• A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

  NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the Booker Prize-winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo and Tenth of December comes a literary master class on what makes great stories work and what they can tell us about ourselves-and our world today. LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL AWARD • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, NPR, Time, San Francisco Chronicle, Esquire, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Town & Country, The Rumpus, Electric Lit, Thrillist, BookPage • "[A] worship song to writers and readers."-Oprah Daily For the last twenty years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it's more relevant than ever in these turbulent times. In his introduction, Saunders writes, "We're going to enter seven fastidiously constructed scale models of the world, made for a specific purpose that our time maybe doesn't fully endorse but that these writers accepted implicitly as the aim of art-namely, to ask the big questions, questions like, How are we supposed to be living down here? What were we put here to accomplish? What should we value? What is truth, anyway, and how might we recognize it?" He approaches the stories technically yet accessibly, and through them explains how narrative functions; why we stay immersed in a story and why we resist it; and the bedrock virtues a writer must foster. The process of writing, Saunders reminds us, is a technical craft, but also a way of training oneself to see the world with new openness and curiosity. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a deep exploration not just of how great writing works but of how the mind itself works while reading, and of how the reading and writing of stories make genuine connection possible.

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  A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

  THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER PICKED BY THE SUNDAY TIMES, GUARDIAN, INDEPENDENT, IRISH TIMES, SPECTATOR, TLS, NEW STATESMAN, MAIL ON SUNDAY, I PAPER, PROSPECT, REVEW31 AND EVENING STANDARD AS A BOOK OF 2021 'A masterclass from a warm and engagingly enthusiastic companion' Guardian Summer Reading Picks 2021 'This book is a delight, and it's about delight too. How necessary, at our particular moment' Tessa Hadley ________________ From the New York Times-bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo and Tenth of December comes a literary master class on what makes great stories work and what they can tell us about ourselves - and our world today. For the last twenty years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it's more relevant than ever in these turbulent times. In his introduction, Saunders writes, "We're going to enter seven fastidiously constructed scale models of the world, made for a specific purpose that our time maybe doesn't fully endorse but that these writers accepted implicitly as the aim of art-namely, to ask the big questions, questions like, How are we supposed to be living down here? What were we put here to accomplish? What should we value? What is truth, anyway, and how might we recognize it?" He approaches the stories technically yet accessibly, and through them explains how narrative functions; why we stay immersed in a story and why we resist it; and the bedrock virtues a writer must foster. The process of writing, Saunders reminds us, is a technical craft, but also a way of training oneself to see the world with new openness and curiosity. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a deep exploration not just of how great writing works but of how the mind itself works while reading, and of how the reading and writing of stories make genuine connection possible.

