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Creativity as a spiritual practice

There’s an old saying that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” It’s intended as a dig at music criticism, but beneath that, there’s a deeper truth: Music is intangible, subjective; it’s universal yet still deeply personal. And while science and math are involved in its creation, there is something undeniably mystical about it.

Laraaji is a 80-year-old pioneer of so-called New Age music and someone who’s been sitting on the fringes of the music world for decades — though, last year, he joined Andre 3000 onstage in Brooklyn.

When he was young, Laraaji experimented with acting, including a role in the landmark experimental film Putney Swope, and spent time in the 1960s standup comedy scene. After that, he became interested in spiritual communities, discovered the autoharp, and devoted his life to making music. He’s been a truly prolific artist ever since.

I recently invited Laraaji on The Gray Area to talk about music, meditation, spirituality, and the therapeutic power of laughter. As always, there’s much more in the full podcast, so listen and follow The Gray Area on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever you find podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Sean Illing

I’m so intrigued by all the artistic interests you’ve had in your life. You’ve done standup comedy. You’ve done acting. Obviously, in the end, you gave yourself over to music. Did the experience of acting and doing comedy make you a better musician? Or is it just creatively a totally different thing?

Laraaji

It’s the same thing, Sean. It’s wherever I choose to open and give expression to. I’m practicing the art of surrendering and spontaneity.

Sean Illing

I think that’s why I’m a lousy musician. I’m too in my own damn head.

Laraaji

I say observe your body language when you have your next orgasm.

Sean Illing

I don’t think anybody — including myself — wants to see that!

Laraaji

Seriously, look at your breath. Look at your body language. Look how focused you are into surrendering to this energetic expression. And I see some of that expression carried over into the way people sing pop music, rock music. They get into the more orgasmic, passionate level of release.

Sean Illing

Do you think of yourself as primarily an improvisational musician for those reasons?

Laraaji

I depend more on improvisation than I do on set scores. I find that improvisation is aligned with what I call my spiritual belief that every moment is new. And to trust that what I need in this moment is here.

Sean Illing

Musicians always talk about that, feeling more like a conduit than an author. Is that what it’s like for you on stage?

Laraaji

Yes, and it’s magical and mystical and a transportive place because you’re somehow beyond linear time flow. You’re in the midst of local time, but you’re also witnessing an unbroken, constant present time. It’s speaking through me and it’s speaking as me. I’m sound, I’m space, I’m timelessness. This is like music I can dream up. Part of my art is knowing when to get out of the way, how to set up a musical flow or a musical event, and then to step to the side of it and let it speak through.

Sean Illing

You also sing but it feels like part of the music, like there’s little distinction between the instruments you’re playing and what’s coming from your voice. Do you think of your voice as another instrument and not something separate?

Laraaji

Yes, I do like doing everything at the same time. Spontaneous, unified flow.

Create a flow with several instruments at the same time, using the voice without calling the mental process into linear thinking. And using a voice as an emotional expressional instrument. That’s what I’ve been exploring, especially with meditation or deep contemplation of contacting altered planes of conscious present time. And so to talk about it is to take the mind out of it.

Then there’s sounds of passion, passionate immersion. The voice can be used to express witnessing inside of an awe-inspiring perception. So the whole body becomes the voice and the breath and the movement and become a conduit.

Invented or improvisational language can be the evidence of a person or practitioner in total immersion, total submission, getting involved with a total perception that’s beyond linear description. So the brain is given a vacation, and in that vacation or place, it might be freed up to have an alternative space-time experience. And that might be the message the artist wants to convey, that there is an alternative way of being conscious here and now.

Sean Illing

I have heard you talk about music as a tool for total presence. Why do you think music has that kind of effect on us?

Laraaji

Music generated or channeled by the right musician or artist? The artist is in a state of contemplation or meditation or a suspended time awareness. And in the languaging that occurs with their instrument, their interaction with their instrument and with their voice can convey this repurposing of the human instrument, repurposing it from a conveyor of local human-based emotion to a conduit of exalted emotion, direct perception inside this timeless present moment.

It’s always available. Certain sounds. Drones can do that. Music that’s very spontaneous, that can pull the mind out of linear thought, could allow the perceiver, the listener, to suddenly directly notice the reality of eternal time and the infinite space.

Sound can point to the invisible and sound can suggest the flowing of energy, the flowing of blood, the flowing of breath. It can suggest the integration of seemingly separate and discordant. In the case of a harp, all 36 strings are vibrating at the same time and producing this synergetic tonal event. So, as you say, that sound can throw a suggestion. It can point to the invisible, it can point to the transcendent. It can direct the emotional body out of heaviness so that a lightness, a more ethereal resonance can be directly witnessed.

Sean Illing

Once we start talking and using words, we’re already in the world of ideas and abstractions. But music is more primary than that, right? It touches something in us that existed before we invented words.

Laraaji

Yes. Music might be able to say more than what speech can say. My general mode of operation is to prepare before a performance or recording through just dropping into a refined sense of the meditative field. Do some yoga postures, some breathing exercises, some positive affirmations, and then sculpt this field or point to this transcendental field and let it transmit itself into a sound repetition through me. When this happens, I tend to call it a sound bath. A celestial sound bath. It’s an immersion experience. And once again, here we’re away from the words and we’re into the pure impacting force of sound.

Sean Illing

Do you actually find a meaningful distinction between music and meditation, or is it all just different manifestations of the same practice?

Laraaji

My ultimate answer is that they’re one and the same, meaning that in the moment of deepest meditation, I consider meditation to be the highest romance and that romance is the highest meditation. This meditation is simultaneous with music. It couldn’t be separated.

Sean Illing

When did laughter become such an important thing for you?

Laraaji

It shifted the energies of the bullies in my neighborhood when I was young to use humor. I wouldn’t be so afraid of their presence when I could use humor. And in church, we use humor because it could get so boring. And because I was in the right place to use it, we’d use it to get other peers to laugh in the middle of a serious sermon. But I notice the power of laughter to alter, to break the sense of rigidity and separation. I began writing scripts in high school and doing situation comedies for talent shows because I enjoyed seeing people lose it to laughter. The family I grew up in, the uncles, aunts, the cousins all were laughter friendly, so laughter was always on the menu. I can’t remember even a funeral where laughter was outlawed.

