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Friday, May 19th, 2017
| Time | Event |
| 8:00a | An Animated Alan Watts Waxes Philosophical About Time in The Fine Art of Goofing Off, the 1970s “Sesame Street for Grown-Ups”
Time is a measure of energy, a measure of motion. And we have agreed internationally on the speed of the clock. And I want you to think about clocks and watches for a moment. We are of course slaves to them. And you will notice that your watch is a circle, and that it is calibrated, and that each minute, or second, is marked by a hairline which is made as narrow as possible, as yet to be consistent with being visible. However true, that’s a particularly stress-inducing observation from one who was known for his Zen teachings… The pressure is ameliorated somewhat by Bob McClay’s trippy time-based animation, above, narrated by Watts. Putting Mickey Mouse on the face of Big Ben must’ve gone over well with the countercultural youth who eagerly embraced Watts’ Eastern philosophy. And the tangible evidence of real live magic markers will prove a tonic to those who came of age before animation’s digital revolution. The short originally aired as part of the early 70’s series, The Fine Art of Goofing Off, described by one of its creators, the humorist and sound artist, Henry Jacobs, as “Sesame Street for grown-ups.” Time preoccupied both men. One of Jacobs’ fake commercials on The Fine Art of Goofing Off involved a pitchman exhorting viewers to stop wasting time at idle pastimes: Log a few extra golden hours at the old grindstone. A koan-like skit featured a gramophone through which a disembodied voice endlessly asks a stuffed dog, “Can you hear me?” (Jacobs named that as a personal favorite.) Watts was less punchline-oriented than his friend and eventual in-law, who maintained an archival collection of Watts’ lectures until his own death: And when we think of a moment of time, when we think what we mean by the word “now”; we think of the shortest possible instant that is here and gone, because that corresponds with the hairline on the watch. And as a result of this fabulous idea, we are a people who feel that we don’t have any present, because the present is instantly vanishing – it goes so quickly. It is always becoming past. And we have the sensation, therefore, of our lives as something that is constantly flowing away from us. We are constantly losing time. And so we have a sense of urgency. Time is not to be wasted. Time is money. And so, because of the tyranny of this thing, we feel that we have a past, and we know who we are in terms of our past. Nobody can ever tell you who they are, they can only tell you who they were. Watch a complete episode of The Fine Art of Goofing Off here. Your time will be well spent. Related Content: The Wisdom of Alan Watts in Four Thought-Provoking Animations Take a Break from Your Frantic Day & Let Alan Watts Introduce You to the Calming Ways of Zen Hear Alan Watts’s 1960s Prediction That Automation Will Necessitate a Universal Basic Income Ayun Halliday is an author, illustrator, theater maker and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine. Follow her @AyunHalliday. An Animated Alan Watts Waxes Philosophical About Time in The Fine Art of Goofing Off, the 1970s “Sesame Street for Grown-Ups” is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.  |
| 10:30a | Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell Sings Haunting Acoustic Covers of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” Michael Jackson “Billie Jean” & Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song”
I entered high school to the huge sounds of Soundgarden’s second album, Louder than Love, playing at home, in friends’ cars, on MTV’s 120 Minutes late at night…. The band’s debut, and two previous EPs released on Seattle’s Sub Pop records, had not attracted much notice outside of a fairly small scene. But Louder than Love—especially “Hands All Over”—was as hooky and alarming as breakthrough singles by other emerging bands on the other side of the country, while losing none of the propulsive grit, groove, and raw, metal/hardcore power of their earlier work. Thousands of new listeners started paying attention. But there’s another reason the songs on Louder than Love resonated so strongly (and scored them a major label deal). The album announced singer Chris Cornell as a vocalist to be reckoned with—a singer with incredible power, melodic instinct, and a four-octave range. On songs like “Hands All Over” and “Loud Love,” he broke away from a fairly narrow Ozzy Osbourne/Robert Plant style he’d cultivated and introduced a sound that took both influences in a direction neither had gone before, one full of anguish, urgency, and even menace.
Millions more got to know Cornell’s voice after Superunknown’s “Black Hole Sun,” but even then no one would have predicted the direction he would go in after leaving Soundgarden. He injected soul and sensitivity into songs like Audioslave’s “Original Fire” and “Be Yourself”—love ‘em or don’t—qualities we can hear in abundance in his covers of sensitive and soulful songs like Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” and Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.” In his unplugged version of Jackson’s pop masterpiece the song acquires the heaviness and grievous beauty of a murder ballad. And I mean that entirely as a compliment. He brings “Nothing Compares 2 U” into “soulful new life,” as Slate writes, which is saying quite a lot, given that Sinead O’Connor’s version is more or less perfect. Cornell took his own life at age 52 on Wednesday night after playing with a reunited Soundgarden in Detroit, and after struggling with depression for many years. It’s true he was never lauded as a songwriter of a Prince/Michael Jackson caliber. His lyrics were often tossed-off free associations rather than carefully crafted narratives. One’s appreciation for them is a matter of taste. But like the artists he covers here, both of whom also died tragically in their 50s, his music reflected a deep concern for the state of the world. This comes through clearly in songs like “Hands All Over,” “Hunger Strike,” and in some pointed comments he made during his final performance.
