Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
A BBC “Arena” TV documentary about Paul Scofield, produced and directed by David Thompson and originally telecast on December 24, 2008:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
“Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it.”
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The American Notebooks
“It is the law of life that if you are kind to someone you feel happy. If you are cruel you are unhappy.”
Cary Grant, interviewed by Sheilah Graham (Motion Picture, June 1964)
Count Basie and His Orchestra play Freddie Green’s “Corner Pocket” live in Sweden in 1962:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
“Happiness in the ordinary sense is not what one needs in life, though one is right to aim at it. The true satisfaction is to come through and see those whom one loves come through.”
E.M. Forster, letter to Florence Barger, February 11, 1922
From 2004:
Read the whole thing here.“I watched the tail end of Master and Commander after I got home from a dinner party in Washington Heights last night, then read myself to sleep with the last chapter of David Herbert Donald’s Lincoln. That, I regret to say, was that. Outside of a late-morning session at the gym, Tuesday went up in the smoke of a freelancer’s chores and an afternoon nap. I didn’t have time–or, rather, I didn’t make time–to experience any art, save for the Chopin nocturnes and Mozart arias playing in the background at the dinner party. Not only did I see no plays or ballets, but I didn’t listen to any music, nor did I read any new Isaac Bashevis Singer stories in between returning phone calls, answering e-mail, and fussing with my schedule. I wouldn’t say it was a wasted day, but neither can I say that I stopped very often or smelled many roses…”
“Of all the means which wisdom acquires to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is friendship.”
Epicurus, Principal Doctrines (trans. Robert Drew Hicks)
The good news is that I continue to be able to work: I have yet to miss a Wall Street Journal or Commentary deadline since Hilary’s death, and I have an essay coming out in the June issue of Commentary in which I speak at length about our marriage and pay tribute to her special qualities, both as a woman and as a life’s companion. I can’t exactly say that the piece was a comfort to write, but it was definitely necessary, and I hope I captured something of her in what I wrote.
As for the rest, I am fortunate to be in the case of a psychiatrist who figured out early on that I was having serious trouble with insomnia and did something about it. No matter how hard the day has been, I know at its end that I will sleep deeply and well. And in between? All I could do at first was work and watch movies, but now I’m reading again—I’m working my way through Barbara Pym’s novels for the first time in years—and I am, first and foremost, staying in touch with the close friends who are collectively pulling me through the long, hard process of coming to terms with the death of a spouse.
To all of you who’ve expressed concern, you’re right to do so, but fear not: I’m being looked after, and I seem to be able to maintain enough altitude to stay above the trees. That’s all I can hope for at present, but it’s working, and I am, if not exactly content, coping.