A 26-year-old Bostonian, originally from Virginia, Charles Overton “wants to be both the Yo-Yo Ma and Herbie Hancock of the harp.” (Might one say he is pushing the Overton Window?) – Ozy
Tag: 11.09.20
City Of Seattle Creates A New Real Estate Company To Buy And Manage Arts Spaces
The city is taking the rare step of creating a “mission-driven” real estate development company so that it can create, purchase, manage and lease property for arts and cultural spaces — which could include a wide range of venues and organizations, including galleries, bookstores, nonprofit dance companies and cultural community centers. – Crosscut
The ‘School of Embodiment’: This Is How To Do Good Sex Writing
“[Garth Greenwell] is, a practitioner, with [Lidia] Yuknavitch and a few others, of what we might call the School of Embodiment: a kind of close tracking of sensation and response that we typically assign to poets or sensory neurologists. This doesn’t mean that work by these writers is stylistically similar, only that it seeks meaning in and through the body.” – The Point
Philadelphia’s Count-All-The-Votes Dance Party Was A Deliberate Plan To Avoid Street Violence
“It seemed impromptu. It wasn’t entirely. The undeniable joy before, on, and after Election Day was organic. But a coalition of Philadelphia progressive organizations, many of them Black-led, have for months planned for political tension and unrest, determined to turn down the temperature.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer
A Historian Concludes Systemic Civilization Failure
“If you have a discussion among the crew about which way to turn, you will not turn in time, and you hit the iceberg directly. The past 10 years or so have been discussion. That sickening crunch you now hear—steel twisting, rivets popping—is the sound of the ship hitting the iceberg.” – The Atlantic
Touting It Up: Public Radio’s Diversity Audit
Public radio has a problem. In 2019, NPR’s newsroom was more than 70 percent white. The same year, 83 percent of the voices heard on its national shows were white, too. According to the most recent State of the System report by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, in 2018, just 23 percent of people working at member stations identified as people of color. That’s almost a full percentage point decrease from the previous year. – Columbia Journalism Review
Why Are Contemporary Writers Obsessed With Self-Awareness?
Critics—and the authors they cover—seem to be obsessed with self-awareness. Writing about oneself isn’t new at all, but what’s current (and quickly growing stale) is the overtly self-conscious way contemporary writers have chosen to go about it. – The Nation
Are Our Brains Wired To Want To Be Outside?
The evolutionary explanation for human connection to nature is a colossal safari through the African savanna, where our ancestors fought, fed, and frolicked for millions of years. The biologist E.O. Wilson speculated on this story in Biophilia, a slim volume on human attraction to nature. Wilson defined biophilia as an “innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes.” – Nautilus
Founder Of Now-Defunct American National Ballet Charged With Murdering Husband
In early 2017, Doug and Ashley Benefield moved to Charleston with ambitious, high-profile plans to create a top-level ballet company and school there — and over that year, the project gradually and messily fell apart. Now Ashley has been arrested near Bradenton, Florida and charged with shooting Doug during an argument; the couple had separated and were in an ongoing custody dispute over their daughter. – The Post and Courier (Charleston, SC)
Commercial Radio Is 100 Years Old. Where Can It Go From Here?
Kirk Miller: “Surviving 100 years is incredible. But I do wonder if it’ll make it through another 10, let alone 100. To get some outside perspective, I asked four people — two long-time DJs, a younger musician and a veteran music industry reporter — for their thoughts on commercial radio, both as it stands today and where it’s going.” – InsideHook