Sean Illing

You really do see it as a transformative force?

Laraaji

Well, after doing standup comedy I decided to let standup comedy go for a while and just focus on music. It was a book by Rajneesh, Osho Rajneesh, that helped me to realize that I could access the laughter experience without doing comedy, and that I could guide other people into the laughter zone and enjoy the deliciousness of laughter without using humor and at the sacrifice of something.

And now, through laughter — play shops, I call them — we use laughter to get people into the play zone and to get them into contact with their inner child and to get them into deep relaxation. Yeah. And I really enjoy laughter now because it can come up out of people without it having to be nervous. Yeah, the entire body can get involved. The entire breath can be open, and it’s getting sweeter and more delicious every time I do one of these.

Sean Illing

So laughter is another way to transcend the thinking mind?

Laraaji

Yes. Rajneesh pointed out that when you’re laughing, really involved with laughter, that you or us or whoever is laughing is not thinking, they’re not involved in the thought process of linear thought. That may be so if you’re into pure, open laughter. If it’s a nervous laughter where you’re mindful of a threatening situation, that would be a different situation. But real, full body, cathartic laughter, you’re releasing faster than you can think. So there’s no thought process processing what it is that’s being released. It’s just a yummy, open, nurturing release.

Sean Illing

You’ve been a professional musician for decades, performing all over the world. You’re entangled with the business and the commercial side of music. I guess I just wonder how you navigate that element, of being a professional musician and being a spiritual person at the same time?

Laraaji

Well, I did many years ago get that unless I integrate my spiritual nature, I would never be totally happy, content, or experience resolution because I can’t get it from the physical world. I’m not hating the physical world, but things in the physical world are temporary and constantly we’re reminded that things come, they stay, and then they leave. And some things are just too beautiful for us to accept that they’re ever going to leave.

And I grew to understand that behind the world that is changing, there is this spiritual field that if I learn how to embrace it constantly, even while I’m embracing my outer wealth, that when the outer wealth shifts, I’m not bent out of shape because I’m still connected to this inner spiritual platform that doesn’t get bent out of shape when the outer world shifts. So for me, staying constant and staying with my spiritual practice allows me to be more playful and less fearful of the physical world, and less fearful of change and less fearful of losing. And so I find that the spiritual side helps me to be more present, more experimental, and more risk-taking with my musical expression.

Sean Illing

I’ve also heard you say that you think our core spiritual problem is our misidentification with our bodies. What does that mean?

Laraaji

I’m not going to do this. I wouldn’t think of doing this to you, Sean.

Sean Illing

Wait, what are you going to do to me?!

Laraaji

I would amputate your leg. Your feet. You’re still there. Your torso. You’re still there. Your arms, your elbows. You’re still there. That’s just a head. And you’re still there. Your ears and nose goes. You’re still there. Your lips and tongue. God is still there. Suddenly your head disappears. But you’re still there. And you’re saying to yourself, wait a minute. I thought I was that body. Look. I’m timeless. I’m invisible. I’m wingless. What do I do with this?

And I believe that identification with the physical body, which is birth, that lives and dies, and we get attached to it, and we get sentimental with it. And we try to enjoy its five senses, and we forget, or we don’t access the joy that we can have, the more expansive joy we can have through the infinite self that is always here.

Perhaps your buddies have had an epiphany through the use of certain ceremonies. Where you’re suddenly in another sense of present time and space, a different sense of expansiveness, a different sense of how time is unfolding, slower or not at all. And to have this experience is to be taking advantage of a different form of body. The deepest sense of happiness and joy I feel comes from having an intimate, communing experience with my eternal present time-self. The spiritual presence which is always here, always everywhere. It just needs to be totally present, to dig it in, to catch it and to wear it and to behold it.

Sean Illing

You’re 80 years old. You’ve been making music for over 40 years. You’ve lived such an interesting life as an artist and a contemplative. As you sit here now, today, what is your spiritual mission? What gets you out of bed every day?

Laraaji

I’ll go through what I have to do the moment I get out of bed. Usually what gets me up is a sense of a daily agenda, which is different every day. Something that I’m going to do that day that I’m going to really enjoy, whether it’s music, performance, or designing, new tuning or getting to know a new piece of equipment, or sitting for an extra period of time in meditation, either in lotus position in my house or going for a walk in Central Park or Riverside Park and sitting on a bench in the sun, getting into meditation.

What keeps me enthusiastically involved in life and passionately involved with life is the sensation of an eternal non-human intelligence that’s generating this thing called creation and is allowing me to participate in it and to co-witness and to co-collaborate with it. And then in the midst of this, it is remaining invisible and remaining infinite. And I’m feeling it through my connection with it. And so it’s not so much what I’m getting out of bed for, but as I’m getting out of bed there’s this sense of conscious improvisational collaboration within the divine alternating intelligence. But when I’m doing tours and I’m put in a nice, beautiful hotel, I’ll happily get out of bed for the breakfast.

Listen to the rest of the conversation and be sure to follow The Gray Area on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Read full article on: vox.com

