Selections from my Virtual Library: February 2014

This is the second installment my virtual library, a year-long project to expand my personal literacy and knowledge base. 

In February, I expanded my library to include pieces from Slate, a "daily web magazine," Medium, a collaborative blogging site, and The Guardian. 

I've decided to organize articles by publication. Some publications have more representation than others because a) they post more content and/or b) I find that their pieces are of better quality/more interesting than others as a whole.

The Atlantic:

The Racially Fraught History of the American Beard - Who knew that the facial scruff I have come to love has such a dark past...

Personal Identity is Mostly Performance - How the things we keep and display project  judgements about ourselves to others while simultaneously reminding us who we are.

The Dark Psychology of Being a Good Comedian - Cool data on what it means to be funny, how intelligence and humor are correlated, and how to know when a taboo topic is at its peak of funniness.

Dead Poets Society Is a Terrible Defense of the Humanities - A great movie that needs to be understood in a different light. While literature is about feeling, it is also about meaning and the beautiful nuances of language.

Teachers Wish More People Would Listen to Them - I might be biased, but teachers deserve a lot more respect than they are currently receiving and the data collected from teachers in this summarized study reflects that immensely. 

The Guardian: 

Drip, drip, drip, by day and night - In case you haven't noticed, rain is important to a lot of literature.

Wes Anderson: in a world of his own - Yet another article that reaffirms the love I have for my favorite director. There are lots of great details in the piece.

The New Yorker:

The $5.7 Million Magazine Cover Illustration - Art is something I still don't fully understand, but this piece brings up a lot of great questions to think about in terms of ownership and creativity.

Medium:

Those Damn Gentrifying Hipsters: Avoiding the pull of the “creative class” typecast - A really important read for anyone looking to live in a gentrified/gentrifying area.

Ma Noirceur - We should not strive to be a color blind nation, but rather a nation that is inclusive and self-aware of privilege. 

Slate:

A Photographer’s Moving Tribute to the Pine Ridge Reservation - Pine Ridge has been a source of fascination for me since my junior year of high school, so this photo essay reminded me how awful it is that a place this impoverished exists in the United States.

The Dalai Lama’s Ski Trip: What I learned in the slush with His Holiness - The Dalai Lama is an unbelievable human being. This piece puts him in a great light and has a great voice.

McSweeney's:

Socrates on the red carpet - It's pretty difficult to describe a McSweeney's piece in a non-cliche way, but I seriously love this. 

NPR:

Saudade: An Untranslatable, Undeniably Potent Word - Yet another place for my loves to connect: words and music. Saudade will be the latest addition to my vocabulary.

Fred Armisen's Fake Bands (And Their Real Songs) - Fred Armisen is too good. What a guy.

Selections From My Virtual Library: January 2014

Last year I decided to cultivate a library of Thought Catalog articles because it would give me an excuse to check the addictive, and now relatively mediocre, site on a regular basis because I had a purpose. This year, I have applied the same idea with a different purpose: create a library of online articles from various sources that can expose me to more rhetoric and literature overall. 

Now, I attempt to check The Atlantic, The New Yorker, BBC, McSweeney's, and NPR on a daily basis. Often times there are no articles that warrant a bookmark in the folder entitled "Virtual Library 2014" on my computer, but at least once or twice a week I find myself really loving a work. As I continue to expand my library, I hope to create a monthly post about the current best in my library. Here are January's picks:

Nobody's Son - I always associate The New Yorker with my Grandpa Pietz and early mornings spent in the farmhouse living room looking only at the cartoons embedded within the text. If only I could go back and read everything I skimmed as kid. Maybe I could have read something just as beautiful as this multiple part piece on the death of a father. I can't wait to read more from the magazine this upcoming year to make up for all the lost time. 

Edit Your Novel With Math - At this point it's redundant to tell you that McSweeney's is hilarious, but this in particular was just ridiculous to imagine as a real practice. 

The Danger of Telling Poor Kids That College Is the Key to Social Mobility - Thought-provoking and urgent, all college students know that at this point, college is not really leading us to tons of success and/or money. It may after five years of graduation, but it certainly won't create the sums of money that flash before our eyes as we eat yet another crappy cafeteria meal waiting for the future. Intellectual curiosity needs to be at the forefront of college education for every class of citizen and not just those that can afford college.

"Life Keeps Changing": Why Stories, Not Science, Explain the World - This article reaffirms my complete infatuation with words. Science can explain so many things, but many of the nuances in life can be found with even the scrutiny of a microscope. This article is part of a great series of interviews with authors about their favorite passages of literature and I think the conversational tone of all of them add to their reaffirmation that words may be the only thing that can capture the enduring beauty of life.

4 Ways To Hear More In Music - As someone who used to be a musician and considers themselves relatively well-versed, I first thought that what the author discusses was sort of an elementary way at deconstructing music. And while my observation is true to an extent, I also think that Tsioulcas chooses wonderful examples for her points of instruction. NPR does a great job once again.

Sally Mann's Lecture and Why My Life Revolves Around Death

Two evenings ago I had the great pleasure and unbelievable opportunity to listen to a lecture by Sally Mann, an American photographer whose work focuses on death and decay. Going into the lecture, I was prepared to listen for two hours about how she processed her photos and what her subjects were.

Instead, I was privy to a reading of her memoir, the last 10,000 words to be exact, a deeply thoughtful section that worked its way through discussing the death of her parents, the discoveries of her family history, and her reflections on her work as a whole. During her lecture, Mann was no longer just a photographer, but a human on the deepest level: reflective, emotional, and raw.

Sitting next to the lovely Anam Merchant in the second row

Death has been more of a prominent subject in my life since the beginning of this school year. It's something I never really gave much thought to in high school. But as I've begun to form new friendships and cultivate even more knowledge in my classes, there seems like there is so much to lose the further I move forward in life.

One of my favorite quotes from the evening that Sally said is, "Death as an artistic theme always presents as a self-portrait." Even if we try to create with loss in mind, it always relates back to how we sense things, perceive things, and reflect. 

When I write, I write for myself first. I'm sure this will change as I continue to progress as a writer, but I've always thought as art as more selfish than selfless. Art is what we leave behind for others to remember us by. As much as none of us want to be judged by what stays when we leave, it is inevitable. Mann quoted Ezra's Pound's Canto 81 during her talk, which fits well with the idea judgement after death: 

What thou lovest well remains, 

                                           the rest is dross 

What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee 

What thou lov'st well is thy true heritage 

Whose world, or mine or theirs 

                           or is it of none? 

What we love will remain: our art, our relationships, our words. Death is supposed to trivialize everything, but does it ever really do this? I think that it expands everything. When we are faced with death, we should follow Mann's other important assertion that our lives should be spent be trying to get better at living, loving, and seeing. And so when we create anything, especially with death in mind, we are expanding ourselves in the best way possible.

Death fascinates me and I think that it is quite unfortunate that the only way we can experience death is through mourning. It is an unthinkable event we cannot pass through. But that makes death this great theme to create around. Lots of great things come from ambiguity, from grayness, from the gap between what we know and what we cannot understand. 

Looking into the future, I can see myself being endlessly inspired by death. I've always wanted to know who would come to my funeral, what words would be said, what people would remember about me, the photos that would hang on the poster board at the memorial service. But I don't think I'll ever write about those things. I think I'll write about how we face death everything day, what it means to grieve, and when we decide that we are ready to leave. As Proust reminds us, "It is grief that develops the powers of the mind."