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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for October 2012

TT: There she was

October 31, 2012 by Terry Teachout

FRIEDMAN%20VASE%20OF%20FLOWERS.jpgNot long after Hurricane Sandy came calling, this thought flew into my mind: If my mother were still alive, she’d be worrying about me now. That, of course, is what mothers do. First, they worry about us. Later, we remember how they used to worry about us, and miss them all the more.

My mother never quite managed to adjust to the fact that I lived in New York City. A year or so after I moved east, she turned on the evening news and heard that there’d been a subway shooting earlier in the day. She immediately called to make sure that I was all right. Needless to say, I was far from the scene of the crime, but I understood at once that her concern, if misplaced, was no less real for its absurdity, and I reassured her that all was well. Eventually she figured out that New York was a very big place, but she never stopped worrying about me. It happened that I was visiting her in Smalltown, U.S.A., on 9/11. I can’t imagine what agonies she would have endured had I been anywhere but there.

400203_10151319471842193_1730220588_n.jpgA few weeks ago I took reluctant note of the fact that my memories of my mother have been colored by the suffering that she endured in her last days:

Of course I miss my mother–I adored her–but when I think of her now, I usually think of the last couple of years of her life, which were happy only at odd and increasingly infrequent intervals. It requires a powerful act of will for me to summon up the countless good times that came before….Mostly, though, I don’t think of her all that often, save in brief flashes. The veil, it seems, has descended.

I long for the sweetness of those inaccessible memories, but I also know that no mere act of will can restore them to me. They’ll come when they come–or not at all. Perhaps, then, it’s an encouraging sign that I now find myself thinking of something as silly as the long-ago night when my anxious mother called me up after watching the news.

TT: We’re just fine

October 31, 2012 by Terry Teachout

Mrs. T and I successfully weathered Hurricane Sandy at our place in rural Connecticut. The power went out at 5:45 on Monday afternoon, and we spent the evening reading by the light of a fluorescent lantern purchased over the weekend. Come Tuesday we relocated to an airport hotel–our neck of the woods is likely to be without electricity for several days–and we hope, transportation permitting, to make it back to Manhattan some time on Friday. We’ll see you around!

TT: Snapshot

October 31, 2012 by Terry Teachout

“Low Light and Blue Smoke: Big Bill Blues,” a 1956 short subject by Jean Delire starring Big Bill Broonzy. The film was shot at a performance in a Brussels nightclub:

(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday and Wednesday.)

TT: Almanac

October 31, 2012 by Terry Teachout

“The Westerly Wind asserting his sway from the south-west quarter is often like a monarch gone mad, driving forth with wild imprecations the most faithful of his courtiers to shipwreck, disaster, and death.”
Joseph Conrad, The Mirror of the Sea

TT: Lookback

October 30, 2012 by Terry Teachout

Osprey%20Backward%20Glance%201579s.jpgFrom 2006:

Nobody walks anywhere in a small town, except maybe next door or across the street. When I told my mother I was going to walk downtown to buy a belt, she boggled. It took me a good ten minutes to persuade her that I wasn’t kidding, and another five to talk her out of driving downtown to pick me up after I’d made my purchase….

Read the whole thing here.

TT: Almanac

October 30, 2012 by Terry Teachout

“Write as the wind blows and command all words like an army!”
Hilaire Belloc, The Road to Rome

TT: A toss of the coin

October 29, 2012 by Terry Teachout

ap_ss1_hurricane_sandy_north_carolina_highway_sign_jt_121027_ssh.jpgI took a train to New York on Friday to see a show on Broadway, then returned to Connecticut and Mrs. T the next day. It was a tough call. Our New York apartment is a few blocks away from the highest point in Manhattan, while our place in Connecticut is tucked away in a wooded valley that is subject to power failures whenever the wind starts blowing branches off the trees. Still, it was my guess that Hurricane Irene might end up hitting New York harder, and come Sunday I was feeling increasingly sure that I’d done the right thing.
We got up first thing in the morning, drove to the nearest grocery store, and bought a trunkful of bottled water, staple foodstuffs, and spare batteries. The ants were already out in force, and we didn’t leave much on the shelves for the slugabed grasshoppers. That done, we spent the rest of the day watching The Weather Channel with mounting dismay. Late in the afternoon, my editors at The Wall Street Journal sent me an e-mail asking if I could file Friday’s drama column as quickly as possible, so I sat down, knocked out a review of the play I’d seen on Friday, and shipped it off via e-mail. Afterward Mrs. T and I watched an old movie, Tales of Manhattan, wondering as we did so what Monday would bring.
Now Monday has arrived, and we’re still wondering what to expect. I have two more shows to see in New York this weekend, and I hope I get to see them, but what matters now is that I’m with my beloved wife, waiting for the weather to catch up with us. Insofar as possible, we’ve made ourselves ready for life without electricity. No matter what horrors the next few days may hold in store, we’ll be together.

TT: Just because

October 29, 2012 by Terry Teachout

Jon Vickers and Norman Bailey perform the storm scene from Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes at Covent Garden. The conductor is Sir Colin Davis:

(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday and Wednesday.)

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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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