I once made a TV show about an installation by the artist Spencer Tunick, who makes his work out of the naked flesh of human beings. Above the sparkling Tyne, 1,700 people stripped off at dusk and lay across the Millennium Bridge between Gateshead and Newcastle. It was a beautiful and affecting sight. Milling around before and after the installation took place, chatting to the participants, I learned two things: 1) Nudity is completely unsexy when you are surrounded by it; and 2) Never interview a man who is sitting bare-arsed on a bar stool live on television. His squashed-up devil’s bagpipes will be right in your eyeline and it will be terribly distracting.
Daniel Genis spent ten years in prison and read over one thousand books:
He read “In Search of Lost Time” alongside two academic guidebooks, full of notations in French, and a dictionary. He said that no other novel gave him as much appreciation for his time in prison. “Of course, we are…
(via Fantagraphics Books | Comics and Graphic Novels - Eleanor Davis and Esther Pearl Watson Book Signing)
On a good day, you look at yourself like, I’m preserving American history: I’m an archeologist. But the bottom line is that there’s seriously something wrong… I think it’s funny that you even call it art… I think it’s more of a disease. There has to be something really wrong with you to want to possess these objects in the first place. You have to have them, and it’s never enough, and you get that strange, tingly feeling when you get one. Anyone who collects anything is obsessive-compulsive and neurotic. The need to put things in order, to file by number, to alphabetize and label, to be constantly reassessing how you’ve ordered things-that’s neurotic behavior… I’ve never met [another 78 collector] who wasn’t like, ‘This is sick, we’re all sick’… When I finally gave in and started buying 78s, it was a conscious decision to embrace my sickness… there has to be something in your mind that says, ‘I give up.’
Any of the better anthologies of 78s – Revenant’s “American Primitive” volumes, Old Hat Records’ “Down in the Basement,” anything produced, compiled, or contributed to by Christopher King – serve as a stunning refutation of homogenized mass culture. “Authenticity” is the word that usually gets tossed around by everyone from casual fan to connoisseur, but in this case it’s true, and it is rare to find anyone not shaken by hearing recorded music free of technological manipulations and mass-market compromises. These are transmissions from a lost world, and the boundless range of idiosyncratic regional voices, heard through decades of accumulated crackle and hiss, often sounds like messages from American’s collective unconscious. Add to that the pathos of the records having barely survived a largely indifferent populace, poor storage and the savagery of worn Victrola needles…
After initially breaking my ssh-agent because I copy/pasted commands that I didn’t really understand, I found the following apt quote:
“A good rule for rocket experimenters to follow is this: always assume that it will explode” – Astronautics, issue 38, October 1937
“One thing I came to realize after college was that the search for purpose is really a search for a place, not an idea,’’ Gawande told the crowd of approximately 33,000 graduates, family and friends. “It is a search for a location in the world where you want to be part of making things better for others in our own small way.
“…If you find yourself in a place where you stop caring — where your greatest concern becomes only you — get out of there. You want to put yourself in a place that suits who you are, links you to others and gives you a purpose larger than yourself in some way.”
It is still the place where risks can be taken. When on Earth did the West End ever do a new play which hadn’t been developed somewhere else – usually at the National or the Royal Court or the regions? Commercial managements just don’t take that sort of risk. My West End producer used to say to me, ‘We’re in the giggle business, darling.’ And I’d sort of agree with him, but while I’m all for giggles, I’d also hope that some of what we do would be remembered for a little bit more than just that.
Steve Donoghue at Stevereads writes about BookTube, a YouTube community devoted to booklovers. It's a fun survey of what he loves, dislikes, and questions about the community (why do so many of the vloggers tout Young Adult novels?). But his joy in the community is in their joy at sharing what they love, particularly the contents of their bookshelves and their bookhauls. Steve shares his own pile o' books from a single day's trawling and it's truly breathtaking. I adore his aside that he doesn't keep a TBR ("to be read") pile, because they will all get read.
His haul reminds me of my 20s and 30s when my friend Scott and I would do a book-crawl through all the used bookstores in Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill. I would often trudge home with bags o' books, less than half of which I ever read, probably. For me, it was always the thrill of the hunt and the serendipitous discovery -- the actual sitting down and reading always seemed a little more dutiful and less fun. Which for a booklover and reader like myself is an odd thing to say, but kind of true. I had more time to read then, I think, but used it less.
