Archives for January 2005

Our readers write:

– “You are doubtlessly correct that the word posses will fail to catch up with the word

– It’s “Critics Week” at WNYC’s Soundcheck, and I’ll be taking my turn at the microphone this Friday. Here’s what the show’s Web site says about my upcoming appearance:

Terry Teachout, drama critic for the Wall Street Journal and music critic of Commentary, offers his favorites of 2004 from across the cultural spectrum. The week rounds out by allowing listeners to weigh in on their picks of the year.

Soundcheck airs in New York weekdays at two p.m. on 93.9 FM. To find out more about this week’s episodes (mine included), or to listen online via streaming audio, go here.

– “The Art of Romare Bearden” closes this Sunday at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and I’m ashamed to confess that I haven’t been to see it yet. I know, I know, I’ve been busy as hell, but Bearden is one of my favorite American artists, so I’m going to do my very best to get there this week. If you’re in the same boat, go here for more information.

With Our Girl gone, I’ve been consoling myself by working on the right-hand column. In addition to updating the “Teachout in Commentary” and “Second City” modules with fresh links, I also undertook a major revision of “Sites to See,” the “About Last Night” blogroll. I’ve added a bunch of new blogs, as well as replacing a few old ones that either got knocked off inadvertently or were temporarily inactive, and I’ve also reorganized some of the categories under which the blogs are listed. We’ll be doing some compensatory pruning in the next few days, and you can also expect some new Top Fives shortly. (For those who wrote to tell me that the link to my new Commentary essay on Haydn was broken, it’s fixed now.)

Here are the “Sites to See” categories, from top to bottom:

– ART LINKS: Web sites (including artsjournal.com, “About Last Night”‘s invaluable host) that provide regularly updated links to English-language news stories and commentary about the arts.

– ART BLOGS: Blogs that are primarily (but not always exclusively) about the arts. We don’t break them out into different art forms–i.e., books, music, whatever–because we want to encourage interdisciplinary surfing.

– MEDIA/GOSSIP: Blogs and Web sites about the media and/or gossip (duh).

– PUBLICATIONS: Mainstream media Web sites, usually with substantial art-related content. (Whenever possible, we link directly to the arts pages of these sites.)

– RADIO: Art-related sites devoted to specific radio shows or hosted by radio stations. (This one’s new.)

– ARTIST SITES: Non-blog sites with frequently updated content maintained by artists and performers who interest us. (This is new, too.)

– CRITIC SITES: Ditto, only for critics.

– USEFUL SITES: Mostly reference-type sites about the arts and related subjects, plus a couple of on-line stores we like.

– OTHER BLOGS: Interesting blogs and bloggish sites that are not primarily arts-oriented.

Our Girl and I encourage you to comment on “Sites to See.” Bear in mind, though, that we’re mainly interested in hearing about artblogs and art-related sites that we haven’t yet discovered, or gotten around to blogrolling. We’re especially eager to build up “Radio Sites” as quickly as possible, and we also want to blogroll all the best arts pages of America’s regional newspapers.

If you have a new or underappreciated artblog that you think our readers might find interesting, feel free to send us your URL. Please don’t ask us to exchange links, though–we don’t do that. If your blog looks interesting to us, we’ll keep an eye on it, and if it remains both interesting and active, we’ll add it to “Sites to See.”

Now, go visit a blog you’ve never read before.

“I don’t want to own anything that won’t fit in my coffin.”

Fred Allen (quoted in John Dunning, On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio)

I’ve been bookmarking toothsome links for weeks, but only just found sufficient time to knock them together into a posting. Some turned out to have a short shelf life, but these are all fresh:

– My Wall Street Journal colleague Eric Gibson nailed it last week:

If Americans are generous, they are also vain. That’s the sad conclusion to be drawn from the fact almost every new concert hall, museum, hospital wing and university building bears at least one donor’s name. The “naming opportunity,” as it is called, is the instrument of choice for development officers–their tried-and-true method of coaxing money from wealthy people. The strategy has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for worthy causes. But with its bald pandering, it has also corrupted the true spirit of philanthropy….

