Category Archives: New Utopia

This weekend, the blues duo of James Montgomery and Bruce Marshall will be doing the one thing every musician in the area wishes they could do: playing a live show, with an audience, in the open air.

Three weeks ago, the Tupelo Music Hall became the first venue in America to experiment with drive-in concerts. Dover, N.H., native Tim Theriault was officially the first to play, followed by the first national name: prog-rock singer/bassist Kasim Sulton of Utopia, in a show that got some national coverage.

The experience is, of course, different from a pre-pandemic club show. Patrons are changed by the carful so you can get a bargain by packing your family in, but large RVs arent allowed. Drinking is also out since youre in a car, though the club will be selling food. Bands play outside the clubs entrance, and patrons either set up outside their cars or listen through their radio. And of course, theres no interacting with the band or the rest of the crowd and with a 6 p.m. start time, it ends well before pre-shutdown concerts usually began. But above all, its still live music, in as safe as a setting as it currently gets.

For singer/guitarist Marshall, the moment couldnt have come too soon. Ive literally been doing this as a pro for 46 years, and this is by far the longest I have ever gone without a show. James and I will be standing six feet apart but well be interacting; and Im going to have to watch out because hes got some serious lung power when he plays harmonica. But we wont be off in separate capsules. Ill have a mask on but Ill keep it around my neck when Im singing. Its a gigging mask, if you will.

Longtime mainstays of the local blues and roots scene, Montgomery and Marshall have already played every other kind of gig there is. They put their duo together 26 years ago, to fill space when their regular bands had a night off. Its a pretty high-energy duo; I like to tell people its an eight-piece R&B revue except that its only James and me. I used a looper on my acoustic guitar and he likes the big kicks and the long endings, so we do that. We play our originals and dip into our well of post-war blues, with Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters songs. I can see that for this show well have to animate a little more, maybe sell it a little harder. Its probably not the best time to pull off a crooning kind of ballad.

Marshall expects to play more drive-in shows over the summer as more venues start opening up. Ive talked to some people who are stick in the muds about it, theyll say I need that direct audience to musician connection and this just isnt for me. But look, this is what weve got right now. Its better than not playing at all, and things are going to get better. Im not saying this is the new normal because things will get back to the way they were. But I think this will translate well in the meantime.

James Montgomery and Bruce Marshall at the Tupelo Music Hall in Derry, N.H. Friday, at 6 p.m.; tickets $75 (per car) at tupelomusichall.com.

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Drive up & park for live blues by Montgomery and Marshall - Boston Herald

In The 1990s, We All Became Free: In Conversation with Jiakun Liu of Jiakun Architects

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Jiakun Liu was born in 1956 in Chengdu, China. Architecture was not his first choice to pursue at school, as he originally wanted to be an artist. He heard that architecture had something to do with drawing, so he applied to Chongqing Institute of Architecture and Engineering, not fully understanding what his role as an architect would be. After his graduation in 1982, Liu worked at the Chengdu Architectural Design Academy for two years, the experience he did not enjoy. So, he set out on a self-searching journey that lasted for over a decade, spending time in Tibet and Xinjiang in West China where he practiced meditation, painting, and writing, producing several works of fiction, while officially working at the Literature Academy as a writer.

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In 1993, Liu was invited to attend an architectural exhibition by his former classmate. Encountering those projects suddenly rekindled his interest in architecture and he decided to give his dormant passion another chance. He finally started his practice, Jiakun Architects in 1999, in his hometown. Since then his work attracted universal acclaim that brought prestigious awards, including the 2003 Chinese Architecture and Art Prize. The architects work was exhibited both at Art and Architecture Venice Biennales and his solo exhibition at AEDES Gallery in Berlin was held in 2017. In 2018, Liu presented his inaugural Serpentine Pavilion Beijing. His architecture is rooted in social and vernacular traditions, oriental aesthetics, close observation of everyday life, refinement of folk skills and wisdom, and is characterized as being fully integrated with nature. The following conversation, a full version of which will be published in the upcoming book China Dialogues, was recorded as I spoke with Jiakun Liu over WeChat video call. Singapore-based graduate student Weili Zhang helped us with live translation.

Vladimir Belogolovsky: Your architecture is about making, building, and revealing the everyday, and what is authentic about living in China. What else is your work about? What is your main goal as an architect?

Jiakun Liu: There are many issues that I am very concerned about, particularly with the juxtaposition of the utopian and the everyday, modernity and traditions, collective memories and personal memory, as well as sustainability. In every one of my projects, I try to focus on all of these issues. Although each project will face comprehensive problems, the focus of each project will be different. Again, going back to one of my first projects, the Luyeyuan Stone Sculpture Art Museum, my key focus was on lyricism, on the poetry of space itself. But if you look at my West Village project here in Chengdu, you will find that the focus is much more on the social engagement of people. And not only those living there, but even those who live all around it. In fact, many of my projects pay particular attention to how they fit into their surroundings. If Luyeyuan Stone Sculpture Art Museum is the poetry, then West Village is sociology.

VB: Could you talk about your design process? In one of your lectures, you said that in most cases you work with unskilled laborers and before initiating your design you meet with them to discuss what they are capable of. I heard that you do that even before starting your design. You said in one of your lectures, Once I understand what the workers can do, then I can design my building. Is that right?

JL: This is true, but not in the very beginning. In the beginning, I will still have a basic conception of the overall design. Of course, I want to know what builders are capable of, so I dont design something they cant build. But in the very beginning, I spend time to discover various issues. First, I need to investigate the site and fully understand the context. During this stage, I would decide on what the problems are and how to tackle them.

VB: Ever since the 2008 Sichuan earthquake you initiated the use of brick or cement block reconstructed from the rubble of the demolished buildings to facilitate rebirth of culture and place. Due to the use of this technique you are referred to as the architect of memory. Could you talk about this technique and do you rely on it in your other projects since then?

JL: The origin of that rebirth brick idea was, of course, the fact that the earthquake left so much destruction and rubble. The immediate problem was all about rebuilding. So, it was important to come up with a creative and fast way to rebuild. And this technique proved to be very sustainable. I am very proud of being able to create a so-called building block for producing my own kind of architecture. And I kept using it for a while in a number of subsequent projects, even years after the earthquake. To this day I sometimes use this technique, but the source, the rubble from the earthquake has become very limited over the years and there is not much left of it.

VB: So, your idea of the rebirth brick did not merge into your iconic and unique way of building? Isnt there enough rubble from widespread demolition in China to keep this idea going?

JL: First, I dont consider this technique as my unique architectural gesture because I dont want to be tied to a single architectural element and be recognized for just one kind of attitude. The idea is to use this technique strategically where it is appropriate. The other reason is very mundane, which is the cost of such a process. Initially, right after the earthquake, there was a lot of readily available rubble and, therefore, the cost was very low. Whereas, now, if I want to continue using the same technique, I have to spend a lot of money and effort to find the rubble from a particular demolition. So now it has become more challenging and from the standpoint of sustainability, it no longer makes as much sense as before.

VB: What do you think about the notion of authorship in architecture? Are you at all concerned with how to leave a particular trace, your own mark, as an author? For example, would you say that your reliance on using the rebirth brick, even if strategic and not universal, is what makes your architecture distinctive, unique, and identifiable with you personally?

JL: I do care about authorship and personal character, and unique identity, but I dont think it needs to be conscious or contrived. It should come subconsciously and spontaneously, not deliberately. Of course, there are architects who are known for inventing their own formally recognizable language. But I dont belong to that camp. What I want to follow is not a fixed symbol or style, but a consolidated methodology and common spiritual temperament. Having a style is like a double-edged sword, it is beneficial for being recognized, but it puts a lot of limitations on what is possible.

VB: What single-term words would you use to describe your work most accurately or the kind of architecture you strive to achieve?

JL: I am not good at making conclusions with single words. Quite the opposite, as I like things to be inconclusive. Let me refer to Martin Heideggers poem Poetically Man Dwells. I like to think that poetry lies at the core of my work.

VB: What is a good building for you?

