The editors' blog

"DON'T YOU THINK SHE'S A LITTLE BIT YOUNG?"

Stephanie Sinclair travelled around rural Afghanistan photographing child brides in 2003. She returned with a series of moving, upsetting portraits of terrified adolescents born into a world of misogynistic duties and suicidal despair.

"PLAYING THE BUILDING" WITH DAVID BYRNE

“Nice one”, says David Byrne. It’s hard to tell whether he’s addressing himself or the instrument. Certainly it’s not us. We are the assembled media, gathered in a clacking and beeping horseshoe to watch the former Talking Head explain his new installation, “Playing the Building”.

FROM THE DEPT OF RATIONALISED VICES

As Theodor Herzl once said: "

If you will it, it is no dream

."

WOODSTOCK, AND ALL THAT

Perhaps you haven't heard, but a big outdoor music concert took place in upstate New York 40 years ago. Ah, Woodstock: what was meant to signal the coming of a revolution was in fact the main event. How sad and tidy and sweet.

MEXICO CITY'S ART WORLD COMES OF AGE

"It's important for us to continue experimenting," Brett Schultz and Daniela Elbahara tell me. We are in the midst of a fevered, packed party for the opening of their gallery's new exhibit of gun-adorned prints by Artemio, a Mexican artist.

DRUNKEN WOMEN NOVELISTS DIDN'T SOBER UP

A number of readers have written in to point out my misidentification of Brendan Behan as "British" and to question the lack of women writers in my article about novelists who sober up.

THE FUTURE OF JAZZ?

Terry Teachout at the Wall Street Journal has sounded the alarm over the serious decline in the popularity of jazz. Evidently the audience for jazz in America is both aging and shrinking at a staggering rate, making it resemble the folks who dutifully take their classical-music vitamins. Jazz no longer seems to speak to young people, which doesn't bode well for the future of the genre.

TAKING TO THE STREETS WITH THE ASPHALT ORCHESTRA

They're loud, sweaty and tend to prefer funk rhythms, long riffs in one key and Slavic sounds. I've seen street bands, but never one as good as the Asphalt Orchestra.

SOGGY TIMES IN LOCARNO

As I've written before, there’s something special about the Locarno Film Festival. Set on Lake Maggiore and surrounded by forested peaks, the town’s 8,000-seat Piazza Grande is one of the world’s great open-air arenas, and the main spot for the festival's 11-night programme.

SIGNS OF BOOK-TOUR FATIGUE

Occasionally one comes across a sign that an author has been perhaps stuck peddling a book for too long. How can it not be tedious to answer the same questions over and over again, without seeming fatigued or bored? How can it not be odd to engage with so many strangers over what you've composed--alone and in your head--now that it is public? It is a funny thing, the way that relentless exposure follows authorial lonerdom (for the lucky few, that is).