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March 6, 2007
TT: Inching back
A friend writes:Terry, how are you doing? I just read yr blog. This "deep under the weather" sounds scary. How are you doing?
Not to worry. Longtime readers know that I suffer from what once was quaintly known as a weak chest, by which I don’t mean my ticker (which has its own weaknesses) but my pipes. Common colds invariably lay me low, especially when I’ve been too busy, and I think my recent trip to California qualifies. I spent a lot of time sitting in theaters and on airplanes, which is no doubt how I happened to inhale the virus that knocked me flat last week and has yet to turn me loose.
Alas, I had to hit a bunch of deadlines and see Howard Katz, King Lear, and Prelude to a Kiss in between sneezes, so my recovery has been incremental. For once I decided to be sensible and cut back sharply on my blogging, and I don’t expect to gear back up to anything like normal until next week. Kindly bear with me!
In the meantime, let me draw your attention to a few things:
• My most recent “Sightings” column, which appeared in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, was about the perils of connoisseurship. Here’s part of it:
Is it possible for a critic to know too much? Not a chance. The unhappy truth is that it’s far more common for us not to know nearly enough about the art forms we review. (If you doubt it, ask any artist.) But I’ve also discovered that the accumulation of knowledge can inhibit our ability to appreciate an artistic experience. I know middle-aged opera buffs who never seem to enjoy the performances they attend. Whenever they go to “La Traviata,” they always end up spending the whole intermission grousing about how the soprano wasn’t as good as some half-forgotten diva they heard in Milan 37 years ago. They’ve lost the knack of enjoying the performances they’re seeing—not to mention the piercing beauty of the music they’re hearing….
[T]he more you learn about an art form, the harder it becomes to enjoy it in a straightforward, uncomplicated way. The literary critic R.P. Blackmur had this phenomenon in mind when he observed that “knowledge itself is a fall from the paradise of undifferentiated sensation.” Go to “Swan Lake” for the first time and you’ll be blown away by the flood of gorgeous new sights and sounds that spills over you. Go 20 times and you’re more likely to notice that the orchestra played out of tune and the ballerina did 31 fouettés instead of 32.
That’s not snobbishness. It’s connoisseurship, and it’s a good thing—unless it gets between you and the immediate experience of art. Gratuitous pickiness is a soul-killing trap against which the critic must always be on guard….
This column inspired artblogger Edward Winkleman to respond in an interesting and sympathetic way, and to invite his own readers to comment no less interestingly. Take a look.
• Not long after I heard her at Joe’s Pub and blogged about it, Erin McKeown, the singer-songwriter who gets mentioned fairly frequently (and always enthusiastically) in this space, was interviewed on NPR’s All Things Considered. To listen, go here.
• Mark your calendar right now, for Jim Hall and Ron Carter are coming to the Blue Note for a six-night stand. Just the other day I was telling one of my young friends that Alone Together, their classic 1972 duet album, was on my Top Five list of great jazz-guitar recordings. I must have played it a couple of hundred times, but I’ve never heard the two of them live. The music starts on April 3. Be there—I will.
Now I’m going to see about getting a good night’s sleep, insofar as it’s possible. I’ve been taking antihistamines, which sometimes have strange effects on me, and last night I dreamed that a well-known New York drama critic was my college roommate (which he wasn’t) and told me that he wanted to undergo a sex-change operation (I don’t have any information about that). On the whole, I’d rather be in Philadelphia….
Posted March 6, 2007 12:00 PM