JL: I often question this myself What is a good building? What can we expect from good architecture? Well, it is like defining oneself, which is a very difficult task. I like different buildings for different reasons. But what I particularly like about any building is when I stand in front of it and experience an emotional sensation. At the same time, I like certain unsettledness. Speaking of my own buildings, I like it when I feel that I might have done something wrong. In other words, I like buildings that welcome alternative readings. I dont like architecture that pretends to be perfect. For example, my West Village is a maxi-courtyard that occupies an entire city block to maximize the inner area with sports activities and park, welcoming a diverse public life. Its key feature is that the entire courtyard was built along the streets, and the elevated walkways along the perimeter, floating above the rooftops. This constant change of altitude is unique, and it activates a dynamic flow of energy within the entire neighborhood. I see this project as a typological innovation, a new way of living together, a new social structure, even an attempt to build a new kind of urban utopia.

VB: In other words, what you are saying is that architecture has reached a certain level of relevance and creativity about a decade ago and since then it has not evolved much besides adjusting itself here and there, and it has turned into a formulaic style with all its rigidity and expectations, right?

JL: You can say that.

VB: Here is my perception so many independent architects in China are focused on the issue of regional identity. This offers a great alternative to so-called global architecture, but dont you think this predominant focus on history, traditions, materiality, and regionalism limits architects possibilities? There seems to be no such liberating and necessary premise that architecture could really be anything.

JL: I agree that there needs to be a balance. Nowadays we pay a great deal of attention to our history. However, we need to derive our ideas and inspirations from both our local culture and from whatever is learned and developed around the world. In fact, I disagree with the view that globalization needs to be resisted. That would lead to a closure of ideas and attitudes. Ideas should be shared and multiplied. We should take what is quintessential about different cultures to enrich our own. Architecture should benefit from creative ideas no matter where they come from.

VB: Together with such architects as Yung Ho Chang, Wang Shu, Li Xiaodong, and Zhu Pei you belong to the first generation of independent architects in China. I wonder how you see them as moving in one direction and sharing a particular common ground or do you perceive your work differently, and if so, in what way?

JL: Compare to some of the architects you mentioned I see myself as a latecomer. I went away for more than a decade and rekindled my interest in architecture when these architects were already practicing for quite some time. I think what we all have in common is a certain hunger for learning and opening up to many ideas that were out of reach before. And most of these architects were exposed to living and studying abroad for many years before coming back, so their work was infused by what they have learned overseas. And there was a kind of urgency to innovate and build after a long period of official government-approved style. Then in the 1990s, we all became free. I relate more to Wang Shu because his focus is on analyzing and reproaching our own culture and utilizing traditions in new and innovative ways. One fundamental difference between my work and Wang Shus is that I would never directly recycle ancient materials as entities. I respect tradition. I hope my work carries the spirit of Chinese traditions, but I dont want to bring ready-made traditional techniques and materials into my architecture, preferring to use contemporary techniques and materials. There is no ambiguity about what is contemporary and what is not.

VB: I read that in one of your interviews you pointed out that Many contemporary buildings dont have shadows. What did you mean by that?

JL: Let me correct that. I must have talked about the necessity for buildings to have what can be described as an atmosphere. Let me refer to the notion of shadows in In Praise of Shadows written by Japanese novelist Junichiro Tanizaki, not typical shadows we find in nature. A shadow is a physical phenomenon, but I referred to qualities that may not be quite visible. Yet, they are very important, nevertheless. For buildings to project a particular atmosphere or aura is very difficult to achieve. It is important for buildings to contain stories, even secrets.

Originally posted here:

In The 1990s, We All Became Free: In Conversation with Jiakun Liu of Jiakun Architects - ArchDaily

If history has taught us anything, its that music has played an integral part in the pursuit of social justice for a long time. James Browns Say It Loud Im Black And Im Proud, U2s Sunday Bloody Sunday, Rage Against The Machines Killing In The Name and more recently Kendrick Lamars Alright are just a few of the songs that have soundtracked revolutionary action over the years.

Over the past week, thousands of people have taken to the streets in the US and across the world to protest following the death of George Floyd, an African-American man who was killed on May 25 when a white police officer, who has now been charged with second-degree murder, knelt on Floyds neck for almost nine minute as he lay on the ground during an arrest (his alleged crime? Possession of a counterfeit $20). Floyds horrendous killing has reignited widespread Black Lives Matter protests, online and in the streets.

Run The Jewels 4, the much-anticipated new album from hip-hop duo Run The Jewels comprised of rapper Killer Mike and producer/rapper El-P couldnt be more appropriate for the times were living in. And you so numb you watch the cops choke out a man like me/ Until my voice goes from a shriek to whisper, I cant breathe, raps Killer Mike, RTJs beloved social activist, on the defiant walking in the snow. Its a track that also sees them question the school system, biased news reporting and unruly religious mobs.

Mike is no stranger to speaking out on social issues. Just last week the community leader delivered an impassioned speech during a press conference in Atlanta in which he pleaded with the protesting residents of his home city to not burn your own house down for anger with an enemy. Instead, he suggested it was time to plot, plan, strategise, organise and mobilise.

El-P and Killer Mike of Run The Jewels (Picture: Timothy Saccenti / Press)

As with their previous three releases all self-titled and numbered theres a lot to unpack on Run The Jewels fourth outing. Whether its police brutality, fear-mongering media outlets, pseudo-Christians or inner spiritual conflict, no stone is left unturned. They announce that theyre back at it like a crack addict and theres no treading lightly as Mike and El-P go full-on with brazen declarations such as: Look at all these slave masters posing on your dollar.

They take listeners to church at a rapid-fire pace; blink and youll miss a lot of whats being said on RTJ4. They usher in chaos over the haunting Wu-Tang Clan-inspired keys of Ooh La La and condemn social medias superficially woke folk on album standout Goonies vs. E.T.. To merely skim Mike and El-Ps latest sermon would be to do yourself a real disservice.

On the ground below, El-P spits: We just gave you inspiration for free/ The money never meant much. Its an admirable statement on its own, but now holds far greater weight, since the duo announced that they would be releasing RTJ4 for free in light of recent events. As El-P put it on Instagram: We hope it brings you some joy.

The heart-pounding pulling the pin, featuring legendary R&B singer and civil rights activist Mavis Staples and Queen Of The Stone Ages Josh Homme, sees RTJ wonder if theyll ever arrive at spiritual utopia without being tempted by the devils charm. Mike feels conflicted: I promised my mama that I would stay honest, but I want it all in the physical. Rage Against the Machines Zack de la Rocha appears on the tightly coiled, Pharrell-featuring JU$T, as if to underline the fact that the record is a modern protest classic.The breath in me is weaponry, he boasts.

Mike and El-P even find time to visit the confession booth on the high-powered a few words for the firing squad (radiation). Manoeuvring through a sea of gorgeous strings and beautifully drawn out synths which are complemented by an empowering sax arrangement reminiscent of J. Coles Let Nas Down Mike and El-P revisit their journey to becoming musical crusaders who fight injustice on raps frontlines. Black child in America/ The fact that I made its magic, Mike raps.

RTJ4 isnt all about social consciousness or spiritual awareness. Sometimes its simply a stage for Mike and El to puff out their chests and drop some witty bars while juiced up on bravado. On out of sight El-P styles out the smoking of a cigarette the wrong way round: Man, I smoke a bogie backwards with a thumb up like its fine. Mike, on the other hand, prefers to throw a haymaker punchline at his fellow MCs on the menacing holy calamafuck: Youre a common cold and my flows are cancerous.

Easily Mike and El-Ps best work to date, RTJ4 is protest music for a new generation; theyre armed in the uprising with a torrent of spirited rallying calls. And they are fearless in their approach to holding middle America and its apathetic leaders accountable. This is less Whats Going On and more It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back although theres no doubt that Marvin Gaye would enjoy hearing Killer Mikes last words for the firing squad: Fuck you, too.

Release date:June 3

Record label: Jewel Runners / BMG

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Run The Jewels Run The Jewels 4 review: a modern protest classic and their best work yet - NME

Todd Rundgrens Utopia, Jon Anderson, Gary Husband and Markus Reuter are part of the latest edition of Five for the Road, an occasional look at music thats been in my car lately

JON ANDERSON 1000 HANDS (PROG ROCK): Previously available in limited release, Jon Andersons eclectic 1000 Hands album sees thewidespread release on Blue Elan Records on July 31. The former Yes frontman delivers his most diverse collection of songs since his solo debut, 1976s Olias of Sunhillow. The lead-off single Ramalama reminds me of We Have Heaven from Yes Fragile with a more international flair. Certainly, the positivity reminiscent of Andersons best lyrics is present. The album also contains touches out jazz, progressive rock, and world music. Activate and 1000 Hands (Come Up) are excellent examples of how Jon Anderson continues to progress musically. Producer Michael T. Franklin (Brian Wilson) does a stellar job managing the diverse talent which includes such icons as Steve Morse, Steve Howe, Billy Cobham, and Jean Luc Ponty. 1000 Hands is one of Andersons most cohesive solo albums.

