Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
Time: 11 p.m., toward the end of a long and exhausting day. Place: A nursing home in Smalltown, U.S.A. A nurse has given my mother a dose of Ativan to help her sleep. She mumbles a sentence repeatedly but unintelligibly.
HE Mom, I’m sorry, but I just don’t understand you.
MOTHER (very clearly and emphatically) YES, YOU DO.
SHE (teasingly) He’s pretending not to understand you. Smack him up the side of the head.
MOTHER I would, if I could get my hand loose.
Laughter, followed by relief.
Benny Goodman plays “Sing, Sing, Sing” in the 1937 movie Hollywood Hotel, with Harry James on trumpet and Gene Krupa on drums:
(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday and Wednesday.)
“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead.”
Tom Stoppard, The Real Thing