Hunters in the Snow (1565)

Cabaret Voltaire - Red Mecca (1981)

"It isn't without reason that Red Mecca is often referred to as one of Cabaret Voltaire's most cohesive and brilliant records. There are tangible bumpers (the record is buttressed by squealing/wheezing interpretations of Henry Mancini's music for Orson Welles' Touch of Evil), so by that aspect there's a tangible center. And taken as a whole, the record contains all the characteristics that have made the Sheffield group such an influential entity when it comes to electronic music of the untethered, experimental variety that isn't afraid to shake its tail a little. Unlike a fair portion of CV's studio output, Red Mecca features no failed experiments or anything that could be merely cast off as 'interesting.' It's a taught, dense, horrific slab lacking a lull. Dashes of Richard H. Kirk's synthesizer are welded to Chris Watson's tape effects for singed lashes of white noise, best heard on the lurching 'Sly Doubt' and the jolting 'Spread the Virus.' ..."
allmusic (Audio)
Brainwashed
W - Red Mecca
Discogs (Video)
YouTube: Red Mecca [Full Album] 40:20

How populism became the concept that defines our age

"'Populism' as a term was rarely used in the 20th century; it was limited to US historians describing, in highly specific terms, the original agrarian populists of the mid-19th century. Latin American social scientists (often Marxists) focused it primarily on the Peronists in Argentina. I only started to really engage with the term in the mid-1990s, while researching my dissertation on what was then still predominantly called 'rightwing extremism'. The German political scientist Hans-Georg Betz had just published what is still the best book on the topic, Radical Right-Wing Populism in Western Europe, and I dived into Leiden University’s library to find anything I could find on this odd term. The great British political theorist Margaret Canovan had written an excellent overview, simply titled Populism, in 1981, but argued that, while there were seven different subtypes, populism itself could not be defined. So I delved deeper, trying to engage with the work of the late Ernesto Laclau, an Argentinian post-Marxist theorist, undoubtedly the most influential scholar of populism for academics and politicians alike. ..."
Guardian
Guardian - Revealed: one in four Europeans vote populist
Guardian - Why is populism suddenly all the rage?
Guardian - How populism emerged as an electoral force in Europe
Guardian - How populist are you?

MADONJAZZ From the Vaults vol 26: Spiritual Jazz, Afro & Eastern Sounds

"MADONJAZZ From the Vaults Vol. 26: Spiritual Jazz, Afro & Eastern Sounds: An 1hr recording including music from Pharoah Sanders, Henri Texier, Sun Ra & his Arkestra, Brother Ah, Badal Roy, Lori Vambe and many more. Recorded live at a London venue in 2016. Enjoy
MixCloud (Audio)

Nublu

Nublu Jazz Festival 2015 - Sun Ra Arkestra
"The chronology of an evening: Latin American food and Modelo consumed in abundance. I forget my hat and mittens in the restaurant, but it won’t be until much later that I realize my ears and hands are cold. The last of my lip balm pops out of its tube and rolls into the gutter. We stand on the sidewalk on Avenue C, outside the jazz club Nublu, for half an hour, waiting for someone to arrive. Once inside, my martini arrives soiled by lime juice. Life happens at a familiar pace, until at ten thirty the set begins and the Sun Ra Arkestra appears, bedecked in gold and sky-blue sequins and outrageous hats, their leader enrobed in satiny vermilion. They hold their instruments like crosiers, a saxophone or trumpet cool against the hot vibrancy of their vestments. The Arkestra was originally conceived and fronted by the great figure of avant-garde jazz Sun Ra, who has been dead twenty-five years now. The group is now under the direction of Marshall Allen, a ninety-four-year-old former sideman of the composer. ..."
The Paris Review - Staff Picks: Singing, Sequins, and Slaughterhouses
W - Nublu
NY Times: Club Mixes Old, New and Blue
Nublu

The White Goddess - Robert Graves (1948)

Wikipedia - "The White Goddess: a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth is a book-length essay on the nature of poetic myth-making by author and poet Robert Graves. First published in 1948, the book is based on earlier articles published in Wales magazine, corrected, revised and enlarged editions appeared in 1948, 1952 and 1961. The White Goddess represents an approach to the study of mythology from a decidedly creative and idiosyncratic perspective. Graves proposes the existence of a European deity, the 'White Goddess of Birth, Love and Death', much similar to the Mother Goddess, inspired and represented by the phases of the moon, who lies behind the faces of the diverse goddesses of various European and pagan mythologies. ..."
Wikipedia
W - Robert Graves
amazon
YouTube: Robert Graves and the White Goddess - Documentary Preview

