England was home to the first great school of classical chamber music, preceding the Viennese School of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven by two centuries.
John Dowland and the lost English Consort School of chamber music
Why Airbnb ain’t my cup of tea
The ambiguous host/guest boundary in many Airbnb households makes for most inhospitable stays.
American rococo
The rococoesque beauty of the American ghetto and the obese.
Philip Glass and Tan Dun
The two most prominent American composers of our time have more in common than it would seem.
Multiply, cascade, explode: A theory of literary fiction
“Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: ‘Here are our monsters,’ without immediately turning the monsters into pets” — Derrida
A Shakespeare sex-and-violence starter kit
It was not just Shakespeare’s obsession; we can assume virtually the entire audience attending his plays was syphilitic.
Theatrics of Japanese Noh, Kabuki, and the mixed-bathing Onsen
A visit to a nude mixed-bathing Onsen revealed more than passing resemblance to the traditional Japanese dramatic stage.
August Stramm, poems (trans. Isham Cook)
Poems like teeth grinding away grammar: Germany’s Expressionist poet who died on the front in WWI.
Isham Cook, poems 1986-88
Bizarre experiments in poetry while under the influence of cannabis.
ISHAM COOK 