Alone: An Animated Lament

Alone (Egyedül) is a beautifully grim short film by Hungarian animator Mendrei Miklos, telling the story of a man for whom time stands suffocatingly still as days and months blend into each other in the abyss of his loneliness — not the bored-on-a-Friday-night kind, but the kind of soul-crushing existential emptiness that drains life of joy and meaning.

Part Kafka, part Saul Bass, the film captures the outer limits of something all of us have felt, perhaps on a tamer scale, and a fear that haunts us as we move, often mindlessly, through our daily routines.

Before you let your heart shrink with the painful narrative, hurry up and ingest this powerful antidote from a few months ago: How To Be Alone, a soul-warming homage to life’s most important skill.

Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s what to expect. Like? Sign up.

Everyone Forever Now: Subcultural Storytelling

What knowing thy neighbor has to do with solar-powered beach bums.

Subcultures and niche rituals are what make humanity the layered, complex and fascinating phenomenon that it is. Everyone Forever Now is “an episodic motion-based media project” documenting different facets of our collective eccentricity. The project consists of three thematic films, each exploring a different cultural practice: tanning, stoop sitting and shooting a gun.

It makes you feel like you have a place, like you belong with people. It’s almost like family. It is family.”

The project comes from production duo William Hoffman and Daniel Mercadante, better known as Everynone — the same team that a few months ago brought us Words, the wonderful conceptual short film for WNYC’s Radiolab.

I understand that component of being so focused you’re absent of thought. I own a yoga instruction company and they all think it’s a riot that the yoga teacher goes out and fires weapons but it’s definitely not a contradiction.”

What makes the project particularly fantastic are the beautiful cinematography, meticulous art direction and thoughtful audio editing that weave together mesmerizing storytelling and fascinating (sub)cultural anthropology in a way that give these communities and subcultures a palpable, deeply human soul.

Being a true beach bum, or beach person, or solar-powered, as I prefer to call it, I’m searching for… I’m searching for self.”

We’ve got a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s an example. Like? Sign up.

In The Dark: A Documentary about Rollerblading

Those of us who came of age in the 90s may recall rollerblading as a particularly prominent fad du jour, one that can be traced as far back as the freewheelin’ 1960s. (Janis Joplin’s Rollerskate Song, anyone?) But unbeknownst to most, the death of the rollerblading fad has actually sprouted a thriving subculture, brimming with passion, competition and community.

In The Dark is a fascinating documentary about the rollerblading subculture by Boston-based filmmaker Kyle Couture, featuring some of the world’s top masters of the sport.

There’s no real games to win or lose at. You’re battling yourself, basically, every time you go out.”

via Fubiz

Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s an example. Like? Sign up.

Andrew Zuckerman’s Powerful Portraits of Music Icons

What the power of curiosity has to do with the most universal human language.

We’re longtime fans of photographer Andrew Zuckerman. Last year, he brought us Wisdom — an absolutely beautiful, both aesthetically and conceptually, book and film capturing profound existential insights by 50 of our time’s greatest writers, artists, philosophers, politicians, designers, activists, musicians, religious and business leaders over the age of 65. This year, we’ve been anxiously awaiting his latest project and it has finally arrived: Music — a fascinating journey into the souls of 50 of today’s greatest living music icons.

The book, a breathtaking hardcover beauty, features portraits of the 50 musicians — including Yoko Ono, Common, David Crosby, Ani DiFranco, Ben Gibbard, Philip Glass, Herbie Hancock, Karen O, Kid Rock, Lenny Kravitz and Iggy Pop — photographed in Zuckerberman’s signature style of intimate closeups on crisp white background, alongside interviews that reveal everything from their creative process to intimate insight into their relationship with music and the world.

My curiosity, I think, is the thing that drives everything.” ~ Herbie Hancock

Of all the languages that human beings use to communicate with each other, [music] is the language which is the most eloquent and the most universal.” ~ Philip Glass

Each copy of the book comes with a unique code for downloading the companion film, which features beautifully shot, deeply moving interviews with the 50 music icons:

Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music. And I will never have enough time to know what I want to know and to be able to contribute what I possibly could. So, I keep working at it.” ~ John Williams

The project even comes as an iPad app, for a touch of smart transmedia storytelling.

Zuckerman recently spoke at the excellent Creative Mornings series by Swiss Miss. Keep an eye out on their Vimeo channel, where his talk — a guaranteed blockbuster — should appear shortly.

The impressive behind-the-scenes footage demonstrates just how much work, thought and creativity went into the project:

Zuckerman’s work remains a Brain Pickings favorite and Music is among the best books you could give, get and indulge in this holiday season. Do.

Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s an example. Like? Sign up.