For the last century, the advertising industry has been centered around this cardinal principle: Find the consumer’s problem and fix it with your product. When the problem is practical and tactical, the solution is “as seen on TV” and available at Home Depot. But when the problem is emotional, the fix becomes a new staple in your life, and you become a lifelong loyalist. Coca-Cola makes you happy. A Mercedes makes you successful. Taking your family on a Royal Caribbean cruise makes you special. – WBUR
An Indie Bookstore Apocalypse? (Maybe Skip This Story)
What’s clear to everyone is that the much celebrated “independent bookstore renaissance,” which coincided with the post–Great Recession economic expansion, is over. Hundreds of stores may never reopen again. The future of independent bookselling, a tenuous, low-margin business in the best of times, has never been gloomier. – The New Republic
French Intellectuals Recommend George Sand, Nabokov, And Other Classics For The Duration
Says Claude Romano, a French philosopher, “One can be tempted to read in order to escape, but one can also read to fully inhabit the present moment and make it the space of a meditation.” That’s why he recommends a Japanese work called The Interminable Rain. – Le Monde
Why Would An Oxford Professor Steal Ancient Papyrus?
Dr Dirk Obbink, an associate professor in papyrology and Greek literature at the university, was detained by officers from Thames Valley police. The force had received a report claiming the papyrus fragments that had been housed at the renowned Sackler Library in Oxford, which ended up in a biblical museum in the US, had been stolen. – The Guardian
Deborah Borda: How The NY Phil Is Thinking About Rethinking Its Future
A new virtual music platform, cancellation of tours and rethinking the renovation of the orchestra’s home. First – keep musicians employed and make sure they have health care – WQXR
Art? Or ‘A Pre-Raphaelite Wet T-Shirt Competition’? ArtActivistBarbie Hits The Museums And Calls Out The Male Gaze
“Posing in her most glamorous handmade outfits, ArtActivistBarbie has been calling into question the representation of women on gallery walls” — the blonde doll is photographed in front of an artwork, generally one of a nude or topless woman such as Charles Mengin’s Sappho (1877), holding a sign saying, for instance, “Yet another painting where the male gaze is legitimised by fine painting & brushwork & a scholarly reference to Classical history.” – The Guardian
A New York Times And Guardian Critic Tries Out ‘Remote Immersive Theater’ At Home
Alexis Soloski got texts from Romeo (who’s a bit of a jerk), helped someone held hostage in Venezuela undo handcuffs, failed to help a pilot land a 747, told an inspector for the Misplaced Keepsakes Division about her long-lost Piaget watch, and (“because I am a terrible props mistress”) scalded herself while attempting Play in a Bathtub. – The New York Times
In For The Long Haul: Post-Virus World Will Be Very Different For The Arts
There is a growing realization that the binary nature of open versus closed is not the right way to think. “It’s not going to be a light switch,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, last Sunday. So what does that mean for live entertainment? – Chicago Tribune
What’s All This Fuss We Hear About Marina Abramović Being A Satanist?
“In one of the strangest art controversies in recent memory, a group of right-wing internet users and blogs have begun targeting Marina Abramović, accusing her of being involved in a Satanist cult. She has previously denied the allegations, but the claims have continued to be levied against her, and yesterday brought news that Microsoft deleted a YouTube advertisement for a new work by her after users had targeted it. But where did the claims come from in the first place? [Here’s] a guide to the controversy’s background.” – ARTnews
‘Reflective Nostalgia’: Alex Ross On Grieving For His Mother With Brahms
“Bach is undoubtedly music’s supreme companion of extreme distress. … But, on the plane to D.C. that night, Bach would have been too raw, too dire. With Brahms, everything passes through layers of reflection. He is the great poet of the ambiguous, in-between, nameless emotions: ambient unease, pervasive wistfulness, bemused resignation, contained rage, ironic merriment, smiling through tears, the almost pleasurable fatigue of deep depression. In a repertory full of arrested adolescents, he is the most adult of composers.” – The New Yorker
Envisioning A New, Post-Pandemic Dance World
“In many ways, we’ll have to start from scratch. So why not learn from this moment and rebuild our community on a stronger foundation? Why not use this opportunity to enact the desires, the dreams, the radical changes that we haven’t been bold enough to voice before? Why not reevaluate the systems and structures we’ve long seen as immutable? We talked to 10 leaders from across the field about how they’d radically reimagine the dance world.” – Dance Magazine
Netflix Is Now Worth More Than ExxonMobil
With demand for its content soaring as people are self-isolating due to COVID, the streaming giant’s total market value on Wall Street has risen to $196 billion. Meanwhile, with demand for its product collapsing as people avoid going anywhere, the oil giant — the most valuable company in the world in 2013, is watching its stock price slump. – The Guardian
Actor Brian Dennehy, 81
“Standing 6-foot-3, Mr. Dennehy had a booming voice and an often intimidating screen presence. … [He] was celebrated for his work as a character actor in Hollywood and on television, where he earned six Emmy nominations. But he received even greater acclaim for his performances on the stage, starring in revivals of classic plays including O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard and Bertolt Brecht’s Life of Galileo,” as well as the two productions for which he won Tony Awards, Miller’s Death of a Salesman and O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night. “‘If it doesn’t scare me,’ he once said of theatrical roles, ‘I’m not interested.'” – The Washington Post
Can The US Postal Service Be Saved?
The battle over the Postal Service has reached a critical stage. Now, others are stepping forward with suggestions for saving the agency that would utterly transform it, from privatizing the USPS to nationalizing Amazon. – CityLab
Theatre World Snapshot: TCG Issues Report On Virus Impact
Bleak of course (how could it not be with all the cancellations?). On the other hand, reading through the data gives a sense of where the people who run theatres think they’re headed. – Theatre Communications Group
How Vermont’s National Guard Army Band Did The Impossible And Built A Hospital In Four Days Last Week
The story of how about 70 National Guardsmen managed to transform a convention center into an alternate health-care facility in mere days shows a state community coming together to get ahead of the pandemic at a time when the federal response is faltering. – The Atlantic
Not Only Is Albinoni’s Adagio A Movie Cliché, It’s A Total Forgery
A musicologist named Remo Giazotto wrote a monograph on Albinoni in which he claimed to have discovered manuscript fragments by the Venetian Baroque composer, fragments from which he reconstructed the overworked now-famous Adagio. “It sounds too good to be true. And it is.” Cinema and early music maven Donald Greig (who for many years sang with the Tallis Scholars) gives us the real story. – The Guardian