Rolling Stone has a few more acoustic Cornell covers of Metallica, the Beatles, Elvis Costello, and more, and they’re all great. He did a profoundly affecting, gospel-like take on Whitney Houston’s belter, “I Will Always Love You.” But for a true, and truly heartbreaking, example of how he could imbue a song with his “unforgettable vulnerability,” watch him play Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” at New York’s Beacon Theater in 2015 above, in an absolutely riveting duet with his daughter, Toni. Cornell will be dearly missed by everyone who knew him, and by the millions of people who were deeply moved by his voice. Related Content: Prince Plays Unplugged and Wraps the Crowd Around His Little Finger (2004) Johnny Cash & Joe Strummer Sing Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” (2002) Patti Smith’s Cover of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” Strips the Song Down to its Heart Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell Sings Haunting Acoustic Covers of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” Michael Jackson “Billie Jean” & Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs. |
| 2:00p | Twin Peaks Essentials to Get You Ready for the Debut of Season 3: Video Essays, Maps, Commercials & Behind-the-Scenes Footage
Have you prepared yourself to return, this Sunday, to Twin Peaks, that small Washington town, so well known for its coffee and cherry pie, once rocked by the murder of homecoming queen Laura Palmer? Fans of the eponymous television series, which first made surreal prime-time television history on ABC in 1990, have binge-watched and re-binge-watched its original two seasons in advance of the new Twin Peaks‘ May 21st debut on Showtime. Even fans who disliked the second season, in which series creators David Lynch and Mark Frost gave in to network pressure to resolve the story of Palmer’s murder, have re-watched it, and with great excitement.  But can simply watching those first thirty episodes (and maybe the follow-up feature film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, once booed at Cannes, the very same festival which will screen the first two parts of the new Twin Peaks on the 25th) suffice? To get yourself as deep into the show’s reality as possible, we recommend dipping into the Twin Peaks material we’ve posted over the years here at Open Culture, beginning with the four-hour video essay on the series’ making and mythology we featured just this past January. You can orient yourself by keeping an eye on Lynch’s hand-drawn map of the the town of Twin Peaks, which he used to pitch the show to ABC in the first place, and which appears just above.
But Twin Peaks has its foundation as much in music as in geography. Just above, you can hear composer Angelo Badalamenti, a frequent collaborator with Lynch, tell the story of how he and the director composed the show’s famous “Love Theme,” which not only made an impact on the televisual zeitgeist but set the tone for the everything to follow. “It’s the mood of the whole piece,” Lynch once said of the composition, “It is Twin Peaks.” Badalamenti has scored the new series as well, joining the long list of returnees to the project that includes not just Lynch and Frost, but Kyle MacLachlan as FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper and many others from the original cast as well, including the late Miguel Ferrer and Warren Frost.
“There’s so much more to Twin Peaks than a riveting murder mystery,” says Alan Thicke, another performer no longer with us, hosting the 1990 behind-the-scenes preview of the show’s second season just above. “There’s a whole look and a feel and a texture,” an experience “180 degrees away from anything else on television.” As dramatically as televisual possibilities have expanded over the past 27 years, it seems safe to say that the continuation of Twin Peaks, which comes after such expansions of its fictional universe as Frost’s Secret History of Twin Peaks, will maintain a similar creative distance from the rest of what’s on the air. “The one thing I feel I can say with total confidence,” to paraphrase David Foster Wallace writing about Lost Highway twenty years ago, is that the new Twin Peaks will be… Lynchian. Below, you can watch a mini-season of Twin Peaks, which also doubles as a series of Japanese coffee commercials. They, too, come courtesy of David Lynch.
Related Content: Watch an Epic, 4-Hour Video Essay on the Making & Mythology of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks David Lynch Draws a Map of Twin Peaks (to Help Pitch the Show to ABC) Angelo Badalamenti Reveals How He and David Lynch Composed the Twin Peaks‘ “Love Theme” David Lynch Directs a Mini-Season of Twin Peaks in the Form of Japanese Coffee Commercials Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities and culture. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer, the video series The City in Cinema, the crowdfunded journalism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Angeles Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook. Twin Peaks Essentials to Get You Ready for the Debut of Season 3: Video Essays, Maps, Commercials & Behind-the-Scenes Footage is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs. |
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