That's Amazing : The Magic of Making Sound
In Hollywood, everything is magic and make-believe, even sounds. When you watch a film that immerses you completely in its world, you’re probably hearing the work of sound artists. If the work is done right, you won’t be able to tell that the “natural” sounds on screen are manufactured with studio props. That's the challenge for Warner Bros. Foley artists Alyson Moore, Chris Moriana and mixer Mary Jo Lang. Theirs is a practice in recreation, one creative element at a time.
- Great Big Story -
The Dream of Dr. King, with the help of a Queen
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963 was unusual among great American speeches in that its most famous words — “I have a dream” — were improvised. - Drew Henson, NY Times
Without question, Dr. King's "I Have A Dream Speech" is not only one of the most famous speeches of American history, it is one of the most iconic moments. And it almost didn't happen.
Several historians and friends of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. have shared that at the most critical and crucial moment of Dr. King's Speech, he went off script, stumbled for just a moment, then, with the encouragement of Mahalia Jackson, shared his beloved dream.
"King read from his prepared text for most of his speech," Henson writes, relying heavily on "the Bible, the constitution and the Declaration of Independence - just as President John F. Kennedy had a few months earlier."
But according to Economist Tim Hartford, Dr. King never seemed satisfied with what he had. In addition to staying up late the night before, editing and re-editing, he also scratched and marked his speech in the back seat of the car on the way to the Washington Memorial and even on stage while waiting his turn. But even then, Dr. King knew something was missing. So about six minutes into his speech, Dr. King looked down at the script, his well crafted but "a little bit lifeless" script and realized it wasn't working.
So he improvised.
The line Dr. King was supposed to say was "Go back to our communities as members of the international association for the advancement of creative dissatisfaction."
Instead, he says:
Then, Dr King paused. The people behind him knew he no longer was on script, and it was then that history was made.
Mahalia Jackson, the Queen of Gospel, had long been a supporter of Dr. King and the "no-famous bus boycott that lunged the modern Civil Rights Movement," and she had heard him, on more than one occasion, tell his dream of "seeing little Negro boys and girls walking to school with little white boys and girls, playing in the parks together and swimming together"(History.com). And she knew the people needed to hear it.
When Dr. King begin to speak from the heart and not the script, when she sensed a brief pause of thought, she yelled out, "Tell 'em about the dream Martin."
So he did.
You can read his scripted/unscripted script here.
"When we allow freedom to ring-when we let it ring from every city and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all (If God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last, Free at last, Great God a-mighty, We are free at last."
Jump!
Philippe Halsman was a renowned portrait photographer who was particularly active in the 40s, 50s, and 60s and most famous for his iconic photos of Salvador Dali and Albert Einstein. For a period in the 1950s, Halsman ended his portrait shoots by asking his famous subjects to jump. The results were disarming.
When you ask a person to jump, his attention is mostly directed toward the act of jumping and the mask falls so that the real person appears.
Halsman got all sorts of people to jump for his camera: Richard Nixon (above), Robert Oppenheimer, Marilyn Monroe (above), Aldous Huxley, Audrey Hepburn (above), Brigitte Bardot, and the Duke & Duchess of Windsor (above). He collected all his jump photos into the recently re-released Philippe Halsman’s Jump Book.
Repost from kottke.org
First off, kottke.org is just a great resource for fun information so thanks to kottke for yet another inspiration/stolen post!
Second, what's so great about these pictures is the "other side" of those being photographed - the "real person." Everyone has a child inside, often hidden and suppressed by expectations, judgements, and "maturity." Jumping seems to be the key to unlocking the cage. If only for a little while.
Thanks Philippe Halsman for the great photos!
Pablo Escobar's Son is an Architect, and He's Building Peace
"At the peak of his power, infamous Medellin cartel boss Pablo Escobar brought in and estimated $420 million a week in revenue, easily making him one of the wealthiest drug lords in history."
And his son was along for the ride.
Sebastian Marroquin grew up in Medellin, Colombia, as Juan Pablo Escobar, the son of legendary drug kingpin and leader of the Medellin Cartel, Pablo Escobar. As a kid, Marroquin enjoyed time at “Naples,” a 20-square-kilometer (eight-square-mile) ranch that included swimming pools and a zoo filled with millions of dollars’ worth of exotic animals. “I’ve never been to Michael Jackson’s Neverland ranch,” he told The Independent. “But I doubt it had anything on Naples.”