According to Leslie Lenkowsky, a professor at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, anonymous philanthropy accounts for only about 1% of total annual giving–a drop in the bucket. The number might be larger, but anonymous philanthropy, by its nature, doesn’t receive much publicity. There are no published surveys that might give it visibility and present it as an attractive option. Business Week, the Chronicle of Philanthropy and Slate all overlook it. “The fund-raising community dislikes it,” says Mr. Lenkowsky. “Named donors are like seals of approval and are thought to generate more funds.”

It is long past time for someone to publish an annual list of the country’s largest anonymous donations. The idea would be not to recognize individuals, as other lists do–an impossible task anyway–but to celebrate the spirit in which such gifts were made and, by encouraging more of them, to help American philanthropy recover its honor. Perhaps such a list could, over time, make anonymous giving so fashionable as to eliminate “named giving” altogether, or at least reduce its greedy prominence….

– Household Opera on being a city person:

I’m troubled by the mindset that everyone has to do their own thing, have their own vehicle, own their own house, go their own way, pull their own weight, not lean on other people, not reach out, not connect, not be reminded of the millions of other lives going on in the world (and if you don’t, you’re a freak, or a naive Pollyanna who’ll just get mugged or knifed). It’s the same thing that bothers me when I read about how people in this country are getting less and less involved with social groups outside their families, bowling by themselves, not going to the movies when they can sit in their living rooms and enjoy “home theater,” and retreating more and more into the private sphere….

Me, too.

– I am soooo into twang twang twang, the British harpist-blogger (you can move to Manhattan any time now, Helen!). Here’s another example of why:

Is it possible to be a perfect artist? To deal plainly, there is always more to do. That is the performer’s Catch-22, striving for something we can only manage in patches, if at all. As Eliot remarks in The Dry Salvages, “For most of us this is the aim/Never here to be realised./Who are only undefeated/Because we have gone on trying.” But that is why it is moving to see a performance. It is heroic–it carries on regardless of difficulty, and it aspires to something that, because it does not come easily, is rare and precious. When somebody performs astoundingly well, they defy their human limitations and deliver something rich and strange….

– I recently stumbled across a now-mislaid link to a site that included a long list of “break-up lines of the philosophers.” Way geeky, but also way cool. Excerpts:

The Solipsist: It’s not you, it’s me.

The Rationalist, v. 3.0: If you can’t see your faults, there’s nothing more I can say.

The Atheist: These things just happen.

The Kantian: You lied to me!

The Hegelian: Do we have to go through this again?

– Another cool list, this one of “the things I will not do when I direct a Shakespeare production on stage or film” (and no, I can’t remember where I found this link, either). Highlights:

1. The ghost of Hamlet’s father will not be played by the entire ensemble underneath a giant piece of diaphanous black material….

4. I will not imply that Hamlet is sleeping with his mother, or wants to….

12. I will not cast actresses as Helena and Hermia who are the same height.

13. Richard II’s minions will not be made to wear pink….

25. I will not use long red ribbons to represent blood, particularly if the long red ribbons bear an unnerving resemblance to pasta.

To the unknown author of this list: a grateful drama critic salutes you!

– Alex Ross (whom OGIC and I ran into at the Metropolitan Opera on Saturday) posts on a bloodcurdling phenomenon:

Just now I found myself typing the sentence, “La Mer, of course, depicts the sea.” Has anyone else had the experience of more or less forgetting how to write–not to mention forgetting how to talk or think–toward the end of a book-writing process? The other troubling sensation I have is that the more verbiage I produce, the farther I am from being done.

You don’t know the half of it, buddy. Just wait till you spend ten years working on a book….

