The latest analysis is computer-aided quantitative analysis of the texts. It’s revelatory (in a way), and it adds something to our understanding. But it doesn’t replace our previous close contextual study. – Times Literary Supplement
Blog
Mozart Was A Brilliant Letter-Writer
Composers’ letters can make frustrating reading. Beethoven’s are brusque, practical affairs; Brahms hides behind a humour as impenetrable as his beard. But with Mozart, you get the whole personality — candid, perceptive and irresistibly alive. – The Spectator
Everything Pina
Pina Bausch’s work has been a delight and compulsion throughout my theatregoing lifetime. I’ve seen every piece I can, several of them more than once. And it turns out I’ve written quite a bit about her work, so have collected some of it here. – David Jays
Juice, Tomato
Of course, I had to grow, pluck my own and juice them. I even bit one on the vine like an animal — I am an animal — and sucked and chewed, thinking of another writer who acted on the same impulse before I was born, though with a different lure. – Jeff Weinstein
Revered jazz elders, deceased: portraits by Sánta István Csaba
As a generation of jazz elders leaves our world — some hastened by the pandemic — their faces as photographed by Sánta István Csaba become even more luminous, haunting, iconic. – Howard Mandel
Frontiers: We’re At The Junction Of Human Thought And Machine Computation
“On the one side is the human mind, the source of every story, theory and explanation that our species holds dear. On the other stand the machines, whose algorithms possess astonishing predictive power but whose inner workings remain radically opaque to human observers. As we humans strive to understand the fundamental nature of the world, our machines churn out measurable, practical predictions that seem to extend beyond the limits of thought.” – Aeon
How The Messages Around Us Will Change Their Resonance
For the last century, the advertising industry has been centered around this cardinal principle: Find the consumer’s problem and fix it with your product. When the problem is practical and tactical, the solution is “as seen on TV” and available at Home Depot. But when the problem is emotional, the fix becomes a new staple in your life, and you become a lifelong loyalist. Coca-Cola makes you happy. A Mercedes makes you successful. Taking your family on a Royal Caribbean cruise makes you special. – WBUR
An Indie Bookstore Apocalypse? (Maybe Skip This Story)
What’s clear to everyone is that the much celebrated “independent bookstore renaissance,” which coincided with the post–Great Recession economic expansion, is over. Hundreds of stores may never reopen again. The future of independent bookselling, a tenuous, low-margin business in the best of times, has never been gloomier. – The New Republic
What The Pandemic Revealed: Our Failure To Build The Things We Know We Need
Part of the problem is clearly foresight, a failure of imagination. But the other part of the problem is what we didn’t do in advance, and what we’re failing to do now. And that is a failure of action, and specifically our widespread inability to build. – Andreesen Horowitz
The Story Behind The Fantastical Dr. Seuss Library
The library is a bit jarring in real life. It’s more like the Space Age tower headquarters of the police, only with hundreds of sunkissed students pouring in, out, and around it. – The Daily Beast