While accompanying his father for years evading the police and rival gangs, young Sebastian saw the perils and pitfalls of the criminal life and has since started a new life as a successful architect. Senior Editor Matt Shaw sat down with Marroquin to discuss his path to architecture, what he learned from his father, and what he hopes to accomplish for Colombia in the future. - Matt Shaw
In this interview, Sebastian Marroguin says he doesn't think much of shows like Narcos because "They are telling lies about [his] whole life", was inspired by his father's architectural ability to hide runways with removable homes, is currently "designing a free, public wellness center and water therapy facility for a small town in Argentina."
Copia de Casa Clau in Colombia by Sebastian Marroquin. (Courtesy Sebastian Marroquin)
But what's even more crazy, is how architecture has saved his life . . . and helped him forgive.
"Architecture saved my life because it gave me the possibility to believe that even when something is demolished new things can come out of that and architecture really helps to know how to think not only about architecture but also about life."
He's even built a house for the guys who, in 1988, "put 700 kilos of dynamite in my house. It was a miracle that we survived because I was with my mom and my little sister there. . . So I built the house for the guy who ruined mine.
"It was a way for them to ask for forgiveness and in a way to understand us," Marroguin explains, "They knew who I was from the beginning. It was weird and it was a clear opportunity and it was clear that a lot of things have changed in Colombia and that is a great example of how things have really changed now.
People want to make peace."
So he built a house for them.
Copia de Casa Clau in Colombia by Sebastian Marroquin. (Courtesy Sebastian Marroquin)
A BRIEF SURVEY OF THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL(S)
On this date in 1868, novelist John William DeForest coined the now inescapable term “the great American novel” in the title of an essay in The Nation. Now, don’t forget that in 1868, just a few years after the end of the Civil War, “America” was still an uncertain concept for many—though actually, in 2017 we might assert the same thing, which should give you a hint as to why the term “great American novel” is so problematic.
John Legend and Ta-Nehisi Coates on the Art of Writing
Dec 05, 2016
Video by The Atlantic
At a taping of Live from the Artists Den at New York City's Riverside Church, The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates had a frank conversation with the musician John Legend about his prolific songwriting and his creative process. Legend admits to being a workaholic, but also someone who dives in without much planning and lets his art move him. “I don’t need a lightning bolt of inspiration to say ‘Okay, I know what I want the album to be about,’” Legend tells Coates. “I figure that the writing process will give me those lightning bolts eventually … the best advice I give to writers is to write."
A Marriage, by Michael Blumenthal
Sometimes, marriage isn't easy. Sometimes, it's work. Most often, it's a choice.
For Margie Smigel and Jon Dopkeen
You are holding up a ceiling
with both arms. It is very heavy,
but you must hold it up, or else
it will fall down on you. Your arms
are tired, terribly tired,
and, as the day goes on, it feels
as if either your arms or the ceiling
will soon collapse.
But then,
unexpectedly,
something wonderful happens:
Someone,
a man or a woman,
walks into the room
and holds their arms up
to the ceiling beside you.
So you finally get
to take down your arms.
You feel the relief of respite,
the blood flowing back
to your fingers and arms.
And when your partner's arms tire,
you hold up your own
to relieve him again.
And it can go on like this
for many years
without the house falling.
For more on . . .
Two Incontrovertible Facts
Sometimes, when the faults, mistakes, and ideas of others become so overwhelming that I can no longer see straight or hear myself think, these two facts wipe clean the mirror, and I drop my stone. If only for a little while.
A Wolf in Hong Kong
Kottke.org first brought me to Michael Wolf and his work, and since then, I've loved it. He isn't magical or polished. He's raw, and the stories and emotions he evokes are powerful. Here is some of his work:
Architecture Density:
100x100:
Hong Kong homes that measure 100 square feet or less in size.
You can view all Michael Wolf's work here
Let's Just Talk, Like Dr. Maya Angelou
"Vulgarity is vulgarity" no matter the color of mouth.
or
"I might like you actually, or you might like me actually. Or I might not. But I will certainly treat you fairly."
