Archives for March 2016

“There are already so many artists whom one admires more than he likes. Am I the only reader who finds in the achievement of James Joyce something that is—well, a little obtuse? Who sees Chekhov as being in some intimate way not only better, but greater?”

Fred Chappell, afterword to The Fred Chappell Reader

Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic perform the “Scene d’amour” cue from Bernard Herrmann’s score for Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo:

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

“Good craftsmen are not expressing themselves. They’re expressing something outside themselves. In that sense, craft is not about selfhood. When somebody declares to you, ‘I feel I have a novel in me, but of course at the moment I’m working in advertising,’ you know that person is never going to be an artist. ‘I have this novel hidden inside myself, I’m an artist without an art.’ I don’t believe that sort of thing. And I don’t believe in the ethos of personal creativity. You either do it or you don’t.”

Richard Sennett, interviewed by Tim Black (“The Intimate Lives of Others,” Spiked, January 2016)

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.

I 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.

It 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.

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Bill Evans plays “Young and Foolish” in 1958:

From 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.

“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)

Vivian Blaine sings “Adelaide’s Lament,” from Guys and Dolls, at the 1971 Tony Awards. The song is by Frank Loesser. Blaine created the role of Adelaide in the original 1950 Broadway production of the show. She is introduced by Jerry Orbach:

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

“One of the fundamental differences between extremes of Right and Left is this: in most instances hatred moves the former; fear the latter.”

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