Archives for February 11, 2013

On Monday afternoon I’ll be returning to New York after a month and a half on the road. During that time I drove all over Florida and saw seven shows there, flew up to New York and back twice to see four more shows and give a ten-minute speech, finished writing and editing Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington and sent the manuscript off to Gotham Books, and saw the sun set over the Gulf of Mexico a dozen times. It was warm–mostly–but it wasn’t a vacation, not even slightly. I can’t remember the last time I took one of those.
My traveling days are now officially over until the end of April. Except for occasional weekend jaunts to Connecticut and a fast trip to Rhode Island to see a rare American revival of a play by Eugène Ionesco, I’ll be totally preoccupied with theater in New York. That’s all right with me: I’m going to miss Florida, which I’ve grown to love in recent years, but I’m tired of living out of a pair of suitcases, and I like the idea of sleeping in my own bed again.
Home, however, is where Mrs. T is, so I’m not really coming home today. She’ll be spending an additional week in Florida with family, then flying to Los Angeles to visit friends and stay warm. I won’t be seeing her again until March.
I’m glad I missed the blizzard. I seem to have lost my taste for snow, and to some extent for New York City as well. Fortunately, I still love a great many people who live there, and I wouldn’t want to be without the theater district, not to mention the other cultural institutions that are for me the whole point of living in Manhattan. That said, I’m definitely feeling a bit disoriented these days, not wholly satisfied with the present and unsure of the future.
It could be that I’m suffering from a mild case of the postpartum depression that has been known to assault writers who’ve just finished a long and demanding book. It could also be that returning to my New York apartment will restore the sense of stability that has lately deserted me. I’ve always have a way of feeling at home wherever I am–which is, I suppose, another way of saying that I don’t feel entirely at home anywhere.
So…what now? As soon as I empty my bags, I’ll let you know.

A rare 1973 interview with Katherine Anne Porter:

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

“As I slowly grow wise I briskly grow cautious.”
Mark Twain, “English as She Is Taught”