She is one of the best.
Good Fiction : Good Life
The best fiction writers write like they’re in love—and edit like they’re in charge.
First drafting should be a wild and wonderful ride, full of discovery, dreams and promises. But at some point you have to settle down and make the book really work. You need to approach your manuscript with sober objectivity and knowledge of the craft.
Having reviewed hundreds of manuscripts over the years, I’ve identified the five mistakes that most regularly turn up. Start your revision by addressing these, and you’ll immediately change your story for the better.
This is the introduction from a Writer's Digest post entitled, The 5 Biggest Fiction Writing Mistakes (& How to Fix Them). In it, James Scott Bell does exactly what the title suggests, he identifies the 5 biggest fiction writing mistakes and shows how to fix them.
But what if these truths were applied to life? Truths such as:
1. Happy People in Happy Land
Chief among the most common problems, in first chapters especially, are scenes presenting characters who are perfectly happy in their ordinary worlds. The writer thinks that by showing nice people doing nice things, readers will care about these pleasant folk when the characters are finally hit with a problem.
But readers actually engage with plot via trouble, threat, change or challenge. . .
Yet, most of the time what we say we desire most is to live a happy life in a happy land. Yet, when it comes to stories, happy people living in happy lands bore us . . . because it just isn't all that relatable. Like a good story, there needs to be adventure.
2. A World Without Fear
The best novels, the ones that stay with you all the way to the end—and beyond—have the threat of death hanging over every scene.
Death comes in three forms. Physical death is a staple of the thriller, of course. But there’s also professional death, where the main character is engaged in a vocation and the particular matter at hand threatens that position: A cop assigned a case that may mean the end of his career. A married politician falling for a young staffer. A devoted mother losing the child she loves to drugs. Your job, if it’s vocational death overhanging your novel, is to make whatever problem the protagonist is facing feel so important that failing to overcome it will mean a permanent setback to his main role in life.
There’s also psychological death (“dying on the inside”), most often emphasized in character-driven fiction. This is where the romance genre comes in. It has to seem as if the lovers must end up together or their lives will forever be less than what they could have been.
Regardless of which form you use, you must put death on the line so fear may be felt throughout. Fear is a continuum—it can be simple worry or outright terror. You can put it everywhere. And you should.
Once the story is underway, scenes where fear isn’t present in some form mean the stakes are not high enough or the characters aren’t acting the way they should in the face of death.
Achilles says the same:
3. Marshmallow Dialogue
Dialogue is the fastest way to improve a manuscript—or to sink it. When agents, editors or readers see crisp, tension-filled dialogue, they gain confidence in the writer’s ability. But dialogue that is sodden and undistinguished (marshmallow dialogue) has the opposite effect.
Pro dialogue is compressed. Marshmallow dialogue is puffy.
Pro dialogue has conflict. Marshmallow dialogue is overly sweet.
Pro dialogue sounds different for each character. Marshmallow dialogue blends together.
Fortunately, the fixes are simple.
First, make sure you can “hear” every character in a distinct voice. . .
Second, compress your dialogue as much as possible, cutting fluffy words, whole lines or even entire exchanges. Here’s an example:
“Mary, are you angry with me?” John asked.“You’re damn straight I’m mad at you,” Mary said.“But why? You’ve got absolutely no reason to be!”“Oh but I do, I do. And you can see it in my face, can’t you?”The alternative:“You angry with me?” John asked.“Damn straight,” Mary said.“You got no reason to be!”Mary felt her hands curling into fists.
Finally, when writing dialogue be sure to include some sort of tension in every exchange. Remember fear? At the very least you can have some aspect of it (worry, anxiety, fright) going on inside one of the characters so that communication is partially impaired. Try playing up the different agendas each character has in a scene. Let them use dialogue as a weapon to get what they want.
Perfect for life, right? When speaking (in real life) speak clearly and don't fluff, be honest not sugar coated, an original (confident) not an echo, and be a great listener.
The Chinese character for "listen" is this:
When engaged in a dialogue, listen with your ears, your eyes, and heart. Treat the speaker like he or she is king. Which means although we are honest and original, we are also respectful.
