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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for July 13, 2005

TT: Almanac

July 13, 2005 by Terry Teachout

“Whoever invented the meeting must have had Hollywood in mind. I think they should consider giving Oscars for meetings: Best Meeting of the Year, Best Supporting Meeting, Best Meeting Based on Material from Another Meeting.”


William Goldman, Adventures in the Screen Trade

TT: Almanac

July 13, 2005 by Terry Teachout

“Whoever invented the meeting must have had Hollywood in mind. I think they should consider giving Oscars for meetings: Best Meeting of the Year, Best Supporting Meeting, Best Meeting Based on Material from Another Meeting.”


William Goldman, Adventures in the Screen Trade

TT: After you get what you want

July 13, 2005 by Terry Teachout

I spent Wednesday in Washington, D.C., attending two closed sessions of the National Council on the Arts. All fun, all interesting, and my fellow council members are as collegial as can be, but it was still a long, hot, humid day, and when it was over I knew I’d be coming back to a hotel whose air conditioning has proved unequal to the demands of Washington in July. (I’ve also been having troubles with the hotel’s high-speed Internet service.) Hence I didn’t care to spend the evening in my room, and it happened that all of my Washington-based friends were either busy or elsewhere tonight.

What to do? I treated myself to a good dinner, then went looking for a movie I hadn’t seen, which turned out to be Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know. On my way to the theater, I tried to think of the last time I’d spent an evening watching a movie by myself in a city other than New York. When I go out of town, it’s usually to visit a friend or cover a performance, so I tend not to be faced with the problem of what to do after dinner. At length I recalled that I’d seen Audrey Wells’ Guinevere in Washington’s Dupont Circle six years ago. I liked it very much, and I liked Me and You and Everyone We Know even more, but a few minutes into the film, it struck me that (A) I was watching a sad little comedy about the loneliness of postmodern urban life and (B) nobody in the world knew where I was.

Sitting in the sparsely peopled theater, alone with the characters and with myself, I thought of a remark A.J. Liebling made in my favorite of his books, Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris:

Granted that in later life a man will have to learn to get along with other people–I learn with horror that the knack is now taught in high school as a “social study”–that is all the more reason there should be a period in his life when he has to get along with nobody but himself. It will be a sweetness to remember.

I think there’s quite a bit of truth in that–up to a point. I don’t spend too many evenings by myself: I’m in the company of friends far more often than not, watching performances or just hanging out. Sometimes I find myself hungering for solitude, and there are occasions when I’m almost painfully grateful to spend a night with my prints, my CDs, my iBook, and my trusty TV, watching What’s My Line?, keeping my own counsel and staying up as late as I like. I’ve recently discovered, much to my surprise, that I even like vacationing alone. At the same time, I’m no hermit, and like most singletons, I find there are other times when being alone is no fun at all. One is when you finish watching a really good movie and, instead of chatting about it over a drink with a friend, retire to an empty hotel room in a city far from home.

My solitude, fortunately, will only last a single night. Tomorrow morning I’ll be meeting my v., v. cool friend Ali for breakfast, after which I’ll head over to the Old Post Office for one more NCA session. At twelve-thirty I’m lunching with a fellow newspaperman, then taking a mid-afternoon train to New York. In the evening I’m taking Bass Player, one of my favorite people in the whole world, to see Pilobolus at the Joyce Theater, after which we intend to have a late supper and talk until the waiters start giving us dirty looks. Friday and Saturday will be much the same, and by Sunday, when I fly home to Smalltown, U.S.A., I’ll probably be thinking wistfully of my solitary trip to the movies.

Would we all be happier if we were capable of always enjoying to the fullest whatever we’re doing at the moment we’re doing it? Probably–but then we wouldn’t be quite human, would we? Such contentment is not in our natures: we keep one eye on the horizon, and sometimes both, which leaves neither free to see the moments that pass before us in review, each one crying out, Look at me! Aren’t I pretty? George Balanchine knew better. “Why are you stingy with yourselves?” he used to ask his dancers. “Why are you holding back? What are you saving for–for another time? There are no other times. There is only now. Right now.” But, then, Balanchine was a genius, while I’m just a middle-aged critic, whiling away an idle hour in an overheated hotel room in Washington, hoping it cools down enough for me to get some sleep.

