Despite a hushed murmur, most of the crowd nodded in mutual approval. Beah continued. “It’s exhausting to write and talk about myself all the time.” The Doerr-Hosier Center was filled with a consortium of accomplished authors, curious wordsmiths, book buyers, and retired benefactors who appeared to be hanging onto his every word. As a public speaker, Beah’s 1000-watt smile, electric charm, and enduring message can regal almost any crowd, be it college students or hard-line international diplomats. However, he’s not in Aspen for the summer to necessarily focus on humanitarian issues around the globe or to entertain; he’s here to write.

As the first ever writer-in-residence for the Aspen Writer’s Foundation, Beah is spending the summer in Aspen to get serious about writing a novel.

Aspen Summer Words: An Interview with Ishmael Beah

The Food & Wine Classic in Aspen: An Exclusive Interview with Mario Batali

If you saw J.J. Abraham’s stomach-churning camcorder blockbuster Cloverfield, you’re already familiar with the Brooklyn-based electronic post-techno duo Ratatat. Before the monster emerged from the Hudson River with Godzilla-like rage and began bashing iconic Manhattan landmarks into smithereens, Ratatat’s post-techno instrumental grooves reverberated through the background of a fashionable loft party in gentrified Greenwich Village. Ratatat’s Evan Mast, aka E*vax, laughed when asked about the song being worked into the soundtrack of the doomsday movie: “There was so much secrecy around the entire project. They just told us who the director was. They wouldn’t show us clips or give us a brief description. It was a real leap of faith for us.” Mast continued, “It was cool how the song echoed through the scene, like it was recorded in that room. But the movie sucked.”

Read the entire interview/profile here…

Bluegrass matters because – much like jazz – it is deeply rooted in the nitty-gritty of the American experience. It’s a genre of colloquial homespun lyrics, plucky melodies, and tight, breakneck acoustic riff. Bluegrass has a certain rustic nostalgia and rural romanticism, serving as an apropos soundtrack for a sequestered high alpine town like Aspen. Dust back the pages of Aspen’s history a century or so and it is easy to envision the scene: motley and haggard silver miners sitting around a fire, drinking whiskey, and strumming at a weathered banjo while crooning a Stephan Foster song after a long day in the craggy underbelly of Smuggler Mountain.

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In the days prior to the 2004 general election, the late Hunter S. Thompson insinuated an eccentric Democratic political strategy to financial website Bankrate.com. The brazenly idiosyncratic Gonzo journalist noted the key to Senator John Kerry’s victory involved rallying around “the sports writer’s vote, the dope fiend’s vote, and the Grateful Dead vote.”

Read the entire expose here…

Hanging modestly from the second story of a gray-brick building deep in the heart of New York’s West Village, an iconic art deco sign reads: “The Village Gate: Politics. Sex. Reality.” Nowadays, the sign is a sort of historical land marker, denoting the location of one of New York’s former great music clubs, Art D’Lugoff’s Village Gate. Though the Gate closed in 1993, the sign remains fastened above the corner of Thompson and Bleeker. Today, the sign symbolically invokes a certain type of nostalgia for a much romanced bygone era of Greenwich Village; an era of prideful bohemian eccentricity and titanic artistic accomplishment – the looming “ghosts” of iconoclastic greats like Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Andy Warhol, Joan Baez, Charlie Parker, Dylan Thomas, etc.

Read it here…