Beautiful.
4. Predictability
Readers like to worry about characters in crisis. They want to tremble about what’s around the next corner (whether it’s emotional or physical). If a reader knows what’s coming, and then it does in fact come, the worry factor is blown. Your novel no longer conveys a fictive dream but a dull ride down familiar streets.
The fix is simple: Put something unexpected in every scene. Doing this one thing keeps the reader on edge. . .
Life is unpredictable. No matter how many lists we create, plans we make, or details we check and recheck, we are not in control.
Dull rides that lead us down familiar streets are safe, but boring. As Bilbo says, “It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to" or what what you'll discover.
A life that is unpredictable is Life.
5. Lost Love
As I said up front, writing a book is like falling in love. Outlining and planning are the wooing. Drafting the novel is your commitment to marriage (which would make the opening scenes the honeymoon). But at some point, you and your book will likely need some marriage counseling. Because when you lose the verve for your material, it shows.
So how do you regain lost love? The surest way is by going deeper into your characters.
Start with backstory. Maybe you’ve already done an extensive bio for your main character. Try starting a new one. Keep the best of the old material, but put in plenty that’s new.
Focus on the year your character turned 16. Create an account of what happened at that crucial stage. What incident shaped her? What romances, heartaches, tragedies? Write those scenes in detail.
Do this for your antagonist, too, and your secondary characters. Soon enough you’ll be excited to get back to your story.
Also, try focusing on what your protagonist yearns for. We yearn because we feel a lack, a need, a hole in our souls. So yearning is about connection. This, in fact, is the power of mythology, some of the best storytelling of all time. Joseph Campbell taught that myths were a way of gaining connection to something transcendent, a life source, an essential mystery.
Readers, too, yearn for connection—with stories they can get lost in and be moved by. Fix these five areas in your work, and your books can be among them.
Holy Crap. Think of all that could happen to relationships if we applied THIS truth? Sheesh.
Thanks for reading, and good luck!
Tupac : Sometimes I Cry
I Shall Be Released
A collection of some of the most influential musicians, artists, and minds of it's generation doing what they do best: inspiring the world, collaborating, and grasping the significance of a moment - as true artists should - for the purpose of capturing a voice, a moment, of mankind. Of something beyond themselves.
Beautiful.
I Shall Be Released, Bob Dylan
They say ev’rything can be replaced
Yet ev’ry distance is not near
So I remember ev’ry face
Of ev’ry man who put me here
I see my light come shining
From the west unto the east
Any day now, any day now
I shall be released
They say ev’ry man needs protection
They say ev’ry man must fall
Yet I swear I see my reflection
Some place so high above this wall
I see my light come shining
From the west unto the east
Any day now, any day now
I shall be released
Standing next to me in this lonely crowd
Is a man who swears he’s not to blame
All day long I hear him shout so loud
Crying out that he was framed
I see my light come shining
From the west unto the east
Any day now, any day now
I shall be released
Songwriters: Bob Dylan
Literal Bohemian Rhapsody
Sure, the acting isn't Oscar worthy, but it's engaging. It forces a new interpretation of the song, they lyrics, and the message - it asks us to see the known and memorized from a different perspective. And for that, I applaud.
Should we Say “And” Instead of “But”?
I stumbled across the following article and thought it worth storing away because I like the discussion it raises, or at least should raise. I'll ask the question at the end.
This post is from Nicole Francesca:
In Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, a “dialectic” refers to the idea of two truths being true simultaneously, even if they seem to oppose one another. It’s a practice in removing ourselves from black-and-white, either-or thinking, which is one of the greatest limiting factors in our collective ability to grow. We’re so used to seeing things as one-or-the-other and never as both-at-once that we unconsciously choose a side and live there. It needn’t be so. It’s not an easy transition always, but here’s the trick that I learned this first year in grad school to become a clinical social worker (which is a long way to say “therapist”):
Whenever you’re about to say “but,” replace it with “and,” or “and it is also true that.”
Fair warning: everyone that is very used to standing at the either-or edge of the both-and lake will not be amused by your commitment to swimming. They may have never even heard of such an outrageous idea, as I had not, of allowing both things to be true at once.
