a blind flaneur

One of my great joys in listening to Radio Open Source is Christopher Lydon’s reliable insight into the cultural resonance of Ralph Waldo Emerson. I never imagined a connection between Emerson and Duke Ellington until Lydon traced it in an interview with Ellington biographer Harvey Cohen.

On the surface, Henry Thoreau and Marcel Proust seem to be as different as two men could be. Both writers have been tutelary spirits for me, though, so the synapse connecting them in my mind had already formed and was ready to fire when I heard Damian Searls say this on Open Source with Chris Lydon.

This is the only surviving recording of Virginia Woolf’s voice. It is part of a BBC radio broadcast from April 29th, 1937. The talk was called “Craftsmanship” and was part of a series entitled “Words Fail Me”. Read a transcript.

If you love his writing, you must see Jorge Luis Borges: The Mirror Man, a 47-minute documentary film directed by Philippe Molins. Via Ubuweb: “Although honors came late in life to Jorge Luis Borges, his unique worldview had begun to emerge even as a child. This program examines the life and literary career of the charismatic Argentine writer, as well as the thematic, symbolic, and mythological underpinnings of his works. Archival interviews with Borges; his mother, Leonor Acevedo de Borges; his second wife, Maria Kodama; and collaborator Adolfo Bioy Casares provide insights into the private Borges, while readings from “The Mirrors,” “Dreamtigers,” “The Plot,” “The South,” “The Aleph,” and other landmarks of Latin American fiction demonstrate his virtuosity as a transformer of experiences. Watch/read more.”

In the 19th-century, free thinkers and radicals of every persuasion held Tom Paine birthday dinners on January 29 to celebrate the freedom of thought and expression championed so articulately by the political pamphleteer. Today we would know him as a blogger . Since beginning to re-read Eric Foner’s 1976 social history, Tom Paine and Revolutionary [...]

I had to laugh out loud this morning when I heard an NPR announcer quip that today is the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin “going rogue.” He meant the 1859 publication of On The Origin of Species, of course, but he was reaching for something else. If Sarah Palin heard the comparison, she must have [...]

Composer John Cage.  [Photo by Erich Auerbach/Getty Images/NPR]
While I was working yesterday to repair a hacker attack on this site’s php code, NPR’s Fresh Air was on the radio somewhere in the background. Fresh Air was rebroadcasting interviews with John Cage and Merce Cunningham, who died Monday at age 90.
John Cage has been a tutelary [...]

James Joyce wrote with excruciating effort as he recovered from one of many eye operations in June 1924. He’d had an iridectomy on his left eye in hopes of preventing another attack of glaucoma. According to Richard Ellmann’s biography, the worst part of the operation was the aftermath. “Lying with face bandaged in a [...]

Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen lead the crowd in This Land is Your Land at the inaugural concert held at the Lincoln Memorial pm January 18, 2009..
Listen to Folk Alley’s 5-hour side stream of memorable Seeger classics covered by artists like Tom Paxton, Bruce Cockburn, Janis Ian, Natalie Merchant, Greg Brown, and, of course, the [...]

McLuhan Remix: Prologue 1/3 from the Kurtweibers channel.

McLuhan Remix: The Medium is the Mix 2/3 from the Kurtweibers channel.

McLuhan Remix: Epilogue 3/3 from the Kurtweibers channel.
Jamie O’Neil is an assistant professor of digital media arts at Canisius College in Buffalo and a video and performance artist. He is the creator of the mock motivational speaker [...]