How Friendsgiving Took Over Millennial Culture

"Every year for the past five or so, the Emily Post Institute—long considered the leading authority on matters of manners and courtesy—fields at least one or two etiquette questions about 'Friendsgiving.' Usually they come from people in their 20s and 30s, says Lizzie Post, the co-president of the institute and the eponymous etiquette authority’s great-great-granddaughter. The advice seekers are often anxious about exactly how to host a Friendsgiving party, a Thanksgiving-themed meal for their close friends. ..."
The Atlantic

24 Amazing, Homemade Dungeons & Dragons Maps

Laureth Ruined
"Last week we asked Atlas Obscura readers to send us their greatest DIY Dungeons & Dragons maps. It was a critical success. We received dozens of fantasy adventure maps illustrating the amazing worlds in our readers’ imaginations. From a hand-drawn city nestled inside a giant turtle shell, to a computer-illustrated continent, to a 'Paraelemental Plane of Ooze' that’s honestly a little too real, your D&D maps are more incredible than we could have imagined. Every single one calls out for exploration. We’ve collected a number of our favorite submissions below. So tighten your sword belts! Shine your pauldrons! Ready your wards and enchantments! The adventure begins below! ..."
Atlas Obscura

The RH Factor - Hard Groove (2003)

"A new musical vision for ace jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove has manifested itself in the form of Hard Groove. This neo-soul/jazz project showcases Erykah Badu, Common, D'Angelo, Marc Cary, and jam band icon saxophonist Karl Denson on a 14-track set that is laden with funk, groove, freestyle rap poetry, and sultry hip-hop/R&B mood swings. Hargrove's interesting horn and keyboard improvisations stem from extensive knowledge of each musician's work and, perhaps even more importantly, from close personal friendships developed as an underground club jam session warrior in N.Y.C. He also plays flügelhorn and percussion, and adds background vocals on several compositions. ... In any case, the ultra-hip trumpeter manages not to alienate his die-hard jazz fans by intersecting with many of the icons of hip-hop, R&B, and neo-soul. Highly recommended."
allmusic
W - Roy Hargrove
Discogs
amazon
YouTube: the RH Factor, "Hardgroove" 11 videos

I ♥ John Giorno and So Should You

"In any given decade of his life in New York, John Giorno could be found right in the middle of whatever the new scene might be, hanging out with the era’s defining figures and embodying the moment: in the fifties, meeting Jack Kerouac at Columbia’s West End; in the sixties, making a movie with Andy Warhol; in the seventies, studying Buddhism in India; in the eighties, playing in a band at CBGB. He has always been a poet who operates primarily in the art world. His practice is multimodal and collaborative: he’s experimented with sound recording, painting, video, and has been muse and lover to a number of artists, including Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns. This last detail, which is so often salaciously foregrounded in the literature and mythos surrounding Giorno, would appear to put him in a passive or sidelined role, but his work gleefully subverts this, showing just how potent and active these roles can be. It reveals, too, the advantages of having passed the time with great artists and what he has learned from being the subject of their gaze. ..."
The Paris Review
John Giorno by Verne Dawson

Nile Deli

"Astoria Stories - Music found in the bodegas of my neighborhood, from Albanian, Algerian, and Bosnian, to Egyptian, Greek, Lebanese, Panamanian, and beyond"
Bodega Pop Live with Gary Sullivan (Audio)
The City Cook

The Leonids and More Meteor Showers That Will Light Up Night Skies in 2018

Watching the Perseids meteor shower in Britain in 2015.
"All year long as Earth revolves around the sun, it passes through streams of cosmic debris. The resulting meteor showers — like the Leonids that are peaking around Friday, Nov. 16 — can light up night skies from dusk to dawn, and if you’re lucky you might be able to catch one. If you spot a meteor shower, what you’re really seeing is the leftovers of icy comets crashing into Earth’s atmosphere. Comets are sort of like dirty snowballs: As they travel through the solar system, they leave behind a dusty trail of rocks and ice that lingers in space long after they leave. When Earth passes through these cascades of comet waste, the bits of debris — which can be as small as grains of sand — pierce the sky at such speeds that they burst, creating a celestial fireworks display. ..."
NY Times

Two Men in Manhattan - Jean-Pierre Melville (1959)