And for good reason. How can we rectify something good as also having bad elements, and vice versa? That makes the black-and-white territory quite gray indeed, and, my friends, we are fucking terrified as a people of the gray area.
It means we have to dig deeper to figure out how we feel about things, what our actual motivations are. The gray area removes the ease of simply choosing a side and leaving it at that. The other factor is this: anyone who has been on the receiving end of a “this truth, but this truth” knows that anything before the “but” is lost to oblivion forever.
I love you, but I can’t stay.
See how that works? We can’t even hear the shit before the “but,” and for good reason. “But” ends dialogue. It says, “the first truth is not nearly as important as the second truth.” Turning it into, “I love you, and I can’t stay,” opens a door for exploration, and values the first truth just as much as the second.
I encourage you to give it a try, and I’m going to give you some examples from my own life, because it took me a good while to commit to the both-and—and now I’m sold for life.
I am angry at the state of the world, and it is also true that I am in love with every small beautiful moment of each day.
I am confident, and sensitive.
Fully experiencing grief is the only way to move through it, and it is also true that grief hurts in ways that tear apart the very soul.
Being poor has made me resourceful beyond measure, and it is also true that poverty fucking sucks.
I’m the only one that can repair the damage incurred to me, without my consent, during my childhood, and it is also true that that’s really unfair.
The difference in how the statements feel when you remove the “but” has a palpable feel to me. Do they for you? It allows the reality of pain to exist without denying the reality of responsibility, or the reality of what seems to oppose the pain. It allows us some small measure of liberation without losing accountability.
The binary of either-or is a lie. As humans, we’re meant to swim in the both-and lake, and explore the deeper-than-surface shit. Joy can include grief, and pain can include beauty. It often does, without us even realizing it.
Side Note: I also want to make note that this can be used by people with nefarious intent and it’s important to be able to recognize that. Any tool for healing will be twisted as tool for control by those who need control, even if they don’t realize they desperately need it. For example:
“I hurt you, and my love for your made me do it.”
Be always sure to listen to exactly whom is taking responsibility for the gray area in which they wade.
So here is my question:
Does this mean we should never say "but"?
I love this article because it does highlight how we are "so used to seeing things as one-or-the-other and never as both-at-once that we unconsciously choose a side and live there." And I think you would agree that we see this in most everything: religion, race, personalities, etc..
So again, does this mean we should never say "but"? And if not, where? When? On what topics, issues?
Thank you Nicole for inspiring a discussion - even if it is only with myself.
Cathedral, by Raymond Carver
Ditching Empathy is a Bad Idea
Paul Bloom, psychologist and Yale professor, argues that empathy is a bad thing—that it makes the world worse. While we've been taught that putting yourself in another's shoes cultivates compassion, it actually blinds you to the long-term consequences of your actions. In this animated interview from The Atlantic, we hear Bloom’s case for why the world needs to ditch empathy.
Video by The Atlantic
- Empathy: the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
Bloom's misuse of empathy creates a problem, namely, that he's wrong.
Empathy, deep and real empathy, isn't done for the purpose of self, "to get a buzz out of it", but for another - to understand and share in the pain they are suffering. To connect with them, for their sake. Not ours.
Perhaps the reason why we care about the baby in the well is because it's here, in front of us, and we can do something about it. The war is over there, untouchable . . . what possible difference can we make? For many of us, not much.
But we can save the child in the well.
"Selfish moralizing" is an issue worth discussing and probably one we should be against, but not empathy.
Empathy breaks down the walls of diversity, allowing us to "understand and share the feelings of another." It asks us to think not of ourselves, but of others - which is never a bad thing.
But Blooms is right, "If [we] really want to make the world better, spend less time trying to maximize [our] own altruistic joy." But then he says, "And in a more cold-blooded way think, 'how can I help other people?'"
And the answer to that Mr. Bloom is this: by being warm-blooded, and empathetic.