TT: After you get what you want

July 13, 2005 by Terry Teachout

I spent Wednesday in Washington, D.C., attending two closed sessions of the National Council on the Arts. All fun, all interesting, and my fellow council members are as collegial as can be, but it was still a long, hot, humid day, and when it was over I knew I’d be coming back to a hotel whose air conditioning has proved unequal to the demands of Washington in July. (I’ve also been having troubles with the hotel’s high-speed Internet service.) Hence I didn’t care to spend the evening in my room, and it happened that all of my Washington-based friends were either busy or elsewhere tonight.

What to do? I treated myself to a good dinner, then went looking for a movie I hadn’t seen, which turned out to be Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know. On my way to the theater, I tried to think of the last time I’d spent an evening watching a movie by myself in a city other than New York. When I go out of town, it’s usually to visit a friend or cover a performance, so I tend not to be faced with the problem of what to do after dinner. At length I recalled that I’d seen Audrey Wells’ Guinevere in Washington’s Dupont Circle six years ago. I liked it very much, and I liked Me and You and Everyone We Know even more, but a few minutes into the film, it struck me that (A) I was watching a sad little comedy about the loneliness of postmodern urban life and (B) nobody in the world knew where I was.

Sitting in the sparsely peopled theater, alone with the characters and with myself, I thought of a remark A.J. Liebling made in my favorite of his books, Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris:

Granted that in later life a man will have to learn to get along with other people–I learn with horror that the knack is now taught in high school as a “social study”–that is all the more reason there should be a period in his life when he has to get along with nobody but himself. It will be a sweetness to remember.

I think there’s quite a bit of truth in that–up to a point. I don’t spend too many evenings by myself: I’m in the company of friends far more often than not, watching performances or just hanging out. Sometimes I find myself hungering for solitude, and there are occasions when I’m almost painfully grateful to spend a night with my prints, my CDs, my iBook, and my trusty TV, watching What’s My Line?, keeping my own counsel, and staying up as late as I like. I’ve recently discovered, much to my surprise, that I even like vacationing alone. At the same time, I’m no hermit, and like most singletons, I find there are other times when being alone is no fun at all. One is when you finish watching a really good movie and, instead of chatting about it over a drink with a friend, retire to an empty hotel room in a city far from home.

My solitude, fortunately, will only last a single night. Tomorrow morning I’ll be meeting my v., v. cool friend Ali for breakfast, after which I’ll head over to the Old Post Office for one more NCA session. At twelve-thirty I’m lunching with a fellow newspaperman, then taking a mid-afternoon train to New York. In the evening I’m taking Bass Player, one of my favorite people in the whole world, to see Pilobolus at the Joyce Theater, after which we intend to have a late supper and talk until the waiters start giving us dirty looks. Friday and Saturday will be much the same, and by Sunday, when I fly home to Smalltown, U.S.A., I’ll probably be thinking wistfully of my solitary trip to the movies.

Would we all be happier if we were capable of always enjoying to the fullest whatever we’re doing at the moment we’re doing it? Probably–but then we wouldn’t be quite human, would we? Such contentment is not in our natures: we keep one eye on the horizon, and sometimes both, which leaves neither free to see the moments that pass before us in review, each one crying out, Look at me! Aren’t I pretty? George Balanchine knew better. “Why are you stingy with yourselves?” he used to ask his dancers. “Why are you holding back? What are you saving for–for another time? There are no other times. There is only now. Right now.” But, then, Balanchine was a genius, while I’m just a middle-aged critic, whiling away an idle hour in an overheated hotel room in Washington, hoping it cools down enough for me to get some sleep.

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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