Archives for April 6, 2006

On Wednesday I entered that state of grace that occasionally comes to biographers so deeply immersed in their material that for a brief time they are capable of simultaneously holding everything they know about a subject in their head, ready for instantaneous access at any point. Between morning and evening I piled three thousand brightly polished words of the fourth chapter of Hotter Than That: A Life of Louis Armstrong. As of this hour, I’ve finished writing roughly a third of the book.

Here’s a taste of what I wrote today:

What is most striking about Armstrong’s solos on “Shanghai Shuffle” and “Copenhagen,” and the many others that he contributed to Fletcher Henderson’s recordings throughout 1924 and 1925, is that they are solos, brief but expressively potent monologues in which he steps into the spotlight and speaks his musical piece, more often than not accompanied by the rhythm section alone. He had been raised, after all, in a very different kind of tradition, one in which it was taken for granted that the individual artist, however gifted, would willingly subordinate himself to the needs of the omnipresent ensemble. In New Orleans solo playing was the exception, not the rule, and even after moving to Chicago Joe Oliver would continue to stress collective improvisation over individual solos, his own included. In Albert Nicholas’ words, he “didn’t want to hear any one person, [he] wanted to hear the whole band. He wanted everyone to blend together.” Armstrong, like Sidney Bechet, knew that tradition intimately, but by 1924 both men were moving in a different direction, having concluded, consciously or not, that it could no longer accommodate their need for personal expression. The more Armstrong grew as a player, the harder he found it to stay within the narrow bounds of the time-honored New Orleans style. He still loved Papa Joe–he always would–but he wanted to be heard.

I hope I have sense enough to lay off for a day and take it easy, though it’s tempting to keep on forging ahead. In the immortal words of Crash Davis, “A player on a streak has to respect the streak.” On the other hand, I forgot to go to the gym on Wednesday. In fact, I almost forgot to eat. (Could it possibly have snowed in Manhattan today, or was that just something I imagined while in the throes of composition?)

What I really ought to do tomorrow is walk across Central Park to the Frick Collection and pay a visit to Goya’s Last Works, which I still haven’t gotten around to seeing (it’s up through May 14). Maybe I will. Or maybe I’ll succumb to the temptation to put in a little more work on Hotter Than That. Somewhere in my mind it’s November of 1925, and Louis Armstrong has just caught the morning train from New York to Chicago. In less than two weeks he’ll be going into a recording studio with his wife Lil to record “My Heart,” “Yes! I’m in the Barrel,” and “Gut Bucket Blues,” the first three sides by the Hot Five….

Enough already! I’m going to get some sleep, and tomorrow morning I’ll go to the gym. The rest can wait.

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway and off-Broadway shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I either gave these shows strongly favorable reviews in The Wall Street Journal when they opened or saw and liked them some time in the past year (or both). For more information, click on the title.

Warning: Broadway shows marked with an asterisk were sold out, or nearly so, last week.

BROADWAY:

– Avenue Q* (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

– Bridge & Tunnel (solo show, PG-13, some adult subject matter, reviewed here, closes July 9)

– Chicago (musical, R, adult subject matter and sexual content)

– Doubt (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter and implicit sexual content, reviewed here)

– The Light in the Piazza (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter and a brief bedroom scene, closes July 2, reviewed here)

– Sweeney Todd (musical, R, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

– The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee* (musical, PG-13, mostly family-friendly but contains a smattering of strong language and a production number about an unwanted erection, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

– Defiance (drama, R, adult subject matter and sexual content, reviewed here, extended through June 4)

– I Love You Because (musical, R, sexual content, reviewed here)

– Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living In Paris (musical revue, R, adult subject matter and sexual content, reviewed here)

– The Lieutenant of Inishmore (black comedy, R, adult subject matter and extremely graphic violence, reviewed here, closes Sunday and moves to Broadway April 18)

– A Safe Harbor for Elizabeth Bishop (one-woman show, PG, some adult subject matter, reviewed here)

– Slava’s Snowshow (performance art, G, child-friendly, reviewed here)

CLOSING THIS WEEKEND:

– Abigail’s Party (drama, R, adult subject matter, reviewed here, closes Saturday)

– Bernarda Alba (musical, R, adult subject matter and sexual content, reviewed here, closes Sunday)

“‘It’s funny, I’ve never met a meaner crook, or a man who had less idea of decency, and yet he honestly believes in God. And hell, too. But it never strikes him that he may go there. Other people are going to suffer for their sins and serve ’em damn well right. But he’s a stout fellow, he’s all right, and when he does the dirty on a friend it isn’t of any importance; it’s what anyone would do under the circumstances, and God isn’t going to hold that up against him. At first I thought he was just a hypocrite. But he isn’t. That’s the odd thing about it.’