6 h

vox.com

tag There’s an old saying that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” It’s intended as a dig at music criticism, but beneath that, there’s a deeper truth: Music is intangible, subjective; it’s universal yet still deeply personal. And while science and math are involved in its creation, there is something undeniably mystical about it. Laraaji is a 80-year-old pioneer of so-called New Age music and someone who’s been sitting on the fringes of the music world for decades — though, last year, he joined Andre 3000 onstage in Brooklyn. When he was young, Laraaji experimented with acting, including a role in the landmark experimental film Putney Swope, and spent time in the 1960s standup comedy scene. After that, he became interested in spiritual communities, discovered the autoharp, and devoted his life to making music. He’s been a truly prolific artist ever since.I recently invited Laraaji on The Gray Area to talk about music, meditation, spirituality, and the therapeutic power of laughter. As always, there’s much more in the full podcast, so listen and follow The Gray Area on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever you find podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Sean Illing I’m so intrigued by all the artistic interests you’ve had in your life. You’ve done standup comedy. You’ve done acting. Obviously, in the end, you gave yourself over to music. Did the experience of acting and doing comedy make you a better musician? Or is it just creatively a totally different thing? Laraaji It’s the same thing, Sean. It’s wherever I choose to open and give expression to. I’m practicing the art of surrendering and spontaneity. Sean Illing I think that’s why I’m a lousy musician. I’m too in my own damn head. Laraaji I say observe your body language when you have your next orgasm. Sean Illing I don’t think anybody — including myself — wants to see that! Laraaji Seriously, look at your breath. Look at your body language. Look how focused you are into surrendering to this energetic expression. And I see some of that expression carried over into the way people sing pop music, rock music. They get into the more orgasmic, passionate level of release. Sean Illing Do you think of yourself as primarily an improvisational musician for those reasons? Laraaji I depend more on improvisation than I do on set scores. I find that improvisation is aligned with what I call my spiritual belief that every moment is new. And to trust that what I need in this moment is here. Sean Illing Musicians always talk about that, feeling more like a conduit than an author. Is that what it’s like for you on stage? Laraaji Yes, and it’s magical and mystical and a transportive place because you’re somehow beyond linear time flow. You’re in the midst of local time, but you’re also witnessing an unbroken, constant present time. It’s speaking through me and it’s speaking as me. I’m sound, I’m space, I’m timelessness. This is like music I can dream up. Part of my art is knowing when to get out of the way, how to set up a musical flow or a musical event, and then to step to the side of it and let it speak through. Sean Illing You also sing but it feels like part of the music, like there’s little distinction between the instruments you’re playing and what’s coming from your voice. Do you think of your voice as another instrument and not something separate? Laraaji Yes, I do like doing everything at the same time. Spontaneous, unified flow. Create a flow with several instruments at the same time, using the voice without calling the mental process into linear thinking. And using a voice as an emotional expressional instrument. That’s what I’ve been exploring, especially with meditation or deep contemplation of contacting altered planes of conscious present time. And so to talk about it is to take the mind out of it. Then there’s sounds of passion, passionate immersion. The voice can be used to express witnessing inside of an awe-inspiring perception. So the whole body becomes the voice and the breath and the movement and become a conduit. Invented or improvisational language can be the evidence of a person or practitioner in total immersion, total submission, getting involved with a total perception that’s beyond linear description. So the brain is given a vacation, and in that vacation or place, it might be freed up to have an alternative space-time experience. And that might be the message the artist wants to convey, that there is an alternative way of being conscious here and now. Sean Illing I have heard you talk about music as a tool for total presence. Why do you think music has that kind of effect on us? Laraaji Music generated or channeled by the right musician or artist? The artist is in a state of contemplation or meditation or a suspended time awareness. And in the languaging that occurs with their instrument, their interaction with their instrument and with their voice can convey this repurposing of the human instrument, repurposing it from a conveyor of local human-based emotion to a conduit of exalted emotion, direct perception inside this timeless present moment. It’s always available. Certain sounds. Drones can do that. Music that’s very spontaneous, that can pull the mind out of linear thought, could allow the perceiver, the listener, to suddenly directly notice the reality of eternal time and the infinite space. Sound can point to the invisible and sound can suggest the flowing of energy, the flowing of blood, the flowing of breath. It can suggest the integration of seemingly separate and discordant. In the case of a harp, all 36 strings are vibrating at the same time and producing this synergetic tonal event. So, as you say, that sound can throw a suggestion. It can point to the invisible, it can point to the transcendent. It can direct the emotional body out of heaviness so that a lightness, a more ethereal resonance can be directly witnessed. Sean Illing Once we start talking and using words, we’re already in the world of ideas and abstractions. But music is more primary than that, right? It touches something in us that existed before we invented words. Laraaji Yes. Music might be able to say more than what speech can say. My general mode of operation is to prepare before a performance or recording through just dropping into a refined sense of the meditative field. Do some yoga postures, some breathing exercises, some positive affirmations, and then sculpt this field or point to this transcendental field and let it transmit itself into a sound repetition through me. When this happens, I tend to call it a sound bath. A celestial sound bath. It’s an immersion experience. And once again, here we’re away from the words and we’re into the pure impacting force of sound. Sean Illing Do you actually find a meaningful distinction between music and meditation, or is it all just different manifestations of the same practice? Laraaji My ultimate answer is that they’re one and the same, meaning that in the moment of deepest meditation, I consider meditation to be the highest romance and that romance is the highest meditation. This meditation is simultaneous with music. It couldn’t be separated. Sean Illing When did laughter become such an important thing for you? Laraaji It shifted the energies of the bullies in my neighborhood when I was young to use humor. I wouldn’t be so afraid of their presence when I could use humor. And in church, we use humor because it could get so boring. And because I was in the right place to use it, we’d use it to get other peers to laugh in the middle of a serious sermon. But I notice the power of laughter to alter, to break the sense of rigidity and separation. I began writing scripts in high school and doing situation comedies for talent shows because I enjoyed seeing people lose it to laughter. The family I grew up in, the uncles, aunts, the cousins all were laughter friendly, so laughter was always on the menu. I can’t remember even a funeral where laughter was outlawed. Sean Illing You really do see it as a transformative force? Laraaji Well, after doing standup comedy I decided to let standup comedy go for a while and just focus on music. It was a book by Rajneesh, Osho Rajneesh, that helped me to realize that I could access the laughter experience without doing comedy, and that I could guide other people into the laughter zone and enjoy the deliciousness of laughter without using humor and at the sacrifice of something. And now, through laughter — play shops, I call them — we use laughter to get people into the play zone and to get them into contact with their inner child and to get them into deep relaxation. Yeah. And I really enjoy laughter now because it can come up out of people without it having to be nervous. Yeah, the entire body can get involved. The entire breath can be open, and it’s getting sweeter and more delicious every time I do one of these. Sean Illing So laughter is another way to transcend the thinking mind? Laraaji Yes. Rajneesh pointed out that when you’re laughing, really involved with laughter, that you or us or whoever is laughing is not thinking, they’re not involved in the thought process of linear thought. That may be so if you’re into pure, open laughter. If it’s a nervous laughter where you’re mindful of a threatening situation, that would be a different situation. But real, full body, cathartic laughter, you’re releasing faster than you can think. So there’s no thought process processing what it is that’s being released. It’s just a yummy, open, nurturing release. Sean Illing You’ve been a professional musician for decades, performing all over the world. You’re entangled with the business and the commercial side of music. I guess I just wonder how you navigate that element, of being a professional musician and being a spiritual person at the same time? Laraaji Well, I did many years ago get that unless I integrate my spiritual nature, I would never be totally happy, content, or experience resolution because I can’t get it from the physical world. I’m not hating the physical world, but things in the physical world are temporary and constantly we’re reminded that things come, they stay, and then they leave. And some things are just too beautiful for us to accept that they’re ever going to leave. And I grew to understand that behind the world that is changing, there is this spiritual field that if I learn how to embrace it constantly, even while I’m embracing my outer wealth, that when the outer wealth shifts, I’m not bent out of shape because I’m still connected to this inner spiritual platform that doesn’t get bent out of shape when the outer world shifts. So for me, staying constant and staying with my spiritual practice allows me to be more playful and less fearful of the physical world, and less fearful of change and less fearful of losing. And so I find that the spiritual side helps me to be more present, more experimental, and more risk-taking with my musical expression. Sean Illing I’ve also heard you say that you think our core spiritual problem is our misidentification with our bodies. What does that mean? Laraaji I’m not going to do this. I wouldn’t think of doing this to you, Sean. Sean Illing Wait, what are you going to do to me?! Laraaji I would amputate your leg. Your feet. You’re still there. Your torso. You’re still there. Your arms, your elbows. You’re still there. That’s just a head. And you’re still there. Your ears and nose goes. You’re still there. Your lips and tongue. God is still there. Suddenly your head disappears. But you’re still there. And you’re saying to yourself, wait a minute. I thought I was that body. Look. I’m timeless. I’m invisible. I’m wingless. What do I do with this? And I believe that identification with the physical body, which is birth, that lives and dies, and we get attached to it, and we get sentimental with it. And we try to enjoy its five senses, and we forget, or we don’t access the joy that we can have, the more expansive joy we can have through the infinite self that is always here. Perhaps your buddies have had an epiphany through the use of certain ceremonies. Where you’re suddenly in another sense of present time and space, a different sense of expansiveness, a different sense of how time is unfolding, slower or not at all. And to have this experience is to be taking advantage of a different form of body. The deepest sense of happiness and joy I feel comes from having an intimate, communing experience with my eternal present time-self. The spiritual presence which is always here, always everywhere. It just needs to be totally present, to dig it in, to catch it and to wear it and to behold it. Sean Illing You’re 80 years old. You’ve been making music for over 40 years. You’ve lived such an interesting life as an artist and a contemplative. As you sit here now, today, what is your spiritual mission? What gets you out of bed every day? Laraaji I’ll go through what I have to do the moment I get out of bed. Usually what gets me up is a sense of a daily agenda, which is different every day. Something that I’m going to do that day that I’m going to really enjoy, whether it’s music, performance, or designing, new tuning or getting to know a new piece of equipment, or sitting for an extra period of time in meditation, either in lotus position in my house or going for a walk in Central Park or Riverside Park and sitting on a bench in the sun, getting into meditation. What keeps me enthusiastically involved in life and passionately involved with life is the sensation of an eternal non-human intelligence that’s generating this thing called creation and is allowing me to participate in it and to co-witness and to co-collaborate with it. And then in the midst of this, it is remaining invisible and remaining infinite. And I’m feeling it through my connection with it. And so it’s not so much what I’m getting out of bed for, but as I’m getting out of bed there’s this sense of conscious improvisational collaboration within the divine alternating intelligence. But when I’m doing tours and I’m put in a nice, beautiful hotel, I’ll happily get out of bed for the breakfast. Listen to the rest of the conversation and be sure to follow The Gray Area on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Read full article on: vox.com

