Author: Matthew Westphal

Top Posts From AJBlogs 01.05.17

12 Plays of Xmas:  9. The Town Fop by Aphra Behn
‘Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.’ WH Auden speaks true – one of the pleasures of this little project has been sitting down with the past. Sometimes, however, … read more
AJBlog: Performance Monkey Published 2017-01-05

DBQ Having Fun In Paris
As the Rifftides staff continues recovering from the holidays and auditions a few dozen incoming albums, let’s follow a lead sent by frequent commenter Terence Smith. Mr. Smith writes from his sanctuary in … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2017-01-05

 

Each Generation Gets – Indeed, It Creates – The Drugs It Deserves

“Over the past century, popularity has shifted between certain drugs – from cocaine and heroin in the 1920s and ’30s, to LSD and barbiturates in the 1950s and ’60s, to ecstasy and (more) cocaine in the 1980s, to today’s cognitive- and productivity-enhancing drugs, such as Adderall, Modafinil and their more serious kin.” (Someone’s forgetting about heroin and crystal meth.) “If Huxley’s progression is to be followed, the drugs we take at a given time can largely be ascribed to an era’s culture.”

Casey Affleck Isn’t Getting The Heat For His Sexual Harassment Cases That Nate Parker Did – Is There A Racial Double-Standard?

Affleck is getting awards and nominations galore for his performance in Manchester by the Sea. Last summer, Nate Parker was considered an even more likely contender for The Birth of a Nation – until word of his rape trial during college spread, whereupon his prospects plummeted. (Parker was acquitted.) Is the difference because Affleck is white and Parker is black? There are certainly reasons to think not, but the question keeps coming up.

An Idiosyncratic Timeline Of “Attempts To Fix The Art World”

The term “the artworld” itself seems to date only to 1964, but this timeline goes all the way back to 1793, when the revolutionary regime in France turned a certain royal palace in Paris into a public museum. The history here is selective, to be sure, but half the fun of these things is working up righteous high dudgeon over what’s been in- and excluded.

One Of The Last Of The Shakers Has Died – Only Two Remain

Sister Frances Carr, a resident of the sole remaining Shaker community, at Sabbathday Lake in Maine, passed on Monday at age 89. “Carr apparently didn’t like when people called her, 60-year-old [Brother Arnold] Hadd and 78-year-old Sister June Carpenter the ‘last’ Shakers – she was convinced others would eventually convert to the religious sect, something Hadd still hopes for.”