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

About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

Lookback: on owning more records than you have time to play

May 16, 2017 by Terry Teachout

LOOKBACKFrom 2007:

As of today I have 3,202 songs on my iPod, which is about all it will hold. From time to time I knock off a few old songs to make room for new ones, but for the most part I find that three thousand songs is enough, by which I mean that whenever I fire up my iPod, I never have any trouble finding something I want to hear.

My office, on the other hand, contains seven custom-built wooden CD shelves holding three thousand discs. In the past year or two, I’ve let days go by at a time without listening to any of them, and I’m sure there are at least a hundred (if not more) to which I’ve never listened, just as there is a not-inconsiderable number of books on my shelves that I’ve never read.

The sad truth is that I now spend more time reading and listening for professional reasons than I do for pleasure….

Read the whole thing here.

Filed Under: main

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

May 2017
M T W T F S S
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
293031  
« Apr   Jun »

An ArtsJournal Blog

Recent Posts

  • Terry Teachout, 65
  • Gripping musical melodrama
  • Replay: Somerset Maugham in 1965
  • Almanac: Somerset Maugham on sentimentality
  • Snapshot: Richard Strauss conducts Till Eulenspiegel

Copyright © 2025 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in