Lots of Shows

In the last few weeks, I've seen a lot of theater. It felt like the old days. Back then, I saw things three times a week. I eagerly awaited the New York Times special section on The New Season. I circled things that I didn't want to miss. At some point, I lost bandwidth. Most things I saw were bad, or average. I felt like spending more time at home. But lately, I've been out in the world again, taking it in. I'm reminded how much theater can be a conversation--how it can be the leaping off point for having conversations. Hooray for New York theater! (And TDF!)

John Leguizamo's Ghetto Klown

This is Mr. Leguizamo's fifth solo show, and I'm beginning to wonder if there's anything left to tell. He's a fantastic performer--his energy is the driving force here, his charisma--not the material, which, if you've seen his solo works before, you've already heard most of this. It's really a great show, funny, charming...I just wish it were a little deeper, a little more....everything. After two hours of great, the show ends with a mixed-up phone call bit that felt, to me, kinda lame. But...it's still great! Right?

The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures

The new Tony Kushner play is so fucking exciting, so much fun, and deeply moving. In (very) short, it's about a guy who calls his family around him so they can vote on his impending suicide. As with any Kushner work, it's about everything else--desire, family, betrayal, love, hope, and yes, capitalism and socialism. The second act reaches a near unintelligible cacophony of arguing, and I remember thinking that very few other plays have felt so alive on stage to me. And nobody--Nobody--does hope like Kushner. Back in January, I saw the Signature Theater's revival of Angels in America, which is maybe, despite its subject matter, one of the most hopeful works of the 20th century. But, this play, I felt, is less hopeful. I felt like the playwright is older, more weary, less sure. And that was perhaps the most devastating part of the "play." It's 4 hours, deeply sad, sometimes hilarious, full of messy characters you find hard to love. Go.

The Other Place

Laurie Metcalf stars in this new play by Sharr White at the Lucille Lortel, for the MCC Theater. I'm so glad Ms. Metcalf has been on stage so much in the last few years; she is an actress of incredible strength and transparency. What's true in this play is really the question--and, in the end, I found myself asking the question of the playwright whose decision-making I question a bit. There is a scene at the end which plays a bit too MOTW for my tastes--and feels a bit like he's trying to rescue the play from an unhappy ending, which is what is really called for here. But, the set is beautiful, the actors are great, Ms. Metcalf is extraordinary.

The Book of Mormon

It's as good as they say it is. If you're looking for a night of big laughs and beautiful, precisely-executed musical theater, then rush out. (If you can get tickets.) You can find 100 other reviews about how great it is--and it is really great, Tony's galore come June, you watch. But I will say a few other things 1) it's not half as offensive as it should be, or could be. In the end, I think the writers settled for a musical that will make tons of money and tour forever. They're smart enough to play to a Broadway audience in a Broadway house, not a midnight-in-the-village audience, know what I mean? 2) The two leads, though wonderful alone, are missing something in their scenes together...their duo-chemistry is a bit deflated. 3) You can only do a musical about the Mormons because punchlines about them aren't in bad taste because they haven't been persecuted throughout history. You can't do "The Torah" or "The Koran" and say how insane all the mythology is, you'd be thrown out of town for racism and anti-semitism. It helps that Mormons are (generally) white, too. But...ultimately, I think the writers all know this, and they've made a big, hilarious, sometimes-moving--and here's the important part--new and original--musical.

Attn: Awkward-Wording Police

Some Almost-Winter Pictures

25 Things I'm Thankful For

Ted made a list, inspiring me to do the same.