“‘It shouldn’t make you angry. The contrast between a man’s professions and his actions is one of the most diverting spectacles that life offers.'”

W. Somerset Maugham, The Narrow Corner

Interesting: Armond White likens Nicole Holofcener’s movies to Whit Stillman’s, approvingly:

Although Nicole Holofcener’s specialty has been showing middle-class white women at loose ends (Walking and Talking, Lovely and Amazing), she has become the small-scale wonder of indie movies not for flattery but because her heroines are seen intimately, concisely and without judgment.

I love both of those movies, but I never thought of them as cousins to Metropolitan et al. There’s something to that. Unfortunately, White doesn’t find Holofcener’s latest, Friends with Money, as penetrating, and he goes so far as to saddle it with what counts in some circles as an ultimate put-down:

So far, Holofcener had avoided the sensibility of a New Yorker short story writer. Now, her biggest film yet is hobbled by vaguely snobbish class desires….

That’s too bad, but I’ll still see anything with Catherine Keener in it. All the more so here since Holofcener has a history of casting Keener in spirited unsympathetic roles, which are truly the actress’s forte. At this point, does anyone remember anything else from Being John Malkovich? I mean besides “Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich.”

There’s little in twenty-first-century life more mind-numbing than a blogger’s excuses for not blogging, so I’m going to skip them. Suffice it to say I’ve been busy. The usual things have been especially demanding, and I’ve added a few new commitments to the weekly schedule. One of these is the return of The Sopranos after its long hiatus. Another is worrying about the playoffs, which isn’t a scheduled activity but gnaws at the edges and center of each waking minute. But the most time-consuming and preoccupying of my new pursuits, by far, is indirectly related: I’m learning to ice-skate.

Yeah, I’m finally doing it. Why now, I couldn’t tell you, but it had something to do with another birthday approaching and passing. For a few years at least, I’d talked about this, but after a few cursory web searches that didn’t turn up any nearby adult beginning skating lessons, I’d put the idea away. Well, this year my searching was more determined and I turned up lessons at a rink that’s almost within a reasonable distance of where I live and work. But not quite. So early Saturday mornings and late Monday afternoons, I take to the road and spend more time than I’m willing to admit driving to and from a northwest suburb, all in order to spend a significantly shorter amount of time on the ice. It’s utterly worth it. Fortunately, I’ve roped a friend into joining me; she’s Canadian, and appeals to her national pride proved effective. And thanks to my dad–and unlike her–I’ve got hockey skates.

I’ve got hockey skates! They’re almost three weeks old, but possessing them still makes me feel like some different, cooler person. Never let it be said of me that I don’t care about my image–I’m especially fond of carrying my skates to the car. Especially if it’s parked far away or my neighbors are around. And I’m totally making progress with the things on my feet, which is really, really thrilling.

I didn’t realize how long it has been since I set out to acquire a brand new skill–hell, in graduate school I think I unlearned a fair number of them–and at this point, anyway, the learning curve is nice and steep. Every week I learn to do something new and get demonstrably better at everything I learned previously. Progress is better than steady, and skating just keeps getting more fun as I test and stretch my limits. My class, which is full of friendly moms and only a couple of guys, is geared toward figure skating, but since I need to build a foundation of skills and get really comfortable on the skates, that’s fine. It’s Sasha Ovechkin, not Cohen, I’m thinking about out there, but right now I just want to keep learning new moves of whatever kind. I’m not picky.

I think this new adventure of mine nicely parallels Terry’s recent forays into painting. He got the bug from looking at so many paintings for so many years with wonder and delight and, in the end, a wish to experience firsthand the process of making something like that. I certainly got here from watching way too much hockey, until mere spectatorial connoisseurship was no longer satisfying. I don’t know whether his taking up painting has changed the way he looks at pictures, but already I’m watching hockey differently, my eyes more on the players’ feet than the puck sometimes (especially their backward skating, since mine hasn’t progressed beyond swizzles yet). I’ve never played an instrument or danced or pursued a visual art form in any sustained way, and in fact I’ve never followed something as it’s performed at the highest level while practicing it at the lowest level (not that I’m yet playing hockey, but in my mind I’m taking the first steps toward so doing). It’s true that at moments, the experience unsettlingly makes me long to be an eight-year-old Minnesotan boy–what wouldn’t be possible!–but for the most part, it’s illuminating and transporting. Count another recruit to the ranks of the passionate amateurs.