David Patrick Stearns: “The carefully-curated public images of the past … have, ironically, faded away in this era of social distancing. Any exterior glamour that creates psychological distance suddenly feels out of fashion in a health crisis that we’re all in together. … [And] some use the blank-page spontaneity for the kind of reckless innovation that might not normally be permitted.” – WQXR (New York City)
Tag: 04.19.20
The Cult Of Celebrity… In Perspective
As Guardian columnist Arwa Mahdawi recently noted, both capitalism and celebrity rely on the “lie of meritocracy:” that working hard will lead to ultimate success. The grips of COVID-19, with its fallout of the millions who have lost their jobs and the thousands who have lost their lives, has shined light on the tenuous nature of the meritocracy myth. Now that we know what essential work is, it seems the perfect time to reflect upon the not-so-essential work of celebrities. – The Conversation
The Last Tourist In Assisi
Contemplating Giotto as the virus closes in, the author says, “Assisi is a city where religious pilgrims come to pray, study, and convene. Before the virus, nuns, priests, monks, and friers careened about on their cell phones, jostling maps, enjoying their time in this holy place, robes and wimples aflutter. They are all gone.” – Hyperallergic
Grammy Winner Miho Hazama Explains How To Combine Classical Training And Contemporary Jazz
Hazama, in this podcast: “My main study back in Japan was to be a film composer. But at the time, computer was taking over the entire industry. My thing was to write for acoustic musicians, not for the computer. … And I kind of lost my dream in the middle of my college life in Japan. So that’s the only reason why I got really into jazz composition. And then I wanted to meet jazz composers who are alive. That excited me so much because I couldn’t obviously meet Ravel or Prokofiev or Stravinsky in person.” – Slate
The Backstage Creatives Trying To Keep Hollywood Going
Shooting may not resume until at least August for most productions – or it may be far later – but while most everyone in cast, crew, and production teams are out of work, some are frantically trying to figure out everything from socially distanced musicians creating a score for finished films to walking with a face mask and taking phone call after phone call. – The New York Times
The Art Of The Pandemic Poster
Before Twitter, before 24-hour cable news, before instantaneous visual information flooding our lives, there was the poster. “Produced and displayed on a massive scale, these posters used a variety of cultural, political, and psychological strategies to steer public behavior with eye-catching and sometimes shocking visuals.” (The message? Very much the same.) – The Atlantic
New Barbara Hepworth Letters Rewrite The Idea Of The Great Artist As A Bad Mother
Hepworth has, for decades, been thought of as a cold and uncaring parent who sent her triplets away when they were four months old so she could get some work done. Surprise: The letters tell a quite different story about postpartum depression and abandonment by the babies’ father (and an idealistic view of the “nursery college” where she sent the babies for just over nine months). – The Observer (UK)
Peter Beard, Photographer And Artist, Has Died At 82
Margalit Fox: “Beard, a New York photographer, artist and naturalist to whom the word ‘wild’ was roundly applied, both for his death-defying photographs of African wildlife and for his own much-publicized days — decades, really — as an amorous, bibulous, pharmaceutically inclined man about town, was found dead in the woods on Sunday, almost three weeks after he disappeared from his home in Montauk on the East End of Long Island.” – The New York Times
How Our Phones Track Social Distancing
And everything else about our location, as well; you can download huge files of randomized info about the entire US, if you’d like. “If you’re wondering whether data from your phone is included in these reports, the answer is yes, probably. However, both Apple and Google are keen to emphasize that they’ve collected this data with user privacy in mind.” – Wired
Online Relief For Listeners Isn’t Replacing Income For Devastated Musicians
There’s just nothing left, really. “The temporary halt to playing live removes the one dependable way musicians can make money. Royalties from music being played in pubs, clubs and shops are suddenly in jeopardy, and with advertising revenues down, the fees paid to music publishers by broadcasters may be cut. Given the long-term decline of physical sales, that only leaves streaming – at which point, let us remind ourselves that YouTube’s average per-stream rate has been put at a princely 0.13p, and that Spotify is reckoned to pay artists an average of 0.26p per listen.” – The Guardian (UK)