Archives for December 2013

For the past four years, Mrs. T and I have been flying down to Florida’s Sanibel Island on New Year’s Eve, when the airports are less crowded with fellow travelers. We hole up at a modest, homey seaside spot where it’s possible for people who aren’t rich to rent small cottages that are within sight of the Gulf of Mexico, and we do as little as possible while we’re there.
Being a working man, I have no choice but to treat these trips as working holidays. Last year, for example, I spent most of our stay on Sanibel Island finishing Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington. No book this year, but I’ll be knocking out Wall Street Journal columns and flying up to New York midway through our stay to review three shows. Once I’m done, though, I’ll head back south as fast as I can manage it.

As I explained in this space a year ago:

So yes, I’ll be working like a man possessed–but at least I’ll be doing it in a tranquil and beautiful place where it isn’t cold. Longtime readers of this blog have watched me learn by installments how to take vacations. I also learned that even if you can’t take a full-fledged vacation, it’s almost as therapeutic to go somewhere nice to work. Coming to Sanibel for the first time drove home that lesson, and our annual visit is now an important part of my life….

The good news is that I won’t be nearly so busy this year as I was in January of 2013, when I had to spend several hours each day frenziedly working on Duke. Instead, I plan to spend as much time as I can sleeping late, walking on the beach, swimming in the ocean, watching the sun set every evening, and being with my beloved Mrs. T, who is the best company in the world.

As for the fast-approaching end of 2013, those of you who visit this space regularly know what I’ve been up to all year, so there’s no need to talk about it today. And while I also have some exciting prospects for the year to come, it’s not yet time to announce them. All I can tell you is to be patient–you’ll know soon enough. Since I spoke a couple of weeks ago of my infinite gratitude for the bounties and good fortunes of my life, I won’t repeat myself on that subject, either, save to say this: I don’t take any of it for granted, and never will.

We’ll be somewhere over the East Coast by the time that most of you read these words. For those who must keep on shivering up north, or wherever you may happen to be today, the two of us wish you the best New Year’s Eve ever.

From 2003:

I can’t think of another city where it’s possible to satisfy so many different obsessions so thoroughly, or to be a member of so many different social groups whose membership doesn’t overlap at all. I first noticed this at my fortieth birthday party (one of the very few parties, incidentally, that I’ve ever thrown, or had thrown for me). I didn’t know a room could have so many different corners, much less that each could be inhabited with its very own gaggle of recognizably similar people.
Perhaps all my obsessions cancel one another out and leave in their wake the residue of an approximately normal human being. But I wouldn’t count on it….

Read the whole thing here.

“The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes.”
G.K. Chesterton, Lunacy and Letters

Taking down the Christmas tree is the saddest of chores, inescapable and depressing, and so I did the hard part while Mrs. T slept. I got up, tiptoed into the living room, and carefully stripped off the lights and tinsel and ornaments. Mere hours before, they’d glittered joyously in the winter night. Now all that remained was a dried-up bundle of branches that I unceremoniously hauled across the road into the woods.
I wouldn’t have been so quick to do my yearly duty were it not for the fact that we’ll be departing Connecticut first thing tomorrow morning, not to return for some time to come. Otherwise I would gladly have left our beautiful tree unmolested, for I know no spectacle so heartening. Mrs. T and I have only had three Christmas trees in our eight years as a couple, and last year’s was our first in a long time. Hence we were determined to put up two in a row, and it filled me with joy when we plugged this one into the wall a couple of weeks ago and beheld the blaze of its old-fashioned lights.
Today it’s gone, and tomorrow we’ll be gone, too. I miss it already–but I’m looking forward to its successor, a shining symbol of the love that is the best part of my life.

Señor Wences appears on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1966:

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

“The nicest thing about being happy is that you think you’ll never be unhappy again.”
Manuel Puig, Kiss of the Spider Woman

Today’s Wall Street Journal drama column is devoted to my best-of-2013 list. Here are some of the items on it:
• Best performance in a play. Sally Eames was hauntingly true to life in “Woman in Mind,” Alan Ayckbourn’s serious comedy about a brain-damaged woman who mistakes her fantasies of a loving family for the real thing, produced in Chicago as part of Eclipse Theatre Company’s all-Ayckbourn season.
• Best performance in a musical. Judy Kuhn and Melissa Errico gave identically gripping performances in John Doyle’s small-scale version of Stephen Sondheim’s “Passion,” mounted to miraculous effect by New York’s Classic Stage Company.
• Best revival of a play. Lear deBessonet’s gender-twisting production of Bertolt Brecht’s “Good Person of Szechwan,” which transferred to the Public Theater after a run at La MaMa, introduced New York playgoers to an immensely promising new directorial talent.
• Best revival of a musical. Amanda Dehnert staged “My Fair Lady” in Brecht’s deceptively austere manner for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, with results that weren’t preachy but intimate and appealing.
To see the rest of the list, including my picks for best play, musical, and company of the year, go here.