The Organist

Since the early 2000s, Joshua Beckman has experimented with nature of performing poetry. He has traveled with gangs of poets around the country in a bus, reading in far-flung and unusual venues. He has written live improvisational collaborative poems and recently has given many one-on-one poetry readings. In this episode of The Organist, Ross Simonini speaks to Beckman about the way he reads and writes his poetry aloud, his favorite poetry recordings, and the many poetsâ€"Lew Welch, Frank O'Hara, Robert Creeleyâ€"whose verbal and performative antics have inspired him.

Joshua Beckman's Poetry Mixtape

For The Organist, Joshua Beckman selected eight of his favorite audio recordings of poets performing their work aloud.

1. John Cage - Mushroom Haiku
2. John Wieners - from Memories in a Small Apartment
3. Lorenzo Thomas - Anuresis
4. Eileen Myles - April 5th
5. Bernadette Mayer - 1979
6. Kenneth Koch and Allen Ginsberg - Improvisation
7. Helen Adam - Cheerless Junkie's Song
8. Yoko Ono - Let's Go Flying

Banner image of Lew Welch appears via the Poetry Foundation.

David Shields's new book got his publisher sued by the New York Times. Then his publisher sued Shields. But the fair-use questions surrounding these lawsuits aren't even the most controversial aspects of the book. War Is Beautiful gathers sixty-four color combat photos that appeared on the front page of the New York Times between 1997 and 2013, and many of the photos are, despite their subject matter, quite beautiful. We see a US military convoy driving through a luminous orange sandstorm in Iraq, a pop-art close- up of two homemade Iranian bullet casings, and an Apocalypse Now–grade shot of a marine vehicle sweeping through an Iraqi palm grove in glowing dawn light.

Shields argues that these images make a break with the photojournalistic tradition of artful but disturbing photos of war, from the Civil War to Vietnam. Instead, he says, these images function much like Judith Miller's reporting from Iraq: manufacturing our tacit consent for war. The Organist spoke with Shields about this strange, polemical new coffee-table book he's produced.

(And, after the credits roll: a short tribute to Alvin Buenaventura, 1976-2016.)

Banner image from War is Beautiful by David Shields, published by powerHouse Books

Since the early ‘90s, Graham Lambkin has created music that pushes the song form to its limits, using noise, samples, spoken word, and any sound that has the good fortune of finding its way into his field recorder. In this “Listening History†episode of The Organist, Lambkin discusses some of the songs that formed his sensibility, from experimental UK postpunk to the a recording of his family listening to Italian prog rock on a road trip through Britain.

Bina Rothblatt sat down at a computer and typed in her memories and thoughts and likes and dislikes for several days. Scientists at Hanson Robotics then took this "mind-file" she'd made and used it to create Bina48: a head-and-shoulders cyborg that appears to have many of the same memories and preferences as the "real" Bina, along with some unique fears and ideas of her own. The Organist sent Lois Parshley to the stifling garage in rural Vermont where Bina48 sits perched on a desk to talk with her and her full-time caretaker, Bruce Duncan, about the promise and the peril at the cutting edge of Artificial Intelligence.

Image Credit: Lois Parshley

Located in a narrow alley in Lower Manhattan inside what used to be the ground floor of a freight elevator shaft, Alex Kalman's Mmuseumm operates in a space that is almost as understated as the objects it exhibits. Kalman gives Rob Walker a guided tour through the exhibitions on display, which include homemade gas masks, KFC corsages, and a delicately detailed taxonomy of cornflakes.

Banner Image Credit: Alex Kalman / Mmuseumm

Today’s story is about a family business that sells nothing. Alan Zorthian and his daughter, Caroline, are the owners and operators of Zorthian Ranch. It’s hard to say what their jobs actually are â€" other than being Zorthians.

Alan’s father, the artist Jirayr Zorthian, built the ranch more than seventy years ago. It resembles a sprawling village built of out of driftwood and washing machines, perched on the northeastern edge of L.A., beyond Pasadena and Altadena, over a wobbly bridge and up a dirt path.

Jirayr Zorthian’s most famous work of art was this ranch â€" the homemade buildings and sculptures as much as the legendary parties he threw there: parties where Charlie Parker performed to an increasingly naked audience; parties where Andy Warhol and Richard Feynman rubbed shoulders with Buckminster Fuller, and they all wandered around amid the goats and the bees and the artful piles of junk.

The ranch’s future is uncertain, and so The Organist sent a radio producer, Jen Rice, to find out what remains of Zorthian’s weird legacy.

Photos of Zorthian Ranch by Jen Rice and Amanda Siegel.

After more than two dozen books ranging from the history of philosophy to David Bowie, Simon Critchley has written his first novel, which connects the Renaissance mnemonic device called memory palace to, among other things, pop songs. For The Organist, Critchley provides a guided tour through the pop music that constructs his life's memories, offering reflections on Nietzsche, krautrock, Obama, and Swedish synth-pop along the way.

Jenny Slate (SNL, Obvious Child, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On) reads Lena Dunham's Erotic Male Jewish Comedian Fan Fiction. We also catch up with the legendary undercover NYPD whistleblower Frank Serpico (played by Al Pacino in the classic 1973 biopic) and Sarah Vowell offers a new definition of "the fog of war."

Produced by Jenny Ament and Jenna Weiss-Berman.

In this original radio drama written by Lena Dunham and performed by Dunham with Jack Antonoff, going insane and going straight to voicemail are intimately linked.

NOTE: This episode contains explicit content.

CREDITS: Written by Lena Dunham. Performed by Lena Dunham and Jack Antonoff. Produced by Jenna Weiss- Berman. Music by Andrew Dost.

Christopher Knowles is often described as autistic, and his relationship to language is repetitive, humorous, and singular. He has worked with the theater director Robert Wilson and compose Philip Glass to write and perform massive, influential 20th century stage works including Einstein on the Beach and The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin. Knowles is also a visual artist; his paintings are currently on display in his first retrospective, at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. He recently sat down with the Organist along with his new bride, the artist Sylvia Netzer, to discuss art making, mutual marital caretaking, and bad reviews.

Painting by Christopher Knowles: Courtesy of Christopher Knowles and Gavin Brown's Enterprise