she is king

"It’s tough to associate creativity with mental illness because obviously if you’re very ill, it gets in the way. … But one of the theories now is that the terrible swings of the mental illness – of bipolar depression – you get these manic highs, these euphorias, where the ideas just pour out of you. And you need to write them down. That’s followed by this dismal low period when maybe you’re a better editor. Maybe it’s easier for you to focus and refine those epiphanies into a perfect form. … The thinking is maybe the correlation exists because the swings of mental illness echo the natural swings of the creative process."

— Jonah Lehrer, on the link between depression and creativity. [complete interview here] (via nprfreshair)

cormac mccarthy’s first television interview ever, with Oprah, June 2008. among other things he explains the 2 moments that lead to him writing the road.

wow. he’s so smooth. so young. and that voice. I always thought his voice was something he grew into. I almost forgot how much I used to listen to this album.

via open culture

Mike Giant doesn’t fuck around. short version & long version

also via coloveration

take a gander

nprfreshair:

nprmusic:

T-Bone Burnett On 10 Years Of ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’

Hear the interview and cuts from a new deluxe edition of the massively successful film soundtrack on this week’s episode of All Songs Considered.

T-Bone on Fresh Air

cbc ideas - sculpting sound

heard this episode of cbc’s ideas in the car last night. it’s called Sculpting Sound - an interview with janet cardiff & george bures miller (their site here). very, very relevant to some areas I’d like to explore.

npr:

Start the video, listen for a few moments, then keep reading.

Anderson: “as YOU can GO, beLOW zeRO” — he’s creating iambs out of words that don’t naturally fall into that pattern: i.e., he stresses ‘zero’ on the second syllable instead of the first, where the stress naturally falls…. His pronunciation of “zoo” is one of the cooler things I’ve ever heard: a “z” with the smallest possible nondescript little vowel syllable attached to it. There is no way on earth to communicate the musicality of the refrain that ends that song in print.

Kelley: One thing that gets lost when only reading rap lyrics is the singing/rapping along.

Anderson: You mean the listener rapping along?

Kelley: Rap along out loud — and it’ll be all the more impressive that someone has managed to wrap their tongue around a lyric, or keep going without taking a breath. Rapping is HARD.

- NPR Music’s Frannie Kelley discussing Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s “Brooklyn Zoo” with New York magazine book critic Sam Anderson. Anderson recently completed editing a 788-page anthology of rap lyrics, without listening to the songs. Kelley asked Anderson to listen to several songs he included, then discuss them with her. The results are one of those rare instances where you actually get to witness an entire art form revealed to someone, in every sense of the word. Play the songs and read their amazing conversation.