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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for August 15, 2007

TT: Wouldja for a big red apple?

August 15, 2007 by Terry Teachout

New York City looked joltingly unfamiliar to me as I rode home from Penn Station after a month in rural New England. The fierce morning sunshine made everything seem unreal. Too many hard-faced pedestrians jammed the sidewalks, and too many cars raced up and down the crowded streets. The first thing I noticed upon reaching my Upper West Side neighborhood was that the diner where I’d lunched the day before leaving town had closed its doors permanently in my absence. I spent the whole afternoon sifting through the piles of mail with which my kitchen table was covered. At one point I snuck a furtive peek at my calendar, saw that I was booked solid through next Monday, and sighed deeply. Life in Manhattan can be hard to take, especially when you’ve just spent a month in the country.

Aldous Huxley speaks somewhere of “the blessedness at the heart of things.” It’s all too easy to lose sight of that blessedness on a hot summer day in New York, and I admit to having briefly questioned its existence yesterday afternoon. But I have more reasons than most to count my blessings, and the events that followed recalled them to me forcibly.

At day’s end I walked to Central Park West, met a waiting friend, and strolled with her to the outdoor stage where Fiona Apple and Nickel Creek were performing. The sky was falling the last time I went to an outdoor concert in Central Park, but by the time we reached our seats, the early-evening air was benignly balmy, and no sooner did my friend and I settle ourselves than the members of Nickel Creek charged out from the wings, loaded for bear and ready to play.

I go back a long way with Nickel Creek–I even wrote the liner notes for their greatest-hits album–but two years had gone by since I last saw them in concert, and a year ago they announced that they’d be going on hiatus at the end of 2007. This will likely be their last New York performance, and I expected it to sound a valedictory note. Boy, did I get that wrong. They came on like gangbusters, and within seconds I knew it was going to be a night to remember.

Fiona Apple showed up on stage midway through the first half of the concert. I’d assumed that Nickel Creek was opening for her, but it quickly became clear that they were going to perform together, and as the band tuned up, I thought, I bet they do “Extraordinary Machine.” Sure enough, they did, and I hugged myself with glee. Fiona Apple had been nothing more than a name to me until I received an e-mail last fall from my favorite blogger containing an audio file and instructions to listen to it at once. It was the title track from Extraordinary Machine, and by the time it was halfway over, I was a fan. Talk about good omens!

Mere words can’t begin to convey how strange and wonderful it was to hear Apple singing with a progressive bluegrass-pop band whose members are equally fond of Bill Monroe and Radiohead. Among many other things, they did Gilllian Welch’s “I Want to Sing That Rock and Roll” and Patsy Cline’s “Walkin’ After Midnight,” and the effect was…well, would it sound too fancy-schmancy to call it exquisite? Rarely do I wish for a concert to last longer–enough is enough–but this one went on for two and a half hours, and I ate up each and every song.

The biggest surprise was “I Walk a Little Faster,” a standard ballad by Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh whose lyrics have long had special meaning for me. Hearing them sung by Fiona Apple on a balmy summer evening came close to overwhelming me: I set my chin a little higher,/Hope a little longer,/Build a little stronger/Castle in the air,/And thinking you’ll be there,/I walk a little faster.

Yes, New York City is a difficult and (on occasion) frightening place in which to live. The low-flying helicopters and airplanes that cleaved the night sky over Central Park were sufficient reminder of that. But it is also full of daily miracles of serendipity, and the life I lead there is rich in experience and delight beyond anything I envisioned for myself when young. May I never take that blessed fact for granted.

TT: Ten things I’ve never done

August 15, 2007 by Terry Teachout

• Eaten a snail

• Had sex on an airplane (I did engage in some medium-voltage hanky-panky in a radio studio once upon a time, but the mike wasn’t open)

• Shot an animal

• Fainted

• Seen the complete Ring of the Nibelung on stage (not in this lifetime, baby!)

• Watched a person die

• Read Bleak House all the way through (I’m still trying, though)

• Broken a bone

• Done a cartwheel (these two items may be related)

• Waltzed

TT: No, but I read the novel

August 15, 2007 by Terry Teachout

From last Friday’s Wall Street Journal:

“Dud Avocado,” a 1958 comic novel about Hollywood by Elaine Dundy, is being developed into a film by producer Sara Risher, who is working with longtime rights holder Twentieth Century Fox. “The re-release made me realize it was timeless,” Ms. Risher says.

If you haven’t bought it already…well, what’s keeping you?

TT: Almanac

August 15, 2007 by Terry Teachout

“Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.”
George Orwell, “Some Notes on Salvador Dali” (courtesy of The Rat)

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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