filtered for nov 22 2019
working process, representing people, 2007
1. with zero irony
Today on Pitchfork, we are taking a critical look at Steely Dan — from their early classic rock staples to their latter-day studio sleaze — with new reviews of five of their most influential records.
Aja gets a 10. And Pitchfork gets a 10 for linking to the Rolling Stone interview from the day the album was released; it was written by a 20 year-old Cameron Crowe.
“Most of our time is spent on the Working Process,” Fagen began, slapping the arms of his leather chair. “We spent most of the year recording.” Fagen stopped slapping. “But I don’t know what we were actually doing.”
Is there anything more 1977 than Cameron Crowe writing in Rolling Stone about Steely Dan and converting “Working Process” into a proper noun?
2. representing people
Currently reading: Make it Scream, Make it Burn by Leslie Jamison. From her essay “Maximum Exposure,” about photographer Annie Appel’s decades-long project documenting a family in Mexico, this bit on the boundary of biography (and profiles, and photojournalism) spoke to me…
Representing people always involves reducing them, and calling a project “done” involves making an uneasy truce with that reduction. But some part of me rails against that compression. Some part of me wants to keep saying: there’s more, there’s more, there’s more. It’s why I often write ten thousand more words than I was assigned.
3. 2007
Via Why is this Interesting, a post on Martech Today (yeah, I know) from Noah Brier about 2007, the year that changed…a lot.
In January, Apple announces the iPhone, and Netflix announces a shift to streaming. Fast-forward to April, and Twitter becomes its own company and begins to grow rapidly under Jack Dorsey, while Google buys DoubleClick for $3.1 billion. Then in June, Facebook announces Platform, which allowed third parties to build apps on the social network for the first time. The fall brought about some big tech announcements as well — with AWS coming out of beta in October, Google announcing Android and Facebook launching ads in November.
We take all of these things for granted, and at the time each of them were interesting (and logical) individual announcements. But with the benefit of hindsight? Truly pivotal year.
