‘Some writers reveal that they listen to music. They tell us their favorite bands and songs so we can steal some inspiration. These writers are cool—maybe even too cool. I picture big money, big headphones, and small packs of cigarettes on their desks. Some say they can’t listen to anything until they’re deep in the revision process; these writers seem reasonable enough, I guess, and might also be modest, responsible drinkers. The author who is said to require complete silence comes across as saintly and chaste. This writer must have a clean desk, drink tea, and make money very slowly.”
Tag: 04.08.16
Dancers’ Bodies, In Repose (Or In A Puppy Pile)
“Dancers are like a special species, … and the company is a place that ties their destiny together in a very intense way.”
We Need To Stop Trying To Deny Our Brutalist History
“The term brutalism borrows from the French béton brut, or raw concrete. Depending on who you consult, those surfaces represent honesty, technological innovation or sheer newness: as the critic Reyner Banham wrote, ‘a radicalism that owes nothing to precedent.'”
Technology Might Just Kill ‘Literary’ Novels
“Before we conjecture anything about this future, we need a way to conceive of the momentum that is affecting everything, most especially our interactions with others: our communications.”
Can The San Antonio Symphony Save Itself?
“David Gross is the President of the San Antonio Symphony, and he says the problem isn’t a new one. The deficit has been growing since 2008. Fundraising, ticket sales and grants just haven’t paid the bills and Gross says he asked everyone involved to help find a solution.”
No One Living Has Ever Heard The Most Famous Violin In The World
“The violin world is a world based on lineage, secrecy, and the ‘war’ between authenticity and deception inside an elite group. It consists of a cloister of craftspeople, dealers, and ‘experts’ passing very specific knowledge down to the very few willing to take the time to learn this time-intensive skill that for centuries has been based on copying old fiddles.”
The Man Who Turned The Organ, And Bach, Into Serious Study
“Unlike scholars in the Bach field who have often succumbed to a bland attitude of continuous adulation towards the master, [Peter] Williams, who has died aged 78, never shirked from showing where Bach fell short of his own astonishing standards, observing, for instance, that certain of his pieces show ‘teeth-gritting dogma’ and that there is something alienating in the thoroughness of the Well-Tempered Clavier’s progress through all the major and minor keys twice over.”
This Is The Woman Who Brought The Original Paddington Bear To Life On The Page
“After photographing Malayan bears at the London Zoo, [Peggy Fortnum] depicted, in black and white with pen and ink, an endearingly frumpy refugee with a floppy hat and duffel coat — ignoring her London art tutor’s advice that she never draw animals that talked and wore clothes.”
How Did Architecture – And Development – Pass East New York By?
“An account of a tour though East New York reads like a Dickens parody. Walk the streets and you’ll pass scrapyards; junkyards; auto dismantlers; methadone clinics; prostitution motels that charge by the hour; seventeen mental health facilities; fifteen drug-treatment facilities; twelve homeless shelters; half-way houses and three-quarter houses.”
An Explicitly Sexual And Explicitly Violent Lucia Draws Boos In London
“The extra scenes include a passionate sex sequence and, after the audience are led to understand Lucia was pregnant, a miscarriage on stage.”