THE DARK MONARCHY THE DARK MONARCHY (PROG ROCK): Mark Anthony K and Joe Bailey conspire to take listeners on a powerful hard-rocking joy ride. Their single Fools Gold came out in April and provided listeners with a no-holds-barred dose of contemporary hard rock. Now, the self-titled album is in the queue for release on June 12 via Reficul Records, with a digital version also available on Bandcamp. Joyride kicks things into gear with soaring guitar work by K and powerful drumming and bass playing from Bailey. The vocal contrast between the two works well in this setting. Mother Earth burns with the intensity of a supernova as 80s-era keyboard sounds meld with the powerful rhythm section and Ks distorted lead guitars. The subject matter is timely, but lyrically the song is never preachy. Broken Kingdom is my favorite song on The Dark Monarchy, combining 70s-style prog keyboards with Joe Baileys bleak and descriptive lyrics. Melodically powerful and musically uncompromising, the Dark Monarchy gives you 45 minutes of compelling music.

GARY HUSBAND & MARKUS REUTER MUSIC OF OUR TIME (JAZZ): As a long time fan of Stick Men featuring Tony Levin, Pat Mastelotto and Markus Reuter), I was looking forward to their summer 2020 tour. That obviously wont be happening, yet there is still plenty of new music from them collectively and individually to explore. One of my favorite discoveries is the collaboration between the multi-talented Gary Husband and Markus Reuter. Music of Our Time came together after the cancellation of Stick Men dates in Japan and China. Recorded live on March 3, 2020, and produced by Reuter and Leonardo Pavkovic, this recording is one of the best of 2020. Husband adds warmth to everything on his grand piano, while allowing ample space for Reuters Touch Guitar. The six joint compositions are simply beautiful. The starkness of Colour of Sorrow creates shapes which change with every listening. White Horses (for Allan) is simply memorizing. The tones and shades Markus Reuter creates on his Touch Guitar and electronics conjure images that are otherworldly yet and grounded by Husband. The contrast and sonics between the two are fascinating. Its is all the more remarkable given this musical landscape was created in just one day.

TODD RUNDGRENS UTOPIA BENEFIT FOR MOOGY KINGMAN (ROCK): Coming on the heels of Utopias 2019 release Live at the Chicago Theatre, one might think this release is redundant. Thats not the case. Taken from January 2011 shows held as a benefit for Utopias original Utopia keyboardist, Benefit for Moogy Klingman is quite a time capsule. Crying In the Sun contains all the charm and theatrics of the original. There are well-worn Utopia classics here too (Utopia Theme, Do Ya), all of which contain the zeal youd expect. The box set also contains two DVDs along with four audio discs and extensive liner notes. Benefit for Moogy Klingman is not to be missed by Utopia fans.

BRIAN TARQUIN PROJECT VEGAS BLUE (ROCK) No stranger to assembling talented musicians for television and film, Brian Tarquin produced, engineered, and wrote this project to honor the victims of the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting at the Mandalay Bay Hotel. This mostly instrumental effort includes noticeable heavyweights including Steve Morse, Trey Gunn, and former Dire Straits guitarist Hal Lindes. Songs like Evil Men Do and Run For Cover are heavy, matching the subject matter. However, Brian Tarquins writing provides enough energy and nuance to make listening interesting and never overwrought. Many of the sings on Vegas Blue could easily stand alone without the central theme around the album. This in itself makes for compelling music.

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Utopia, Jon Anderson, Gary Husband and Markus Reuter + Others: Five for the Road - Something Else! Reviews

Eddy Lee Ryder has announced her forthcoming debut EP, Expected to Fly, with the release of the new single, "There In Dreams." A ready and willing mistress of everything from murder ballads to love songs and upbeat party tunes, Eddy's unconventional, theatrical approach to songwriting mingles contagious '70s good-time rock riffs and pop beats with complex poetry and layers that sparkle through her well-crafted recordings.

Listen below!

"There In Dreams" is deeply personal for Eddy, written about her father who passed away when she was 16 years old, who she describes as "a larger than life marathon runner who qualified for the 1980 Olympics." She says, "When I was struggling in the world he built for me, I was trying to get to him in my dreams. When everyone thought I was insane and it felt like life around me was crumbling, I would go to sleep and hope to see my dad to tell me it would all be ok. This song is about both loving and hating the nights when I see him, because it's as great as it is painful."

A classically trained musician and opera singer, Eddy was trapped in a world of made-for-TV pop music and light rock in her youth until she heard Peter Gabriel's "Solsberry Hill" and never looked back. She soon found herself hooked on Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Nicks, Kate Bush and even Spinal Tap. To date, Eddy has put out a series of singles in collaboration with Kevin Killen, who has mixed and engineered some of her favorite albums, including Peter Gabriel's So and Elvis Costello's Spike.

Those singles will appear on Expected to Fly, which pays homage to the musical style and spirit of the 60s and 70s, complete with big themes, haunting melodies and interesting storytelling. "Those styles represented a freedom and wandering life that I always related to; a quest for utopia on the open road," Eddy explains. "I was writing while holding on to that sentiment but realizing there might actually be a more dystopian future ahead, so I wrote about trying to find the beauty and comfort in this strange future ahead, so the songs are a blend of a bit hopeful but dark."

Expected to Fly will be released on July 10, 2020. For more information, please visit EddyLeeRyder.com.

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Eddy Lee Ryder New Single 'There In Dreams' - Broadway World

AFTER days of avoiding it, I finally sat down and watched a video (The New York Timess edit) of the murder of George Floyd by Derek Chauvin and his police associates in Minneapolis.

It has the horrific, transforming power of the naked, nine-year-old, napalm-covered Phan Thi Kim Phuc, running down a road near Trang Bang, South Vietnam in 1972. Powerful humans, to whom we grant a monopoly of force, inflicting intentional harm on manifestly vulnerable others.

That picture played its part in ending an American war. Will todays images do the same? Yet how do we characterise this war? The systematic brutality wreaked by US police forces on black Americans has a long history.

Alex Vitale, the author of The End of Policing, writes about the uniformed and professionalised Charleston City Guard and Watch, formed in 1783 (this was well before Robert Peel established the Metropolitan Police).

Their job was patrolling slaves, and preventing revolts among them, by ensuring they were not harbouring weapons or fugitives, conducting meetings, or learning to read or write, says Vitale. The Guard also played a major role in preventing slaves from escaping to the North, through regular patrols on rural roads.

Killing was discouraged, however: you could be civilly liable to the slaveowner for destroying his property. No such inhibition, though, when faced with George Floyd, Eric Garner (who uttered Floyds same final words, I cant breathe in 2014), Michael Brown (the Ferguson riots), Tamir Rice (aged 12), or any of the 1252 black people shot dead by police in the US since January 1, 2015, according to the Washington Posts tracker.

This column wont be my attempt to marshal sources and resources, in outrage and solidarity (though anyone who follows my Thoughtland Twitter feed will know Ive been interested in doing little else this week).

Our friends in Los Angeles reminded us again in the last few days that they were still having The Talk with their dark-skinned sons.

If a police officer stops you, do everything he tells you to do. Dont move suddenly. Dont reach for your cellphone. Use sir a lot.

Hes a marvellous young man.

That lands home.

So I am informed about (though can never know) the degree of daily oppression and fear that comprises black experience in contemporary America. Their president is now recycling segregationist slogans from the 1960s when the looting starts, the shooting starts and may use law-against-public-disorder as his campaign theme for re-election later this year. What at least makes things different from 1968 the hot year that 2020 is often being compared to, with King and Kennedy assassinated, urban riots, even a Hong Kong super-flu is that the protest marches look gloriously multi-ethnic.

As Jeet Heer notes in The Nation: In 1968, white America didnt stand with African American protests over police violence and racism. This year, things are different.