Wikipedia - "Two Men in Manhattan (French: Deux hommes dans Manhattan) is a 1959 French film-noir directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. The film stars Melville (who also wrote the screenplay) and Pierre Grasset as two French journalists in New York City searching for a missing United Nations diplomat. Though Melville occasionally played bit parts in films by other directors (most notably as Parvulesco in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless), Two Men in Manhattan was his only starring role and the only time he acted in one of his own films (he served as the off-screen narrator in Bob le flambeur). After a hard day's work, the reporter Moreau is asked by his boss to find out why the head of the French delegation to the United Nations has suddenly disappeared. Moreau drags out of bed the unscrupulous photographer Delmas, who knows his way round Manhattan at night. Together they visit women the diplomat knew: an actress in a play, a jazz singer in a recording studio, a stripper in a burlesque show, a prostitute in an expensive brothel. ..."
Wikipedia
LA Times: Jean-Pierre Melville's 'Two Men in Manhattan' reaches U.S. fans
A Modernist
amazon
YouTube: Two Men in Manhattan - Trailer , Deux hommes dans Manhattan - opening titles, The Jazz Scene

2017 June: Jean-Pierre Melville’s Cinema of Resistance, 2017 November: Un Flic (1972)

Extreme Nature!

Unknown, Great Fire at Boston, Nov. 9 & 10, 1872
"Nature’s extremes—remote, fantastical, and unpredictable—permeated artistic imagery and popular media throughout the nineteenth century. News outlets reported on natural disasters around the globe, researchers defined modern scientific fields, and authors like Jules Verne infused their adventure novels with technological experimentation. Newly founded journals, such as Scientific American and the French La Nature, detailed emerging scientific theories and speculated upon Earth’s origins and its position within the greater cosmos. Influenced in part by the prevalence of scientific inquiry in popular culture, artists also probed nature’s fundamental truths, examining everything from volatile weather patterns and the stars to the earth’s most cavernous depths. ..."
The Clark
The Clark: Audio Highlights (Audio)
The Clark: About - Image Gallery - Alluring Landscapes - Volatile Atmospheres - Extremes Imagined - Natural Disaster -Art and Popular Science
The Clark: Checklist

E2-E4 - Manuel Göttsching (1984)

Wikipedia - "E2-E4, released in 1984, is a solo recording by Ash Ra Tempel/Ashra guitarist Manuel Göttsching. The album consists of a minimalistic hour-long progressive electronic track that is subdivided into single tracks according to the stage of the song. The second half of the record is notable for Göttsching's guitar playing. The album is named after the most popular opening chess move 1. e2-e4 (which is expressed in long algebraic notation). A noteworthy pun on E2-E4 exists because the guitar is tuned from E2 (the low string) to E4 (the high string). The album was named as one of the best 1980s albums for its important role in the development of house and techno music of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The song's repetitions and arpeggiations have influenced house, techno, space disco, balearic and even alternative forms of rock music. ..."
Wikipedia
Guardian: Manuel Göttsching: the Göttfather
Key Tracks: Manuel Göttsching – E2-E4
“Music was my drug”: Manuel Göttsching on making E2-E4 (Video)
Pitchfork
Discogs
YouTube: E2-E4 (Full Length Version) 58:39

Persuasive Maps - The PJ Mode Collection

Angling in Troubled Waters, 1899
"This is a collection of 'persuasive' cartography: ​more than 800 maps intended primarily to influence opinions or beliefs - to send a message - rather than to communicate geographic information. The collection reflects a variety of persuasive tools​, including​ allegorical, satirical and pictorial mapping; selective inclusion; unusual use of projections, color, graphics and text; and intentional deception. Maps in the collection address a wide range of messages: religious, political, military, commercial, moral and social. Learn more about persuasive cartography and the collection"
Cornell University Library | Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections
vimeo: Deconstructing Persuasive Cartography​ 50:02

The Awakening, 1915

Northern Picture Library - Love Song for the Dead Che (1993)

"Northern Picture Library's debut release immediately distanced the group from Bobby Wratten and Annemari Davies' previous work in the Field Mice; favoring electronic textures, ambient drones, and trip-hop rhythms over the jangling guitars of the past, 'Love Song for the Dead Ché' (a cover of a track from the United States of America's classic self-titled LP) is cold and remote where the Field Mice were warm and deeply intimate. Give Wratten and Davies credit for staking out new territory, but both versions of the song are simply too dispassionate to really work and pale in comparison to the original. The closer, 'The Way That Stars Die,' is a sequencer-driven instrumental recalling Field Mice efforts like 'Let's Kiss and Make Up' -- engineer Ian Catt's fingerprints are all over the recording, evoking his work with Saint Etienne."
allmusic
Discogs
YouTube: Northern Picture Library - Love Song For the Dead Che #1, Love Song For The Dead Che #2, The way that stars die
YouTube: Love song for the dead Che - The United States of America (1968)

Left-Wing Protests Are Crossing the Line

Protesters rally outside the home of Ivanka Trump on April 1, 2017
"Last Saturday night, a Fox News contributor named Kat Timpf was at a bar in Brooklyn. As she recounted the incident to National Review, a man asked her where she worked. A while later, she said, a woman began 'screaming at me to get out.' Timpf walked away, but the woman followed her around the bar while other patrons laughed. Fearing physical attack, Timpf left. She told National Review and The Hill that it was the third time she has been harassed since 2017. A few months earlier a woman yelled at her during dinner at a Manhattan restaurant. The year before, while she was about to give a speech, a man dumped water on her head. Protests like these, that target people’s private lives, are wrong. They violate fundamental principles of civil disobedience, as understood by its most eminent practitioners and theorists. And they threaten the very norms of human decency that Trump and his supporters have done so much to erode. ..."
The Atlantic

Jazz Deconstructed: What Makes John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” So Groundbreaking and Radical?

