[contextly_auto_sidebar id="9ZrmYtTcEkAZeeiJjqnX9vpz85XUHyUt"] TECHNO-utopians, heartless neoliberals and market-worshipping optimists will tell you that when creative destruction hits, it's only weeding out the losers, casting off the dead wood, allowing the invisible hand -- which works in mysterious ways -- to do its work. And it's easy to imagine, say, an acoustic folk club or a jazz cellar … [Read more...]
Archives for December 2014
Science, Religion and the Arts
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="QenFCLTcJKBApjGPuMk4yTYCy8otpnpB"] ARE there subjects science, metrics, Big Data, and rational thought can't entirely address? I sometimes thinks that these issues are the ones arts and culture are about, but I'm coming to realize that there's another lineage that engages with them as well: Religion. To many, this will sound obvious, but the relationship between … [Read more...]
Has Architecture Lost Its Connection?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="JXp6XOeglaoCeQ8tXG7WjOAVz5fmoupq"] ARCHITECTURE is a funny field: Much of its most important, most talked-about work is done for a tiny number of clients -- we'll call them rich people -- but the profession has a lingering (and in some cases sincere) social conscience and concern for the broader built environment the rest of us live in. That blend of ambitions has … [Read more...]
Nature Painting and Weimar Film at LACMA
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="6xLprSnZT28agTDtPzklXpRf7UUnEW1W"] SOME days all the planets line up and a visit to a museum really can offer "fun for the whole family." That's what happened at the LACMA a few days ago, where the ups and downs of exhibit schedules meant a show of samurai armor, another of Hudson River school 19th c. painting, and another of German Expressionist Cinema. I spent … [Read more...]
Novelist Janet Fitch Joins Culture Crash at Skylight Books
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="F72Akus0FnI1F8UXy7215APyWoohS6MQ"] IT's been both gratifying and frustrating to have my book launch at the LA Central Library fill up so quickly. (Tickets went in a single day.) Now Los Angeles audiences have another chance to see me discuss the subjects I dig into on this blog and in my upcoming book -- at Skylight Books. And I'm glad to say that Janet Fitch, the … [Read more...]
The Middle Class Gets Crushed
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="nlkSqy50Zn5Bw3CQlhpyfd29maMq78kr"] ONE of my guiding principles on this site and in the soon-to-be-published book it accompanies is that the creative class it almost entirely embedded within the middle class, and that musicians, writers, artists, etc. are even more exposed to contemporary economic pressures than the average burgher. This is despite the fact that the … [Read more...]
Nicholas Carr’s “The Shallows”
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="Iwl9o6IO0qS8QhMgMHnnfdwEgtpDwMBi"] ONE of the best books on life in the digital age -- and perhaps the one closest to my own point of view -- is Nicholas Carr's The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. I like it for a host of reasons, among them Carr's elegant style, cool tone, and literary and humanistic sensibility. Among my favorite passages: When … [Read more...]
Culture Crash the Book Goes to Washington
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="mf4rE6xWgZDul2vj7Ls64RZGrkkXbufG"] THE august D.C. bookstore Politics and Prose will host an event for my book a few days after publication, on Saturday evening, January 17. This is a great bookstore with a smart staff and a great hand-picked selection; it's exactly the kind of place I write about in the book, and the kind of place that tends to disappear in the … [Read more...]
Brad Mehldau and the Bad Plus in Northridge
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="ocaaAdSFWvE4N0CAxZumQsegvYINpapN"] IT was no surprise that two of the greatest trios in jazz today put on bracing and powerful sets. What was new was that these two groups performed in the San Fernando Valley, an enormous swatch of suburbia that has often lagged behind the rest of Los Angeles for most kinds of culture. (As Easterners have often looked down on LA, … [Read more...]
Culture Crash The Book Hits NYC
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="XmMqM0QnhXqGOSqUzhLut0F2n8ftDdRV"] OUR Department of Self-Promotion is happy to announce an event at McNally Jackson in SoHo on Weds. January 21. Sponsored by Salon, the evening will involve me discussing Culture Crash alongside author Elizabeth Wurtzel (pictured), whose upcoming book, Creatocracy: How the Constitution Invented Hollywood, shares some concerns with … [Read more...]