Heer continues: In sixty-eight, Richard Nixon ran as a challenger who could bring order to a disintegrating country. Trump, by contrast, is presiding over the fraying of America and can thus be plausibly blamed for it, all the more so since hes been an agent of chaos from the start.

Maybe so, heres hoping, go go sleepy Joe (Biden). But whats in my heart here is really the nature of my own American dreams, forming me from birth. Are they currently being tested to destruction? Or is the challenge to make them even bigger and more capacious?

American music is the obvious entry point. It beamed into our Coatbridge home in the 1960s and 70s, filling our hearth with a kind of multiracial utopia. Sinatra, yes, but just as readily Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Earl Bostic, Nat King Cole, Oscar Peterson ... black excellence was simply assumed, as my mum and dad danced around the living room floor to their soundtrack.

Yet when I started to become a yearning and seeking musician, rather than just being my fathers receptive son, something soon became obvious.

THE music I had been wired early to eventually discover and enjoy James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye was also bringing news reports from a black America I had to get up to speed with.

To finally, properly sit down and engage with Wonders early-to-mid 1970s LPs with tracks like Village Ghetto Land, Black Man, Living For The City, You Havent Done Nothin, Big Brother was to be inducted into an even bigger utopia: where sheer musical beauty supports a social (and racial) justice agenda.

Its still the template of creativity that inspires me most. But whatever history Ive managed to read about the greats of jazz, soul or funk I hope has sedimented something else into me. Which is the pain, loss and emotional damage that accompanies black music over the last century.

Yet one of the truths borne out by the #BlackLivesMatter movement is that its not enough for the response to oppression to be some beautiful art. A programme of action, policy and irreversible progress may be just as creative an act.

In the words of the rapper and activist Killer Mike, a few days ago: It is your duty not to burn your own house down for anger with the enemy. It is your duty to fortify your house so that you may be a house of refuge in times of organisation. And now is the time to plot, plan, strategise, organise and mobilise.

My other key American dream is of the country, not as the home of fearful, reactive, prejudiced know-nothings, but the very opposite. This is America as a place of irony, restless wit, easy self-awareness, vernacular smarts.

It goes all the way down and up. Animations by Chuck Jones, where Wile E Coyote holds up signs saying: How about ending this cartoon before I hit the ground? Movies such as Paddy Chayefskys 1976 Network, which essentially anticipates the next 50 years of the development of media and capitalism.

Novels by Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo, Ursula Le Guin and Samuel Delany, which couldnt possibly be more self-aware of the operations of our minds, our wider systems, and their interrelation.

This is America as a home for genius. I did two radio shows for Radio Scotland in the 1990s where we toured the US talking to intellectuals and academics of all schools and ethnicities from JK Galbraith to Stanley Crouch, Nelson George to Lewis Lapham. Its still the most exhilarating cultural experience of my life. Endlessly eclectic minds flourishing within what the late legal scholar Ronald Dworkin told me was the supporting conceptual framework of a constitutionally-defined nation.

Will all that massive flexibility all those potentials for incubating ideas and practices that make up the improvisational, experimental strain of American life be stiffened and snuffed out, by the Dullard-and-Gangster-In-Chief?

Perhaps the solution may be the break-up of the Union itself and well have to abandon the miraculous e pluribus unum (unity in diversity) that is stamped on Americas Great Seal. Its been brought to the fore with the coronavirus, where Trumps feckless performance has compelled Americas States to consider their Federal loyalties.

We have to meet the needs of all our diverse communities, California governor Gavin Newsom said in March, as a nation-state with six-plus million children.

Will Americans, grouping around values, or even ethnicity, in flight from a Trump regime, start to regard themselves as Californians (or Oklahomans, or Illinoisans) first?

I would lament that. But it feels like something has decidedly ended in America, as a result of the slow, traumatising public death of George Floyd. An American nightmare has always been more the truth for many in the Republic. We dreamers may have to recalibrate our ideas and ideals, as the next six months wildly unfurl.

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This is why my love affair with US is being tested to destruction - The National

The coronavirus has been a pox upon nearly the entire entertainment industry. But there is one pocket of the business that is undergoing a revival, even a reincarnation: the drive-in. Fueled by the need to socially distance and the collective nostalgia for happier times, the comfort food of show business is providing a much-welcome way to consume live entertainment.

Indeed, these strange, socially isolated times have led us to look back to find a path forward. And while drive-in movies and their new partner, concerts seem like a clever but temporary solution to the dearth of live events at present, drive-in theaters should continue to be embraced in American life long after COVID-19 is behind us.

Fueled by the need to socially distance and the collective nostalgia for happier times, the comfort food of show business is providing a much-welcome way to consume live entertainment.

The drive-in began as a distinctly American venue exactly 87 years ago this Saturday in Camden, New Jersey, the brainchild of Richard Hollingshead, who at the time was a sales manager at his father's store, Whiz Auto Products. Once in-car audio speaker technology was developed in 1941, theaters sprouted up across the country. At their peak in 1958, there were 4,063 drive-ins in the United States, a number that has since unfortunately dropped by 90 percent.

They haven't been big moneymakers in recent years, yet they still have an audience, and at a time when few people can patronize traditional indoor theaters, they are serving a useful function by providing a communal experience that people crave right now. Accordingly, many indoor theaters are converting their parking lots to drive-ins.

But this shouldn't be just a move of desperation: The drive-in has many reasons to recommend itself, pandemic or not. People have space to spread out and aren't on top of one another, and thanks to FM and Bluetooth transmission, they could easily have stereo sound sent into their car speakers. It also really lends itself to dates (wink-wink), which was a big draw for young people back in the day. And many of the big screens tower over cineplexes with smaller, chopped-up spaces. High-quality HD movies will look fantastic projected on giant screens.

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While drive-ins have become synonymous with movies, they don't need to stay that way. At the height of their popularity during the 1950s and the 1960s, drive-in theaters offered more than just films. There was often live entertainment before screenings or between them the double-feature being a staple (and well worth revisiting). There were also concession stands, contests and fireworks. Nearby stood family-friendly places such as playgrounds, petting zoos and, at one Tennessee location, laundry services. (OK, maybe that's too much.) There was even the occasional movie star appearance at Southern California locations. (Today, fans could become stars, like at baseball games, with a cameraman capturing preshow audience shots.) These could all be resurrected, and more.

Stephen Rebello, author of "Dolls! Dolls! Dolls!: Deep Inside Valley of the Dolls, the Most Beloved Bad Book and Movie of All Time," sees a nostalgic appeal to drive-ins for hipsters and retro fans that could expand on this sense of pageantry.

"Why wouldn't a smart drive-in owner book a triple-feature of, say, rock concert movies from back in the day and have a one-night-only intermission concert by great pop singers from the era who are still performing?" Rebello asks. "What about an old-time Goth night with all-night horror movies on the screen? A beach movies night with Tiki and surfer bands? All-night Elvis movies with Elvis impersonators? How about family nights with 'Frozen' movies and actors dressed as the characters? The possibilities are goofy and endless."

And let's be honest: You're not going to see an intimate art house movie or period piece at a drive-in; they're much better suited to family movies, action flicks, horror films and other genres that appeal to a collective throng where group reactions and participation generate energy and heighten the experience. Back in the day, exploitation flicks were a big part of drive-in fare. In fact, thanks to drive-in showings, the indie horror production "The Wretched" has been the highest-grossing movie in America for the last five weeks running, thanks to nearly $841,760 in box office receipts as of last week. It's only the fifth movie to do that since "Titanic," and it is currently playing on 75 screens.

And the venue hardly need be limited to displays on the big screen. Another twist are the drive-in concerts being tested in different parts of the country. Singer-songwriter Kasim Sulton, a founding member of the 1980s Todd Rundgren band Utopia, played shows at noon and 3 p.m. at the Tupelo Music Hall in Derry, New Hampshire, on May 23. He said the first performance had a decent draw, but the second was sold out at 75 cars, each of which paid the $75-per-vehicle fee.

As Sulton described it, cars were spaced out in assigned slots to allow occupants to sit next to their rides but still practice social distancing. Food was ordered before the show and delivered by employees in golf carts and deposited 6 feet from cars. The singer acknowledged that the sense of intimacy wasn't the same as at a regular concert, but the concertgoers themselves were even more attentive.

