In addition to writing about theater and the other arts for a living, I also blog in this space purely for my pleasure. Here are ten of my favorite posts from the year almost past:
• February 8 “Turning sixty, I’m told, is a big deal. I can’t say that it feels especially big, though, nor do I feel nearly as old as I am, save on the too-frequent occasions when I have trouble pulling a name out of my hat.”
• March 28 “I’ve loved Esplanade, in which [Paul] Taylor blends walking, running, hopping, sliding, and the music of Bach into a plotless explosion of pure choreographic delight, ever since I first started looking at the dance three decades ago.”
• April 18 “This morning I fly back to New York from Winter Park, Florida, where I attended the premiere of Music, Awake! on Saturday night.”
• May 16 “I am now officially a professional stage director.”
• June 1 “You don’t have to be, or have been, a TV star to know how fast stardom fades. I wonder whether [Andy] Warhol ever thought about that: what happens when your fifteen minutes are up? Even more interesting, what happens when you outlive your fifteen minutes by…oh, fifty years?”
• June 14 “Never before have I felt so strongly that Americans are talking past instead of to one another. It is, I fear, our future and our fate—which is why I have come to believe that I will live to see Red and Blue America negotiate a ‘soft disunion.’”
• June 27 “I do suffer grievously from the sin of impatience, not with myself but with other people, as well as with such inanimate objects as elevators, stoplights, and toasters.”
• November 21 “As I walked into the kitchen to throw away an apple core, my eye happened to fall on one of the two dozen pieces of art that hang on the walls of our New York apartment.”
• November 28 “The point, I think, is that you must not be afraid to fall on your face if you want to get anywhere in life, and most especially if you want to try doing something new late in life. And if you are aware—intensely, consumingly aware—that the clock is running and time may be short, you’re less likely to be stymied by the fear of falling on your face in front of an audience.”
• December 27 “If my family had any dark secrets, they went to the grave with my parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. But like all families, we did have a few subjects of which we preferred not to speak save in hushed tones, foremost among them the fate of my Uncle Paul.”