In my defense, when my obsession for a particular author or subject took me over -- like Chekhov or Hazlitt or Kotzwinkle or Montaigne or Delacroix -- I would scarf down whatever I could till only crumbs were left.
As Stephen Fry said once upon a time: when I was young, comedy albums were my rock albums. The first albums I remember buying were remaindered copies of "Another Monty Python Album" and, rather incredibly, Robert Klein's "Mind Over Matter" (I think because the cover just looked so out-there).
Since then, comedy has always flickered in the background. I've been interested in comedy as a performer (when I acted in college and community theatre, it tended to be in comedies), as a consumer (watching classic sitcoms via Netflix is quite relaxing ["Wings" is my current before-bedtime snack], "The Big Bang Theory" reruns are fun to watch while eating supper, and the Flying Karamazov Bros. are funny as hell), and as a writer/critic (what was Bill Hicks up to? what the hell is Dan Harmon doing with those bloody circles? how does telling three mini-stories in a single Big Bang episode change the viewing experience compared to a 1977 Mary Tyler Moore episode that focused on only one story for 25 minutes?).
As you can tell from that last paragraph, I have a sort of engineering relationship with comedy. I love reading about what makes comedy work. (Disclaimer: I've never written any skits or humor pieces.) If you see me watching a sitcom or standup special, I may nod, smile, occasionally bark out a laugh. Thing is, what I'm mainly doing is studying the structure, trying to guess where the joke is going, and also kind of watching it like I'd listen to an orchestra -- keeping an ear out for the unique sound or the pattern that's holding everything together, while remaining open to be surprised and delighted.
Over the last few years, I've been reading about comedy and comedy writers (And Here's the Kicker is great place to start), listening to comedy writing podcasts, and particularly enjoying James Cary's blog, "Sitcom Geek."
Cary set his sights on being a comedy writer long ago, writing shows for the Fringe festival, radio skit programs, sitcoms for radio and TV, and more. I enjoy his take on the writer's life from the British comedy writer's point of view, which is not all that different from any other writer's point of view: work hard and you may be rewarded but it's more likely you won't be, so keep working, get better, and try again. And his views on what makes a sitcom work or not work, appraising classic shows and modern alike for what they do that's worth noticing.
My favorite kinds of posts are when he praises the work of those he admires: this tribute to Bob Larbey, who co-wrote on our favorite sitcoms, "The Good Life," was tremendous fun to read. (That photo of Larbey makes him look like a mashup of Jay Leno and Marty Feldman.)
My other favorite posts of his are when he talks about the business of sitcom (the state of the industry, the primacy of hard work and solving problems, incremental improvements, advice to young writers) and the structure of sitcom (characters, plot, theme, research, performance). As someone experienced in the business, he's great at pointing at a comedic success while saying, "Look, did you see how long it took them to devise that concept? How long it took them to write it?" He's also pretty frank about not holding on to sour apples or grapes: if the BBC passed on your script but accepted a script almost exactly like it, it doesn't pay to kick up a fuss. Maybe their script was better, cheaper, hit the accepting editor on a good day -- it doesn't pay to get too up in your head and resentful about this business. Get back to work, figure out your characters' motivations, bring the funny. In other words: Keep writing.
His post "Theoretically Funny" is a great example of the kind of post I just eat up. These aren't templates for writing stories; if anything, they may be more helpful as ways to diagnose why a particular kind of story is going wrong. But they show the bones, the structure, the logistics of a particular kind of storytelling that not only has to make an emotional impact on a viewer, but also deliver a laugh every 20 seconds.
“We cannot think if we have no time to read, nor feel if we are emotionally exhausted, nor out of cheap material create what is permanent. We cannot co-ordinate what is not there.” (Cyril Connolly)
One of my favorite quotes of all time, probably my very favorite, is this one from Stanley Kubrick: “Sometimes the truth of a thing is not so much in the think of it, as in the feel of it.”
One of my long-term listening pleasures is BBC4's In Our Time podcast. The show is hosted by Melvyn Bragg, a novelist, cultural reporter, broadcaster, and a member of the House of Lords, in no particular order. The show's premise is to pick a significant topic from history, culture, science, art, philosophy, etc., bring in three scholarly or scientific experts on the topic, and let Lord Bragg serve as the audience's guide and interlocutor. Bragg's job is to absorb lots of detail (written and prepared for him beforehand by the week's guest experts) and then attempt to lay out the topic from end-to-end for the eager-to-be-informed listener. All in about 43 minutes, which makes it fast-paced with lots of finely argued details and centuries of stories regretfully brushed aside or glossed over in an attempt to get out of the studio on time.