1) That I was wrong about thinking I shouldn't move in with my boyfriend.
2) A warm bed filled with my kitties.
3) Art on every wall, everywhere.
4) The complicated relationship to your writing that being published creates.
5) Good reviews.
6) New York City's utter, unflappable, inspiring awesomeness.
7) Kip.
8) Kip's patience with my everything.
9) Friends who live very close by.
10) Parents who get it.
11) Central Air.
12) The Greenmarket community.
13) My editor & my agent. Because everyone said that Yield wasn't publishable except for them, and turns out, it was.
14) That I have a desk job where I can iChat with Cory and Robert and Jeff.
15) That Howie made enough of the best maple syrup in the world to keep me employed another year.
16) Complicated questions that people ask and struggle to answer well.
17) The DVR.
18) Antibiotics.
19) The MoMA, The Met Museum, The Whitney, The Guggenheim, etc.
20) Jokes.
21) The Theater Development Fund.
22) The incredible bounty of local food.
23) Poets.
24) Homosexuals.
25) Having friends in so many lines of work: dentists, psychotherapists, drummers, photographers, teachers, graphic designers, fashion thinkers, singers, DOT workers, performers, artists, writers, journalists, bartenders, farmers, waiters, chefs, lawyers, zine-makers, dancers, yoga teachers, real estate agents, puppeteers, activists, old folks home managers, playwrights, actors, film editors, sound technicians, and circus performers.

Joanna Newsom at Carnegie Hall

Few of us know anyone who plays the harp; basically none of us have been near enough to touch one. Part of the success of Joanna Newsom's show last night at Carnegie Hall has to do with the kind of magic that an instrument like that creates. The posture in the player--this kind of open, holding, wide elbowed stance--combined with the mystery of the dozens (and from the balcony it seemed there could be hundreds) of strings, and finally the strange fact that its difficult to determine when the player is actually touching the harp, and when the sound is simply vibrating out of it. Only in close up, does any of it make any sense.

Less successful, and ultimately what made the evening feel a bit like a deflated exercise, was Newsom's ambiguous relationship to her audience, and the awkward moments of harp-tuning, which left enough blank space that, upon Newsom's suggestion, the audience began shouting out "questions." "Brooklyn loves you," someone said. This is interesting to me, because I have a feeling that most of the people in the audience had traveled from Brooklyn. Was he sending a collective message? Sent from the "better" borough? (There is a feeling among young hip people that Brooklyn rocks and Manhattan is square.) Was this person unconsciously indicating a kind of sentimental otherness?

This went on twice for not long, three or four minutes perhaps, but the energy lagged, and I wished that the band, or Newsom herself, had prepared some kind of other business for this moment--comedy, a story, talking, banter, anything. If anyone has seen Alison Krauss and Union Station perform, you will know that they are always tuning, but they have created many "bits" to do during this boring, and stagnant tuning sections, which bring the audience back into the show. Sure, it feels casual when they do it, never calculated, but AKUS would never, ever, allow their audience to set, or shift, the mood of those moments. Maybe this comes with having performed on stage together for 20 years--a luxury Newsom and her band does not have--a kind of seasoned, professional ease.

"Can I play Ryan's banjo?" one audience member yelled, during this tuning/question section. "No," said, Neal Morgan, on percussion. He then asked the audience to have a kind of meta-moment where we imagine her playing while she actually didn't, and then he counted out 5 seconds of quiet, while we all listened. Ultimately, this is kind of asshole-ish, taking the, yes, stupid question "Can I play Ryan's banjo" and then making the extra large point of showing the audience how stupid the question is, by extrapolating its stupidity by making us all engage in a similarly stupid interaction. More stupid does not counteract stupid.

Early in the evening, Newsom spoke of her nervousness, how it wasn't until she got on stage for the sound check that she realized, okay, Carnegie Hall may be Carnegie Hall, but it's just a room with the most incredible acoustics. Joanna, hello, it's not just a room. Tell that to Sissieretta Jones, or Marian Anderson. Or Judy Garland. Or any of the thousands of amateur musicians who would kill to get on that stage. At the same time, however, her fans do not see her as the girl at the party: "What does it feel like to be a goddess?" screamed one fan from a few rows away from where I was sitting. Morgan responded: "Trick question, Joanna actually isn't a goddess." This was too clear.

I think she could be. Her music, as beautiful, ethereal, strange, unstructured, long, wandering, so different from anything else you hear--where was all that in the show? It was there in the songs, sure, but something else seemed missing. Even the long-winded biography printed in the playbill was reductionist, made to seem as if, ho hum, Joanna was playing harp in her basement and then, oh wow, people liked it, and thanks to a lot of illegal downloading and enough actual sales, now here she is.