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  The Loud Silence

  Der Römer Donato Dozzy (Afterhour-DJ der Panorama Bar, Voices From The Lake) ist inzwischen einer der Superstars in der Nische zwischen Ambient, Dub und Techno.Der Römer ist seit den späten 80ern als DJ aktive seine ersten Maxi-Releases erscheinen erst 2004. In Berlin steigt er zum Afterhour-Resident-DJ in der noch jungen Panorama Bar auf. Drei Jahre bleibt Dozzy in Berlin, verbessert seine Produktionstechniken, vernetzt sich bestens mit den Berghain-Künstlern und kehrt 2007 als in Kennerkreisen gefeierter Techno-DJ nach Italien zurück. Nach Maxi-Releases auf Mental Groove, Curle Recordings und Mule Electronique erschien 2010 mit K sein erstes Album, gefolgt vom Longplayer seines zusammen mit dem Produzenten Neel gestarteten Projekts Voices From The Lake. Bei den Releases von Dozzy klingen trotz aller Abstraktion immer auch seine Psychedelic-Wurzeln, die Vorliebe für The Who, mit an. Seine Tracks lassen sich irgendwo zwischen Ambient, Dub und Techno verorten. Diese Genres bilden die Fixpunkte in den DJ-Sets von Donato Dozzy, die ihre graduellen Veränderungen auszeichnen und die einen ausgeprägt hypnotischen Charakter entfalten. The Loud Silence widmet sich als Konzeptalbum einem Instrument: Der Maultrommel. In April of this year, Donato Dozzy took a set of mouth harps back to his parent's house in the Italian countryside and set about exploring the possibilities of that most basic of instruments. The mouth harp had been calling to Dozzy ever since childhood, when he had discovered the marranzano on a holiday in Sicily with this parents at the tail end of the 1970s. Almost four decades later, Dozzy had begun to see in this peculiar, ancient sound, the roots of the music he'd been making and playing in clubs all these years. It was time to find out how far he could trace it all back. The Loud Silence is the result of those explorations, an accompanied deep-dive into childhood memory, social history and the roots of psychedelia. Recorded indoors and outdoors, half-way up mountains and on the edge of the Mediterranean sea, the record is meditative but also powerful. Dozzy has distilled his ideas into an incredibly intimate sound, one that invites an inverted sort of exploration, pushing you further and further into your own head. Each track maintains an inviolable central pulse, while delicate, fluttering sounds hint at vast spaces that might open up at any minute - they're just waiting for you to connect with them. Field recordings hover below the resonating harps, adding to the mysterious atmosphere. Tracks like 'The Loud Silence' and 'Downhill to the Sea' are wrapped up in simple rhythms, their strict throb drawing you deeper and deeper into the primitive sound. Where so much of today's trance-inducing music is mechanical, born of grids and microchips, The Loud Silence pulses with the presence of the human body. As Dozzy says, The hand gives the tempo, together with the breath. It's all about the mouth, the ears, the hands. The organic physicality of the sound, made in concert with the body itself, generates a primal response in the listener, an undeniably visceral understanding, an empathetic resonance. When you play such an instrument, you'll feel all your bones vibrating to the sound in a sort of chain reaction! says Dozzy. It becomes an emotional and physical clean up. In Italy, one of the ways to call the jew's harp is 'scacciapensieri', which literally means 'It kicks thoughts away'. The sound and its effects also carry with them a sense of history, of community and of social ritual. Trance states, whether shamanic rituals in the Amazon or DJ sets in dark night-clubs, have always relied on a social element, a communal understanding of what is going on, what is expected to happen. The Loud Silence is a personal album that speaks to this communal experience, that wonders implicitly why these ancient ideas of society and community have been so devalued today. In a moment where all individuals seem to act egoistically and not as a tribe, says Dozzy, This music gives me the sense of continuity with the past. Throughout history, states of altered consciousness have been religious, political, poetical or nihilistic, but rarely ever just a means of innocent entertainment. There is something inherently transgressive about removing the shackles of individual will and succumbing to something larger than yourself. Giving up your base desires and ambitions in favour of a sound, to submit yourself to something as simple and fleeting as vibrations in the air, the sound of some metal resonating in another person's mouth, is a way to communicate with the part of you which is in everyone else too. It's a way to reach both in and out at once, to the heart of what it is to be human on this planet. At a time when nations are burning and whole continents are on the edge of breaking apart, recognising the bonds that bring and hold people together, recognising that what we share is what truly defines us, couldn't be more important. The Loud Silence is Dozzy's second solo album, and it sees him return to Further Records, where he released his first solo LP, K, in 2010. On the surface, there might seem to be a world of difference between this record and K, but they share the same sense of dynamic movement within a limited sphere. It's not minimal exactly - it's hard to describe such a rich sound as minimal or reduced in any way - but it is music that gets the most out of a small, well-chosen set of tools. Like on the recent album Sintetizzatrice, a full-length collaboration with singer Anna Caragnano, and a forthcoming Further LP from Aquaplano studio partner Nuel, the ability to make a single element - voice, synthesizer, mouth-harp - the centre of a musical world is enthralling. The Loud Silence is a testament to this eagerness to unearth the historical and social resonances of lone instruments, to see what traditions, what emotions, lie hidden in the most familiar sounds. Anyone who has followed Dozzy's work over the years, whether the celebrated Voices from the Lake collaboration with Neel, the otherworldly mixes he's done for MNML SSGS and electronique.it, or particularly his album of Bee Mask remixes for the Spectrum Spools label, will see that The Loud Silence is a continuation of a life-long fascination with sound and its potential to bring people, times and places together. It's one more stunning chapter in a musical career that has never shirked the task of digging deep into the sounds that move us. This record is the first in a series exploring the depth of one instrument - next up in the series a solo record from Nuel that explores the Ekdahl Polygamist. TRACKS: 1. Personal Rock (5:03) 2. Cross Panorama (4:10) 3. The Loud Silence (4:09) 4. The Net (4:34) 5. For Arnaud (3:58) 6. Downhill to the Sea (6:08) 7. Concert for Sails (3:44) 8. Exit The Acropolis (6:04)

