I was just thinking…what a wonderful year it’s been. In addition to publishing two books, being appointed to the National Council on the Arts, and buying a few more lithographs than I could afford, I’ve experienced every imaginable kind of aesthetic pleasure, from the music of Jonatha Brooke and Erin McKeown to such terrific new plays as Doubt, Intimate Apparel, Charlie Victor Romeo, and Private Jokes, Public Places. I heard Hilary Hahn play the Elgar Violin Concerto. I haunted the nightclubs of New York, where I heard more great jazz than I can possibly list here. I saw Sideways and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I threw myself head first into Lucas Schoormans’ Giorgio Morandi show. I reread the complete works of Evelyn Waugh. I saw Kristin Chenoweth sing Cunegonde. And those are just the things that come immediately to mind! Were I to look back over my blog entries and “Second City” columns for 2004, I’m sure I’d blush to recall some of the good things that are temporarily slipping my middle-aged mind.
I’ve also made some wonderful friends, not a few of them such fellow bloggers as Maud, Sarah, Chicha
(a/k/a Galley Cat), and Maccers,
whose postings first brought them to my attention, but who have since become a part of my corporeal life as well.
How lucky am I? Words can’t even begin to say. Thanks to you all, hither and yon, for taking part in the fun–and thanks above all to Our Girl in Chicago, my adored co-blogger, who has been improving my life for more than a decade.