May 2012
2 posts
3 tags
Best of luck to Matter, a new longform publication... →
Add Matter to the list of new publications and websites focused on promoting and publishing longform journalism. The more attention on good writing, and funding good writing, the better the genre of longform journalism will be. But I’m curious to see how they’re going to incorporate the hundreds of Kickstarter backers into their editorial process:
“PLEDGE $25 OR MORE | 944...
Recent American History in 4 Parts →
E. L. DOCTOROW hits all the highlights. I don’t think he missed a one:
PHASE ONE
If you’re a justice of the Supreme Court, ignore the first sacrament of a democracy and suspend the counting of ballots in a presidential election. Appoint the candidate of your choice as president.
If you’re the newly anointed president, react to a terrorist attack by invading a nonterrorist country....
April 2012
2 posts
2 tags
Interesting take on texting, email as written... →
There is a virtual cult of concision – OMG, LOL and such – and little interest in the niceties of Strunk & White on capitalization or punctuation. …
Yet the brevity, improvisation and in-the-moment quality of e-mails and texts are those grand old defining qualities of spoken language. Keyboard technology, allowing us to produce and receive written communication with unprecedented...
$.25: How to Improve your Personality →
Having a sense of well-being means having that “healthy feeling,” and what a prized possession it is!
March 2012
5 posts
5 tags
CONVERSATION | John Jeremiah Sullivan & Geoff Dyer... →
Dyer: …Sometimes they’re physical road journeys like in your first piece, but more usually they’re some kind of epistemological journey from either relative ignorance or bafflement— curiosity—toward some kind of knowledge and/or understanding.
Sullivan: Absolutely. I mean, I pray that’s what they are because that’s their potential value. I rarely set out feeling that I have an opinion...
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Despite Everything
accidental observers
give doubtful figures
accompanied by the shameful
word “about”
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and yet in these matters
accuracy is essential
we must not be wrong
even by a single one
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we are despite everything
the guardians of our brothers
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ignorance about those who have disappeared
undermines the realities of the world
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it thrusts into the hell of appearances
the devilish net of...
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My week, Illustrated →
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““We don’t really live in a country. We live on the Internet.”
The...”
– Alex Ljung (via cacioppo)
Rick Santorum's 'Google Bomb' problem has gone... →
shortformblog:
brooklynmutt:
I hope someone does something to rectify this.
No it hasn’t. It’s just another, similar Google problem — which the WSJ doesn’t correctly note. Search Engine Land has a different, more accurate and … uh, frothier take on the matter.
It will fun seeing how this plays out…
February 2012
6 posts
3 tags
The Unmentioned →
Maybe I just run in different circles, but isn’t one of the more interesting parts of this anecdote disguised as Internet News the fact that roller derby friends are just part of the social milieu these days, as likely to be referenced as co-workers and spousal connections?
Also in here: invasion of privacy, internet entering its darkest hour, etc etc
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Romney and the Prozac Nation →
•Should Romney win the nomination despite himself, Obama’s campaign staff would do well to check out Lawrence Wright’s New Yorker article on Mormonism in 2002.
•This ambitious profile of an antire religion takes place right before Utah hosted the Olympics in 2002, and works today as a good primer for those (like me) who are mostly unaware of what this massive religious denomination...
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Pairing NYT on N+1/Believer & NYRB on Writers... →
Tim Park on the emergence and missteps of the creative writer as a professional
So then, a would-be anti-conventional public enjoys the notion of the rebel, or at least admirably independent, writer, but more and more to achieve success that same writer has to tune in to the logic of an industrial machine, which in turn encourages him to cultivate an anti-conventional image. This is an...
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The Brief Histories & Modern Journey of a Vinyl... →
See: A record being made in Brooklyn, from the recording studio to the store
August 2011
1 post
3 tags
An essay on music and people →
With so many options for control and power over our music, we run the risk of falling prey to a fantasy of what Baudrillard calls “potentialitites linked to usage.” Instead of employing our music and mp3 players as conduits to our “psychological” sanctuaries, we fascinate ourselves with the mechanics of music curating.
July 2011
2 posts
4 tags
...Two parts bourgeois museum gathering and one... →
“Attendants guided the line through a disorienting path of back doors and service hallways before corralling us into the bottom level of the Guggenheim’s famous rotunda. Here the scene became generally bizarre–funny to see, disorienting to be in–three parts rave, two parts bourgeois museum gathering and one part carnival.”