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The Lessons of Aging

This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.Over the past few months, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about old age. Earlier this year, imost Americans seemed to share my fixation, as voters debated President Joe Biden’s mental fitness for a second term. But my preoccupation also has something to do with realizing that my peers—those in their early 30s—are no longer the primary audience for pop culture, as well as the feeling that people close to me are no longer “getting older” every year, but actually “aging.” And because you’re reading the Books Briefing, it won’t be a surprise that I’ve turned to literature for guidance.First, here are four stories from The Atlantic’s Books section: A naked desperation to be seen In defense of marital secrets Six books that feel like watching a movie The woman who would be Steinbeck With his latest novel, Our Evenings, the English author Alan Hollinghurst, now 70 years old, has written a work that “reads like a throwback,” Charles McGrath wrote for us this week: It is “as if the author, now older and wiser, were reminding both himself and his readers that … true emotional intimacy is often elusive.” Like all of Hollinghurst’s work, McGrath argues, his latest is focused on “time, and what it does to everything.” And what the passing years seem to do, most of all, is get in the way of the truth: Many of Hollinghurst’s characters intentionally misremember or obscure their past mistakes and failures. A vein of sadness runs through the novel; the “evenings” of the title perhaps refers not only to the protagonist’s numbered days but also to a bygone era in England, and a romanticized past that was simpler than “the mess that contemporary Britain has become,” as McGrath puts it.The writer Lore Segal, who died this week at the age of 96, had a somewhat different approach to the passage of time—one with more humor and less regret. The Austrian American author was best known for her tales about immigrants and outcasts; last year, my colleague Gal Beckerman recommended her novel Her First American for our summer reading guide, writing that “the originality of this love story between two outsiders in 1950s New York City … cannot be overstated.” And Segal kept writing until the very end of her life. In James Marcus’s appreciation of her life and work, he writes that in recent years she sent him drafts of her new stories, many of which were included in her final collection, Ladies’ Lunch. Even after a decades-long career, Segal was “still beset with doubts about her work,” Marcus reports.Her last story for The New Yorker, to which she was a frequent contributor, was published just last month. In it, the reader sees Segal address those doubts almost head-on. The story follows a group of old friends who get together and, almost immediately, start talking about the embarrassment of writing for a living. Bridget mentions that she’s sent her latest story to a friend from a former writing class, and for four weeks, she’s been anxiously awaiting a response. The others ask what she’ll do, and she responds that she’ll “lie in bed at night and stew. Dream vengeful dreams.” Age, it seems, doesn’t dissipate pettiness or insecurity.In that story, which appeared in Ladies’ Lunch, Segal doesn’t betray much sadness at getting older, just a commitment to working things out on the page. Where Hollinghurst’s work is tinged with regret over unfulfilled lives and better days, Segal looks back with a less maudlin touch. She seems to suggest that the solution to aging is to just keep living—and writing. Illustration by Aldo Jarillo Alan Hollinghurst’s Lost EnglandBy Charles McGrathIn his new novel, the present isn’t much better than the past—and it’s a lot less sexy.Read the full article.What to ReadSabrina, by Nick DrnasoAlmost no one is writing like Drnaso, whose second book, Sabrina, became the first graphic novel to be nominated for the Booker Prize, in 2018. The story, which explores the exploitative nature of both true crime and the 24-hour news cycle, focuses on a woman named Sabrina who goes missing, leaving her loved ones to hope, pray, and worry. When a video of her murder goes viral on social media, those close to her get sucked into supporting roles in strangers’ conspiracy theories. Drnaso’s style across all of his works—but especially in Sabrina—is stark and minimal: His illustrations are deceptively simple, yet entrancing. He doesn’t overload the book with dialogue. He knows and trusts his readers to put the pieces together; part of the audience’s job is to conjure how his characters feel as they approach the mystery of Sabrina’s disappearance and death. Drnaso wants to show the reader how, in a society full of misinformation and wild suppositions, the most trustworthy resource might just be your own two eyes. — Fran HoepfnerFrom our list: Six books that feel like watching a movieOut Next Week