"A lot of times at shows, there's a few dozen people that aren't looking at the stage. They're looking at their phones," Sulton noted. "I didn't see that once at the show, which was really, really heartening." He added: "They were really there because they just wanted to get out of the house. Get in the fresh air for a minute and see a show."

Keith Urban and the DJ D-Nice have also recently held drive-in concerts, and others are being planned throughout the country. Many will offer listeners the chance to tune in through their car sound systems for a ramped-up stereo experience.

While drive-ins have become synonymous with movies, they dont need to stay that way.

Those technological improvements aren't a bad thing, particularly for people who want to see event movies on really big screens with an enhanced experience. Plus, sitting under the stars rather than inside is an attractive idea for many. The concept is growing in Europe, too, and a drive-in non-movie theater (as in the kind that puts on Shakespeare) has popped up in Prague.

Really, circumstances for many of us could be a lot worse. In post-apocalyptic or pandemic movies, people often revert to their animalistic nature and jump into survivalist mode. We are taking refuge now in a few more basic habits, but it's not like we're suiting up in our Mad Max gear and roving around in armored vehicles or loading ourselves onto spaceships to escape a dying planet and populate a new world.

Although those scenarios would look really cool on a giant drive-in screen.

Bryan Reesman is a New York-based reporter, author of the book Bon Jovi: The Story and host of the podcast Side Jams.

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The coronavirus emptied movie theaters. But it's resurrecting the drive-in. - NBC News

THERE is no doubt that the greatest danger of this pandemic going forward is the overwhelming and in most cases unnecessary fear that has swept the nation.

Its this irrational terror that has this week seen parents refuse to send their kids back to school, healthy young folk avoid public transport, and one in five of us choose not to leave home altogether, according to one study.

Many of my friends in their 30s and 40s have embraced this crisis like a lengthy summer retreat they never thought theyd get to experience.

A chance for reflection, new exercise regimes, learning how to make bread and long drunken picnics are all part of their new lifestyles while off work being paid on the governments generous furlough scheme.

But the problem is that this false sense of utopia is almost certainly disguising imminent mass redundancies if the economy continues to crater as the population rejects many of the usual trappings of capitalism.

So the pressure is on us now.

While you might feel another six weeks in the garden is a preferable option for your new zen-like lifestyle, I wager thats an irresponsible choice.

Its a decision that could see your favourite businesses close for good. Its a decision that could cost your kids jobs in the future. Its a decision that could cripple public services.

Besides, when you emerge again, surely you want the experience of the great British high street and the ability to go to your favourite local or restaurant?

Surely you dont really want a life where you never leave your property and wait for a drone run by a tax-avoiding foreign company like Amazon to drop your supplies into the garden?

This is no longer some unrealistic dystopian future, these changes are happening right now.

Microsoft in the UK this week sacked its journalists and replaced them with news-creating robots.I wish I was joking.

Thats why it is now our national civic duty to eat, drink and shop, if you can afford to do so. Doesnt sound so bad, does it?

Book that holiday. Go on, the ridiculous quarantine is unlikely to last beyond a month

Get on the bus to work. The risk is negligible.

Visit the outdoor market this weekend and buy some takeaway pints from your local pub.We need to keep independent businesses alive.

And, most importantly, prepare to shop like you never have before as the sale to end all sales begins at malls up and down the country on June 15.

What about the danger, I hear you ask?

We have spent a life of taking risks because thats the only sort of life worth living, whether it be as basic as getting in your car or as extreme as paragliding.

Risks, of course, need to be calculated, so well be alert and sensible. But only to the point where it doesnt take away all pleasure.

Former Chancellor Lord Norman Lamont, who is 78, was brave enough to come on my talkRADIO Drivetime show this week and say we need to ditch social distancing altogether in the near future to avoid economic catastrophe.

Its not a politically correct view, but I tend to agree.

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The World Health Organisation said again this week that a one-metre distance is all thats required.

That must be adopted by the government as soon as possible. It will make shopping and travel experiences far more realistic and, quite literally, stop most pubs, restaurants, bars and nightclubs going out of business.

Its time for the British public to stand up for the life that we want and the experiences that we love because this is the ultimate case of use it or lose it.

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Eat, drink, shop. Its our national duty to get our lives back - The Sun

Most modern teenagers have a discreet, thumbed-aside corner of their smartphones where they stash away the apps they are most ashamed of using. In 2018, this was where a 17-year-old US high school student called Dixie DAmelio kept an odd little social media app called TikTok. From what Dixie could make of it, TikTok expected users to record and post ultra-short, ultra-energetic videos of themselves that were soundtracked with pre-made audio clips. Songs. Snatches of dialogue. Users danced to these clips or lip-synced along. They copied each others moves and riffed on references and in-jokes that were starting to slosh around TikToks expanding global network.

More and more, Dixie enjoyed scrolling through the endless feed of hectic TikTok videos, but in private. She was a TikTok lurker and would never have dreamed of posting anything herself because, as she puts it: Ew. People at school made fun of TikTok. It was looked down on. Embarrassing! When she found out that her younger sister Charli, a talented dancer, had started posting videos on the app, Dixie was horrified. It would surely mean social death. I was, like, Charli, dude, what are you doing?

Today, in the spring of 2020, TikTok has about 800 million active users around the world. ByteDance, the Beijing-based startup that created the app, was valued at around $75bn in 2018 and is now thought to be worth close to $100bn. TikTok has made global superstars of its most popular users, and when Dixie and Charli DAmelio talk to me over video from their home in Connecticut, it is in their capacity as unquestioned TikTok royalty. They have 83 million followers between them, these sister queens of the app who, along with parents Marc and Heidi DAmelio, now form TikToks first family.

TikToks strategy of appealing to Gen Zs need for release, somewhere for them to not be Insta-perfect, was working

How did Dixie go from being a TikTok refusenik to one of its best known faces? How did a Chinese app step in from the fringes to take such an awesome bite out of a social media market traditionally dominated by powerhouse Americans (Facebook, Twitter)? Dixie and Charli tell me their half of the story from their bedroom, speaking over each other in that fluent, seamless way of close siblings. They both have shoulder-length brown hair, freckles and the reedy physicality of young athletes. (Dixie is a former nationally ranked BMX racer and school track athlete; Charli started dance training for ever ago.) Having not so long ago rolled out of bed, the DAmelios wear the bleary expressions of just-woken teens who will shortly need to go and forage for snacks. They paint their nails while we talk.

I remember Dixie was so embarrassed to have a sister on TikTok, Charli says. And then in May 2019 oh! I guess that was a year ago all my friends started making TikToks. They asked me for help copying some of the dances. They said, Oh, youve got to teach us. And I said, I dont want to, its weird, I dont even have my own account. But then I started making videos and I guess I started having a lot of fun?

Dixie interrupts. Do you remember when people first started recognising you? They would say, Where do I know you from? And you would say

I would say social media, Charli says. Because I was embarrassed to say TikTok.

At the time, the app was attempting a delicate manoeuvre, trying to position itself as a place for teens and tweens to come to be silly, unashamed, unfiltered a tonic to the earnestness of Instagram, the stress of Snapchat, the verbal warfare of Twitter. The app had been around in some form or another for years, first gathering momentum in 2016 after Twitter closed down its short-form video service Vine, leaving a small but exploitable hole in the social market. In summer 2018, it merged with the US lip-syncing app Musical.ly, increasing its reach, and by the end of that year it had crept to the top of Apples US app charts.

TikToks strategy of appealing to Gen Zs need for release, somewhere for them to not be Insta-perfect, was working. It was adding tens of millions of new users every month; in January 2019, the influential technology blog TechCrunch published an editorial headlined Its time to pay serious attention to TikTok advice that Facebook and Twitter, now hurriedly preparing copycat products, had been uncharacteristically slow to heed. When ByteDance celebrated the new year by projecting its TikTok logo on to the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, it was a statement of arrival.

Charlis perky, precise dance videos caught on in 2019 and grew in popularity as TikTok did. It hadnt exactly become cool in her friend circle, Dixie explains, but few people would have thought of pretending they didnt use the app, or understand its references and in-jokes. TikTok culture had spilled over into the school corridors.