4 tags
June 2011
12 posts
3 tags
Some General Instructions →
This is good:
Do not bake bread in an oven that is not made of stone Or you risk having imperfect bread. Byron wrote, “The greatest pleasure in life is drinking hock And soda water the morning after, when one has A hangover,” or words to that effect. It is a Pleasure, for me, of the past. I do not drink so much Any more. And when I do, I am not in sufficiently good Shape to enjoy the hock and...
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Oxymoron: Classy GIFs →
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It's an experience--not a message →
I really enjoyed the Samuel Delany interview, for a variety of reasons. Top one being this right here:
This was the major thing I took away from the interview—the major thing I found a great amount of truth in: that the greatest gift from literature isn’t some message you can bottle into a line or two and treat as a transferable commodity, a message you can quote and insert into...
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But Is Anyone Looking? →
In the commercial sphere, marketers are also looking beyond facts and bits of information, in order to determine not just what you have bought, but what kinds of pitches appealed to you when you did. Once they have compiled your “persuasion profile,” they will refine those targeted ads even further. And if marketing companies can do this, why not political candidates, the government, or...
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The New Music Industry Blueprint →
I’m still under the impression that the new music industry has yet to be designed.
No one yet has figured out how to blueprint the post iPod marketplace.
With the announcement of iCloud, I believe we’re getting a glimpse of what at least part of the marketplace foundation will look like. Spotify’s stateside release is another significant piece of that foundation. The missing...
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Money in the Streams? →
Most interesting thing here is (1) Parker’s involvement w/ Spotify and his interest in the catalogue of the label. How valuable will the catalogues become once the streaming services take off? WIll the streaming services have traction? It’s going to be a battle b/w the streamers and the lockers, Spotify vs. ICloud and the others. The field is wide open right now.
“In the last 10 years we have...
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Instagram Band Photos, Pre-iPhone →
The woman on the left, Alma Gluck, sold 1 million records of her 1916 hit, “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny.”
One has to think that, if this photo was in wide circulation, her success was as much a result of her stylish branding & image as it was her talent. Check out that hat.
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Call it Indie and call it a day →
Yet according to Adam Klein, its chief executive, eMusic has stayed strong and stuck to its indie roots by serving a niche clientele with sophisticated tastes and a tendency to buy more music than the average pop consumer. “Everyone wanted to see if we were going to become a puppet for pop-culture music,” Mr. Klein said. “We said we never would, and we will continue to service this segment of...
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Joan Didion & The Managerial Elite →
I’m enjoying this line immensely.
“The process today gives everyone a chance to participate,” Tom Hayden, by way of explaining “the difference” between 1968 and 1988, said to Bryant Gumbel on NBC at 7:50 AM on the day after Jesse Jackson spoke at the Democratic convention in Atlanta. This statement was, at a convention which had as its controlling principle the notably non-participatory...
May 2011
10 posts
3 tags
Modern Musician =Musician+CEO →
One third of Radiohead’s management team on the new music biz:
“Under the new way of doing things, you’re a chief executive of an artist’s business with multiple revenue streams that go across multiple countries.”
Every musician who’s not @ Jay-z’s level has to hustle a living (oddly enough, sort of like the character Jay-z himself created in his raps). The current...
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New Kid on the Block: Byliner →
Tayman took issue with the idea that people have too much to read. “I don’t think readers ever suffer from having too many *great* stories to read,” he wrote. “The idea is to save readers from wasting their time on reading that might not be satisfying — to steer them away from unsatisfying stories, and point them to stories that not only are great reads, but great reads that will resonate with...
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DJ, What's That Tune? →
Jamaican DJs, to prevent rival DJs from learning what hot new record they recently acquired and played, would scratch off the record label and rename the disc w/ something related to their DJ name or club:
By the time tunes came into Jamaica their original US release date was pretty much irrelevant. Their exclusivity was what was valuable, thus the most important piece of equipment for a sound...
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This technology (internet) is ruining civilization →
One of the things that John Brockman’s collection on the Internet and the mind illustrates is that when people struggle to describe the state that the Internet puts them in they arrive at a remarkably familiar picture of disassociation and fragmentation. Life was once whole, continuous, stable; now it is fragmented, multi-part, shimmering around us, unstable and impossible to fix. The world...