"John Coltrane bore an unusual burden. Many experimental artists who radically change their forms of music, and music in general, are so out on the edge and ahead of their time they elude the public’s notice. But Coltrane was responsible for both 'furthering the cause' of free jazz and 'delivering it to an increasingly mainstream audience,' as Lindsay Planer writes at Allmusic. This meant that he achieved the kind of recognition in his short life that most musician/composers only dream of, and that his every attempt was heavily scrutinized by critics, a listening public, and record companies not always ready for the most forward-thinking of his ideas. His immense popularity makes Coltrane’s accomplishments all the more impressive. While 1959 is often cited as the 'year that changed jazz' with a series of landmark albums, two releases by Coltrane in 1960—My Favorite Things and Giant Steps—completely radicalized the form, with repercussions far outside the jazz world. ..."
Open Culture (Video)

2011 November: John Coltrane Quartet, Live at Jazz Casual, 1963, 2012 March: John Coltrane 1960 - 1965, 2012 September: "Naima" (1959), 2012 October: Blue Train (1957), 2013 April: The World According to John Coltrane, 2013 November: A Love Supreme (1965), 2014 July: New Photos of John Coltrane Rediscovered 50 Years After They Were Shot, 2014 November: Coltrane’s Free Jazz Wasn’t Just “A Lot of Noise”, 2015 February: Lush Life (1958), 2015 May: An Animated John Coltrane Explains His True Reason for Being: “I Want to Be a Force for Real Good”, 2015 July: Afro Blue Impressions (2013), 2015 September: Impressions of Coltrane, 2015 December: Giant Steps (1960), 2016 January: Crescent (1964), 2016 April: The Church of Saint John Coltrane, 2016 July: Soultrane (1958), 2016 December: Dakar (1957), 2017 July: The John Coltrane Record That Made Modern Music, 2017 October: Live at the Village Vanguard (1962), 2017 December: Interview: Archie Shepp on John Coltrane, the Blues and More, 2018 March: Cannonball Adderley Quintet in Chicago (1959), 2018 June: Lost John Coltrane Recording From 1963 Will Be Released at Last, 2018 July: Stream Online the Complete “Lost” John Coltrane Album, Both Directions at Once

The Seducer’s Diary – Soren Kierkegaard (1843)

"According to Kierkegaard, there are three stages or 'spheres' of existence: the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious. In The Seducer’s Diary, the author depicts the life of someone who has made a conscious choice for the aesthetic way of life, with all the consequences that implies. I was torn between joy — that this amazing text-within-a-text is in print and available to an English-language audience — and concern, that it is taken out of the context of its intellectual home, the monumental philosophical work Either/Or. Be that as it may, The Seducer’s Diary alone is an entrancing read. The layers of metafiction and seduction are dizzying, the tone and pace wonderfully genteel, and filled with visionary metaphors, which only adds to its beauty, but with a hard and frightening core that has given me an almost ominous pause. The plot is simple, and the book is very short, but all the same I became easily involved with the characters. ..."
Tongue Sophistries
New Yorker: Søren K.’s Two-Hundredth Birthday
The Seducer’s Diary
Princeton University Press: The Seducer's Diary

2011 July: Søren Kierkegaard, 2013 April: Repetition (1843), 2013 December: The Quotable Kierkegaard, 2014 October: Fear and Trembling - Søren Kierkegaard (1843), 2014 December: The Dark Knight of Faith - Existential Comics, 2015 July: I still love Kierkegaard, 2015 October: The Concept of Anxiety (1844), 2016 October: Cruel intentions, 2017 July: Søren Kierkegaard Newsletter, 2018 January: Either/Or (1843)

Free Man In Paris - Joni Mitchell (1974)

