I think painters and sculptors react to music, more naively, in a sense…
I think painters and sculptors react to music, more naively, in a sense, because their politics are a lot different from our politics. It’s very hard for one composer to listen to another composer without somehow bringing his own mind-set to the music he’s listening to. It’s not that it’s impossible. And that’s only natural, whereas someone in another art field is going to listen to it very naively, in a sense (you hope), and that’s a worthwhile, unbiased opinion. Ultimately, it’s a naive opinion that rules the roost.
When the Crescendo Is the Least of Your Worries by Christopher R. Graham - The Morning News
“After practicing with his iPod—and feeling pretty good, actually—novice Christopher R. Graham discovers the extreme fear of conducting a professional orchestra.” (via)
When the Crescendo Is the Least of Your Worries by Christopher R. Graham - The Morning News
Getting a job decreases the amount of work it takes to live
Getting a job decreases the amount of work it takes to live. That’s why jobs are good.
Karl Smith. (via)
The Malcolm Gladwell Book Generator
I Am Love
I Am Love. Not sold on this one. Just like the film deals with genteel restraint and animal passions, there’s a strange balance in the film making where some things are left unsaid, only hinted at–and some parts of the film are maddeningly overt or silly. Good enough to finish, but…
Southern Food Section Aisle 9 (by Lindsay Reul)
Thunderball opening titles with theme song by Johnny Cash
Thunderball opening titles with theme song by Johnny Cash. Woah. ( via)
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Say What?: An Interview with Etymonline.com’s Douglas Harper | David C. Carver | Drunken Koudou
Steve Reich’s “Clapping Music” performed by Lee Marvin and Angela Dickinson
Steve Reich’s “Clapping Music” performed by Lee Marvin and Angela Dickinson. (via) A scene from Point Blank, I believe. Here’s the score.
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Potlatch: The Politics of the Thumb
Potlatch: The Politics of the Thumb.
The thumb-press is a straight-forward mode of manual expression, in which the user makes a traditional fist, but then manoeuvres the thumb from its position clasped over (or under the fingers) and lays it gently on top of the index finger as a hint of diplomacy.
Atlanta by car, 1991
Atlanta by car, 1991. As Pecanne Log points out: killer soundtrack.
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Wind & Wonder: the Great Mississippi River Balloon Race by Brian Blickenstaff - Norman Einstein's Sports & Rocket Science Monthly
Double Indemnity
Double Indemnity. This one is very good. Very cynical, not as nearly as complicated as some other noir, just a tight, direct story. You have to wonder why the characters let themselves get caught up like this. They might wonder the same thing. Good performances all around, but again I find myself especially impressed with Edward G. Robinson. The other time I saw him was in Key Largo.
Strange as it may sound to many people, who tend to think of critics as being…
Strange as it may sound to many people, who tend to think of critics as being motivated by the lower emotions: envy, disdain, contempt even… Critics are, above all, people who are in love with beautiful things, and who worry that those things will get broken.
The Mad Men Account by Daniel Mendelsohn | The New York Review of Books
Although I can’t vouch for anything beyond the second season, Mendelsohn’s critique seems fair. (via)
Worst of all—in a drama with aspirations to treating social and historical “issues”—the show is melodramatic rather than dramatic. By this I mean that it proceeds, for the most part, like a soap opera, serially (and often unbelievably) generating, and then resolving, successive personal crises (adulteries, abortions, premarital pregnancies, interracial affairs, alcoholism and drug addiction, etc.), rather than exploring, by means of believable conflicts between personality and situation, the contemporary social and cultural phenomena it regards with such fascination: sexism, misogyny, social hypocrisy, racism, the counterculture, and so forth.
A few years ago, I read a collection of Mendelsohn’s criticism, most of it anyway, and found it quite enjoyable.
The Mad Men Account by Daniel Mendelsohn | The New York Review of Books
You can tell when rhetoric is empty — and therefore should be cut — because it…
You can tell when rhetoric is empty — and therefore should be cut — because it would never be possible to say the alternative.
How CEOs Can Improve Speeches - Harvard Business Review. (via)
Woman at the Piano by Philip Evergood, 1955
Woman at the Piano by Philip Evergood, 1955.
My Father's Fashion Tips - GQ
The turtleneck is the most flattering thing a man can wear because it strips a man down to himself—because it forces a man to project himself. The turtleneck does not decorate, like at tie, or augment, like a sport coat, or in any way distract from what my father calls a man’s “presentation”; rather, it fixes a man in sharp relief and puts his face on a pedestal—first literally, then figuratively. It is about isolation, the turtleneck is; it is about essences and first causes; it is about the body and the face, and that’s all it’s about.
Music is not ruined by other people liking it
Music is not ruined by other people liking it. Discovering things for the first time can still be the source of great pleasure, even when everyone else in the world has already heard it.
John Roderick, “The Pink Moon Problem: There’s No Shame In Admitting You’re Hearing Something For the First Time” (Amen.)