Do young musicians in this new-folk scene refuse to take themselves that seriously? Does a kind of formal live presentation reduce your hipster street cred? These were the questions I wanted to ask.

Scattered Light

The other night, I took this video of Jim Campbell's new outdoor sculpture "Scattered Light." There are a few pieces in the park, but the only one you will care about seeing is this one, which is described as:

Scattered Light, will feature nearly 2,000 LEDs encased in standard light bulbs, suspended within a support structure spanning 80 feet in length and standing 20 feet high and 16 feet wide to create a vibrant light grid across the center of Madison Square Park’s Oval Lawn. The LED bulbs, programed to flicker scattered light, will create the illusion of figurative images that explore and reflect the human experience amidst the urban landscape, creating the appearance of giant human shadows crossing a floating 3-D matrix of light. As one travels around the piece, the vantage point alters and the light figures begin to abstract, blurring the boundaries between image and object.

Scattered Light is on view until February 2011. More about it by looking here.

Scattered Light by Jim Campbell from Lee Houck on Vimeo.

Who You Are

1.
On Sunday, some of us went to see Laurie Anderson's new show "Delusion" at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. I first encountered her work in high school, when ou theater class was looking at artists whose performances were some mix of sound, visual art, theater and "performance art," which still has a certain dreadful ring to it, I think, for most people. We were learning about boundaries in theater, or lack of boundaries. I loved what we studied. Some day, I thought, I will see Laurie Anderson in person. She will do what she does, and I will be who I am. A lot of my thinking back then had something to do with who I would be once that person emerged. Does everyone think this way in high school? That the real you is somewhere inside waiting to get out? Perhaps this feeling never ends for some people--but I feel, at my (I know) very young age of 32, that I am finally who I am. So, with that, I saw Laurie Anderson.

I was somewhat lost for the first half of the performance--not lost in that I wasn't following the story, which is not to say that her work is a linear story--but I felt that my experience of it wasn't as rich as it could have been. I was fussing with the seat, those awful balcony stools at the Harvey Theater, which surely were put there as some hideous last resort. I was distracted by the Werther's Original hard candy that my friend Jaime brought, and which was doing this incredibly thing to my taste buds, because I hadn't tasted a Werther's Original in many many years, and it was like a supersonic journey through time to the last time I tasted one as soon as it went into my mouth.

But then, she started talking about the moon. Specifically, she was talking about NASA's plan--a very long range plan, something along the lines of 5,000 years--to move all industry and manufacturing to the moon, thus leaving the Earth to repair herself without interference. Then she talked about how the Americans and the Russians and the Chinese were arguing about who owned the moon. Everyone claimed it.

After that, and until the end of the show, I was transfixed--absorbed into the music and the emotional waves pouring out of her and over the audience. I really felt like who I am.


2.
On Tuesday night some of us went to see James Franco play Allen Ginsburg in the new movie "Howl," which is based on the poem. I didn't know anything about the movie in advance--which is actually unlike me. Turns out, it's not the typical biopic where they show the hero going through his trials and then he finds success and becomes famous, etc. Or dies. This was something excitingly different.

At first the acting style seemed jarring--everyone seemed to be in on something, a very subtle wink at the audience, because we all know that Ginsburg was a genius and his work will probably live forever and ever and change lives of young poets and writers (and gay kids) for eternity. But eventually, between the animation and the interviews and the incredibly lucid language of Howl itself--you just get won over by the man himself...as played by James Franco. Basically, it's like 90 minutes of poet porn. Go.

After the movie, over beers and burgers and quesadillas and sweet potato fries at Trailer Park bar after the movie, Jenny Romaine and I were talking about muses. Who is yours, or what is yours? I told her I didn't believe in that kind of mysticism--that the work is just the work and I either don't know where it comes from, or don't want to know where it comes from. (I then proceeded to go on and on about Joan Didion and how everything I do is for her, or maybe because of her, I can't tell the difference...and Romaine asked me if I was sure I didn't have any muses.)

Then I thought maybe I was misunderstanding her.

