I Assassin Down the Avenue

“Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’s triumph was in how it captured a facet of human nature: the way we all send signals, hoping that someone will understand them but also anxious about what happens when someone does. You’ll sometimes hear the album get called cryptic, or self-conscious, or difficult. And that’s fine. It’s really a soundtrack for the ways in which people ask to be misunderstood.”

- “What Yankee Hotel Foxtrot Said”, The Atlantic

Cormac McCarthy v. Three 6 Mafia

Cormac McCarthy and Three 6 Mafia share no small number of traits.They both like talking about guns and blood and alcohol and thugs and killers and the dark. Neither is afraid to abuse the rules of punctuation or make up language. Both also have ten major primary works spanning several decades. I decided to compare their histories head-to-head to see who comes out on top.

You’re going to want to read this.

Bob Dylan’s Brain

“Dylan was describing the uncontrollable rush of a creative insight…This was the thrilling discovery that saved Dylan’s career: he could write vivid lines filled with possibility without knowing exactly what those possibilities were…Dylan suddenly realized that it was possible to celebrate vagueness, to write lines that didn’t insist on making sense.”

Really interesting new article in the Guardian on the neuroscience behind Bob Dylan’s creativity, and which may explain lyrics such as “Now you see this one-eyed midget/Shouting the word ‘NOW’/and you say ‘for what reason?’/and he says ‘how?’”

Weekend Failures

“Just by sheer happenstance, you had two polarizing, media-constructed diamonds shatter to pieces on national television.”

What I Learned From My Weekend with Lana Del Rey and Tim Tebow: a Consequence of Sound article comparing Tim Tebow getting crushed by the Patriots to Lana Del Rey epically failing on SNL. Somehow, it makes perfect sense. 

10 Musicians Who Should Really Write Novels

#9 Matt Beringer of the National

Berninger’s lyrics can move from heartbreaking to deadly ominous in a moment, and he easily wrenches the listener along with him — we think he’d do even better with the density of prose. You know the man reads — his wife was once the fiction editor for The New Yorker. And finally, because he’s a confident liar, of course, which can’t hurt.

Full article here. Other musicians include Kevin Barnes (Of Montreal), Joanna Newsom, and Stuart Murdoch (Belle & Sebastian).

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