The Nature of Conversation

"It halts, it stutters, it doubles back, it soars."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/opinion/05martin.html

Sacrifice

http://nymag.com/news/business/69782/

What Makes The World Boring

http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2010/12/02/131750301/steve-martin-isn-t-predictable-enough-this-is-why-we-can-t-have-nice-things?sc=fb&cc=fp

We All Fall Down

You + Rocks =

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2010/09/14/129858314/my-grandson-the-rock

Dick Cavett

"It's when something said spontaneously prompts a thought and a reply in someone else."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=131161215

Authentication + Forensics =

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/07/12/100712fa_fact_grann

Neuroscience + Genealogy =

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127888976

Fiction + Video Games =

http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2010/06/25/06

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Perfect Imperfect

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127495176

The Pendulum Swings

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-of-men/8135/

Cover

Bettye LaVette + The Who =

Emily Dandelion

"I know for a fact that this is the first time we've grown dandelions for a flower show," Forrest says. "But dandelions were very important to her. In fact, she referred to herself more as a dandelion. She felt more comfortable and more natural in the fields with the dandelions than she would in the drawing rooms with the fancy folks around Amherst." The New York Botanical Gardens on NPR.

W. H. Auden

"Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another."

Mayhem

The funeral of Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren today, for which he requested people observe a moment of mayhem instead of a moment of silence, makes me think of two other funerals. The first is Jim Henson’s memorial in 1990 at the Cathedral of St. John The Divine in Manhattan. The ceremony, where Henson requested no one wear black, and which culminated with a Dixieland jazz band, Harry Belafonte and the Muppets singing, and each mourner in attendance animating the wings of hundreds of multi-colored foam butterflies, had a big impact on how I think about ritual and art.

It was a tremendous leap from the low flame Catholic funeral home ordeals of my youth. Henson, with his body of work, was able to change what people felt comfortable doing and thus how they responded within a tradition. Not just anyone could request and then inspire such a reaction in a church. And yet, a decade later, a friend of my family, a printer and a thinker, who was at many of our previous low flame wakes, died, and left instructions for his own goodbye. There were no butterflies, but the words and songs in the printed program were carefully selected and one last time I got to know Dave better.

There is a guilt to pursuing creative endeavors when you love people, because you could always be spending time with them as opposed to your work. But art helps us discover who we are individually – it makes us more the self we then share with others. We mourn greater those we knew better because they made the attempt to reach out to us with something more unique than the weather report.

So for Dave, Jim and Malcolm, make a little mayhem this afternoon.

Then go be alone and make some mayhem for those who matter to you.

Obama's Mistake

"And in any great career, failure is an instructive moment. That was his. That was his crucible. And he failed spectacularly." - New Yorker editor David Remnick on the President, today on NPR.

"You Don't Want To Be Liked."

Acting and voice teacher Patsy Rodenburg on how art is not giving the audience what it wants but revealing what they don't realize they need.

Conversation With Notes

My favorite annual NPR piece. The analysis is not what it used to be – a more in-depth discussion between host Hansen and expert Trudeau used to consist of two or three segments aired over a few weeks’ episodes – but I still appreciate the countdown.

Where Is Conversation 2010?

"One of the things that has always bewildered me is that we have a surplus of television shows that feature political chat and almost no TV shows that feature cultural or sociological chat." - David Brooks, New York Times, today.