Episode 31 - Life, Art, & Experience: A Conversation

Darron and Jeff have a free-form discussion that was inspired by a Bruce Springsteen concert, a Beatles song, and a subsequent text message, about the role of art in our lives and experiences - both how our experiences shape our perceptions of art, and how art shapes our experiences. They talk about children and how their interaction with art helps them develop their self concept, they talk about the feelings and emotional responses we have to art, and how art connects us to both the artist and each other while at the same time helping us to shape meaning in our lives.

Notes:

• 2:30 - Listen to “Now And Then” by The Beatles (YouTube)

• 3:24 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 22 - What is Life? from March 2022

• 4:00 - The “Hunting House” is in Clarendon, VT

• 5:14 - Adaptation (2002) and Into the Wild (2007)

• 6:44 - Bruce Springsteen at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, September 3, 2023

• 10:57 - boygenius at Westville Music Bowl in New Haven, September 28, 2023

• 11:05 - boygenius is Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker

• 12:05 - See “The Infinite Gay Joy of Boygenius” and “Boygenius’ Big, Emotional, Gay-as-Hell Night Out at Madison Square Garden” (this happened to be the next show after the New Haven show)

• 12:20 - See some Jeff Tweedy between song banter (YouTube)

• 14:10 - Collective effervescence is a sociological concept coined by Émile Durkheim, read the Wikipedia entry

• 14:20 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 21 - The Myth of the Desert Island Self from January 2022

• 16:57 - Writing in The Atlantic about his new book, World Within A Song, Jeff Tweedy says “No matter how many people hear the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life,” there’s only one version that belongs to you. Our appraisals might align, but I doubt your version includes a memory of waiting for the doors to open at an all-ages Jodie Foster’s Army concert on Laclede’s Landing, in St. Louis, as a flooding Mississippi River rages down Wharf Street and heaves up onto the steps of the Gateway Arch. Your mind melting down on mushrooms, watching a husband-and-wife street-performing duo sing “A Day in the Life” while their toddler does laps around you keeping shockingly good time on a tambourine. It’d be cool if we could see the worlds within the songs inside one another’s heads. But I also love how impenetrable it all is. I love that what’s mine can’t be yours, and we still get to call it ours. Songs are the best way I know to make peace with our lack of a shared consciousness.”

• 17:55 - Read “Tradition and the Individual Talent” by T.S. Eliot (Poetry Foundation)

• 18:06 - Homer (Poetry Foundation)

• 18:15 - Read “The Wasteland” by T.S. Eliot (Poetry Foundation)

• 19:05 - The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

• 21:25 - The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

• 21:48 - The exact quote comes from chapter 7 of The Great Gatsby - "What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon?" cried Daisy, "and the day after that, and the next thirty years?" "Don't be morbid," Jordan said. "Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall."

• 24:05 - The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

• 26:55 - Listen to the 2023 mix of “Love Me Do” and the 2009 remaster of the original mono recording by The Beatles

• 28:00 - Watch “Now And Then - The Last Beatles Song,” a short film about how the song was made using old recordings, new recordings, and modern technology

• 33:19 - The Beatles: Get Back

• 42:55 - The Magnificent Seven (2016), The Magnificent Seven (1960), and Seven Samurai (1954) directed by Akira Kursowa

• 44:25 - For (much much) more on Jeff and Darron’s experiences with Bob Dylan listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 2 - Our Back Pages from September 2020