No. 11, “The Undiagnosed Colorblindness Ending”: ” ‘What are you talking about?’ the fisherman asked. ‘That light is blue, and your socks don’t match.’ “
Tag: 07.07.12
As J.K. Rowling Prepares To Publish First Book For Adults, British Towns Claim The Book’s About Them
“The Casual Vacancy, published in September, charts rivalry and small-time political strife in Pagford, a seemingly tranquil town. While the author is remaining tight-lipped about any real-life inspiration, Kelso in the Scottish Borders this weekend boasted a”
Brooklyn, Writers’ Mecca (Why? How?)
“The phenomenon is now so pronounced that you could say, without exaggeration, that there are two principal avenues for would-be writers in America. The first is to swallow the exorbitant price tag for one of the country’s multiplying creative-writing courses (usually Masters of Fine Arts, or MFAs); the second is to move to Brooklyn.”
Goodbye To All That, Redux: Decamping Literary Brooklyn For L.A.
“I’ve never felt more important than when I lived in New York. I was poor and my work was neither very good nor very well-read, and yet every day I’d wake up in my 10-by-10 room, its window looking out over my building’s rusted trashcans, and somehow think I’d achieved another great victory.”
George Szell, Who Demanded Merely Perfection From The Cleveland Orchestra
“‘He sat down and played a chord something like this and he said, “How many?”‘ [Szell biographer Michael] Charry says. ‘I said six or seven and he said, “Can you name them?” and I actually did name them. And, passing that, then we went to the rest of the audition. I had the feeling, though, that if my ear hadn’t been good enough, he would have said, “Thank you very much, but you may go.”‘”
Creating Dance That Destroys (And Revives) The Creator
Choreographer Jack Fervor, who found it devastating (and freeing) to revisit his childhood for a new collaboration with a sculptor who had a similarly terrible youth: “After every performance, audience members come up, gay and straight, who say they identify with the isolation and fear that we felt. That’s my intention. I make my work so that people don’t feel as lonely as I have.”
Hey, Hollywood: Adults Love Movies (And Need Good New Ones Every Week)
Will this be the summer – yes, this summer, even though you’ve heard it a million times before – when Hollywood finally realizes that people over 30 love to go to the movies?
As The Olympics Near, London’s East End Transforms (Somewhat)
London’s East End “is persistently seen as other – as mysterious and threatening, as an orphan child prompting pity, as something unknowable which must therefore be tamed by stereotypes. It has lent itself to exploitation on a large scale, from the high-walled and ferociously defended docks, to Fortress Wapping, as the base of Rupert Murdoch’s News International was once called. Grand gestures are repeatedly imposed from outside, whose aims are at once charitable and controlling.” Will the 2012 Olympics be any different?
Happiness Is (Spending Money On) Other People
Until people in the U.S. make around $75,000, their happiness goes up with every step up the ladder. After that, the only way to be happy is to put that extra money in the service of others (and not just your kids).
Protesting Oil Company Sponsorship With A Wind Turbine At The Tate Modern
Protestors carried parts of a wind turbine blade into the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall and asked that curators include it as part of the permanent collection – to protest what they see as the garish obviousness with which BP (formerly British Petroleum) sponsors the museum.