13 m

theatlantic.com

Elon Musk’s X, Unilever reach settlement after left-leaning ad boycott dustup

An X spokesperson said the firm’s claims against Unilever had been “resolved” and it is no longer a defendant in the suit. Unilever, which owns Ben & Jerry’s, Dove, Hellman’s and various other consumer goods firms, has plans for its brands to resume advertising on X, according to the spokesperson.

15 m

nypost.com

'Bad Boys' actor Theresa Randle detained by LAPD after suspected felony assault incident

Theresa Randle, who appeared in the first three 'Bad Boys' films, was taken into custody in Los Angeles earlier this week over an incident from last weekend.

18 m

latimes.com

This Is Not a Pan of a Bob Woodward Book

At this late stage in Bob Woodward’s career, it would be possible to publish an entertaining anthology of the negative reviews of his books. Although there’s an ongoing debate about the journalistic merits of Woodward’s reportorial mode, he has no doubt succeeded in bringing out the vitriolic best from the likes of Joan Didion, Christopher Hitchens, and Jack Shafer.A few years back, I wrote to Woodward, hoping to get his help with an article I was reporting. I decided to solicit him with a thick layer of flattery, in what I believed to be the spirit of Bob Woodward. To my embarrassment, he replied that he struggled to reconcile my fawning missive with the negative review of his book State of Denial that I had published in The New York Times in 2006, “which strongly concludes the opposite.” His response suggests that he might be the ideal editor of the anthology.Over the years, my critique of Woodward has softened considerably. It’s not that the complaints about his works aren’t fair: He does recite his sources’ version of events with excessive deference; he trumpets every nugget of reporting, no matter how trivial; he narrates scenes without pausing to situate them in context. But when he’s in his most earnest mode—and War, his new book about President Joe Biden’s navigation of the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, might be the most earnest of his career—he exudes an almost atavistic obsession with the gritty details of foreign policy. Woodward is the most gifted sensationalist of his generation, but it’s his abiding desire to be known as a serious person that yields his most meaningful reporting.War gets to that fruitful place, but it begins in unpromising fashion. In the prologue, Woodward remembers that Carl Bernstein ran into Donald Trump at a New York dinner party, back in 1989. Trump exclaimed, “Wouldn’t it be amazing if Woodward & Bernstein interviewed Donald Trump?” The journalistic duo that helped bring down Richard Nixon agreed to see him the next day.Last year, Woodward went to a storage facility and began rummaging through his files in search of the lost interview. In a box filled with old newspaper clippings, he found a battered envelope containing the transcript. That’s the most interesting part of the story, alas. Woodward subjects his reader to pages of Trump’s banal musings: “I’m a great loyalist. I believe in loyalty to people.” Because Woodward and Bernstein were the ones asking the questions, the conversation is apparently worthy of history. This is a goofy, tangential start to a book devoted to the foreign policy of the Biden presidency.The cover, which features a row of faces of global leaders, places Kamala Harris’s visage in the center. It’s another piece of misdirection, because the vice president is a bit player in the story. That said, Harris comes off well in her cameos. She asks diligent questions in the Situation Room. In phone calls with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, she plays the heavy, asking him about civilian casualties in Gaza. There are no instances, however, of her disagreeing substantively with Biden.[Franklin Foer: The war that would not end]The most revealing Harris moment comes toward the end of the book. One of Biden’s friends asks her, “Could you please talk to the president more than you talk to him? Your president really loves you.” Her boss’s biggest disappointment was that she didn’t write, she didn’t call. In response to the friend’s plea, Harris joked about her strongest bond with the president: “He knows that I’m the only person around who knows how to properly pronounce the word motherfucker.” It’s a genuinely funny exchange, and telling in its way.But these are just MacGuffins: sops to the Beltway superfans. At its core, Woodward’s book is about diplomacy. Just past the sundry tidbits about Trump—most horrifying, the former president’s ongoing chumminess with Vladimir Putin, a charge that Trump’s campaign denies—there lies a serious history of the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza. I have reported on these stories myself, and I can’t say that I found any faults in his account. If anything, I’m unashamedly jealous of how he managed to get a few big stories that eluded me. One of the most stunning sections of the book captures Putin mulling the use of a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine—and all the quiet diplomacy that pushed him back from the brink. Newspapers hinted at this threat at the time, but Woodward reveals the backstory in robust and chilling detail. (Jon Finer, the deputy head of the National Security Council, says that Putin’s decision on whether to deploy the nuke seemed like a “coin flip.”) When Biden frets about the possibilities of nuclear escalation, he’s not just recalling his youth in the earliest days of the Cold War. He’s confronting a very real risk in the present.Unlike his predecessors, Biden was distrustful of Woodward. Old enough to remember how one his books helped to derail Bill Clinton’s first term, Biden appears to have chosen not to participate in either this history or Woodward’s previous book, Peril. Having withheld access, the president comes across as lifeless. It’s not that he’s out to lunch—he is in command of his faculties, according to Woodward’s reporting. There are just no real insights into his psychology. His decision to withdraw from the 2024 race came too close to the book’s publication date for Woodward to report on the process that led the president to back away. He has very little to say about the most fascinating decision in recent political history. But in some sense, Biden and Woodward were made for each other. These two octogenarians are both avatars of a bygone era in Washington, when foreign policy was the shared obsession of the establishment. Even if Woodward doesn’t find Biden personally interesting, he pores over the president’s conversations with Netanyahu and Putin with genuine fascination. These aren’t the scraps of reporting that move copies, but they are clearly what he treasures. In his epilogue, he hints at how much he enjoyed covering “genuine good faith efforts by the president and his core national security team to wield the levers of executive power responsibly and in the national interest.”Despite his fixation on substance, Woodward fails to answer—or even ask—some of the bigger questions about Biden’s foreign policy: Could he have done more to bolster Ukraine? Could he have pushed Israel to accept a cease-fire? But Woodward does arrive at a judgment of the presidency that strikes me as measured and fair: “Based on the evidence available now, I believe President Biden and this team will be largely studied in history as an example of steady and purposeful leadership.” Despite the many mistakes of this administration, I’m guessing that Woodward’s verdict will pass the test of time, and that none of the reviews of War is destined for the anthology.