Wikipedia - "'Free Man In Paris' is a song written by Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell. It appeared on her 1974 album Court and Spark, as well as her live album Shadows and Light. It is one of her most popular songs. The song is about music agent/promoter David Geffen, a close friend of Mitchell in the early 1970s, and describes Geffen during a trip the two made to Paris with Robbie and Dominique Robertson. While Geffen is never mentioned by name, Mitchell describes how he works hard creating hits and launching careers but can find some peace while vacationing in Paris. Mitchell sings 'I was a free man in Paris. I felt unfettered and alive. Nobody calling me up for favors. No one's future to decide.' ... The home key of the song is A-major. The frequent substitution of 'flatted' scale degrees (flat-6 and flat-7; that is, in A-major, F-natural and G-natural in place of F# and G#) adds a jazzy folky sound to the song. The time signature is 4/4 except the compound quintuple meter intro counted as 15/8 or simply 2 bars of 6/8 plus 3 eighth notes. ..."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Free Man In Paris (Live London 1983)

2015 July: Blue (1970), 2015 Novemer: 40 Years On: Joni Mitchell's The Hissing Of Summer Lawns Revisited, 2016 August: On For the Roses (1972), 2016 November: Court and Spark (1974), 2017 February: Hejira (1976), 2017 August: Miles of Aisles (1974), 2017 October: Joni Mitchell: Fear of a Female Genius, 2018 March: Joni Mitchell: We look back over her extraordinary 50 year career

Operation Infektion

"Russia’s meddling in the United States’ elections is not a hoax. It’s the culmination of Moscow’s decades-long campaign to tear the West apart. 'Operation InfeKtion' reveals the ways in which one of the Soviets’ central tactics — the promulgation of lies about America — continues today, from Pizzagate to George Soros conspiracies. Meet the KGB spies who conceived this virus and the American truth squads who tried — and are still trying — to fight it. Countries from Pakistan to Brazil are now debating reality, and in Vladimir Putin’s greatest triumph, Americans are using Russia’s playbook against one another without the faintest clue."
NY Times

Antilles Méchant Bateau (2018)

"Fifteen track compilation of deep biguines and Gwo Ka from the ‘60s French West Indies. 'Biguine is a rhythmic style of music that originated in Guadeloupe and Martinique in the 19th century, which fuses 19th-century French ballroom dance steps with African rhythms. Gwo Ka is found among all ethnic and religious groups of Guadeloupean society. It combines responsorial singing in Guadeloupean Creole, rhythms played on the Ka drums and dancing. Gwo Ka is the musical and cultural product of the region’s African ancestry, forcibly brought to the Caribbean through slavery. Gwo Ka exists only in Guadeloupe, which is a very different island from much of the Caribbean, in that it remains a ‘department’ of its original colonial master, France. Here the currency is the Euro and the baker sells croissants and café au lait. This constant ‘European-ising’ of the island means that Gwo Ka plays a fundamental and important role in the defining of Guadeloupean identity. 'Antilles’ Méchant Bateau', a low-tempo number with a bolero feel, indeed a pure case of the blues, and a terrific saxophone solo. What else would you expect to set the tone for this selection, in which beguine regains its original colours, in the darkness of the Gwo Ka drums. ..."
Holland Tunnel Dive
YouTube: Various Artists - Antilles Méchant Bateau 15 videos

Where Have College Basketball’s Star Point Guards Gone?

"I don’t mean to melt your brain right out of the gate, but a reader pointed something out to me a month ago, and it’s stuck with me ever since. Now, I can’t help but share that observation with the world. Try to think of the best point guard in college basketball heading into this season. No, seriously. Take as much time as you need to come up with a name. Got it? Cool. Let me guess: You came up with Carsen Edwards? That would make sense given that the Purdue junior averaged 18.5 points per game and shot 40.6 percent from 3-point range last season and is probably the best player, at any position, returning to college basketball in 2018-19. Edwards was so good for the Boilermakers last season that he was named third-team AP All-American and presented with the Jerry West Award, an honor given annually to the nation’s best … shooting guard. ..."
The Ringer (Audio/Video)
W - 2018–19 NCAA Division I men's basketball season
Duke tops, Kentucky plummets in Andy Katz's Power 36 college basketball rankings (Video)
College basketball: Why North Carolina’s gutsy non-conference schedule is the toughest this year (Video)
College Basketball Preseason Top 25
SI: Ranking Every Team in College Basketball, From Kansas (No. 1) to Delaware State (No. 353)
The Ringer: The 2018-19 College Basketball Preseason Enthusiasms (Video)
CBS Sports: College basketball rankings: The top 100 (and one) best players for the 2018-19 season (Video)
College basketball: A-10 predictions for the 2018-19 season (Video)

