• Home
  • About
    • About Last Night
    • Terry Teachout
    • Contact
  • AJBlogCentral
  • ArtsJournal

About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

You are here: Home / 2016 / March / Archives for 8th

Archives for March 8, 2016

The comforts of home

March 8, 2016 by Terry Teachout

I’m a middle-aged semi-homebody whose chosen line of work requires me to spend a fair amount of time traveling. I don’t do it resentfully (except for the time I spend sitting on airplanes and in airports, which is pure hell). Not only do I love my job, but I often get to travel with Mrs. T, which makes everything infinitely easier. But even at its best, hotel life is…well, hotel life. No matter how long you’re staying in one place, you have to pack up all your stuff at regular intervals and go somewhere else, and “all your stuff” necessarily means “whatever you can cram into a suitcase.” Sooner or later you find yourself longing to be back home again, where you can empty out your suitcase and hang up your clothes in a closet that belongs to you.

heights 7I came home at midday Saturday after two months of near-nonstop coast-to-coast travel. On Monday there was nothing whatsoever that I absolutely had to do: no deadlines to hit, no shows to see. It was a reasonably sunny day and the weather was mild, so I took a long afternoon walk through the neighborhood, something that I love to do but haven’t done in far longer than I care to admit. I ended by climbing the West 187th Street Steps, a 130-step staircase that leads from the well-named Overlook Terrace to Hudson Heights, where Mrs. T and I live.

Time was when I climbed those steps four or five times each week, but life got complicated, and before I knew it I was sedentary once more. My walk was a down payment on a promise I made to myself months ago: When the weather gets nice again, I’ll start walking every day. Maybe I will and maybe I won’t, but at least I did do it yesterday, and once in a row is absolutely better than not at all.

Mrs. T is in Connecticut, so I spent the evening alone, contentedly curled up on the living-room couch. I lit a candle, sent a how-was-your-day e-mail to Our Girl in Chicago, tinkered idly with the script of my new play, started reading a biography of Roland Hayes, and watched Doc Hollywood. From time to time I looked around the room and reveled in the pieces of art on the walls, some of which are new enough that I haven’t yet had time to get used to their presence in the apartment.

When the movie was over, I went into the kitchen, where our compact discs are shelved, and brought back Everybody Digs Bill Evans, a 1958 album to which I last listened around the same time that I last climbed the West 187th Street Steps. Soon the air was full of gentle, pensive harmonies, and I found myself wondering, not for the first time, whether I was spending too much time on the road for my own good.

Cc_PuNtVAAAkmJ8It didn’t take long for me to decide, as I always do, that I wouldn’t have it any other way—for now. What, after all, would I give up in return for being able to spend more time at home? The sunsets on Sanibel Island? My new career as a late-blooming playwright? The opportunity to direct Satchmo at the Waldorf at Palm Beach Dramaworks in May? The wonderful shows that I see all over America? No, it wouldn’t be a fair trade…not yet. I’m just not ready to start living a different kind of life.

That doesn’t mean I can’t try to strike a better balance between staying home and living out of a suitcase. Sure, you can listen to Everybody Digs Bill Evans anywhere in the world, even on an airplane. Somehow, though, “Young and Foolish” sounds different when you’re listening to it in your own living room, looking at your own copy of Milton Avery’s Gray Sea, and remembering that you’ll be spending the night in your own bed. That’s awfully hard to beat.

* * *

Bill Evans plays “Young and Foolish” in 1958:

Lookback: on not going to classical concerts

March 8, 2016 by Terry Teachout

LOOKBACKFrom 2006:

I rarely go to classical concerts. It’s not that I love the music any less, but over time I’ve become increasingly alienated from the experience of concertgoing: the noisy audiences, the unimaginative programs, the feeling that not nearly enough is at stake. Now that I’m spending less time out on the town, I find that few classical-music events in New York City are capable of inspiring me to surrender a precious evening I could spend doing something else….

Read the whole thing here.

Almanac: John Lukacs on the power of love

March 8, 2016 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“It is hate that unites people, whereas love is always individual, rather than collective. To this we may add what immediately negates whatever moral essence the purposes of class struggles or of racism or of modern nationalism may have: and this is that love is never the love of oneself, it is the love of another. That is the saving grace of mankind.”

John Lukacs, Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred (courtesy of Rod Dreher)

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...]

Follow Us on TwitterFollow Us on RSSFollow Us on E-mail

@Terryteachout1

Tweets by TerryTeachout1

Archives

March 2016
M T W T F S S
 123456
78910111213
14151617181920
21222324252627
28293031  
« Feb   Apr »

An ArtsJournal Blog

Recent Posts

  • Simply splendid Sondheim
  • Almanac: Tennessee Williams on theatrical characters
  • What Patricia Highsmith wrought
  • Almanac: Samuel Butler on sickness
  • Snapshot: Lieber and Stoller appear on What’s My Line?

Copyright © 2021 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in