sidewalks in the sky

At 3qd, Jaffer Kolb cites the High Line and a project in my hometown in his exploration of off-the-ground development.

The problem is simple: most cities contain tall buildings (though, ironically, I’m writing this from Los Angeles), and yet despite sharing scale and parallel planes, these buildings rarely connect or contain any physical relationship to one another. The average city dweller only really enters vertical space for specific purposes, whether to go from his 16th floor apartment to his 42nd floor office or from his friend’s basement flat to the observation deck on the top of Rockefeller Center. That is to say, from private space to private space. This isn’t about rooftop restaurants or mid-building showrooms, but rather the problem of urban circulation that forces pedestrians down a stairwell, across the street, and up an elevator—ultimately and forever bound to move over a singular plane at the feet of the city.

the real artichoke

Wittgenstein, explained:

Wittgenstein's glamour was Garbo-esque. When Wittgenstein was in the room, even Isaiah Berlin was at a loss for words. He placed such an emphasis on precision of language that he made the merely eloquent feel slovenly. To get Wittgenstein in perspective, it required first of all his death, and then some unsentimental reflection on the breathtaking scope of what he had never talked about. He received credit for giving away the large amount of money he had inherited, and thus detaching himself from his social privileges and from the involvements and distractions of everyday life. But he also detached himself from everyday life by ignoring what was going on in Europe. The advantage to his philosophical position was that by not saying much, he never said anything ill-considered.

un wap-doo-wap

VSL: On the Parisian Website La Blogothèque, photographer and filmmaker Vincent Moon regularly contributes a video feature called Les concerts à emporter (“The Take-Away Shows”) in which he films emerging bands in distinctive locations around France, performing songs in one continuous take.

hush hush keep it down now

I've been feeling incredibly taciturn this week, so I'm just going to embrace it.

From Indexed:


From Strange Maps:

White Chicks & Gang Signs

the right word

Sunday's LA Times reprinted Jonathan Safran Foer's foreword to The Diary of Petr Ginz, 1941-1942, the journal of a 14-year-old Czech Jew who died in Auschwitz in 1944.

It can be dangerous to treat a diary like this as literature — to find beauty in it, and symbolism and structure. But how can one not? Here is the beginning of the passage in which Petr recounts learning that he would soon be parted from his family:

"Don't think that cleaning a typewriter is easy. There is cleaning and there is 'cleaning.' If you want the typewriter to shine on the inside and on the outside, you have to remove the carriage and wipe the most invisible corners with a small brush. Then you have to use a blowpipe to clear it out. The most difficult part are the spaces between the typebars."

When Theodor W. Adorno speculated about the possibility of literature after the Holocaust, he wasn't asking something about art (as is commonly misunderstood), but about language itself. What meaning can words have in the light of such destruction? Can "loss" have any use? Can "war"? Can "love," for that matter? Will we ever again be able to find the right word?

the children of hurin

Am I implying that Suge Knight killed J.R.R. Tolkien in order to take his unreleased material, produce it under the pseudonym "Christopher Tolkien" and reap the benefits of the high-selling novels? No, but I'm not saying it's out of the realm of possibility.

trying to find what was lost

The director of the creative writing program at Virginia Tech reflects on yesterday's horrific events.

A few months ago, when I returned from a trip to Sierra Leone, a country I lived in for years and one still reeling from the effects of a brutal civil war, I was filled with relief to be returning to a crime-free place like Blacksburg. As usual, I was welcomed by the Blue Ridge Mountains, and by the friends I’ve grown to love during my 22 years on the faculty at Virginia Tech.

It’s a quiet place. The town is full of turkeys — statues of our mascot, the Hokie Bird, painted in garish colors — as if being a Hokie were not a sports metaphor but a way of life. There’s a 5-foot-tall turkey just outside the bank; one near the police station; another in the parking lot of a Cleaner World, where I take my clothes. We have a sense of humor in Blacksburg — it’s part of our charm.

Blacksburg is a misnomer, of course. It’s the whitest town I’ve ever lived in. And although I’m not white, I’ve grown used to the fact that we can, for the most part, live in relative harmony — black and white, town and gown, young and old together. It’s a place that lulls you into believing you can predict what will happen next.

kudos

Congratulations to Cormac McCarthy, Lawrence Wright, David Lindsay-Abaire (thanks again to Ellie for taking me to see Rabbit Hole), Ornette Coleman, local boy Jonathan Gold, and all the Pulitzer Prize winners.

on becoming a woman

In your twenties and thirties you will experience the realities of becoming bride, housewife, and mother. Each of these experiences will carry its full quota of satisfaction and enjoyment. But the routine duties that accompany homemaking will fill your time so that you will hardly have opportunity to realize that your cherished day-dreams have come true...

...A girl's reasons for petting are not so much for the physical pleasures she receives, as is true in the case of a boy. Her reasons are somewhat secondhand in that she derives her satisfactions from bringing pleasure to her boy friend. It is not that a girl is repulsed by petting, but rather that her greater pleasure comes from assuming that by petting she is endearing herself to her friend and thus improving her social status.

the molecule's defiance

Nextbook has a previously unpublished story from Primo Levi (via KR Blog).