2011 June: American Basketball Association, 2012 July: Doin’ It In The Park: Pick-Up Basketball, NYC, 2012 November: Your Guide to the Brooklyn Nets, 2013 March: March Madness 2013, 2013 October: Rucker Park, 2014 January: History of the high five, 2015 February: Dean Smith (February 28, 1931 – February 7, 2015), 2015 June: Basketball’s Obtuse Triangle, 2015 September: Joint Ventures: How sneakers became high fashion and big business, 2015 October: Loose Balls - Terry Pluto (2007), 2015 November: The Sounds of Memphis, 2015 December: Welcome to Smarter Basketball, 2015 December: New York, New York: Julius Erving, the Nets-Knicks Feud, and America’s Bicentennial, 2016 January: The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams (1994), 2016 January: A Long Hardwood Journey, 2016 March: American Hustle - Alexandra Starr, 2016 November: 2016–17 College Basketball, 2017 November: 2017-18 College Basketball, 2017 March: N.C.A.A. Bracket Predictions: Who the Tournament Experts Pick, 2017 June: The Rise and Fall of the High-Top Sneaker, 2018 January: Chaos Is This College Basketball Season’s Only Constant, 2018 February: Heaven is a Playground, 2018 March: The End of March Madness?, 2018 March: The 2018 March Madness Cinderella Guide, 2018 August: Ancestor Work In Street Basketball

Walking - Henry David Thoreau (1862)

"Henry David Thoreau, the naturalist, philosopher, and author of such classics as Walden and 'Civil Disobedience,' contributed a number of writings to The Atlantic in its early years. The month after his death from tuberculosis, in May 1862, the magazine published 'Walking,' one of his most famous essays, which extolled the virtues of immersing oneself in nature and lamented the inevitable encroachment of private ownership upon the wilderness. ..."
The Atlantic
W - Walking (Thoreau)
[PDF] Walking
amazon

2009 April: Henry David Thoreau, 2012 September: Walden, 2015 March: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849), 2017 March: Civil Disobedience (1849), 2017 April: The Maine Woods (1864), 2017 June: This Ever New Self: Thoreau and His Journal, 2017 July: Pond Scum - Henry David Thoreau’s moral myopia. By Kathryn Schulz, 2017 July: Walden, a Game, 2017 October: Walden Wasn’t Thoreau’s Masterpiece, 2017 December: Walden on the Rocks - Ariel Dorfman, 2018 March: A Map of Radical Bewilderment, 2018 April: On Tax Day, Reread Thoreau’s ‘Civil Disobedience’, 2018 October: Against Everything: Thoreau Trailer Park

Pink Noises: Women on Electronic Music and Sound - Tara Rodgers

"Tara Rodgers, a composer and scholar, rightly perceives a lack of academic and mainstream media attention towards women creating electronic music, and in 2000 she created the website pinknoises.com as a collective space for female artists to promote their work, get tips and information regarding production methods, and discuss the trials and tribulations of working in a field where men often dominate the discussion. The book Pink Noises: Women on Electronic Music and Sound is an expansion of Tara Rodgers’ website and contains far more extensive interviews with twenty-four female electronic musicians, composers, sound artists, and DJs whom Rodgers has come in contact with during her research and career. ..."
Ethnomusicology Review
“Pink Noises” Showcases Women In Electronic Music
Archive: Pink Noises: Women on Electronic Music and Sound
Interview: Analog Tara
amazon

The artist and scholar gargoyles on 121st Street

"Copper bay windows, grand arches, juliet balconies and a sloping roof: As university housing goes, the 8-story Bancroft Apartments are pretty fanciful. Preeminent architect Emery Roth designed the building, which opened at 509 West 121st Street in 1910. By 1920, it had been acquired by Columbia University’s Teachers College, just a block away in the city’s new Acropolis neighborhood, so named for the many schools in the area. Considering that what’s now called Bancroft Hall ended up housing educators, it makes sense that the gargoyles decorating the facade are nods toward higher learning. Behold the building’s wonderful painter and scholar (a writer perhaps, pointing to letters in a book?). I don’t think these characters represent any specific people but instead symbolize creativity, education, and imagination. ..."
Ephemeral New York

Paris Was a Woman (1996)

"At the beginning of her elegant and illuminating Paris Was a Woman, documentarian Greta Schiller declares that in the first quarter of the 20th century, the Left Bank of the City of Lights was a magnet for women from all over America and Europe, with its 'promise of freedom,' of 'a life filled with literature and art.' Schiller goes a long way toward balancing the image of Paris between the wars as a male paradise for the likes of Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Starting with Gertrude Stein, whose experimental writing influenced Hemingway, and her lover Alice B. Toklas, virtually all of the key figures in Schiller's film were lesbians, yet Schiller and her writer Andrea Weiss acknowledge this with a reticence bordering on reluctance. ..."
LA Times
W - Greta Schiller
amazon
YouTube: Paris Was a Woman trailer, Sylvia Beach Interview

