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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for March 2020

Hilary Teachout, R.I.P.

March 31, 2020 by Terry Teachout

Hilary Dyson Teachout, the “Mrs. T” of this blog, suffered throughout the decade and a half of our life together from pulmonary hypertension, a rare and devastating illness that gnawed inexorably at her body without touching her soul. She was smart, funny, generous, and gallant, a perfect companion and the love of my life. Indeed, we fell in love at first sight, a thing I had never thought possible until, at the improbable age of forty-nine, it happened to me, followed in the shortest order that I could manage by a middle age full of shared joy. Alas, Hilary lacked the strength to survive the double-lung transplant that we had hoped would give her more life, and now she is gone.

Loss is the price of love: I knew from the start that I was likely to lose her too soon, though I was lucky beyond belief to have her for far longer than her doctors foresaw. But merely to know such a thing cannot begin to ready us for its coming. Raymond Aron said it: “There is no apprenticeship to misfortune. When it strikes us, we still have everything to learn.” I shall now try to learn the lesson of misfortune in a manner as worthy as possible of my beloved Hilary, who faced death as she faced life, with indomitable courage.

Here’s a special memory of my life with Hilary. She was struck by the last sentence:

For those of us still on earth, straining to make something of ourselves, it seems there is no weaning away from the people we love and lose: they are always there, dissolved into the completeness of eternity, waiting patiently—and, I suspect, indifferently—for the little resurrection that is memory.

I am blessed with many, many memories.

*  *  *

Nancy LaMott sings a medley of “Good Thing Going” and “Not a Day Goes By,” written by Stephen Sondheim for the score of Merrily We Go Along:

Lookback: some memories of a son and spouse

March 31, 2020 by Terry Teachout

From 2017:

The same friend asked me the other day to sum up my life. “I had a mother who believed I could do anything I wanted,” I replied. “Now I have a wife who believes the same thing. That’s the whole story, right there.” We make ourselves, but without the steadfast love of those two women, I’d be unimaginably different. Not many people get that lucky twice in a lifetime….

Read the whole thing here.

Almanac: Ursula K. Le Guin on suffering

March 31, 2020 by Terry Teachout

“If you evade suffering you also evade the chance of joy. Pleasure you may get, or pleasures, but you will not be fulfilled.”

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

Reason to believe

March 30, 2020 by Terry Teachout

If you haven’t seen my Facebook posting about Mrs. T, here it is:

Dear Friends: I can’t believe I’m posting this message, but…after looking at this morning’s stats, Mrs. T’s doctors now believe there is still some chance that she will start to respond to the new antibiotics, and they want to give the drugs more time to work. I was able to communicate this to Hilary, and she responded unambiguously by blinking: she’s not ready to give up. We both understand that the odds are against her, but we’re prepared to keep on fighting. I will continue to keep you posted.

And so I shall. Here’s hoping….

UPDATE: As of Tuesday morning, Mrs. T remains in critical condition but is holding fairly steady: there are no unambiguous signs either of improvement or decline. The doctors expect to have a clearer sense of things tonight. Again, I will keep you posted.

Just because: Ton Koopman plays Bach

March 30, 2020 by Terry Teachout

Ton Koopman plays Bach’s Chorale Prelude ”Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele,” BWV 654: 

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

Almanac: E.M. Forster on courage

March 30, 2020 by Terry Teachout

“Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life.”

E.M. Forster, “The Poetry of C.P. Cavafy”

Encouraging words

March 29, 2020 by Terry Teachout

I just spoke on the phone to Mrs. T’s nurse, who passed on a report from her doctors about her condition at midday Sunday. It now appears that she is holding her own—her blood pressure is down and her other medical requirements have remained steady (instead of spiraling upward, as would have been the case if she were deteriorating). While it’s too soon to say for sure how well her new antibiotic regime is working, these are all positive indicators.

The doctors suggested that I stay home today: they’ll be busy with her and other patients. This, too, is a good sign—I’m sure you can guess what it would mean if they told me to come to the hospital at once, or be ready to come on short notice. I plan to do FaceTime with her tonight.

Yes, it’s important not to jump to conclusions, but the situation this afternoon is definitely much more hopeful than it was twenty-four hours ago.

UPDATE: As of Sunday night, Mrs. T is no longer holding her own. I will keep you posted.

*  *  *

For better news about Mrs. T as of Monday night, go here.

A thank-you note

March 27, 2020 by Terry Teachout

To everyone who’s written to me here and in the social media with kind and encouraging words of all sorts, both for me and for Mrs. T, I want to thank you very much for being in touch. It means the world to me to know that you think I’m doing a good job of covering the arts in these fearsome times, and it means even more to know that you are so concerned about my beloved spouse and life’s companion.

I wish I could write to you all individually, or even to a few of you, but I’m afraid that I’m so pressed with deadlines and swamped with incoming mail that I have to resort to this impersonal but truly heartfelt note. Bless you for sending your good wishes. Now as always, they buoy me up.

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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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