President Obama's Library, From the Past Eight Years

President Obama is a reader. NY Times book critic Michiko Kakutani interviewed Obama about his reading just before he left office.

Last Friday, seven days before his departure from the White House, Mr. Obama sat down in the Oval Office and talked about the indispensable role that books have played during his presidency and throughout his life — from his peripatetic and sometimes lonely boyhood, when “these worlds that were portable” provided companionship, to his youth when they helped him to figure out who he was, what he thought and what was important.

During his eight years in the White House — in a noisy era of information overload, extreme partisanship and knee-jerk reactions — books were a sustaining source of ideas and inspiration, and gave him a renewed appreciation for the complexities and ambiguities of the human condition.

During his tenure in office, the President publicly recommended 86 different books, compiled into one list by Entertainment Weekly. Here are several of them, some of which I have also read and recommended on this very site:

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, Dr. Atul Gawande
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
Seveneves, Neal Stephenson
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari
The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert
Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, William Finnegan
The Power Broker, Robert A. Caro
Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois
The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead
Working, Studs Terkel
Washington: A Life, Ron Chernow
The Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Doris Kearns Goodwin
What Is the What, Dave Eggers

Not a bad list.

Repost from kottke.org

How Does it Feel : Patti Smith

PHOTOGRAPH BY PHILIP MONTGOMERY / THE NEW YORK TIMES / REDUX

By now, we all know the story of Patti Smith faltering during Dylan's Nobel Price ceremony.

Beautiful. In spite of and perhaps even more so because of the such obvious failure.  In an interview with the New Yorker Patti Smith shared that she "conflicting emotions." "In his absence," she asked herself, "was I qualified for the task?" She didn't want to displease Bob Dylan. But she committed herself to it and decided to sing 'A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall, a song she "'loved since {she} was a teen-ager, a favorite of {her} late husband."

Then she fell, and fell hard. When she took her seat, she "felt the humiliating sting of failure, but also the strong realization that I had somehow entered and truly lived the world of the lyrics."

When I arose the next morning, it was snowing. In the breakfast room, I was greeted by many of the Nobel scientists. They showed appreciation for my very public struggle. They told me I did a good job. I wish I would have done better, I said. No, no, they replied, none of us wish that. For us, your performance seemed a metaphor for our own struggles. Words of kindness continued through the day, and in the end I had to come to terms with the truer nature of my duty. Why do we commit our work? Why do we perform? It is above all for the entertainment and transformation of the people. It is all for them. The song asked for nothing. The creator of the song asked for nothing. So why should I ask for anything?

When my husband, Fred, died, my father told me that time does not heal all wounds but gives us the tools to endure them. I have found this to be true in the greatest and smallest of matters. Looking to the future, I am certain that the hard rain will not cease falling, and that we will all need to be vigilant. The year is coming to an end; on December 30th, I will perform “Horses” with my band, and my son and daughter, in the city where I was born. And all the things I have seen and experienced and remember will be within me, and the remorse I had felt so heavily will joyfully meld with all other moments. Seventy years of moments, seventy years of being human.

A metaphor for our own struggles - of being human. And beautiful.

You can read the full lyrics here.

And watch Dylan sing it here.

Embrace the Shake

One of my favorites. 

PostSecret : Thoughts and Deeds That Expose Us All

PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard. Their secrets are posted every Sunday.

Some are funny and innocent.

Some are not.

All, in a strange way, are relatable.

We all understand pain, embarrassment, and loneliness.

In the social media age, putting the best images, ideas, and moments of ourselves forward is expected. Which, in moments of despair and grief, isolates even more. 

To steal a concept from Stranger Things, PostSecret reveals the Upside Down dimension - the existing yet hidden parallel dimension of sorrow and fear inhabited by all human beings.

All human beings.

So even if we've never done this:

we can all relate to having our own secrets of stupidity that have been tucked away in the attic of shame and regret, only be unpacked and shared on a postcard. Not Facebook.

We are beautiful and wonderful, we are flawed and broken, and we all carry secrets.

When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer, by Walt Whitman

When I heard the learn’d astronomer, 

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, 

When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, 

When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, 

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, 

Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself, 

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, 

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

Yet, how much MORE mystical the perfect silence of the stars when we're also able to measure them, their distance, their mass, and their purpose - what they mean for all that we cannot see. 

There has to be a balance. Too much of either and not enough of both lends itself to error on both sides.

So, yes, Mr. Whitman. But also, incomplete.

jtinseoul : Loud yet Clear

JT White is a street and documentary photographer based in Seoul, South Korea. "Noise" in digital photographs is used to describe visual distortion - grain for example, and JT White's photography has a lot of noise. But it works.

Each photograph is full of emotion - tone even.

And his ability to capture a moment is truly mesmerizing. 

Here's a few images from his tattoo project entitled, "The Culture."

JT White has also been featured at Lensculture and can be followed on instagram: @jt_inseoul. 

Canvas of My Life: Jason Momoa

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)

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 . . .

-N- Stuff  :  Poetry  :  Inspiration

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.

Tokyo Compression:

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