The Millennial Question : Simon Sinek
Diversity Makes You Brighter
By SHEEN S. LEVINE and DAVID STARKDEC. 9, 2015
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION is back before the Supreme Court today. The court has agreed to hear, for the second time, the case of Abigail Fisher, a white applicant who claims that she was rejected by the University of Texas at Austin because of her race. Ms. Fisher invokes the promise of equal protection contained in the 14th Amendment, reminding us that judging people by their ancestry, rather than by their merits, risks demeaning their dignity.
Upholding affirmative action in 2003, in Grutter v. Bollinger, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor argued that it served the intellectual purpose of a university. Writing for the majority, she described how the University of Michigan aspired to enhance diversity not only to improve the prospects of certain groups of students, but also to enrich everyone’s education.
Ms. Fisher argues that diversity may be achieved in other ways, without considering race. Before resorting to the use of race or ethnicity in admissions, the University of Texas must offer “actual evidence, rather than overbroad generalizations about the value of favored or disfavored groups” to show that “the alleged interest was substantial enough to justify the use of race.”
Our research provides such evidence. Diversity improves the way people think. By disrupting conformity, racial and ethnic diversity prompts people to scrutinize facts, think more deeply and develop their own opinions. Our findings show that such diversity actually benefits everyone, minorities and majority alike.
To study the effects of ethnic and racial diversity, we conducted a series of experiments in which participants competed in groups to find accurate answers to problems. In a situation much like a classroom, we started by presenting each participant individually with information and a task: to calculate accurate prices for simulated stocks. First, we collected individual answers, and then (to see how committed participants were to their answers), we let them buy and sell those stocks to the others, using real money. Participants got to keep any profit they made.
When trading, participants could observe the behavior of their counterparts and decide what to make of it. Think of yourself in similar situations: Interacting with others can bring new ideas into view, but it can also cause you to adopt popular but wrong ones.
We assigned each participant to a group that was either homogeneous or diverse (meaning that it included at least one participant of another ethnicity or race). To ascertain that we were measuring the effects of diversity, not culture or history, we examined a variety of ethnic and racial groups. In Texas, we included the expected mix of whites, Latinos and African-Americans. In Singapore, we studied people who were Chinese, Indian and Malay. (The results were published with our co-authors, Evan P. Apfelbaum, Mark Bernard, Valerie L. Bartelt and Edward J. Zajac.)
The findings were striking. When participants were in diverse company, their answers were 58 percent more accurate. The prices they chose were much closer to the true values of the stocks. As they spent time interacting in diverse groups, their performance improved.
In homogeneous groups, whether in the United States or in Asia, the opposite happened. When surrounded by others of the same ethnicity or race, participants were more likely to copy others, in the wrong direction. Mistakes spread as participants seemingly put undue trust in others’ answers, mindlessly imitating them. In the diverse groups, across ethnicities and locales, participants were more likely to distinguish between wrong and accurate answers. Diversity brought cognitive friction that enhanced deliberation.
For our study, we intentionally chose a situation that required analytical thinking, seemingly unaffected by ethnicity or race. We wanted to understand whether the benefits of diversity stem, as the common thinking has it, from some special perspectives or skills of minorities.
What we actually found is that these benefits can arise merely from the very presence of minorities. In the initial responses, which were made before participants interacted, there were no statistically significant differences between participants in the homogeneous or diverse groups. Minority members did not bring some special knowledge.
The differences emerged only when participants began interacting with one another. When surrounded by people “like ourselves,” we are easily influenced, more likely to fall for wrong ideas. Diversity prompts better, critical thinking. It contributes to error detection. It keeps us from drifting toward miscalculation.
Our findings suggest that racial and ethnic diversity matter for learning, the core purpose of a university. Increasing diversity is not only a way to let the historically disadvantaged into college, but also to promote sharper thinking for everyone.
When it comes to diversity in the lecture halls themselves, universities can do much better. A commendable internal study by the University of Texas at Austin showed zero or just one African-American student in 90 percent of its typical undergraduate classrooms. Imagine how much students might be getting wrong, how much they are conforming to comfortable ideas and ultimately how much they could be underperforming because of this.
Ethnic diversity is like fresh air: It benefits everybody who experiences it. By disrupting conformity it produces a public good. To step back from the goal of diverse classrooms would deprive all students, regardless of their racial or ethnic background, of the opportunity to benefit from the improved cognitive performance that diversity promotes.