20 m

theatlantic.com

Kamala Harris Gets a Consolation-Prize Online-Only Vogue Cover

The Daily Beast/Vogue/AnnieLeibovitzKamala Harris has appeared on the cover of Vogue magazine—but could only land the October digital version of the iconic mag with pop star Billie Eilish taking top billing on the cover of the new print issue.Some social media users suggested the photo was doctored to make the 59-year-old Democratic Party presidential nominee look younger.“Makeup magic plus airbrushing like no one has ever airbrushed,” wrote one user. Read more at The Daily Beast.

23 m

thedailybeast.com

North West calls out mom Kim Kardashian for not cooking dinner for their family in 2 years

The 11-year-old declared that if she could "only eat one thing for the rest of [her] life," it would be cucumbers and salt –– "or onions."

24 m

nypost.com

Tim Walz tries — and fails — to walk back call to end Electoral College in ‘GMA’ interview

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz appeared to double down Thursday on his support of getting rid of the Electoral College — despite getting smacked down by the Harris campaign the first time he called for the radical constitutional change. “Well, it’s not the campaign’s position, and the point that I’m trying to make is that there’s...

24 m

nypost.com

Pregnant Lindsay Hubbard teases ‘unique’ name of first baby with boyfriend Turner Kufe

"We've had a name for a while, one that we both really liked from the beginning. We use it all the time," the "Summer House" star told Page Six.

