The meteoric rise of the author of The Selling of the President 1968, the split with his family (“I get off the plane after doing Merv Griffin and the Tonight Show and have to leave for Paris and your mother tells me I need to take out the trash”), the intermittent happy visits, and the long, depressive, alcohol-fueled decline.
Big Tech Killed Bookstore Chains – And It’s Saving Indie Bookstores
“It’s a bit of tech innovators being hoisted by their own petard: the massive drop in cost in back-office software and computers has benefitted small stores as much as a large ones. It costs much less now to do much more than a decade [ago], reducing overhead and improving efficiency.”
‘Opera Has Broken Free Of The Stage’ – What We Learned At The First New York Opera Fest
“Over the course of the festival, we attended 14 productions out of the more than 25 presented, taking us to four out of five boroughs, from a Harlem school to a West Village townhouse to a basketball court in Brooklyn. Along the way we saw works presented in unconventional venues and on screens; discovered lesser-known and brand new works; and witnessed innovative approaches to reaching new audiences. Here is what we learned.”
The ‘Zines Of Renaissance England
“From the 15th century onward, everyday English people passed broadsides around, sang their songs, and gossiped about the news contained within. Unlike books or early newspapers, broadsides and pamphlets were not curated nor intended for a specific, upper-class audience. This early form of journalism and storytelling was sold on the cheap, and many took no time at all to read.”
The Latest Trend In LGBT Fiction: Gay Shame
“Shame informs much of the work of our latter-day gay novelists, offered as an antidote to our overriding gay culture that recognizes ‘pride’ as the core (and perhaps only) important expression of gayness today. The literary projects offered by [Hanya] Yanagihara and [Garth] Greenwell are cultural counterpoints to gay pride, attempts to show how shame – just as much as pride, if not more – still meaningfully forms part of the terrain of gay life, and must be acknowledged as such.”
Why Are Zombies Scary? It’s Not Because They Want To Eat Your Brains, Even Metaphorically
“Zombies belong to the realm of horror stories that reappear over and over throughout history – from ancient Mesopotamia to modern-day sci-fi – because they raise a more terrifying fear than merely that of a gory death: the threat of eternal life.”
The Big Plans For Cambodia’s Floating Arts Center
“The arts are an integral part of the fabric of [Phnom Penh], but, most days, art isn’t a major priority for those scraping by in one of the world’s poorest countries. That’s just one reason why The Boat is so important.”
We Need To Think About Anger – And Philosophy Can (Really!) Help Us Do It
Martha Nussbaum looks at two of anger’s main drivers, loss of status and the desire for payback, and looks to Aristotle and Nelson Mandela for examples of how to deal with them.
Power Of Positive Thinking? Researchers Say Maybe Not So Much
“Indulging in undirected positive flights of fancy isn’t always in our interest. Positive thinking can make us feel better in the short term, but over the long term it saps our motivation, preventing us from achieving our wishes and goals, and leaving us feeling frustrated, stymied and stuck.”
Musicians Complain Politicians Don’t Have Permission To Use Their Music (But Here’s Why They Won’t Sue)
A campaign may obtain “public performance” licenses from performing rights organizations like ASCAP or BMI, which typically allows for the use of whatever songs are in their catalogs. Trump’s campaign very well may have secured such licenses to play songs on the trail.
So You Want To Build A Performing Arts Center. Here’s The Cost-Benefit Proposition
Do you believe that arts centers create jobs? That they improve business? That they enrich the lives of the community? As a community in Colorado considers building another new center, Ray Rinaldi looks at the experience of some of the state’s other arts centers and their impact on their communities.
Why Women Are Starting To Have More Leadership Roles In Orchestras
“Doors are beginning to open for female conductors not due to any delayed sense of fair play, however, but for the simple reason that there are more women in symphony orchestras these days and they are much less resistant to being led by a woman than the male-dominated orchestras of the past.”
City Commissions Public Mural, Fusses And Interferes Over Detail After Detail, Then Finally Paints Over The Whole Thing
“Yesterday afternoon, artist Gary Wynans, who goes by Mr. AbiLLity, learned that [Jersey City] workers had painted over his giant painting of a Monopoly game board at the heavily trafficked Newark Avenue Pedestrian Plaza. … The surprise paint job was not the first time City Hall has made its mark on Mr. AbiLLity’s board. The entire process was riddled by authorities’ demands that the artist edit his work, foreseeing possible controversy around the original image.”