So, things got late, and we kept talking, and talking, about what publishing has meant to me. (In sort: all great things you can never prepare for, and some uncomfortable things which change the relationship you have with your work...but mainly very, very good things.) And I decided that, since it was after 11:00pm, and all I wanted at that moment was to be in bed covered in cats and talk to my boyfriend about our days, I would take a cab home. And I decided that somewhere along the way, in the cab, I would figure out who or what the muse was. (If not Joan. Of course.)

Along Fourth Avenue, there was a building under construction--being built or being renovated, sometimes it's difficult to determine in this town--and it was covered by a large blue tarp, the basic blue tarp you can buy at any hardware store. The wind was blowing softly through the window of the cab when it stopped at the red light in front of the building. And this soft wind was making the tarp billow, curling out and back, brushing against the concrete, making the most delicious, satisfying, crisp, singular sound. It hit me: that's my muse. Not the building, not the tarp itself--but the sound of it.

Things can be that simple, which is what I couldn't articulate back at the Trailer Park bar. I am still learning things. It takes a long time to figure out who you are.

Coming Up!

A few more events on the calendar:

Wednesday, Sept 29 - 7:30pm
Bar on A, 170 Avenue A
part of Guerrilla Lit Series

Saturday, Oct 2 - 9:00pm
Brooklyn Museum of Art
part of First Saturdays

Tuesday, Oct 5 - 6:00pm
Dixon Place Lounge, 161A Chrystie Street
with Sam J. Miller and Alexander Chee

Wednesday, Oct 27 - 8:00pm
Nowhere Bar, 322 East 14th Street
part of PANIC!

This is a Test

The day after the 9th anniversary of September 11th,
we stood at the edge of the great hole in the ground,
where the great buildings once stood,
and watched thousands of birds caught
in the two great columns of light,
which are lit each year to mark the memory of the day,
of the lives that were lost,
and the thing that happened.

We do not reach desperately into the cold dark.
We do not grope for meaning in the great black sky.
Rather, we are blinded by the brightness of our grief.
We spend hours wandering the density of it.
We are unguided, made tired hungry zombies
by the rich colors of our memories,
and the instinct to find safer climates,
where winters
and sadness
can not find us.

The sign above the roadway of the Williamsburg Bridge,
as we drove from Manhattan to Brooklyn,
which is designed to warn drivers about traffic
and construction issues ahead,
blinked over and over: THIS IS A TEST.

September Readings

If you are in or near the NYC area, please come out to hear me read, and get your copy of YIELD signed, at any of the following events:

Tuesday, Sept 7 - 7pm
Barnes & Noble, 82nd and Broadway
Reading/Signing

Tuesday, Sept 14 - 7pm-9pm
Sugarland, 221 North 9th Street, Williamsburg
Book Party with Open Bar/Reading

Thursday, Sept 16 - 8pm
Happy Ending Lounge, 302 Broome Street
part of In The Flesh Series

Wednesday, Sept 29 - 7:30pm
Bar on A, 170 Avenue A
part of Guerrilla Lit Series

Tuesday, Oct 5 - 6:00pm
Dixon Place Lounge, 161A Chrystie Street
with Sam J. Miller

What I Am Thinking About This Week

Today, as I begin changing everything I can think of from my old address to my new address, I am thinking of every place my information resides--banks, insurance, magazines and post office, credit cards, AAA, more and more, and more that I surely have forgotten. I'm also thinking about all this Facebook privacy stuff, how everyone is going crazy reacting to the idea that maybe your "information" has been compromised, and what is going to happen when your "information" is leaked to "outside sources." And, on top of that, I'm thinking of the census takers who I see walking around neighborhoods, with their clipboards and their open, hopeful faces. And also their begging and knocking on doors and talking to people who are too confused, or jaded, or suspicious to answer the questions. In short: I am thinking about all the ways in which we want and don't want to be known.

I am curious about the shock and surprise people are having, or are at least expressing, when they find out that Facebook, a free service, has shared their "information" with third party websites in order to, well, sell you things. I only ask: What did you expect from a website that asked you to enter all your "information" and then tracked every click of here and there? Also, What information are you trying to protect? Also, it only knows what you tell it.