Still, that's about the right length of time for an introduction to a big topic. It sounds like a frantic idea, to discuss Prime Numbers, the Nicene Creed, Montaigne, Renaissance Magic, or the Battle of Bosworth Field in under an hour, but I have to admit, Bragg delivers more often than not. (Take a look at their archives; the variety of topics is astounding.) He favors a strictly chronological narrative both to establish a context and structure the discussion, and is careful to make sure a decent foundation is laid before the more interesting aspects of the topic are discussed.
As someone who loves to learn new things and who particularly enjoys these kinds of scholarly panel discussions, I enjoy getting a condensed introduction to a topic or idea I know nothing about. I often want a taste, not a full meal. "In Our Time" delivers that.
And it's lovely hearing the experts talk. While some of the voices sound like particularly eccentric Monty Python characters, it's bracing to hear younger voices, women's voices, and ethnic voices taking their place at the table. These folks know their stuff and the deference they pay to each other is charming.
But you knew there was a "but" coming. For all that Bragg ably herds his cats, he has habits that make me want to scream. For someone whose day job is as a broadcaster, I'm often shocked by his lazy elocution and gabbled, hurried, mumbled words. He has an annoying habit of literalness; under the guise of "getting it clear for the listeners," he tries to pin down whether Pocahontas actually did save John Williams' life and did King Arthur and Robin Hood really exist, all while his experts squirm in their seats after having already said five times that there's no hard evidence one way or the other.
While I'm on a Bragg-bash, I sometimes get annoyed when the topic is literature. As a novelist and a great reader himself, he often inserts his opinions and summaries into the conversation when I believe they don't add much to the conversation. However, when the topic is well outside his familiarity, he becomes more humble and capably guides the experts through a forest of dense ideas. He's at his best when he lets his guests talk.
After the show, he and the experts usually repair to a lounge for a cup of tea where the conversation continues, one assumes more free-spiritedly, and they lament all the good bits that had to be left out. He shares choice tidbits from these conversations in his weekly newsletter and a Radio 4 blog.
I enjoy these morsels he shares in his weekly posting; more admirable and humorous qualities of his character peek through. Here are some paragraphs I enjoyed from his post accompanying a show on the gladiator Spartacus:
Mary Beard told me after the programme that Crassus (he who said that no man can count himself rich unless he can afford a private army), the one who finally defeated Spartacus, had taken on the Parthians and himself been defeated. His head was severed and later used as a prop in a performance of The Bacchae at the Parthian court. A story like that is what I think, perhaps many of us think, classical historians are for.
The business of gladiators being killed in the arena and a great flurry of thumbs down going on seems to be ill-founded. Put simply, gladiators were very expensive. They were an investment. Their owners did not like them to be killed and therefore, of course, as privileged, rich and wealthy owners do, they fixed things so that they got what they wanted. So in the end gladiators were as much for show as for dead meat.
There was a discussion about whether Spartacus's wife could possibly have spent time with him in the gladiatorial school, i.e. lived with him. She certainly seems to have been there when he was bought as a gladiator in the first place.
Curious how we seem to like men fighting each other or lions, bare-topped, shouted on by crowds. But it wasn't long ago that much the same thing happened around these parts, is it? Crowds at hangings, crowds at bear fights, crowds at executions, women knitting as the guillotine fell. How much would it take for it to come back?
What would the 50-something you say to the 20-something you?
You’re going to need reserves of determination, and persistence, now, during the high points and right up to the moment you retire, if that ever happens. So, don’t be put off easily. You’re never too young, too inexperienced, too familiar, too old, too traditional, too radical, too uncool, too black, too female, too weird, too conventional, too deaf, too Portuguese, or too anything for anyone to stop you making the comedy you feel driven to make. And if you don’t feel that, then you shouldn’t be doing it.
And then I realize: The way for me to be better than my parents isn’t to do my taxes on time. That would be nice. But really I need to not give myself choices about how I spend my time. The more choices I have throughout the day, the more decisions I make, the more willpower I need, the more I get distracted from paying attention to the building blocks of a fulfilling life: gratitude, meaning, and ritual.
Being productive means simplifying how you use your time. Which in turn, simplifies your life.
Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them … well, I have others.
—Groucho Marx