James M. Nederlander, Sr., 94, Theater Mogul On Broadway And Nationwide
“Mr. Nederlander transformed what was a regional theatre business based in Detroit into a New York powerhouse when, in the 1960s, he set his sights on New York City and began buying Broadway theatres. The Nederlander Organization now has holdings [in New York] second only to the Shubert Organization … [as well as venues in] Chicago, Tucson, Detroit, Los Angeles, San Diego and London.”
New CEO At Chamber Orchestra Of Philadelphia
“The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia has hired a rock/jazz guitarist and administrator from New York’s Orchestra of St. Luke’s to be its next executive director. William Rhoads, 49, vice president of marketing and communications for the Orchestra of St. Luke’s since 2006, starts the new post just after Labor Day.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 07.26.16
The size of the arts sector is not a rationale for public funding of the arts sector
All sectors in the economy, if they are a sector at all, employ people. Not all sectors warrant public subsidy, which is only called for in the case where there are benefits to society beyond the activity as measured in the market. … read more
AJBlog: For What It’s Worth Published 2016-07-26
Diane Arbus, The Met and “The Envelope”
Maybe it was the heat, or the humidity. Maybe it was the artist – Diane Arbus, and the fact that diane arbus: in the beginning is focused on her early works, … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2016-07-26
How to write a press release
As a footnote to my posts on classical music publicists, and how they could do better, here’s a post I did in 2005 — wow, 11 years ago! — about how to make press releases better. … read more
AJBlog: Sandow Published 2016-07-26
Twitter Swarm: My Storify on Reactions to My WSJ Review of SFMOMA’s New Tech
When I published today’s Wall Street Journal piece on the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s technological transformation – Golden Gate Gigabytes (this hardcopy headline is much catchier than the online one) – I knew from the heated tweets … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2016-07-26
Claude Williamson 1926-2016
Claude Williamson, a piano mainstay of jazz in California for seven decades, died on July 16 in Los Angeles. He had been in decline since he fell in his home in 2015 and broke … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-07-26
A Piece of Zen Music Called ‘Pond’
When I heard it for the first time, I didn’t know what to make of it. I thought of it as a demonstration of the trombonist’s virtuosity. Then I read the composers’ general description of the piece … read more
AJBlog: Straight|Up Published 2016-07-26
On Community
Let it be known that my initial response to this prompt detailed the intertwining life stories of the colorful personalities who lived within my grandmother’s nursing home. In Prairie Home Companion style, I waxed poetic …read more
AJBlog: Field Notes Published 2016-07-26
Community: A song
Torres Hodges, a musician and Creative Community Fellow describes what community means to him in this original song. … read more
AJBlog: Field Notes Published 2016-07-26
It’s about passion
Growing up, I was part of many different communities. Among them were Girl Scouts, youth group, writing club, a small city just south of Akron and … read more
AJBlog: Field Notes Published 2016-07-26
Another word
Before forming the Wormfarm Institute, my partner Jay and I ran a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm. As newly rural, beginning farmers, our shareholders (the community) were all from Chicago, … read more
AJBlog: Field Notes Published 2016-07-26
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Music Fans Are Excited About Virtual Reality. But The Music Industry Is Slow To Catch Up
“Interest in the technology is outpacing actual VR music products, however, and few virtual reality performances have been released.”
Can A Brain Scan Tell What You’re Thinking? (Here’s What We Know So Far)
“To see if they could actually identify such patterns, the team had 80 people solve a series of math problems while lying in an fMRI scanner. Using a mix of otherwise standard methods from computer science and neuroscience, they identified a sequence of brain-activation patterns corresponding to encoding a problem, planning a solution, making the necessary computations, and providing a response.”
New Ideas? There Are Fewer Of Them Than You Might Think
“Human beings are extraordinarily good at deceiving themselves and possibly never more so than when they think that they have had a new idea, as Steven Poole makes clear in this fascinating compendium of new ideas that aren’t new at all.”
Edinburgh Festivals’ Economic Impact Has Grown By 25% In Five Years: Study
“The value of Edinburgh’s festivals has soared by almost a quarter to £313 million in the space of just five years … They are also now supporting 6,021 jobs – up by 26 per cent – according to findings released ahead of next month’s 70th annual season.”