The Webcam as Instrument - A performance by Sideband on Jeff Snyder's audio-video toolkit

Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk) performs Ghost Line by Jeff Snyder.
"'Ghost Line' is a thoroughly compelling audio-video performance by Sideband (Lainie Fefferman, Jascha Narveson, Seth Cluett, and Mika Godbole) of music by Jeff Snyder, from Snyder’s forthcoming album, Concerning the Nature of Things. The album is due on November 9th on the Carrier Records label, with one preview track, the title cut, already up on Snyder’s Bandcamp page. But the real way to experience 'Ghost Line' arguably isn’t the audio on its own; it’s the audio as a component of the video (on vimeo.com). In most music videos, the video part of the equation is either a complement (whether a narrative or just associative imagery) or a document (of the performance, whether simulated or live). In the case of 'Ghost Line,' the 12-minute video is, quite literally, both performance and score. And while the images may tend toward abstraction, those abstractions directly inform the music we hear. ..."
disquiet (Video)

Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry (John Huston - 1984)

"By the time Malcolm Lowry had finished filling Under the Volcano with 'signs, natural phenomena, snatches of poems and songs, pictures, remembered books and films, shadowy figures appearing, disappearing, and reappearing,' according to Douglas Day, Mr. Lowry's biographer, the book 'finally became not a novel at all but a kind of monument to prodigality of vision.' Certainly it evolved, as Mr. Lowry expanded his short story of the same name into the 1947 novel, into one of the most haunting and difficult works of modern fiction. That this densely allusive work is also tantalizingly cinematic has made it an Everest of sorts, from the film maker's standpoint. The book, aside from an opening chapter that dissolves into flashback, spans only a 24-hour period (the Day of the Dead, in November 1938) and involves few principal characters: Geoffrey Firmin, an alcoholic former British Consul living in a small Mexican town; Yvonne, the Consul's estranged wife, who has just returned to him, and Hugh Firmin, Geoffrey's rakish young half-brother, with whom Yvonne has had an affair. ..."
NY Times
W - Under the Volcano (film)
Roger Ebert
Criterion
YouTube: trailer - John Huston Films

John Huston

New York’s Finest: Paying Tribute to the Beastie Boys in the Pages of the Voice

"Though we may never again be treated to new music from the Beastie Boys — those three impish young New Yorkers, Adam Yauch (MCA), Adam Horowitz (Ad Rock), and Michael Diamond (Mike D), who went on to become one of the most original and longest-lasting groups in the history of rap — fans this week were treated to some new material from the group with the release of its Beastie Boys Book. A Beasties-style oral history, the book features the Boys’ two remaining members, Ad Rock and Mike D, swapping written reminiscences that span their pre-Beastie days growing up in New York to MCA’s death in 2012, at the age of 47, from cancer. Interspersed are a mini-cookbook, a graphic novella, and essays from numerous famous writers and artists, including several Voice contributors, such as Colson Whitehead, Luc Sante, and Ada Calhoun. ..."
Voice
amazon: Beastie Boys Book

Tangled Up in Blue: Deciphering a Bob Dylan Masterpiece

Wikipedia - "'Tangled Up in Blue' is a song by Bob Dylan. ... The Telegraph has described the song as 'The most dazzling lyric ever written, an abstract narrative of relationships told in an amorphous blend of first and third person, rolling past, present and future together, spilling out in tripping cadences and audacious internal rhymes, ripe with sharply turned images and observations and filled with a painfully desperate longing. 'Tangled Up in Blue' is one of five songs on Blood on the Tracks that Dylan initially recorded in New York City in September 1974 and then re-recorded in Minneapolis in December that year; the later recording became the album track and single. The New York version of this song is in open E tuning.'Tangled Up in Blue' is one of the clearest examples of Dylan's attempts to write 'multi-dimensional' songs which defied a fixed notion of time and space. Dylan was influenced by his recent study of painting and the Cubist school of artists, who sought to incorporate multiple perspectives within a single plane of view. As Neil McCormick remarked in 2003: 'A truly extraordinary epic of the personal, an unreliable narrative carved out of shifting memories like a five-and-a-half-minute musical Proust.' ..."
Wikipedia
Tangled Up in Blue: Bob Dylan’s utterly transformed “Real Live” version
YouTube: Tangled Up in Blue: Deciphering a Bob Dylan Masterpiece, Tangled Up In Blue (Live), Tangled Up In Blue - NYC Session - Lyrics in description (7:01)

An Atlas of Literary Maps Created by Great Authors: J.R.R Tolkien’s Middle Earth, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island & More