28 m

nypost.com

Quantum Woo’s Irresistible Energy

As a being made up of billions of billions of atoms, I am subject to certain rules. To walk through my front door, I first have to open it. If I throw my jacket onto a chair, it will move in the direction and at the speed with which I tossed it, and stay on the chair until I pick it up again. I can’t affect the movement of a tennis ball in China by bouncing one in New York.In the quantum world, where physicists study the behaviors of individual atoms and their even smaller parts, these laws do not apply. Particles of matter sometimes act like waves, or move through solid objects. The qualities of one atom can be linked to another’s, even if the two are a great distance apart.Starting around the turn of the 20th century, physicists began to understand that the behaviors of the tiniest bits of our world couldn’t be explained by the laws of classical physics—the type that governs macroscopic solids, gases, liquids, and the forces that act on them. But as the field has developed, it has taken on another surprising role: as a touchstone in alternative health and wellness spaces, used to justify manifestation, energy healing, and other fringe claims and products. The phenomenon is called “quantum woo,” “quantum mysticism,” or “quantum flapdoodle.” It’s both an incorrect appropriation of scientific ideas and a strangely elegant way to explain the psychological forces that push people toward alternative medicine. Many wellness trends reflect a desire for another, contrarian account of the inner workings of the human body and mind—just what quantum mechanics provides for the inner workings of the physical world. Alongside a pervasive interest in alternative-medicine practices and New Age beliefs, more people could be in danger of getting pulled into the flapdoodle.The physicist Matthew R. Francis once wrote that “possibly no subject in science has inspired more nonsense than quantum mechanics.” In some cases, quantum terminology is arbitrarily added to health practices to legitimize them, or to indicate that they are mysterious and powerful, says Christopher Ferrie, a physicist at the University of Technology Sydney and the author of Quantum Bullsh*t: How to Ruin Your Life With Advice From Quantum Physics. “Like calling your dishwasher detergent Quantum, it just makes it sound cooler,” Ferrie told me. It’s easy to find a “quantum healer” practicing within a couple of miles of my home. YouTube and Instagram accounts offer advice on learning to quantum leap; you can read books about falling in quantum love. You can even buy a $99 quantum water bottle “charged” with special healing frequencies or a quantum crystal kit that will help you “clear any negative vibrations you have picked up.”In a 2020 episode of the Netflix show The Goop Lab With Gwyneth Paltrow, an energy practitioner named John Amaral told Paltrow that a pillar of quantum mechanics, the double-slit experiment, shows that “consciousness actually shifts or alters, in some way, shape, or form, physical reality.” What the experiment actually demonstrates is that when photons are shot through two open slits, they can act either as waves or as particles, depending on whether they’re measured. The finding is perplexing—how can matter behave as a wave, and why would recording photons change their behavior? Physicists are still actively working on how and if quantum behaviors might seep into the larger world, but they agree that the human body is a solid thing, and that people don’t act as photons do.Amaral’s comments are typical of quantum woo in that they apply the uncertain state of subatomic particles to people, and expect humans to act as photons do. “By influencing the frequency of energy in and around your body, you can change your physical reality,” Amaral said on Goop Lab. In The Secret, the best-selling manifesto of manifestation, Rhonda Byrne referenced quantum physics to claim that thoughts and emotions are entangled with outcomes in the exterior world. There are parallels in her description to the quantum theory of entanglement—the idea that pairs of particles can have correlated behaviors even at a distance. In physics, energies and frequencies refer to measurable properties of subatomic particles and waves. In New Age or wellness vernacular, these terms are squishier, usually alluding to ambiguous thought patterns, life forces, or chakras—so immeasurable as to be incontrovertible.Quantum physics’ close relationship with mystical ideas has on occasion pushed the science forward. In 1975, two students affiliated with the theoretical-physics division of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory formed the “Fundamental Fysiks Group,” which frequently connected quantum mechanics to Eastern mysticism, psychedelic-drug experiences, and telepathy. Their explorations into parapsychology, including getting CIA funding to test “remote viewing”—basically whether one person could receive telepathic messages from another—were a bust. But David Kaiser, a quantum physicist at MIT and the author of How the Hippies Saved Physics, told me that the group’s radical questions about the quantum world and its limits “helped nudge the broader community, which then began to take some of these questions more seriously than they had been taken before.” For example, the group’s thought experiment on entanglement led to the “no-cloning theorem,” which states that certain quantum states cannot be copied. This is now important for, among other things, quantum cryptography, which takes advantage of the fact that encrypted messages cannot be copied without also being corrupted.Crucially, the Fundamental Fysiks Group put its notions to the scientific test, combining Eastern religious or parapsychic ideas with real physics know-how. The quantum wellness and health industry, by contrast, demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of what quantum physics is all about. “Quantum mechanics does have many strange and counterintuitive features,” Kaiser said. But quantum states are very delicate, and much different from the ones humans live in. To perform quantum experiments, physicists typically have to put atoms in vacuums or subject them to temperatures near absolute zero. “By the time you get to something that’s a few thousand atoms big, you’re losing the pure quantum essence,” Philip Moriarty, a physicist at the University of Nottingham, in England, told me. “When you get to something as big as a human, there’s no quantum essence left.”Quantum mechanics arose because classical physics failed to completely describe the microscopic universe around us—because scientists had uncovered experimental situations that defied the physics they knew. It suggested that, underneath the world of cause, effect, and consistency, a secret alternative playbook was hiding in plain sight. Applying that hint of fantasy to the world at human scale has proved too tempting for the wellness marketplace—and many consumers—to resist. Deepak Chopra, a popular alternative-medicine figure and the author of Quantum Healing, declares on his website, “You are a mystery that needs quantum answers.” Many people’s emotions and bodies really do feel like puzzles that we haven’t been given all the pieces to solve, so it’s appealing to think that the missing bits exist somewhere in the quantum realm.The wellness industry often reflects larger anxieties around health, food, and environmental safety, Adam Aronovich, a medical anthropologist at Universitat Rovira i Virgili, in Spain, told me. It also has a history of using scientific-sounding—but scientifically inscrutable—language to lend itself a patina of legitimacy. Quantum wellness is no exception. Quantum water filters, for example, are enticing “not only because of the quantum mysticism behind it, but because people have real anxieties about microplastics,” Aronovich said. “You don’t have to worry about microplastics in your water if you have enough money to buy this quantum filter that has the approval stamp of Deepak Chopra. It is going to filter away all the bad things in a mystical, magical, unknowable way.”[From the April 2020 issue: Reiki can’t possibly work. So why does it?]The quantum world may be all around us, but humans—and our anxieties—inhabit a classical world. Most people are concerned primarily with how to keep our bodies healthy and tend to our emotional states amid social and environmental conditions that make doing so difficult. These problems operate on the macro scale. We can’t rely on single atoms to solve them for us.

28 m

theatlantic.com

Hochul’s agency heads might be getting a raise

During a sparsely attended hearing of the state Commission on Legislative, Judicial, and Executive Compensation Thursday, the panel’s chair presented research prepared by Hochuls budget office supporting a pay bump.

30 m

nypost.com

How Kayla Nicole has handled awkward Travis Kelce run-ins: ‘No room to communicate’

Kayla Nicole was candid about where she stands with Travis Kelce after their 2022 breakup.

30 m

nypost.com

Democratic Socialists ready endorsement of Israel critic Zohran Mamdani for NYC mayor

The Democratic Socialists of America is readying a vote on whether to endorse Israel-bashing Queens Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani for mayor, according to an internal planning document obtained by The Post.

32 m

nypost.com

Laura Dern and Liam Hemsworth Have Enthusiastic Sex Against a Wall in Netflix’s ‘Lonely Planet’

Katniss had her chance with Gale—now it's Dern's turn.

33 m

nypost.com

‘The Anonymous’ exclusive clip: Nina Twine lies to Marcel Cunningham About Her True Identity

Her mother would tell her to do whatever she can to win.

33 m

nypost.com

College football Week 7 predictions: Ohio State vs. Oregon, more picks against the spread

Howie Kussoy, also known as the Pigskin Profit, is taking the favorite in Ohio State-Oregon on Saturday.

33 m

nypost.com

WATCH: Former blue state governor, stepson brutally beaten by band of teens

Curtis Sliwa posted brutal footage of a band of tweens kicking and punching his son, Anthony Sliwa, and his son's stepfather Gov. David Paterson in New York City's Upper East Side.

34 m

foxnews.com

Australian police officer arrested for grooming 15-year-old girl: ‘You owe me’

A “deeply psychologically troubled” police officer showered a 15-year-old girl in compliments and sent her nearly $1,000 before making a sickening request.

38 m

nypost.com

'Jeopardy!' references Mayim Bialik in clue 1 year after she was fired

Former "Jeopardy!" host Mayim Bialik was mentioned during an episode of the game show. The reference comes one year after she was let go from her hosting duties.

