Archives for 2006

For some relevant memories, go here and here.

– “Tragedy, as you know, is always a fait accompli, whereas terror always has to do with anticipation, with man’s recognition of his own negative potential–with his sense of what he is capable of.”

Joseph Brodsky, “On Grief and Reason”

– “Tragedy is like strong acid–it dissolves away all but the very gold of truth.”

D.H. Lawrence, letter to James T. Boulton (April 1, 1911)

– “Now, the more I distrust my memory, the more confused it becomes. It serves me better by chance encounter; I have to solicit it nonchalantly. For if I press it, it is stunned; and once it has begun to totter, the more I probe it, the more it gets mixed up and embarrassed. It serves me at its own time, not at mine.”

Michel de Montaigne, “Of Presumption”

– “The memory of most men is an abandoned cemetery where lie, unsung and unhonored, the dead whom they have ceased to cherish. Any lasting grief is reproof to their forgetfulness.”

Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian

– May memory restore again and again

The smallest color of the smallest day:

Time is the school in which we learn,

Time is the fire in which we burn.

Delmore Schwartz, “Calmly we walk through this April’s day”

I reviewed two shows in this morning’s Wall Street Journal, one in town (Seven Guitars) and one elsewhere (Pippin). Here’s the gist:

August Wilson was on the outs with Broadway at the time of his death last October. “Gem of the Ocean,” the ninth installment of his ten-play cycle about the black experience in America, barely made it to the Great White Way, and “Radio Golf,” the last play in the cycle, has yet to be seen there (though it’s already received several regional productions). So it’s good news indeed that the Signature Theater Company, the Off Broadway troupe that devotes each of its seasons to the work of one American playwright, is featuring him this year–and that “Seven Guitars,” the first of three plays by Wilson to be produced there this season, has been given a revival of the utmost splendor and compulsion. Now that “The Lieutenant of Inishmore” and “Faith Healer” have closed their doors, I’d go so far as to call it the best play in town….

Needless to say, it was written with black playgoers very much in mind, but for all the ethnic specificity of his chronicles of ghetto life, Wilson never lost sight of the artist’s obligation to communicate to the widest possible audience. As he told the Paris Review in 1999, “You create the work to add to the artistic storehouse of the world, to exalt and celebrate a common humanity.” I can’t think of a better way to sum up “Seven Guitars”: Like all great art, it shows you yourself, no matter who you are….

Youngsters unaware that Stephen Schwartz wrote anything before “Wicked” should take note of the lively production of “Pippin” now playing at the Goodspeed Opera House, the century-old 398-seat auditorium on the Connecticut River whose musical-comedy revivals are universally admired by well-traveled connoisseurs….

To be sure, “Pippin” is a wan period piece with a watered-down rock score and wince-making lyrics that stink of 1972 (“Every man has his daydreams/Every man has his goals/People like the way dreams have/Of sticking to the soul”). But the ham-fisted stop-the-war sermonizing of the first act will soothe the parched souls of the gray-ponytail set, and Gabriel Barre and Beowulf Boritt, the director and designer, have miraculously contrived to shoehorn the show’s complicated events onto the Goodspeed’s tiny stage with plenty of room to spare….

No free link. As usual, you can read the whole thing by (A) buying the paper or (B) going here to subscribe to the Online Journal, which will give you immediate access to the complete text of my review. (If you’re already a subscriber, you’ll find it here.)

Two months ago I added a new module to “Sites to See,” our blogroll. As I wrote in June:

In the past year YouTube has evolved from a curiosity into a major online resource. If you’re interested in seeing rare film and video clips by a fast-growing number of great performers of the past, you’ll find them there–but only if you have the patience to sift through the innumerable postings of nitwits who think the world is waiting with bated breath to see their homemade music videos.

From time to time I’ve passed on links to interesting videos that I’ve found on other blogs, but it never occurred to me to try making this blog a one-stop portal to the wonders of YouTube–until now. Take a look at the “Sites to See” module of the right-hand column and you’ll find that it ends with a brand-new roll of selected culture- and history-oriented video links, most (but not all) of them to YouTube. So far as I know, this is the first such list to appear anywhere on the Web.

If you haven’t checked it out yet, I strongly suggest you do so now. Last night I spent a couple of hours revising, updating, and expanding our list of video links. (All newly posted videos are marked with an asterisk.) It is, if I do say so myself, a spectacularly rich catalogue of on-demand online video treasure–and the audio-only links are pretty amazing, too.

As always, I encourage you to send me the URLs of any choice culture-related links that you run across in the course of your own YouTube explorations.

Have fun!

Nothing with gods, nothing with fate;

Weighty affairs will just have to wait!

Stephen Sondheim, “Comedy Tonight”

If you have no plans for this Sunday night–and maybe even if you do–I strongly recommend that you attend the all-star jazz concert that Dan Levinson and Randy Sandke have put together to benefit Dick Sudhalter, about whose plight I recently blogged. The bill includes (among others) Harry Allen, Dan Barrett, Eddie Bert, Bill Crow, Jim Ferguson, Dave Frishberg, Wycliffe Gordon, Marty Grosz, Becky Kilgore, Bill Kirchner, Steve Kuhn, Dan Levinson, Marian McPartland, Joe Muranyi, David Ostwald, Nicki Parrott, Bucky Pizzarelli, Scott Robinson, Randy Sandke, Daryl Sherman, and the Loren Schoenberg Big Band.

The concert will take place at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in New York. The address is 619 Lexington Avenue at 54th Street and the music starts at seven o’clock sharp. Admission is $40, plus whatever else you care to chip in.

I’ll be there. You come, too.

Are there any songs that you really, really like in spite of their lyrics, whether in whole or part? Here’s my list:

– Swing Out Sister, “Breakout”

– Joan Armatrading, “Call Me Names”

– Tori Amos, “Crucify”

– Joni Mitchell, “Black Crow”

– Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne, “Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out to Dry”

– Rosanne Cash, “I Want a Cure”

– The Police, “King of Pain”

– Billy Strayhorn, “Lush Life”

Incidentally, it only works one way for me: if I don’t like the music of a song, it doesn’t matter how good the words are. I suspect the same thing is true for most people, which says something interesting about the nature of songwriting.

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway and off-Broadway shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows strongly favorable reviews in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

Warning: Broadway shows marked with an asterisk were sold out, or nearly so, last week.

BROADWAY:

– Avenue Q* (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

– The Drowsy Chaperone* (musical, G/PG-13, mild sexual content and a profusion of double entendres, reviewed here)

– The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee* (musical, PG-13, mostly family-friendly but contains a smattering of strong language and a production number about an unwanted erection, reviewed here)

– The Wedding Singer (musical, PG-13, some sexual content, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

– The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children old enough to enjoy a love story, reviewed here)

– Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living In Paris (musical revue, R, adult subject matter and sexual content, reviewed here)

– Slava’s Snowshow (performance art, G, child-friendly, reviewed here)