Blog

Is Smell Our Most Powerful Sense?

Increasingly, loss of the sense of smell is being treated as a serious harm in clinical settings. Besides, the sense of smell is key to flavour perception. Indeed, most of what you perceive as the taste of food and drink is actually smell, being caused by volatile chemicals travelling from the cavity of your mouth through the open space of the pharynx up to your nasal epithelium. And there’s no way around it: the spice trade, with its growth following the Silk Road, has shaped the modern global socioeconomic landscape as much as – if not more than – philosophical discussion on reason and morality. – Aeon

The Role Of Homes In Shaping Writers

The description of a house can vividly reveal the experience of childhood or the story of a relationship: “How a house is lived in can tell you everything you need to know about people, whether it’s the choice of wallpaper, the mess in the kitchen, the silence or shouting over meals, doors left open or closed, a fire burning in the hearth”. – The Guardian

Edward Tarr, Master Of Trumpets New And Old And Of Their History, Dead At 83

“Mr. Tarr left his mark on every aspect of the trumpet world. As a player he set new standards of lyricism on an instrument long associated with military bravado. As a scholar he hunted for rarities in European archives and created performance editions of hundreds of newly discovered works.” He wrote the definitive history book on the instrument, and he led the revival of the 18th-century valveless trumpet played in period-instrument ensembles. – The New York Times

Dancer In The Dark: Did Intensive Study Of Butoh Drive A Young American Woman To Suicide?

Sharon Stern was a vivacious, popular, hard-working actor when she enrolled in the MFA program at America’s first Buddhist university. There she met Butoh master Katsura Kan and became his ferociously devoted disciple. That ferocity of devotion — to her teacher, to the art form and the idea of loss of self behind it — concerned her parents, her friends, and ultimately Kan himself. When Stern killed herself, her parents blamed Kan and sued him for wrongful death. – The New Yorker

Critical Thinking About Indigenous Art

So far, the best Indigenous-authored texts about Indigenous art are not reviews but catalogue and academic-essays, which are critical in that they explicate the context, intent and meanings of Indigenous artworks, but do not offer evaluations. They do not ask, for instance, if one work is better than other work, nor why considering a work as art is a more productive approach than considering it as a work of culture, an elaborate utility, or a trade good. – Momus

How One Off-Broadway Company Is Able To Close For Three Months But Still Pay Everyone

“Ars Nova did not seek an article about the course it has chosen. On the contrary, [its directors] worried that discussing it publicly could look like they were shaming colleagues amid an industry-rattling pandemic.” That Ars Nova can pay everyone it had engaged for its canceled shows “has nothing to do with an angel donor — there isn’t one, [the managing director] said — but rather serendipity.” – The New York Times