A batch that spoils is one that solidifies halfway through the preparation: the liquid becomes gelatinous, or even hard, like horn. It's a phenomenon that is called by fancy names like gelatinization or premature polymerization, but it's a traumatic event, an ugly sight, not to mention the money that's lost. It shouldn't happen, but sometimes it does happen, even if you're paying attention, and when it happens it leaves its mark. I told Rinaldo that it's useless to cry over spilled milk, and immediately I regretted it—it wasn't the right thing to say. But what can you say to a decent person who has made a mistake, who doesn't know how he did it, and who carries his guilt like a load of lead? The only thing to do is offer him a cognac and invite him to talk.

sunday short stack

"When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong." - R. Buckminster Fuller

• Missed a Monday night at Spaceland? No worries.
• "Under-published" J.D. Salinger stories
• Esa-Pekka Salonen is stepping down from the LA Orchestra; he will be replaced by a younger hottie.
• Why is it that du Maurier still has such a hold?
• An early look at Icky Thump
• Let The Filter create playlists for you.
• Newsweek hires John Banville to interview himself (via TEV).
• Life Cycle of a Successful Hair Band Frontman
• What makes Brits in New York such a thoroughly annoying lot?
• Scenes from a Blog
• Was a legendary punk rocker arrested for possession of … soap?
• And last but not least: Ed Champion collects many links in tribute to Kurt Vonnegut.

eyes full of falling angels

You have to like an essay that begins with the line: "There comes a point in many a person’s life when things that Nietzsche said begin to make good sense." Erik Campbell is referring to the Nietzsche quote - "Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory is too good." - and this idea begins his VQR reflection on the accidental plagiarist.

X. A Thought Concerning Socrates

I’ve read that Socrates never wrote any of his philosophy down because he believed that words imbedded in print, being unalterable and static, could never be sufficiently defended against misreading and perversion. In his twilight years Socrates was put to death for sharing too many interesting ideas with young men in the agora,[21] which resulted in his being considered a “pain in the ass” by an assemblage of Greeks who were fed up with their sons humiliating them in front of the servants by using Socratic logic and initiating every utterance with, “Oh, yeah? Well, Socrates says . . .” Then, as we all know, Plato turned around just as the hemlock touched his teacher’s lips and began madly scribbling, using Socrates as the spokesperson and the de facto ethos for what we now call Platonism.[22]

And so now I wonder about two things:

• Would Socrates be pissed off at Plato for appropriating his ethos?
• If both he and Plato were transported to the twenty-first century, would Socrates, as Vonnegut would say, attempt to “sue the piss” out of Plato for stealing his ideas, for lost royalties, and for false representation?[23]

very short list

I'm a sucker for these daily newsletter thingamajigs. I currently receive one from Daily Candy, Ideal Bite, Yoga Journal, and my fast-growing favorite, Very Short List. (There are many more weekly newsletters I receive as well, but it takes great dedication and imagination to put something out every day.) At the risk of sounding arrogant, it's not all that easy to impress me with recommendations for cultural items, because I've usually read about them on someone's blog or this or that website or heard about them from this or that friend. Very Short List, however, discovers the coolest things I've never heard of. It was yesterday's recommendation that prompted this post.

No one would confuse the auditory barrage of a busy big-city street with, say, the ethereal strains of a madrigal choir. But if you’ve ever gazed wistfully from your office window, wishing that the ceaseless car alarm and pounding jackhammer and crazed sirens would turn into something more calming and melodic, this may be the classical-music CD for you.

The Cries of London performs a remarkable act of alchemy on a bustling 17th-century English thoroughfare, transforming the city’s bygone peddlers’ shouts into soothing, strangely beautiful baroque music. While Fretwork, a string ensemble, plays the music of period composers, the vocalists from Theatre of Voices sing out the sales pitches of the day (“Chimneysweep!” “Fine white salt!”), creating a sonic combination that’s as pleasurable as it is improbable.

Even if you’re agnostic on the subject of classical music, The Cries of London could be a welcome escape from a chaotic, disharmonious day. And you’ll never again hear a phrase like “I can kill vermin!” the same way.

WTF? Love it. Other recent recommendations of note include Billy Collins' poems-as-music-videos, the Athanasius Kircher Society website, Fanfare Ciocarlia's Queens and Kings, the monthly comic serial Scalped, this hilarious rap track from Dan Le Sac VS Scroobius Pip, and Vice's documentary Heavy Metal in Baghdad. I'll let the archives take you from here.

kurt vonnegut (1922-2007)

Goodbye, Mr. Vonnegut. It's hard to find something appropriately meaningful to say about an author who seems to have been there for me since I learned how to read. You will be missed.

dedicated to ether

I wonder why people don't talk about Tim Fite more often. He's an engaging character from what I can tell. I first discovered him in what must have been his alt-country phase and listened to the song "All I Need" thousands of times. You can get a sense of the quirk from this odd introductory video:


His album Gone Ain't Gone has many other gems I've grown to love, but then what does Mr. Fite do? He releases a rap album - Over the Counter Culture - that you, yes you, can download for free. You can understand the transition listening to songs from Gone Ain't Gone like "No Good Here." Over the Counter Culture, however, dispenses with any pretense toward the pop and Fite goes for the whole ironic gangsta pose. Who can resist lyrics like this?

Robitussin/MochaMuffin/Ibuprofin/Rice-a-Roni/Stouffer-stuffin' Hamburger Helper/Sudafed/Bell Biv DeVoe/Soup of the Day/Kanye/Monistat 7/Soup of the Day/Kanye/Hamburger Helper/

Not me. Brooklyn Vegan has some great photos from a 2005 show at Joe's Pub.