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Listening To Music On Headphones Has Disrupted Our Culture

The power of music has long been its ability to soundtrack a generation—to evoke emotion, as well as summon a specific time and place. Headphone listening not only isolates the listener; it shrinks music’s cultural footprint. - The Atlantic

Some People Can’t See Mental Images

Their whole lives, they had heard people talk about picturing, and imagining, and counting sheep, and visualizing beaches, and seeing in the mind’s eye, and assumed that all those idioms were only metaphors or colorful hyperbole. - The New Yorker

Ronald K. Brown On 40 Years Of His Dance Company And How To “Make Dance Speak”

“Dance is already abstract, and so the role of us as artists is to be as specific as possible with what we want to say. That’s how we make dance speak. We are talking heart-to-heart, spirit-to-spirit, with the audience.” - The Minnesota Star Tribune

A Club Where Jazz Fans Gather To Play Old 78 Shellac Records

“At the Hot Club of New York, ... jazz from the 1910s through the ’50s crackles to life, spun on 78 RPM discs made of shellac (and heard) through a restored vintage hi-fi system … (in a room) where shelves sag under thousands of 78s, books and magazines.” - The New York Times

England’s Arts Funding Agency Suffered A Major Computer Failure In July. The Mess Still Isn’t Cleaned Up.

Arts Council England’s online portal, Grantium, was used by artists to submit and manage funding applications. It crashed in July, leaving thousands of applications in limbo until the portal reopened in late September. Yet, say applicants, ACE refused to extend deadlines and has distributed less money than grantees were promised. - The Guardian

Dallas Theater Center Cancels Shows At Last Minute Two Weekends In A Row

The company was producing Michael Frayn’s backstage farce Noises Off, which is, as DTC’s executive director wrote to subscribers, “an intensely physical comedy that depends on precise timing and movement, (so) even one missing performer made it impossible to safely continue.” And the cast had a whack-a-mole series of health issues. - KERA (Dallas)

Dubai To Get Its First Real Art Museum

While the extremely affluent emirate has had commercial galleries and art fairs for years, the Dubai Museum of Art will be its first museum. (However, it will include space for art fairs and other commercial projects.) The architect is Pritzker Prize winner Tadao Ando. - Artnet

Post-Merger Layoffs At Paramount Begin: Over 1,000 Jobs Cut

“Paramount on Wednesday began … the first wave of a deep staff reduction planned since David Ellison took the helm of the entertainment company in August” following a merger with Ellison’s company, Skydance. “Wednesday's cuts represent about 5% of the organization.” - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)

Five Additional Suspects Arrested In Louvre Jewel Robbery Case

“One of the men detained ‘was a target of the investigators – we have traces of DNA linking him to the robbery’, (prosecutor Laure) Beccuau said. ‘He’s one we had in our sights.’ The other four ‘can give us information about how the theft was carried out’, she said.” - The Guardian

Two Suspects In Louvre Jewel Robbery Confess Involvement, Says Prosecutor

Prosecutor Laure Beccuau also said that the pair are believed to be the men who forced their way into the museum on Oct. 19. They have been given preliminary charges of criminal conspiracy and theft committed by an organized gang and remain in custody. - AP

Oldest Surviving Piece Of Western Music Notation Turns Up Near Philadelphia

A private collector brought a page from a mid-9th-century liturgical book to document dealer Nathan Raab, who, after research, identified some previously overlooked markings over the word “Alleluia” as notating the rising and falling pitches of a melody. - The Guardian

Art In The Time Of AI: Just What Does “Owning” Art Mean?

Archetypes belong to everyone: that’s why art galleries and libraries and arts councils receive public funding; that’s why Top 40 radio plays a Friday-morning megamix. As is typical in my line of work, I don’t consider the stories I’ve written my property; a story isn’t finished until the reader completes it. - The Walrus

An Interview With “The Interview Assassin,” The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner

Q: Why do you think people still talk to you? IC: Most people don’t read bylines, and the vast majority of people I interview have no idea who I am. - Columbia Journalism Review

Cult Film Case Study: Rocky Horror Picture Show

A cult film is born through ritualistic traditions of audience attendance that must occur in a public, social screening setting like a movie theatre. The Rocky Horror Picture Show — the Hollywood-funded screen adaptation of Jim Sharman and Richard O’Brien’s successful British stage musical — owes its cult success to independent, repertory cinemas. - The Conversation

TS Eliot And The Impression Of Having Read Everything

Eliot was not only a prolific, but also a powerful prose writer. Impressively, he emerges even in the earliest of this work as if fully formed. His voice is mature and assured in a 1909 review published in the Harvard Advocate, where he already perfected the performance of having read everything. - Hudson Review

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