What is that culture? You could think of it like YouTube (beauty how-tos, cartoony science experiments, impressive athletic feats, pets being cute, domestic accidents filmed by chance, monologues to camera, goofy lip-syncs, breathless dances), only on TikTok such videos have to be severely truncated in order to be uploaded. Users get 15 seconds to express themselves, and this brevity helps to create a staccato, no-explanations, absurdist flavour to much of the content. Comedy skits benefit from the tight edit, for instance. If some of the monologues are over-earnest, at least they dont run on too long. TikTok has made capsule celebrities of young magicians, fashion mavens, political campaigners. It has also elevated people to notoriety by accident (my favourite being a young woman known as The Motherfucking Tea Girl, after a rant of hers that went viral in 2019).

We were out one night and noticed kids staring. We thought, theres no way they know Charli from that weird app

As a TikTok novice, I didnt fully grasp its peculiar culture until I started thinking of the app as if it were my old playground at school. When I was a kid in the 90s, everyone had seen the same TV shows, listened to the same songs, had heard about the same laugh-out-loud acts of cheek against the teachers. To listen in on our playground conversation as an outsider (Simpsons references, Britpop lyrics, hyper-local gossip) would have been like hearing a gabbling alien language. But to be in the thick of it, getting it, was wonderful. So now I think of TikTok as one big secondary-school playground, with 800 million people crammed in. All babbling, all getting it.

Yes! says Dixie, when I pitch her my comparison.

It was more or less why she cracked and started posting videos herself, she explains. Every conversation was about TikTok. Oh my God, Charli has 100,000 followers. Oh my God, she has 200,000. I said, Im done! If Charli hits 1 million followers, Ill start posting because Im done being left out like this.

Charli: She never thought I was gonna hit one million followers.

Dixie: No.

Charli: And then I hit one million.

Dixie: Yeah.

This was October 2019. The DAmelio family celebrated Charlis milestone with a cake and Dixie kept up her end of the agreement, popping up in Charlis videos and then shooting her own knockabout solo efforts, fooling around in the family home. Dixies presence supercharged both sisters popularity. By now, their parents had accounts of their own, initially to keep an eye on the girls, but soon with millions of curious followers of their own.

We were kind of on autopilot as a family at the time, recalls Marc, who is 51 and works in sportswear. Dixie was about to go to college. She was driving Charli to school in the mornings. Me and Heidi were kind of looking at the finish line of parenting.

Coasting, agrees Heidi, 48. And then we were out to dinner one night and we noticed kids at the other table staring. We both thought, theres no way they know Charli from that weird app

Before long, there were mobbings at the mall and at airports. Managers and marketers contacted the house, hoping the sisters would sign deals. Marc and Heidi first met in the 90s in New York, where Marc ran his sportswear business and Heidi was a model and personal trainer. They both had some experience at the crossover point of consumer and celebrity culture, but still that their teenage daughters had become lucrative stars, in a matter of weeks and without leaving their bedrooms, was a bit of a surprise. Marc recalls: We really thought wed figured out how to have two kids. Then this was thrust on us. We had to regroup. Huddle together as a family and figure out all this new stuff.

In November 2019, Charli was invited to go on holiday with a collective of young TikTokers based in Los Angeles (the Hype House, a kind of 21st-century Mickey Mouse Club) and though the affiliation did not last, it was a move that helped nudge her further into the millions of followers. There were other, more random boosts to her popularity. Before Christmas, she copied a TikTok dance that was doing the rounds the audio was the clip of a track by the rapper K Camp and a lot of people gravitated to Charlis version. The video was watched more than 150m times, mostly by users trying to copy and perfect the dance. The suburban high school girl, still 15, suddenly had the market reach of a Knowles-Carter or a Kardashian.

In early 2020, Charli was signed by the powerful Hollywood agency UTA, along with the rest of the DAmelio family. By then, The Face magazine felt comfortable describing her as the Pina Bausch of TikTok. In February, Dixie joined the cast of a YouTube drama made by the tween production company Brats and, meanwhile talks began about constructing a TV reality show around the entire family. In April, Charli was invited to dance for a national TV audience on The Jimmy Fallon Show, by which point she was the most-followed person on TikToks platform. As Heidi describes this period: Things. Went. Crazy.

***Its worth pausing here to consider a question often asked in the comment-threads under Charlis TikTok videos. Why her? What made this particular teenagers breezy, professionally dapper, but ultimately innocuous dance videos take off in such an enormous way?

To properly understand a community and its whims, theres little point zeroing in on the gilded few who have risen to the top. They dont know. To understand Charlis mass appeal, I would need to speak to representatives of the masses, users who were stuck in the foothills of the app with tens or hundreds of followers and who nevertheless kept the network churning with content and comments and follows. Several of my teenage nieces and nephews are dogged TikTokers and after a quick call-out on the family WhatsApp group, I was able to assemble a brain trust of Charli obsessives who could answer any question about her.

Why Charli, I ask?

Niece #1: Shes funny. Upbeat.

Nephew #1: Shes very smiley and positive.

Niece #2: A major thing with Charli is her age. The general TikTok audience is younger than on Facebook or Instagram, so the influencers need to be younger.

Niece #3: Shes a good dancer.

Niece #2: Whenever we want to learn a dance, well look for Charlis video because shes so good, we think of hers as the best version to copy.

Nephew #1: Her having an older sister helps. They can do videos together.

Niece #1: They can do synchronised moves.

Niece #2: A lot of families across the world use TikTok and its a bond people recognise.

Were offered deals all the time that we turn down. Charli will not promote something she doesnt like

When I ask the DAmelio family the same question why them? Marc puts it down to luck. An app came along that prized a certain style of dancing (just this side of practised) and a certain style of personality (just this side of sarcastic) and Charli and Dixie happened to fit the mould. They benefited from the lightning in a bottle effect, Marc says, of being relatable to a generation.

Charli has long professed bafflement about her rise. TikTok, though noticeably friendlier in tone than most of its social media competitors, is by no means an online utopia. People can be cruel. Towards the end of last year, Charli had to post a captioned video in response to a common observation that her popularity did not make sense. I dont understand [it] either, Charli wrote in the video, but thats not my problem. This slightly flinty statement has softened over time into a kind of mantra for dealing with both the attention and the questions about whether she deserves it. Dont worry, it now says on Charlis TikTok profile page, I dont get the hype either.

Dixie says: I wish I could protect her a little bit more from the haters.

I ask them how the worst of the negativity manifests itself. Comments? Direct messages? Actually, on TikTok it tends to be a little more roundabout than that. A popular collaborative feature on TikTok allows users to take a strangers video and duet with it. (The original video appears on one half of a split-screen, the responding one on the other half.) Credited by some tech observers as a key innovation that helped TikTok create a sense of ongoing collaboration, duets are also a quick and easy vehicle for mockery. You cant really avoid them, Dixie explains, adding that if youre the subject of someones duet (well-intentioned or otherwise), that video is invariably pushed into your feed. And I dont think people

Charli finishes her sentence: understand that. They think youll never see. But its just not true. Learning how to deal with hate, Dixie says, thats the part were still working on it. It gets very frustrating.

As for the numbers, Charli says, even 100,000 pairs of eyes is a lot. So its been, since very early on, that the numbers stopped making sense to me. I try to think, I dont know how these people found me, and this is all crazy, and Im just gonna keep doing what Im doing.

***We break off the interview so Charli and Dixie can make some TikTok videos. Charlis creative process for this is not much of one at all. She scrolls through her For You page (a sort of welcome-to-the-app splash screen full of videos algorithmically generated for each user) and chooses an audio clip she likes. Otherwise, she thumbs through a list of saved, favourite clips that have caught her ear before and earmarked for possible use. Today its a crunchy, low-quality recording of a couple of bars from a 2011 track by rapper J Cole called Work Out.

For reasons of not looking as if youre trying too hard, another convention of TikTok is that the music clips often sound secondhand, slightly distorted, as if taxing the limits of a smartphone speaker. Charli hits the button that says Use this sound and shes ready to shoot. Now, and not before, shell think about what to do. Theres no planning. The thing about making a TikTok is, whenever youre making it, thats when the ideas come. She props her smartphone against a water bottle in her bedroom and, with Dixie, films a brief dance. It ends in a comic tumble as Dixie collides with her sister and loses her balance. Good enough: the footage is edited down to seven seconds, ending on a smeared closeup of Dixie as she collapses forward towards the camera lens. Upload.