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  One Day University: The Scientific Genius (And Rivalry) Of Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla

  One Day University presents a series of video lectures recorded in real-time from some of the top minds in the United States. Given by award-winning professors and experts in their field, these recorded lectures dive deep into the worlds of religion, government, literature, and social justice. When Thomas Edison died on October 18, 1931, the lights went out. In his honor, President Herbert Hoover asked Americans everywhere to turn off their Edison lightbulbs at 10 p.m. on the evening of his funeral. "Thomas Edison, Genius Inventor, Dies at 84" screamed the front-page headline in the New York Daily News. When Nikola Tesla died in room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel on January 7, 1943, the lights went out for him alone. Tesla was surrounded, not by a family, but by his pet pigeons (among his eccentricities were Columbophilia and Triphilia-look at his room number). The obituary in The New York Times did not call Tesla a genius. Instead, it's final paragraphs implied he was a crackpot: Tesla had conceived of a "death beam" powerful enough to annihilate an army of 1, 000, 000 soldiers, and he was certain of intergalactic messaging that would allow communication with Mars. The Times obituary implicitly posed this question: Was Tesla a visionary genius or a lunatic? Edison and Tesla (Edison's one-time employee) were arch-enemies with competing visions as to how to electrically empower America. Their hostility played out in the infamous War of the Currents, which culminated in the electrocution of Topsy the circus elephant in 1903, orchestrated and filmed by Edison, but intentionally using Tesla's controversial AC current. Radio, television, robots, electric cars, self-driving cars, solar heating, the internet, and the cellphone were on the mind of one or the other of these geniuses. Which one ultimately proved to have the more accurate and enduring vision for the world? Who is in the news today and why? Come and find out the answers.