"Plot, setting, character… we learn to think of these as discrete elements in literary writing, comparable to the strategy, board, and pieces of a chess game. But what if this scheme doesn’t quite work? What about when the setting is a character? There are many literary works named and well-known for the unforgettable places they introduce: Walden, Wuthering Heights, Howards End…. There are invented domains that seem more real to readers than reality: Faulkner’s Yoknapatowpha, Thomas Hardy’s Wessex… There are works that describe impossible places so vividly we believe in their existence against all reason: Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, China Miéville’s The City and the City, Jorge Luis Borges' 'Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius'. ... A new book, The Writer’s Map, edited by Huw Lewis-Jones, offers lovers of literary maps—whether in non-fiction, realism, or fantasy—the opportunity to pore over maps of Thomas More’s Utopia (said to be the first literary map), Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, J.R.R Tolkien’s Middle Earth, Branwell Brontë’s Verdopolis (above), and so many more. ..."
Open Culture
amazon: The Writer's Map: An Atlas of Imaginary Lands

The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, a DIY Hip-Hop Incubator

"On the night of Halloween 1989, Bob Holman brought slam poetry to the newly reopened Nuyorican Poets Cafe. An intimate 120-person venue on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the Nuyorican had been shuttered for much of the ’80s due to the fallout from 'crack, AIDS and gentrification,' says Holman. The revamped style of poetry performance – which encouraged audience participation as poets competed against each other – kick-started the Nuyorican’s transformation into a sandbox environment that attracted a wave of revered writers and artists raised under the influence of hip-hop: Paul Beatty, Reg E. Gaines, Tracie Morris, Mos Def, Talib Kweli and Erykah Badu all came to use the open mic spot to figure out their artistic voices. At the apex of the movement was Saul Williams, whom Holman remembers as the 'flashpoint' for a ’90s spoken word scene that mixed hip-hop vernacular and attitude with poetical delivery. ..."
Red Bull Music Academy Daily

2018 January: Nuyorican

Trump Is About to Get a Rude Awakening

"In the lead-up to the midterm elections, President Donald Trump tried to have it both ways. 'I’m not on the ballot, but in a certain way, I’m on the ballot,' he told supporters, yet he also made clear that he wouldn’t take the blame if Republicans did poorly. And in the end, he sort of got it both ways. Democrats handily won the House of Representatives, picking up about 34 seats. But Republicans gained seats in the Senate and limited losses in governors’ races. Anyone hoping that Tuesday’s results would deliver a clean verdict on the Trump presidency, either up or down, was disappointed, even as voters told exit pollsters that Trump was the dominant factor in the election. Yet the outcomes still tell us something about the strengths and weaknesses of the president’s campaign strategy—and, more important, about the slog that’s ahead for the next two years in Washington, as Democrats harry Trump from their perch in the House. ..."
The Atlantic
NY Times: Democrats Capture Control of House; G.O.P. Holds Senate (Video)
Guardian: Blue wave or blue ripple? A visual guide to the Democrats’ gains in the midterms
NY Times: Despite Loss of House, Trump Claims ‘Big Victory’ and Threatens Democrats (Video)

Les Stances a Sophie - Art Ensemble of Chicago (1970)

"In 1970, the members of the Art Ensemble of Chicago were living as expatriates in Paris. The group had only recently expanded to its permanent quintet status with the addition of drummer/percussionist Don Moye when they were asked by New Wave director Moshe Misrahi to provide the soundtrack for his movie, Les Stances a Sophie. The music was never used in the film but, luckily, it was recorded. The result was one of the landmark records of the burgeoning avant-garde of the time and, simply put, one of the greatest jazz albums ever. ... Their extensive knowledge of prior jazz styles, love of unusual sound sources (the so-called 'little instruments') and fearless exploration of the furthest reaches of both instrumental and compositional possibilities came into full flower on this record."
allmusic
W - Les Stances a Sophie
Discogs (Video)
amazon
YouTube: Les Stances a Sophie 7 videos

Why Undocumented Immigrants Should Be Allowed to Vote

Voting booths are set up at a 2018 Minnesota primary election polling place inside the Westminster Presbyterian Church on August 14, 2018 in Minneapolis.
"Imagine: what if today, instead of being consigned to the shadows, the more than 22 million noncitizen immigrants in the US were heading to the polls? Sound preposterous? Voting by non-citizens is actually as old America itself. From the founding of the American Republic, voting rights were determined not by citizenship but by other criteria, such as race, gender, and property holdings. When women, post-emancipation African Americans, and poor white men were denied voting rights, it was due to elite antipathy — not because they lacked citizenship. Non-citizens in those years picked electoral winners and losers, and even held political office. What brought this period of 'alien suffrage' to a close was simple nativism. ..."
Jacobin