– Alicublog, my favorite Blue American grouch, has also been known to write on matters apolitical. Somebody sent me a link to a mini-essay he posted last year on Glen Campbell’s recording of a pop song I love, Jimmy Webb’s “Wichita Lineman”:

That Jimmy Webb song is basically a dramatic fragment: a lineman in a barren stretch of the Great Plains during wintertime talks about the burdens of his business and the burdens of his love in alternating passages, but with a similar attitude: it’s hard work, and things might go wrong at any time. It’s pretty sophisticated for mainstream 60s pop, but it’s the arrangement on this record that lifts it into glory. The orchestral sweeps and twang guitar are perfectly normal–a little C&W, a little Living Strings–but because the song is so weird, they actually promote rather than assuage a feeling of unease, like a haggard-looking guy at the end of a bar methodically peeling the labels off each of his beers. The main riff supports the feeling: the telegraphic guitar part, thin and insistent, cushioned in distant, ethereal strings….

Nice, really nice, except that I think maybe he underestimates the quality of the song itself, perhaps just a little. Listen to this recording and see if you don’t agree.

UPDATE: A reader just wrote to remind me of the original link that led me to this posting. Thanks for helping me give credit where it’s due….

– My Balanchine book
inspired the anonymous author of Searchblog to post something that touched me:

Apparently, it is ballet that will provide my ultimate salvation. It has come to my rescue on three significant occasions: during my childhood, at the outset of my major depression a year ago, and more recently when I plunged into a similar depressive episode. On each occasion, it was the exquisite beauty of ballet that redeemed me.

There is nothing in my childhood that would portend my intense love of dance, especially classical ballet. I grew up in a hardscrabble industrial town, several of my grandparents were immigrants, and “the arts” was something that strange men in capes and berets did with each other….

Don’t I know it.

– On the other side of the coin, here’s a retired dancer who reminisces wryly about the mixed blessing of appearing in Balanchine’s Nutcracker, year in and year out:

My first adult role was Grandmother in the Party Scene of the first act. The Grandfather I was paired with was Misha Arshansky, a pal of Balanchine’s. I would be prepped for our solemn entrance with penciled age lines, a gray wig and a dowdy lace shawl. Then we would shuffle and hunch through the frolicking kids until I made my exit, and had exactly 18 minutes to transform myself into one of the shimmering Snowflakes. I’d throw off the wig, wipe away my “wrinkles,” get my pointe shoes on and my tulle skirt in place and return to the wings in time to dance through the rising drifts of confetti snow. Onstage, I’d keep my eyes squinty and my mouth closed. The stuff was coated with some fireproof material, and if a piece got lodged in your throat, it tasted awful and you couldn’t cough to get rid of it. Ballet rule No. 1: music from the pit, silence from the stage….

Memo to parents: remember to be more grateful next time.

– Speaking of dance, my Washington Post colleague Sarah Kaufman wrote a great profile of Paul Taylor the other day:

When he’s creating a new dance, Taylor overnights in the 19th-century house he owns in New York’s SoHo, within walking distance of his company’s studios. But it is here, on Long Island’s North Fork, where a hillside of gnarled trees leads to an unbroken view of Long Island Sound, where Taylor spends most of his time. Snugly tucked in among the bare, twisted flora, his wind-beaten house is more of a burrow, like something furry animals would inhabit in a children’s book. Taylor has owned it since the 1970s….

That’s exactly right.

– My Stupid Dog expands thoughtfully on what I wrote last month apropos of True Grit:

I suspect that as a cinematic genre, the Western might integrate language and action more thoroughly–and successfully–than most other types of filmic narrative. In this stark terrain, where civilization is ostensibly absent (even though its artifacts are everywhere), characters have little to do but fight and talk to each other. They do both in abundance….

– Old Hag is on a John P. Marquand kick, and the novel she likes best, Point of No Return, is big with me, too, as I’ve previously mentioned in this space (scroll down).

