The Top 10 Most Frequently Played Songs On Several Famous Authors’ iTunes
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER
1. Macy Gray “I Try”
2. Bon Iver “Towers”
3. Conor Oberst “First Day of My Life”
4. Bruce Springsteen “Prove It All Night”
5. Everclear “Father of Mine”
6. Outkast “Hey Ya!”
7. Conor Oberst “Milk Thistle”
8. Jay-Z “Big Pimpin (radio edit)”
9. Xiu Xiu “I Do What I Want, When I Want”
10. Bob Dylan “You’re a Big Girl Now”
“If Jonathan Safran Foer wakes up with an erection, he immediately puts on Bon Iver’s “Towers” and takes care of business. During the afternoons, if he is writing, he prefers the house to remain in silence, though sometimes when between projects he finds the Beckettian lyricism of Macy Gray’s “I Try” lends him a sense of willingness to challenge himself to take new leaps in ways a story might be told.” Read More (via true-grit)
When they talk about gender and academic skills, most people keep math and language separate. Boys are good at math, girls are good at language, and never the twain shall meet.
Guillermo Del Toro speaking about the notebooks he kept that became his film, “Pan’s Labyrinth”
Many artists talk about keeping a notebook as a place to start gathering ideas. Even if they’re not sure about what the project is, they begin to gather things into their notebook that have a certain magnetic quality, that somehow feel related to this future project. A notebook as a place to start letting images and accumulate until something starts to take on some kind of a shape, almost on its own. Something like a dust ball galaxy begins to roll, something that could not have been predicted
Notebooks are a good staging area for this kind of accumulation of images and ideas.
“From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood. There was poetry for quiet companionship. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories when she came into adolescence and when she wanted to feel a closeness to someone she could read a biography. On that day when she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived.” ― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Photo by Dimitri Caceaune)
Teaching the Teacher
Anytime someone tries to use new media for the first couple of times it can be rough. That’s what I’ve found with this tumblr thing. I find that I get so easily distracted—“oh, look at that!”—that I am not sure if I am approaching this right.
Students, teach me. What am I doing right? What am I doing wrong? What could I do better? Recommendations? Suggestions?
Show me how Internet savvy you are!