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  Bhakti: Devotion

  BABA "The end goal of education is character. The end goal of knowledge is unconditional love. The end goal of wisdom is freedom. The end goal of culture is perfection." - Bhagwan Sri Satya Sai Baba Few have influenced the spirit of modern India as Bhagwan Sri Satya Sai Baba. Baba's thoughts, words, sentiments and actions permeate the lives of human beings everywhere regardless of origin or faith. Baba's vision of a better world is exemplified in the exceptional schools, universities, hospitals, housing and drinking-water supply projects built by his charities to serve and enhance societies in hundreds of countries. A life of truth, righteousness, peace, love and non-violence is a life dedicated to Baba. THE MUSIC BHAKTI : DEVOTION celebrates the eternal spirit of Baba through music. The inimitable sisters Kalaimamanigal Radha & Jayalakshmi join some of the most eminent musicians of India to sing twelve songs espousing Baba's values composed and conducted by Pt. Vijay Raghav Rao. Through the past seven decades, legendary flautist, innovative composer, pioneering choreographer and erudite musicologist Pt. Vijay Raghav Rao has shaped and indelibly influenced the essential form and derivatives of culture known to the world as classically Indian. Pt. Vijay Raghav Rao's is a rare brilliance on the cultural firmament in India and abroad. Marked by characteristic excellence, his work has always carried an exuberance of spirit. In BHAKTI : DEVOTION Panditji leads a stellar cast of renowned singers and musicians to celebrate the aesthetic joy inherent in spirituality. ART & SPIRITUALITY In the interview below, Pt. Vijay Raghav Rao elaborates on the confluence of art and spirituality. Question: What is spirituality? Answer: It is perhaps an inwardly soulful vivacity, well defined as an immaterial, eternal, pure state of mind devoid of all physical tensions, illusions, or wants. It is what makes the mortal an immortal. Q: Are you spiritual? A: Just to say 'yes, i am' is sheer hypocrisy. All achievements, attainments or professional skills of a human being - I think - are ultimately aimed at making him/her a ' spiritual' person: a true human being guided by a spirit that can conquer his / her self. That spirit embodies my ideals. As I seek it through my thoughts, it transforms my actions. In the serene, unconscious manner of a prayer with tangible consequences, my spirituality allows me successively increasing amounts of self-fulfillment. Complete self-fulfillment is a state of true independence. Liberation is another moniker for that state of being. As we seek what we know is an infinite expanse of ideals, we regulate our processes accordingly, and eventually liberate ourselves. I think liberation is the process of fully coming to terms with oneself, free from non-idealistic bondage. Every human is endowed with a fund of divinity, the complete potential of our ideals. Artistes seek it as a matter of skill, those less prone to expression seek it through prayer. When we strive to realize that innermost being and it's consequent divinity, we seek to be spiritual. 'Spirituality' is a process of such realization. If I am engaged in this process, I am spiritual. I wish to be spiritual in every action of mine and earnestly attempt to seek it's blessings. Q: How does your spirituality influence your expressions? A: My spirituality guides me when I create. It offers me inspiration. It makes me humble. It provides me with an anchor. It puts my muse in perspective. It is the essence of any innovation I attempt. When my creations rise above what is mundane and appear to be genuine, everlasting, they implicitly suggest a lingering, pervasive aesthetic. That aesthetic is significantly intertwined with my spirituality. Because what I seek through my spirituality is intrinsically unique to my being, my aesthetic is original too. Technically perfect pieces of art begin to enlighten beyond their compass if they were founded on the basis of spirituality. Entertaining is no longer an audience driven exercise - with spirituality, the performer begins to express a soul. Q: Can there be such an entity as a non-spiritual artiste? A: The world is populated with human beings of all kinds. Simple expression sometimes becomes high art. Much vacuous expression is passed off as art. Intentions drive human beings to the extremes of their potential: evil masquerades under guises of acceptable expression. There is much tacit approval of non-art, rooted as it is in a confusion of metaphor or medium. A lot of this comes from non-spiritual expressionists. They exist, and they practice, and they foist their mindsets on unsuspecting audiences. They are a necessary barometer of free societies: for every action, the unavoidable reaction. Yet, in my opinion, true art has always had it's roots in introspection. Art is a journey from the realms of the self to the non-self. The moment one undertakes the responsibility of making that trip, he / she invariably operates in the realm of spirituality. To be an artiste, therefore, is to be spiritual. Art is the language of the spirit. A non-spiritual artiste, thus, is a rare species. Q: Is the artist's nature the same as his spirit? A: Through constant 'sadhana', by virtue of an innate discipline in consequent expression, an artiste could attain a level of maturity that allows him / her to realize all his / her visions and his / her dreams, consistently, at the level of complete perfection. In that stratosphere, over time's passage, he /she could conceivably express his / her imagination through the process of conquering self-defining traits, so that his / her spirit is allowed free reign. What he / she expresses then is the spirit in it's full glory. Shorn of what is fleeting, devoid of the artiste, completely representing his / her art. The spirit is the art, then, the spirit is the artiste. There is a resplendent symmetry in the artiste's nature, his / her medium, and what it carries outward. Perhaps this is utopian, maybe it is an ideal as unattainable as the spirit itself. Perhaps that state of being is what characterizes saints who practice artforms - Thyagaraja is a case in point. In such states of consciousness physical existence is not a desire. Art outlives the artiste. Q: Is God an artiste? A: Can you ever believe that nature - our nature, beautiful, colorful, multivariate - , throbbing with a multitude of energies, seething with a billion forms extending well into the reaches of time and space, that this nature could ever be the work of a non-artiste? I believe God is the net essence of all knowledge, truth, energy and purity. He / She is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent. That essence is achieved through several lifetimes of inculcating and honing of an ephemeral spirituality. The quest of a typical human lifetime is to harness it's skills, knowledge, capacity and deeds to move toward a sense of godliness. In that framework, we human beings are all engaged in the process of making art. An art that meshes with the grand order of natural process - the ultimate work of art. In that order worlds exist in majestic splendor to sustain life, and just as majestically self-destruct, so that newer worlds of fresher truths take their natural place. If that is not art, what is. If that is not the artiste's dream, what is. Q: What has been the role of God in your art? A: To me God represents exquisite energy: immaterial, immortal, eternal energy. As I create, I seek recourse to that perennial energy. I can seek to perfect my expressions that way. Work becomes a form of worship. I am able to sustain my spirits for interminable lengths of time. My creations take on a completeness of meaning. I seek symmetries with pieces of nature. Can my interpretation of a Raga induce it's natural mood in the ears and minds of my connoisseurs? I work within a divine frame of reference. I develop an aesthetic which is uniquely mine. I am more mature as an artiste because I