39 m

foxnews.com

Our high-fashion test drive of Cadillac’s 2024 all-electric Lyriq

Whether you’re driving a Cadillac Lyriq or lying flat across its back seats — the celebrity-approved style hack for keeping red-carpet gowns wrinkle-free — you’re traveling in the lap of luxury. After all, the all-electric SUV has a roomy cabin, 126-color LED dual-zone ambient interior lighting to set the vibe and a glamorous panoramic fixed...

42 m

nypost.com

Malik Nabers to miss ‘Sunday Night Football’ vs. Bengals in major Giants blow

Malik Nabers needs more time.

42 m

nypost.com

Florida gas stations are in need of fuel. Here's how long it could take.

There's a lot of gasoline headed to Florida, but power must first be restored for terminals to receive it.

43 m

cbsnews.com

‘The View’: Joy Behar Predicts Kamala Harris Would Be A “Shoo-In” Against Trump If She Were A Man

"Basically it's incompetence and racism on one side, and competence on the other side."

46 m

nypost.com

No thanks Obama — this black man will make up his own mind and not be shamed into voting for Kamala

Democratic elitists have a habit of disregarding your legitimate concerns, refusing to address your questions and shaming you into giving them your support.

47 m

nypost.com

Third-party candidate Cornel West loses bid to get on Pennsylvania ballot

A federal judge is turning down third-party candidate Cornel West’s request to be put on Pennsylvania’s presidential ballot

48 m

abcnews.go.com

All about NBA star Anthony Edwards’ alleged kids

The athlete allegedly welcomed a daughter and son in September and October 2023, respectively. He also shares a baby girl with girlfriend Shannon.

52 m

nypost.com

Elon Musk’s Optimus humanoid robots steal show at Tesla event: ‘This will be the biggest product ever’

The humanoid robots – faceless, tall figures with joint-like bends around the knees, hips, shoulders and elbows – can “basically do anything you want,” Musk said.

54 m

nypost.com

'Hamilton' former cast member missing, car found abandoned near national park

Zelig Williams was last seen on Oct. 3 in his hometown of Columbia, South Carolina. Authorities located his abandoned vehicle near Congaree National Park.

55 m

foxnews.com

Who is Martha Stewart’s ex-husband that she cheated on? Meet Andrew — who married her assistant

Martha Stewart tied the knot with Andrew in 1961 and welcomed daughter Alexis in 1965.

60 m

nypost.com

How Global Warming Made Hurricane Milton More Intense and Destructive

Greenhouse gas emissions added rain, intensified winds and doubled the storm’s potential property damage, scientists estimated.

1 h

nytimes.com

We Need to Stop Paying Attention to ‘Undecided’ Voters

Focus groups should address swing voters and lower-turnout voters, rather than ‘undecided’ voters, write Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Stephen Henriques.

1 h

time.com

Riley Keough steps out in NYC amid Lisa Marie Presley’s bombshell memoir and more star snaps

Riley Keough steps out in NYC, Selena Gomez shops and more snaps...

1 h

nypost.com

Billionaire ex-Harrods boss Mohamed Al Fayed linked to 40 new sex abuse allegations

A BBC documentary said the Egyptian billionaire, who died last year, had sexually abused female staff at Harrods in London and had threatened them if they tried to complain.

1 h

nypost.com

Justin Hartley Finally Responds To Glen Powell’s Viral Body Swap Movie Proposal (EXCLUSIVE)

Richard Linklater, u up?

1 h

nypost.com

Abortion emerges as most important election issue for young women, poll finds

Abortion has emerged as the most important issue in the November election for women under age 30, according to a new survey by KFF published Friday.

1 h

abcnews.go.com

McDonald’s CEO shares prediction that 2025 will be ‘another challenging year’

McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski told a business gathering in Boston on Thursday that the Big Mac maker is girding for more turbulence ahead.

1 h

nypost.com

Hart's Zach Rogozik sets school record with seven touchdowns in win over Canyon

Hart High senior running back Zach Rogozik scored a school-record seven touchdowns, including six on running plays, during a win over Canyon on Thursday.

1 h

latimes.com

I have the same rare ‘vampire’ condition Count Dracula had — garlic can kill me

A woman's rare "vampire disease" causes her to writhe in pain and could even be fatal if she ingests garlic, much like the mythical bloodsucking creatures.

1 h

nypost.com

‘The Sopranos’ cast Halloween costume guide for your favorite fictitious mobster

A Halloween costume inspired by a character from "The Sopranos" makes for a unique look. You can even dress up with your significant other as your favorite coupe from the show.

1 h

foxnews.com

Young Men Are Going in a Very Different Direction From Young Women. It Could Completely Upend Society.

Something strange is going on with Gen Z.

1 h

slate.com

‘SNL’ Movie ‘Saturday Night’ Shamefully Fails Gilda Radner

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Sony PicturesSaturday Night has a compelling concept: Instead of a film tracking the history of Saturday Night Live, which is celebrating its 50th season this year, it's a crazed behind-the-scenes comedy chronicling the night before the first episode ever aired, Oct. 11, 1975.Directed by Jason Reitman, who wrote the screenplay with Gil Kenan, the film is a zany whirlwind depicting the chaos, cast drama, and production issues on a night where anything you could imagine going wrong does. That whirlwind, however, does an enormous disservice: The film completely fails comedy legend Gilda Radner.Radner made an immediate impact on Saturday Night Live with her now iconic characters Roseanne Roseannadanna, Lisa Loopner, and Emily Litella, and memorable impersonations of celebrities like Lucille Ball and Patti Smith. She even won an Emmy in 1978 for her work on the show. When Rolling Stone ranked every cast member in the show’s history, she placed ninth, with the magazine praising that “Radner was the prototype for the brainy city girl with a bundle of neuroses.” Watching Saturday Night, however, you’d be forgiven for thinking she wasn’t even a cast member.Read more at The Daily Beast.

1 h

thedailybeast.com

Startling find on Mount Everest appears to solve 100-year-old mystery

A team of National Geographic climbers and filmmakers made the discovery on the treacherous north face of the world's highest mountain last month.

1 h

nypost.com