Dixie goes downstairs to make a solo video of herself dancing on the kitchen counter while Charli stays in her room and, choosing a clip of an old song by Drake, lip-syncs along. Her follower count has just ticked over 54 million, so she appends a comment: THANK YOU GUYS SO SO MUCH FOR 54 MILLION!!!! Meanwhile I track the progress of the J Cole dance that ended with Dixie falling over. It goes online in the early afternoon and by teatime it has been seen 4m times. Within a day the number is up past 20m. After a week its 45m and still tick-tocking up, up, up. These are Adele numbers. Sports broadcast numbers.

It is a business now, 100%, Marc tells me. When kids have millions of followers, its kind of hard to put the brakes on it. So, for lack of a better term, weve kind of decided to double down. Were seeing where all this goes. The sisters currently have a range of endorsement deals, including with a skincare company, though Marc stresses were offered deals all the time that we turn down. Charli will not promote something she doesnt like. Heidi adds: Ive seen her sit in a room full of executives and say no. I couldnt have done that at her age.

TikTok as a service has been deliberately slow to monetise, creators ByteDance deploying the softly-softly startup strategy of growing a base of devotees before trying too obviously to sell them things. In spring 2019, early video ads were allowed on to the network. A few months later, a feature was added called Hashtag Challenges: sponsored marketing campaigns, by any other name, in which TikTokers push certain products. In February, the DAmelios were involved in some hectic promotion of a Hashtag Challenge in aid of Jennifer Lopezs half-time performance at the Super Bowl. The family were flown to Miami, where Charli filmed a dance with Lopez.

It probably says a lot about TikTok culture (and maybe older medias hesitant grasp of it) that some videos Charli made of herself dancing to a Sean Paul track in her Miami hotel bathroom got more eyeballs than the J-Lo collaboration. For now, at least, theres distrust in TikTok land of any stars who too brazenly sell out. On Charlis 16th birthday, the DAmelio family recorded videos of themselves wearing matching Charli-branded hoodies in celebration. Marc put out a message directing fans to Charlis online shop where the hoodies were on sale (today only). I noticed, though, that he kept the salesmanship to his Twitter account, away from TikTok.

In the same way the young users of the app seem to resist many of the aesthetics of the Instagram age (the DAmelios will often make videos while wearing pimple cream, to the amazement of their mother), theres evidently a squeamishness about echoing the mistakes of older Insta-stars who will haphazardly sell followers anything teabags, eScooters, obscure holiday destinations, whoevers paying. Heidi, trying to explain why Charli would face down a room full of advertising execs and refuse lucrative offers, gives a compelling reason: Charli doesnt want to get crushed for it online. She doesnt want to be called out.

***One of Charli and Dixies most popular TikToks, made in the days after our interview, lasts just four seconds. Its a compact, gnomic expression of Gen Z mores and tics an initially inexplicable duet between the sisters and three strangers that takes me a good half an hour to decode when it pops up on my For You page. Heres what I think is happening in the video.

A random TikToker, feeling sentimental, has a thought about Charli and decides to express it by filming themselves curled up in bed with a pensive look on their face. I know for a fact, it says on an overlaid caption, that Charli DAmelio would wait for me to tie my shoe while everyone else kept walking. Another TikToker takes the prompt and duets with this video, adding the lightest touch of snark about too-good-to-be-true Charli. I just know [she] would ask me if I was feeling OK after the rest of the group laughed at my self-deprecating joke. This goes on a bit, with more pensive expressions and more I just knows, until Dixie sees the video and gets involved. She videos herself curled up in bed and appends the caption: I just know Charli DAmelio.

The coup comes from Charli herself, who breaks the chain of melancholy faces by filming herself clenching her fists, jiggling from side to side with a deadpan, shit-eating grin, under a caption that reads: I Charli DAmelio. The whole thing plays out, without explanation, to a looping clip of Kenny Loggins singing the 1984 soundtrack to Footloose.

This is TikTok. The ad hoc collaboration between distant strangers. The tonal blend of earnestness and irony. The unbothered bed-head aesthetics and the incongruous soundtrack. Watching the video, trying to unravel it, gets me thinking about Gen Z as a whole what a confused and sad world were bequeathing them. Weve thrust cameras in their faces for as long as they can remember, making them twitchily aware of their appearance from all angles. No wonder they have begun to congregate, away from all the stumbling grownups, in a place they can be silly, arch and sweet, and look a mess, and think at microprocessor speed all in a format that registers as gibberish to outsiders.

As Dixie explains, If someone has never used TikTok before and they come on it, theyll have no idea whats going on. Things go viral and then disappear right away. It comes and goes, and comes and goes.

And thats why its fun, Charli says. You dont need to be on-your-best all the time. Things keep passing. There isnt some impossible thing you can be, that youre shooting for, that you have to maintain.

Dixie: Things can last one day and then nobody talks about them ever again. And thats

Charli: Thats super-cool.

Original post:

Its hard to put the brakes on it. We doubled down: Charli DAmelio and the first family of TikTok - The Guardian

A still from the 1963 film of William Goldings Lord of the Flies Two Arts/Cd/Kobal/Shutterstock

If you want to be seen as a profound thinker, just remember the principle: dark is deep. You must take a dim view of human nature and see its prospects as dismal. There may be more money to be made writing upbeat self-help books promising easy happiness, but you will never be taken seriously in self-consciously intellectual circles unless you are unremittingly gloomy or, as such intellectuals see it, unflinchingly realistic.

Think of the fate of Steven Pinker. Once widely admired as one of the worlds leading psychologists, he is now ridiculed by cognoscenti for his belief that weve never had it so goodthat more human progress remains possible, even likely. Meanwhile, the stature of the likes of Nassim Nicholas Taleb and John Gray, neither of whom I believe has ever been photographed smiling, grows every time they dismiss his data as either wrong or irrelevant.

The Dutch historian Rutger Bregman has emerged as the youthful leader of the rebellion against the doomsters and gloomsters. His first book, Utopia for Realists, argued that with a universal basic income, a 15-hour working week and open borders, we could build a fair and flourishing world. It was a huge bestseller, praised by the likes of the Green MP Caroline Lucas, who said it adds to a growing list of compelling accounts in favour of radically restructuring our economy. But the sober mainstream was unmoved: journalist Will Hutton dismissed his three key proposals as pie in the sky.

_______________________________________________________________________

Listen to Rutger Bregman discuss Humankind with Prospects Sameer Rahim

_______________________________________________________________________

The sequel, Humankind, is an attempt to challenge the basic premise on which the more pessimistic orthodoxy rests: that human nature is essentially rotten to the core and that only the constraints of civilised society keep us in check. Veneer theory, as the Dutch primatologist Frans de Waal calls it, asserts that underneath the pacific and pro-social cover of civilisation lies humankinds festering heart of darkness.

Bregmans tone is chirpy, but he does not attempt to make the impossible case that the human heart is all sweetness and light. His view is simply that we have a powerful preference for our good side, one that is hard to override. We may not be wholly good, but we are mostly good.

His takedown of veneer theory is compelling. Meticulously sifting the evidence, he finds that the most pessimistic views of human nature are not backed up by the facts. Indeed, some are solely backed by fiction. William Goldings novel Lord of the Flies is routinely cited as if it somehow proved that if left to themselves children would inevitably descend into barbarism. Oddly, people rarely talk about the only historical example of a similar case. In 1965, six boys from a boarding school in Tonga were shipwrecked for 15 months on an island, Ata, now classified as uninhabitable. They ended up co-operating, innovating and improvisingand they survived in good physical and psychological shape.

Numerous other myths of essential human depravity are ruthlessly dismantled. If you think war unleashes the inner murderer in ordinary men, consider the growing weight of evidence that it is hard to make soldiers kill, and that most of them dont even try. One study by the sociologist Randall Collins found that in modern warfare only 13 to 18 per cent of soldiers in combat fired at all. The military has good reason to keep such truths quiet and foster instead the myth of the fearless warrior. The 1914 Christmas truces along the western front so disturbed the generals that they went to great efforts to make sure they werent repeated.

Then there is the oft-repeated story of Kitty Genovese, a New Yorker murdered in 1964 on the stairs of her own apartment building. The legend is that 38 witnesses stood by and did nothing, even as the assailant returned twice to inflict more wounds. This became the classic illustration of the bystander effect, the tendency to walk by on the other side, especially when others are doing the same.

