arts & leisure

Oh New York Times, how I've missed you! Somehow, even on the Sunday when I was in New York (or at least nearby), I didn't pick up a single paper on the whole trip.

Unfortunately today's A&L is a little sketchy, but it's still better than no Times at all:
( High school, music, movies, theater, Frank Rich. )

One of the interesting things about a newspaper is how its layout can lead you to read things you wouldn't seek out. Following one article to the page it's continued on, your gaze ranges across whatever shares the page with it, and maybe you learn something new.

Case in point: I pretty much never read the dance articles; the art itself is one I've never developed a taste for, and if I had, I still don't know if I'd want to read about it. But on my way to the end of the Stephen Glass article, I tripped over Roslyn Sulcas's article about classical dancers adapting to William Forsythe's momentum-driven, semi-improvisatory choreography.

"I remember, when I first did Bill's work, thinking I don't want to do it wrong, but then just deciding to go for it. You have to push past what you think is 'right.' The freedom of that can be a little daunting, but it's ultimately liberating."

I don't know if I'd actually enjoy seeing it, but it sure was fun to read about.

And a lovely piece about what people get out of opera, and what they feel like they should be getting. We've come to expect "transcendence," writes Anne Midgette, but "Opera deals in human emotions, not divine and ethereal ones. When singing is sublime, it's partly because it amplifies those emotions with a kind of inner purity." Also, quotes from Ann Patchett and Willa Cather novels.

new jersey, 9/24-9/28

I lived in New Jersey for two years. Two years is long enough to get attached, but not long enough for a return to feel like a homecoming. What it feels like--and yes, no doubt there's some personal history behind this analogy--is like seeing an old girlfriend. You remember with sudden vividness all the things you loved about her, and all the things that got on your nerves. Worse, there are little pockets of unfamiliarity, and you don't know why: Has she changed? Or have you forgotten? Or were these things about her that you never even noticed?

So: New Jersey is still beautiful. If you've never been there--or if you've only been to the turnpike and Newark Airport--you don't know how green it is. My camera's battery died just before I crossed the border from Pennsylvania, an hour before sundown when the sun makes everything glow, and I was sad not to get the photographs, but I still got to see it. As darkness fell I left the interstate to take the back roads I used to drive, back when the freeway scared me, through old-growth suburbs and past Fort Nonsense into Morristown.



And New Jersey still has terrible traffic (the next day, a half-hour standstill on the way to New York!) and the worst signage in the country (misleading or simply false, where they bother to put it up at all) and the most confusing roads (every town has a road named after every other nearby town, and none of them match up across town borders, and none of them lead to the town they're named for), and the curious property that, no matter where you are and where you are trying to get to, there is no good driving route from here to there.



And Jersey Boy Bagels is still the Home of the Eggel, and the Edison Family Restaurant still claims to have the World's Best Oatmeal (and is still correct, as far as I know), and the libraries and banks and post offices and train stations are still grand old brick stalwarts, and the churches are grander still. But was that house in Plainfield always lavender? And when did the abandoned mall downtown, or any mall anywhere, get carpeting? And Clearview has been buying up all the old Bob Roberts art house movie theaters. And the Afghan restaurant is still there, but the gigantic U.S. flag in the window is new. But the guy at the Sweet Dreams Cafe still recognized my face, and that felt good.



Near the post office I looked down at the curb and saw "I LOVE SEAN" etched in angular letters into the curb. I don't know who wrote it, but I can guess that she was in high school or not far from it, and I can guess that she doesn't love Sean anymore. Does she still live in Morristown? Does she walk by it on her way to buy stamps or send a package? What does she think when she sees her youthful love still proclaimed there? How many years has it been?