“‘This is your brain on Jane Austen,’ rang the headline [on the Standofrd University study]. Oh, no, not another one, went my head. … This one, however, proved to be different. It’s not about your brain on Jane Austen. Not really. It’s about a far more interesting question: can our brains pay close attention in different ways?”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Gargoyles In The Trees Of A Paris Park
“Rooted in the prized soil of [the] Parc de Saint-Cloud, home of Marie Antoinette’s rose garden, the trees bear faces that are alternately twisted in grimaces, bellowing in anger or frowning in the intensest way possible. … Photographer and light artist Clément Briend is responsible for summoning this hostile hardwood.”
The Fundamental Problem With US Orchestral Musicians’ Pay Demands
“The first reality is this: However much it takes to become a top-flight classical musician, the performer can expect to earn only what the market is able and willing to pay. … Today, far more ‘people with money’ are inspired to give to charities meeting human needs than are willing to pay top-flight classical music performers year after year. … [U]nless and until society at large assigns higher value to the extraordinary work of classical music performers, musicians cannot expect to be paid what they deserve.”
Chicago Symphony Posts Deficit Despite Increased Revenues
“While contributions and ticket sale revenues reached an all-time high at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2012, the boost was not enough to keep the orchestra from running an operating shortfall for the second year in a row.”
Benjamin Millepied Wants To Kick Up Dust In L.A.
“Mr. Millepied, 35, moved to Los Angeles – where his new wife, Natalie Portman, resides – and started his own company. Sorry: ‘curatorial collective.’ He says he will create new dances, revive seminal works and generally kick up dust by collaborating in unusual ways with various arts organizations here.”
How David Mitchell’s Stammer Shaped His Writing
“[It] was an effective if merciless boot-camp instructor. It (or ‘He’ as I imagined it) trained me to amass a vocabulary flexible and muscular enough to avoid words beginning with stammer-consonants, and do so on the hoof, before the other person caught on. … What feels like a curse when you’re younger can prove to be a long-term ally.”
The Three Sides Of Modern Chinese Literature (They All Won Prizes This Month)
Mo Yan, the new Nobel literature laureate, works in a contemporary idiom and is seen as more-or-less mainstream, mainland establishment. On the other hand, dissident and exile Liao Yiwu, in his speech accepting the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, said of the People’s Republic, “This empire must break apart.” Meanwhile, Taiwanese poet Yang Mu, winner of the Newman Prize for Chinese Literature, models himself after the medieval Chinese poet-scholars.
Lethal Weapons And The Evolution Of Civilization
“It’s about 2 metres long, made of tough spruce wood and carved into a sharp point at one end. … At 400,000 years old, this is the world’s oldest spear. And, according to a provocative theory, on its carved length rests nothing less than the foundation of human civilisation as we know it, including democracy, class divisions and the modern nation state.”
The Plays That Made Ben Brantley Scream
“I do not scream at the theater. … I laugh, I cry, I might even gasp. Scream? Almost never. It is, however, that ‘almost’ that I am thinking of just now, as Halloween creeps up on us. For there have been a few, isolated occasions when I have been scared out of my cucumber-cool skin by what was happening on a stage.”
Leader of Toronto’s Tafelmusik, Jeanne Lamon, To Step Down
“Jeanne Lamon, music director of Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and Chamber Choir, is leaving her post in 2014. It was announced Wednesday Lamon will leave after 33 years at the helm of what is considered one of the finest baroque orchestras in the world.”