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The Doers are the Knowers →
My thought seems to be leading me toward the conclusion that in art the doers are the knowers. And that the doers, though they are rarely paying customers, are nevertheless to us the most impressive of all consumers, because they use us not merely in the living that they are doing, as ordinary customers do, but also in the art that they are making. For no work is uninteresting to a workman. And...
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The First A&R--Fred Gaisberg →
Fred Gaisberg (1873-1951: 78yrs) was in many ways the first record producer and A&R man (A&R being artist and repertoire—the division of a record company that acquires, nurtures, grows talent).
From the Continuum Encyclopedia Of Popular Music (an invaluable resource):
“In 1899, the Gramophone Company of London sent recording engineer Fred Gaisberg on the first of many field...
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Byliner Blog: Kevin Smokler joins Byliner... →
thebyliner:
Hi everyone! I’m Kevin Smokler, Byliner’s new VP of Marketing and I’ll be manning the controls here at The Byliner Blog. You’ll still be hearing plenty from the talented journalists and editors on our team but this corner of Byliner is my responsibility. Put simply: If you don’t like what TBB is…
Be interesting to see early drafts of the pieces published in Byliner. Mark...
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Billboards Starting to Learn Who You Are | Adweek →
Immersive Labs in New York City has created billboards and in-store displays that use facial-recognition software to determine the age and gender of the people looking at them—and can change the ad that’s displayed based on who you are.
That’s comforting.
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April 2011
13 posts
4 tags
GrantLand? →
Consulting editors to the site will include:
Chuck Klosterman, a best-selling author of books, a former columnist for Spin,Esquire and ESPN.com, and a feature writer for New York Times Magazine, Esquire, GQand Spin. Chuck will be writing about sports and culture exclusively for Grantland.com;
Malcolm Gladwell, the international best-selling author of The Tipping Point,...
4 tags
Maybe the circus is easier →
Holy smokes is Saunders quotable:
“…when the writer “imagines” his reader—i.e., imagines where the reader “is” at that precise point in the story. This is more of a feeling thing than an analytical thing, but all that is good about fiction depends on this extrapolation. Which is pretty insane, when you think of it. The writer, in order to proceed, is theoretically trying to...
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The American Male Age Ten →
A great essay opening.
essayist:
by Susan Orlean
If Colin Duffy and I were to get married, we would have matching superhero notebooks. We would ’ wear shorts, big sneakers, and long, baggy Tshirts depicting famous athletes every single day, even in the winter. We would sleep in our clothes. We would both be good at Nintendo Street Fighter II, but Colin would be better than me. We would have...
4 tags
Why Do We Read Non-fiction? →
“Do we read nonfiction in order to receive information, or do we read it to experience art?” he asks in The Lost Origins of the Essay, another omnium-gatherum that suggests the answer to be the latter. Except, as D’Agata shows, “to receive information” can be equivalent to the experience of art.
Not so sure about this one here. There’s a lot at play to make a simple act of consuming...
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Higher Education=the next bubble to burst? →
“To see an education, college or otherwise, as merely a way to increase the amount of money you make is a terrible corruption and fundamentally unsustainable.”
Not surprising, Peter Theil sees an opportunity here. His new venture is to:
Pick the best twenty kids he could find under 20 years of age and pay them $100,000 over two years to leave school and start a company instead.
...
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Derrida's mother would be...Derrida →
Interviewer: If you had a choice, what philosopher would you like to have been your mother?”
Derrida: [smiling, to camera] His style? This is his own style? … [really beaming now] I don’t know how to properly answer this question… Give me some time.
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Shouts, Murmurs, Bills →
Speaking of long form journalism:
EXPLAINING YOUR TIME WARNER BILL
$12.71 — Oops, we had the wrong address
$104.23 — Keychain Restocking Fee
-$5.95 — Credit for improper charges on previous bill
$5.95 — Psych!
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Behind the music: Is it OK for bands to court... →
futureoflistening:
More praise for OK Go as marketers.
Yes, 100%. I think bands have to be brand + market conscious in the new music industry market place (post iPod/ Music Piracy). If not, if a musician assumes a label will sweep in and create a career for him, then a musician faces the prospect of just being a waiter who plays music on the side.