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  Fantasy

  Composers have used the word 'fantasy' in myriad ways, taking advantage of both it's implied lack of formal structure, and the exploration of the imagination. A fantasy can be a spontaneous improvisation on a simple chord structure (Mozart), a development of a single theme (Schubert), a celebration of multiple themes (Hirtz and Di Liberto) or a full-scale original work (Schumann). The Wanderer Fantasy (1822) is Franz Schubert's most openly virtuosic work for piano, and as such first drew me in as a teenager looking for technical challenges. Fortunately my teacher Lee Kum-Sing opened my eyes and ears to the music behind the notes. Remarkably, the genesis for all four movements is the smallest kernel of a rhythmic idea that Schubert took from his own song Der Wanderer. Aficionados of Morse Code will recognize the letter D in the opening measures of each movement. William Hirtz's Wizard of Oz Fantasy (1999) was originally commissioned as a piano duet for Karen Kushner and Igor Kipnis. I gratefully accepted an offer from Mr. Hirtz to arrange a solo version, mistakenly assuming that a reduction for only two hands would have fewer notes. (I am happy to report that our close friendship has survived.) This ingenious fantasy enables Harold Arlen's glorious songs and Herbert Stothart's colorful incidental music to be heard in a piano recital setting. It is a tour-de force of pianistic creativity and a virtual compendium of advanced technique. Performing W.A. Mozart's Fantasy in D minor (1782) presents a particular challenge, as it is an unfinished work. My childhood copy has ten measures added by an editor, which bring the piece to a rather abrupt close. I have taken the liberty of improvising my own ending. If the last minute and a half is not to your liking, do not blame Mozart! Fantasia sulla Cavalleria Rusticana (2005) was written by Sicilian pianist Calogero Di Liberto while he was completing his doctoral studies in my studio at The Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. In researching operatic fantasies for his doctoral document, he realized that he could compensate for the lack of a fantasy on Pietro Mascagni's immensely popular opera by writing his own. Di Liberto's brilliant understanding of the piano, and his lifelong love of Italian opera, shine through in this fantasy dedicated to his daughter Clara. Robert Schumann's Fantasy (1836) was my first major project (it may have qualified as an obsession) at The Juilliard School as a student of the legendary pedagogue Adele Marcus in 1980. My battered copy of the score is swathed in her markings: "Sentiment without sentimentality," "Proportion vs. freedom," and "Surge!" In these lessons I began to grasp the scope of a work whose artistic challenges far surpassed the considerable technical ones. A sign of this monumental work's enduring popularity occurred during the final editing process, when three of my students at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University were working on the Schumann Fantasy simultaneously. It has been a privilege to pass on the legacy of Miss Marcus' words of wisdom. Although I did make a few recordings at the beginning of my concert career, I was always ill at ease. I missed the inspiration of a live audience and the unpredictable nature of each performance. To me, a recording was a permanent document that I might instantly wish to disavow! Now, I thoroughly enjoy the process. I find satisfaction in trying a phrase one way, then another. I also appreciate my wife Aloysia Friedmann's special role as my recording session producer. Her musicianship, artistry and patience inspire me, and I trust her ears implicitly. In addition, it is wonderful to have the opportunity to bring new works to light, and I am delighted to have Hirtz and Di Liberto stand with pride beside Mozart, Schubert and Schumann. This recording is dedicated to the memory of Adele Marcus. PRODUCER Aloysia Friedmann POST-PRODUCTION Jon Kimura Parker and Aloysia Friedmann RECORDING AND EDITING Andy Bradley, SugarHill Studios, Houston, TX MASTERING Chris Longwood, SugarHill Studios, Houston, TX CD DESIGN Wade Campbell PHOTOGRAPHS Tara McMullen PHOTO STYLING Liz Parker, lizpr.com MICROPHONES Telefunken/Schoeps, Francis X. Schmidt PIANO Hamburg Steinway #491220 Maintained and tuned by Dean Shank SPECIAL THANKS TO Sam Ersan, and to Dean Robert Yekovich and The Shepherd School of Music for making this recording possible All Wizard of Oz songs in medley © Harold Arlen, E.Y. Harburg, published by EMI Feist Catalog, Inc. Arrangement © William Hirtz Fantasia Sulla "Cavalleria Rusticana" Per Pianoforte By Calogero Di Liberto. Copyright and Publishing Casa Musicale Sonzogno, Milan, Italy.

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