Critics—and the authors they cover—seem to be obsessed with self-awareness. Writing about oneself isn’t new at all, but what’s current (and quickly growing stale) is the overtly self-conscious way contemporary writers have chosen to go about it. – The Nation
Blog
Why Opera Will Endure
Opera is one of those words that contains so much historical and symbolic weight and prejudice that you have to clamber through dense, thorny tangles before you even get to what it might actually be, and if there is anything really left, other than it being a segregated leisure pursuit for the entitled. – LitHub
Trying To Understand Indigenous Ways Of Passing On Knowledge
“If knowledges are environmentally embedded, and have to be activated through skilled practices, our orthodox idea that the privileged pathway for knowledge acquisition is cognitive, from one brain to another, is challenged. Think about it: we have never been able to ‘think’ without more-than-human extensions.” –Psyche
Are Our Brains Wired To Want To Be Outside?
The evolutionary explanation for human connection to nature is a colossal safari through the African savanna, where our ancestors fought, fed, and frolicked for millions of years. The biologist E.O. Wilson speculated on this story in Biophilia, a slim volume on human attraction to nature. Wilson defined biophilia as an “innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes.” – Nautilus
You Can’t Make This Stuff Up: Classic Shows Remade For The Trump Era
“SHAMILTON. A rap-inspired musical drawn partly from the pages of The Art of the Deal, this show celebrates the creation of a new nation by a small group of wealthy landowners and hyper-successful businessmen through the adoption of an economic funnel that sucks money out of the pockets of the poor and middle classes and into the bank accounts of the rich. Its hit tunes My Way or the Highway and Never Give a Sucker an Even Break are hailed as chart-toppers, although there are mutterings inside the music industry that the numbers are manipulated and Payola is involved.” – Oregon ArtsWatch
Founder Of Now-Defunct American National Ballet Charged With Murdering Husband
In early 2017, Doug and Ashley Benefield moved to Charleston with ambitious, high-profile plans to create a top-level ballet company and school there — and over that year, the project gradually and messily fell apart. Now Ashley has been arrested near Bradenton, Florida and charged with shooting Doug during an argument; the couple had separated and were in an ongoing custody dispute over their daughter. – The Post and Courier (Charleston, SC)
Inside A Treasure Trove Of Wax Cylinder Recordings
Say what you want about the millions of digital songs stored in the cloud and awaiting your Spotify spin. Strolling through the rows of shelving units, each packed with cylinder recordings, overwhelms the imagination. – Los Angeles Times
UK Declines To Prosecute Royal Accused Of Sexual Assault By Curator Of Hay Festival Abu Dhabi
The Crown Prosecution Service won’t pursue the case of Caitlin McNamara, a Briton who was organizing the inaugural version of the Hay book festival’s satellite event in the UAE when, she says, she was summoned to a meeting at the villa of the Emirati official overseeing the festival (the country’s Minister of Tolerance) and he assaulted her. – The Guardian
John Waters Donates His Collection To Baltimore Museum Of Art
Waters’s collection, much of which is installed in his home, features in-depth holdings of works by Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Mike Kelley, Karin Sander and Richard Tuttle, and will fill gaps in the museum’s own collection of work by artists including Catherine Opie and Thomas Demand. An exhibition of works from the gift will be staged at the museum within the next five years, it says in a statement. – The Art Newspaper
Commercial Radio Is 100 Years Old. Where Can It Go From Here?
Kirk Miller: “Surviving 100 years is incredible. But I do wonder if it’ll make it through another 10, let alone 100. To get some outside perspective, I asked four people — two long-time DJs, a younger musician and a veteran music industry reporter — for their thoughts on commercial radio, both as it stands today and where it’s going.” – InsideHook