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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for January 5, 2015

Turning loose

January 5, 2015 by Terry Teachout

HILARY ON THE TRAINMrs. T and I boarded a train in New York last Sunday, and twenty-six hours later we got off in West Palm Beach. The next day we drove to Sanibel Island. Since then I’ve read three and a half books, watched nine movies, taken a sunset cruise, plucked a stray coconut out of the Gulf of Mexico, and found a great new place to eat—but I haven’t written a single word that is destined for publication.

The two of us thought it would be wildly romantic to take a sleeper car to Florida, so I’m sorry to say that long-distance train travel chez Amtrak leaves much to be desired. Our roomette was cramped and shabby, the dining-car food strictly institutional, and the ride was too bumpy to permit easy sleeping. On the credit side, though, were the wonderfully kind people who looked after us on board and the ever-changing views from the windows of the tiny compartment into which we were shoehorned, as well as one seeming disadvantage that turned out to be a plus: Amtrak’s Silver Meteor, believe it or not, has no wi-fi. No sooner did it pull out of Penn Station than I was cut off from the outside world. No e-mail, no Twitter, no nothing.

B6dSSVHCMAIMsJuSince there was also no point in complaining, I powered down my laptop and called time out, and what started as an enforced break soon turned into a full-fledged holiday. It helped that I’d already written and signed off on the two columns of mine that appeared in Friday’s Wall Street Journal, and that I didn’t have any other outstanding deadlines. As a result, I had no need and felt no compulsion to resume my usual schedule once we reached Sanibel. Instead I hit the beach, which is a few steps from our back door. Not only did I stop writing, but I read no books about which I plan to write. Yes, I tinkered with the script of a new play on which I’ve been working, but that was mostly for fun: I find it restful to snip away bits and pieces of superfluous dialogue, in much the same way that another person might enjoy sitting in the sun and whittling.

1490813_10153042888537193_4060469330376300233_oI suppose I could justify this protracted stretch of inactivity by claiming that I’ve been lying fallow, letting my creative batteries recharge themselves, but I’m not going to do any such thing. I don’t think inactivity needs to be justified. It took me the better part of a lifetime to figure out that you don’t need a reason to take it easy. Now that I’ve finally learned my lesson after years of compulsive overwork, I don’t propose to unlearn it by coming up with elaborate justifications for doing what I’ve been longing to do for weeks and weeks.

Pope Francis, it seems, agrees with me. “A time of rest, for those who have completed their work, is necessary, obligatory and should be taken seriously: by spending time with one’s family and respecting holidays as moments of spiritual and physical recharging,” he recently declared. So now I have it on impeccable authority (if you believe in authority, papal or otherwise) that watching the sun set, especially on Sanibel Island, is sufficient unto the day thereof, especially when I’m in the company of Mrs. T, who likes it as much as I do.

A couple of days ago a friend of mine posted as follows on Facebook: “I feel more purpose in cleaning out my closets—a/k/a, making my life less chaotic—than working on this article I’m supposed to be writing.” To which I replied, “I vote for clean closets. Articles will keep.” So they will, and so they have, though not, alas, forever. Today I start easing back into something more closely resembling my normal routine: I have to see a play in Fort Myers on Wednesday and review it on Thursday, and on Friday afternoon I’ll be flying up to New York to see two more shows on Broadway. But come Sunday I return to Sanibel, and when not actually earning my keep, I plan to keep on doing plenty of nothing.

* * *

Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald perform “I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’,” from Porgy and Bess:

Just because: Groucho Marx sings Gilbert and Sullivan

January 5, 2015 by Terry Teachout

TV CAMERAGroucho Marx and Helen Traubel sing a duet from The Mikado, originally telecast on The Bell Telephone Hour in 1960:

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

Almanac: Eric Hoffer on leisure

January 5, 2015 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“The superficiality of the American is the result of his hustling. It needs leisure to think things out; it needs leisure to mature. People in a hurry cannot think, cannot grow, nor can they decay. They are preserved in a state of perpetual puerility.”

Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind

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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