The problem is the true story of that murder: most of the neighbours didnt hear or see anything, and several had in fact called the police, who did nothing. One drunk neighbour notoriously did not intervene, but he had an understandable reason: he was a gay man afraid of drawing the attention of the police at a time when homosexuality was illegal. Yet he did notify a neighbour who bravely went to the stairwell to try to help. Genovese died in her arms.

Six boys were shipwrecked on an island. They ended up co-operating, innovating and improvising

This one misreported anecdote and several dodgy lab experiments turned the bystander effect into a widely accepted fact of human behaviour rather than a dubious hypothesis. When a Danish psychologist, Marie Lindegaard, looked at CCTV footage of crimes to see how people actually behaved in real-life conditions, she found that in 90 per cent of cases including brawls, rapes and attempted murders, someone intervened to help.

Bregman is especially convincing in debunking two of the most notorious social psychology experiments of the 20th century. Philip Zimbardos Stanford Prison Experiment is still widely taken to show that if you give an ordinary person a uniform and authority, they will become a tyrannical monster. Stanley Milgrams obedience experiments similarly concluded that all it takes is an authority figure in a white coat with a clipboard and people will be ready to inflict potentially lethal electric shocks on their fellow human beings.

Bregman is not the first to discredit either experimentProspect ran a piece unraveling both in April last yearbut his summary of their failings is damning. In the Stanford Prison Experiment, the subjects playing the role of guards were not left to their own devices but instead strongly coerced into behaving badly. And even then, the original study papers show that two thirds of them in fact refused to take part in sadistic games. When the BBC tried to re-run the experiment for a 2002 reality show, this time without any pressure applied, the result was an outbreak of harmony. By day seven, the group had voted in favour of creating a commune. In Milgrams study, what is striking is how much subjects resisted obeying orders. And there is good evidence that many subjects simply did not believe that they were causing harm, (rightly) assuming that they were involved in some kind of simulation.It would indeed have been incredible if one of the USs leading universities was actually torturing people.

And yet despite these and other well-documented rebuttals, Bregman writes, veneer theory is a zombie that just keeps coming back, often in the guise of whataboutery. What about Auschwitz? What about the Rwandan genocide? What about countless other examples of human depravity?

Of course Bregman has to concede that we too often descend into barbarism. But the reasons he gives come with silver linings. For example, while he accepts that some of Milgrams subjects clearly did act with intentional cruelty, their chief reason for doing so was not sadism but the desire to help. Subjects reported that they hated what they were being asked to do but believed it would benefit science, and thereby eventually help create a better world. The moral of this story is that if you want to make people do evil, dont appeal to their worst naturesjust hijack their better ones. Time and again wrongdoers follow the same justificatory path as Adolf Eichmann, a leading architect of the Holocaust, who did evil because he believed he was doing good.

Did he do evil because he believed he was doing good? Adolf Eichmann at his trial in Jerusalem in 1962 AP/Shutterstock

The other generally benign mechanism that can be abused is our capacity for empathy and fellow-feeling. Studies of soldiers suggest that they are not primarily motivated by ideology or nationalism, but by friendship and solidarity with their comrades-in-arms. Just as parents often say they wouldnt hesitate to kill to protect their babies, soldiers kill primarily to protect each other.

But Bregman does have to concede that these silver linings are attached to some pretty dark clouds. It seems were born with a button for tribalism in our brains, he says. Empathy and xenophobia are two sides of the same coin. His concession that the good and the bad are deeply connected jars with the headline message that most people, deep down, are pretty decent. Isnt it rather the case that, deep down, were amoral? We have instincts for co-operation and fellow feeling, not because were good but because we have evolved to find these things useful. The fact that these instincts can be harnessed for good and evil suggests to me that there is nothing inherently good or bad about them.

Despite Bregmans occasional willingness to acknowledge our darker side, his is not a balanced appraisal. Instead he offers a piece of advocacy for our better natures that reads like a 400-page TED talk, driven by stories, full of inspirational moments and punctuated by one-sentence paragraphs. Its brisk and entertaining, but we are swept along too quickly. Although there is no reason to doubt the evidence he presents, it is not selected or framed impartially. Some of his villains, such as Richard Dawkins and Machiavelli, appear in caricature form, while the ideas of thinkers such as Hume and William James are somewhat distorted.

The strongest indication of imbalance is in the contrast between his strongly evidenced debunking of the pessimists, and his much more anecdotal case for the optimists. Bregman is on reasonably solid ground when he advocates for the humane Norwegian prison system and for citizens assemblies, both of which have been widely studied. But much less so whenon the strength of tales about an inspirational head of a Dutch healthcare companyhe gushes about revolutionary management. Jos de Bloks ideas are, supposedly, on par with cracking DNA.

So what are they? His company is based on the principle that staff should be driven by intrinsic motivations and do a good job for a positive social purpose, not extrinsic financial ones. It sounds wonderful (if not entirely novel), but it is just an anecdote. Is the secret of de Bloks success really the managerial attitude that Bregman notes, or could other factors be more important? His brief mention that the companys overheads are negligible due to its lack of an expensive head office suggests there is more to this story than progressive leadership. Similarly, his visit to an equally inspirational alternative Dutch school, Agora in Roermond, makes it sound idyllic, with students drawing up individual plans with coaches rather than teachers. But one brief, breezy eulogising chapter does not add up to an argument that the model is replicable, much as Id like to believe that it is.

Despite its excesses and its breathless enthusiasm, the book works as a much-needed corrective to excessive pessimism about human wickedness. But why is such a corrective needed? Why are we so well-disposed to the view that we are not generally well-disposed?

Bregmans book is an attempt to challenge the basic premise on which the more pessimistic orthodoxy rests: that human nature is essentially rotten to the core

Bregman argues that to believe in our own sinful nature is comforting it provides a kind of absolution. If thats just how people are, theres no point feeling guilty over our own failings or getting too bothered by those of others. He also highlights two importantpsychological mechanisms at work. One is negativity bias. We are more alert to the bad than to the good, presumably for evolutionary reasons. For survival purposes, we need to be much more attuned to potential threats than to what is harmless. The cost of failing to notice a lion is much higher than the benefits of noticing a kitten. Thanks to the omnipresence of news, were also affected by availability bias. We pay more attention to what we see most and the news is filled with tragedies. This theory seems intuitively plausible, but given that intellectual pessimism long predates 24-hour news, it can only be an intensifier rather than a cause of our fundamental distortion.

Bregman argues that we need to counter our gloomier tendencies because our grim view of humanity is a nocebo. Just as placebos have positive effects simply because people believe they do, nocebos are negative expectations of treatment or prognosis that become self-fulfilling prophecies. One nice piece of evidence for this are the studies that show the longer students study economics, which teaches them that human behaviour is motivated by self-interest, the more selfish they become. A society in which people assume the worst about human beings will be one that has coercive penal systems, authoritarian schools and low levels of trust, all things that will make matters worse.

Bregman clearly thinks that the flip side of this is that belief in human goodness can act as a placebo. If hes right about that, it hardly matters if many of his claims are factually true: believing them will make them so. He doesnt undersell the extent to which positive beliefs can lead to positive actions. Kindness is catching, he says. And its so contagious that it even infects people who merely see it from afar.

But his evidence is again anecdotal. If kindness truly did have an R value of above one, the world would be full of loveliness and his book wouldnt be needed. In his cries for the potential snowballing effects of good deeds we can hear the echoes of so many empty hopes of the past. People sincerely believed that the 1967 Summer of Love was going to usher in a new Age of Aquarius. Soon after Live Aid in 1985, an article by Stuart Hall and Martin Jacques in Marxism Today claimed that A new politics sweeps the land and that the ideology of selfishness has been dealt a further, severe blow. Right now people are quick to predict that the new sense of community fostered by the Covid-19 lockdown will change society for the better, forever.

The world is never as grim as some fear or as sunny as others hope. The debate about whether human nature is essentially good or bad is pointless. The answer is that it is neither. We have the capacities for love, kindness and sympathy and also for hatred, malice and selfishness. To ask which set of characteristics comprises our essence is like asking whether a Manhattan is actually whiskey or vermouth.

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Reasons to be cheerful: despite what we see on the news, things are getting better all the time - Prospect Magazine