Says the Hag:

Have you been looking for a book that combines an anthropological examination of a small New England town with the vagaries of lost rich-girl love with a desperate, almost frantic crisis revolving around a promotion at a bank? Have you ever suspected that such a book could be the best book in the world, with a heart-stopping last line that rivals Katherine Anne Porter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider closing (“Now, there would be time for everything”) with its simultaneous blast of redemption and cruel irony? Well, have you? Look no further.

– The Brazilian Muse muses on the birth of a life-changing obsession:

I’m glad that Brazil found me when it did. Better late than never, I say. Because my interest in the music coincided with my move to the city, that curiosity for all things Brazilian helped introduce me to a whole side of New York City that I never would have found otherwise. It wasn’t because of New York that I discovered Brazilian music, but it was thanks to New York that my love for that music and culture could grow and thrive and evolve….

Yes on both counts. New York is the cafeteria of obsessions.

Lastly, two technology-related posts deserving of a quick peek:

– Here‘s a nifty little primer for those who’ve run across the word “podcasting” but don’t quite know what it is, much less how it works. (Trust me, it’s going to be big.)

– As for this, I smell a brilliant idea whose time is near–or here. When the price comes down a bit, I’m so there….

Gleaned from the wires:

DETROIT (AP) — From wardrobe malfunctions to erectile dysfunction, it’s been a tough year all around for the guardians of English–language purists from blue, red and battleground states who long to say “You’re fired!” to offensive words and phrases.

More than 2,000 nominations arrived in Michigan’s far north, where a committee at Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie released its 2005 compilation of language irritants Friday.

Among the 22 expressions on the “List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness” are “blog,” “sale event,” “body wash” and “zero percent APR financing.”

“We’re

“For the artist, the focus on self, on personal development and artistic destiny, is a drive that excludes everything else. Normally endowed people living normal lives see it as inexcusable selfishness.”

Ada Louise Huxtable, Frank Lloyd Wright

– I once had a significant other who could easily have stepped out of a Nancy Mitford novel, or a children’s book. Among other things, it was her custom to anthropomorphize everything she ran across. Animals, books, housewares, pieces of furniture: all were endowed with personalities in her high-flying mind. I’d never done that kind of thing myself, my natural sense of fantasy being deficient to the point of nonexistence (I must have been a painfully literal child). Close proximity to so fantastic a person eventually gave me an appreciation for her flights of fancy, though, and to this day I occasionally catch myself thinking in something of the same way. As I walked home this morning from the bagel store, I noticed that the sidewalks were lined with discarded Christmas trees, and I thought: Oh, poor things! Were they well lit and handsomely trimmed? Did they look down on great piles of beautifully wrapped presents? Are they cold and lonely now? Or do they feel fulfilled?

– At breakfast with Our Girl the other day, my memory abruptly disgorged a long-lost fact: Arthur Rubinstein, the classical pianist, reread all of Proust, including George Painter’s two-volume biography, in the year before he went blind. I can’t recall whether he knew for sure that his sight was going or merely had a premonition of trouble ahead, but I do know he later declared himself to have been deeply satisfied by the way he’d spent his last sighted months.

I wonder what I’d do in like circumstances. I don’t think I’d go out of my way to read anything at all, though I can see why someone else might want to do so, reading with the eyes being an experience utterly different from “reading” with the ears. (I’ve never listened to an entire book from cover to cover–I get too impatient.) But if not A la recherche du temps perdu, then what? I suppose the obvious thing would be to hit the museums one more time. On the other hand, I could imagine finding that too painful, knowing that I’d soon be deprived of such experiences together. And if I did it anyway, would I try to see as many masterpieces as possible, or concentrate on a few special favorites in the hopes of retaining them in my mind for a little while longer?

I suppose a philosopher might choose instead to continue his normal life, endeavoring to savor each day’s ordinary experiences to the fullest. Alas, I’m not a philosopher, merely a greedy aesthete who’d take a Balanchine ballet over a Balanchine-blue sky any day of the week. Does that mean I live my life once removed from the “real” world? Or are the aesthetic experiences of which the life of art is constituted as “real” as blue skies and fiery orange sunsets?