I am thinking about one of my favorite things in New York, which is the moment when you put something on the curb that you don't need any more and then you go to get a Vietnamese ravioli, and when you come back, it's gone. I am thinking about how I love, love, love the efficiency of this. And I am even imagining what the object must feel when it is given a new home, and suddenly made useful once again. This makes me think of Naomi Shihab Nye's poem "Famous" where she says "I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous/or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular/but because it never forgot what it could do."

Right this moment, I am thinking: I should not have eaten the entire of bag of potato chips.

"Now you have to start letting it go," said Peter, my editor, after I turned in the final draft of my novel. I thought I had been doing that since 2005, which was when I originally finished it. (I say that--originally--because not only did Peter ask me to write a new scene or two, and to adjust a thing or two, I think I probably could have tinkered with it for another five years. It's true when they say you never finish a novel, you just stop.) But I hadn't really let it go. Do you ever? I tell you this about Peter firstly because he was right (as per usual) and also because I notice myself wondering how I am reflected in the work, and wondering how to let go of that. Just tonight, I handed a galley to a friend of a friend and thought "Oh, there I go, into his hand, into his head, and digested." (Of course, this is not really how we read books, and I know that, so I am aware that it's me and not the real thing that's happening.) What's interesting, and hard to deal with, apparently, is how I want to be known for the book, but also distance myself from the book. Oh, art, you are so complicated and wonderful and I love you!

from 1997, Part 3

This, the last entry in the journal:

1-2-98. 3:30pm.
Moved in somewhat. Boxes are still everywhere, everything impossible to find. I seem to need everything at once. I'm living in Chris's room until I have a bed. We watched the video of [our high school performance of Brecht's Caucasian] Chalk Circle.
The space is great, a little nervous, but excited. We had a good dinner at some cafe on St. Mark's, which I liked, I'd go there again. Blackened salmon with mashed sweet potatoes. Mom and Dad are doing well. They like the city.
Furniture shopping today. Sleeping here will be tough. I have all this noise outside my window to combat. Talked to everyone back home. No one is helping each other. I don't know what to say. I hope I can really be myself in this place. Like really be the best version of myself here. It's wonderful what's already been established. But Chris's room is a mess.

from 1997, Part 2

More from the three pages of my journal. At this point, I'm still in the car with my parents, driving north from Chattanooga to TN.

12-31-97. 12:30pm.
Had a long conversation about T with my parents at a McDonald's somewhere outside of Asheville. Hearing them react shows me how good I've got it. I got my Dad to open the back of the car so I could get my CDs, and now I've got Shawn Colvin with me. Still snowing heavily, hopefully we won't run into any problem on the way. I feel good. I'm sure we'll be fine. I'm supposed to call T tonight. I hope he doesn't break anything or burn the house down.
We have almost 5 more hours of driving until we stop for the evening. That will put us into NY about 2:00pm on New Year's Day.
Just now remembering chemistry class and Becky in the 10th grade. And all the notes we passed. We had a good time.

from 1997, Part 1

I have too many books. Wait, is there such a thing? I have decided that there is. Before we move, I've decided to parcel down my library to a few hundred. I am always buying new ones, so there's that. I hope to move into my new apartment with an empty bookcase.

In the shuffling around, I came across a blank book that was, for three days in 1997, my journal. I have never been good at keeping a journal, they always seemed like too much work going into something that wasn't "the work." But this was a nice surprise. Here's what I was writing on the day before I arrived in New York City, when I was 19:

12-31-97. 7:53am.
Just left Chattanooga for NY. Been driving for only 20 minutes. My cold is annoying but if I can live through my parents doing what they do I'll be fine. I left T at home. I think I really got to him last night. Like me, he is a sentimentalist. I just told him the truth. That we are all worried sick and we loved him too much to watch him do what he does lately. Or what he doesn't do I should say. I think T has always existed inside his head and I suppose he'll go right on.
A new environment will be good. I don't know about all of us in that place. Everyone is counting on me to bring something to it, some kind of maturity, or something. I'm ready. I'll get to play housewife for a while.
Saw my parents holding hands in a movie the other day. Haven't seen that in a while. It made me glad. The snow outside is beautiful. It's nice to have it on the ground. The world is uncomfortable and vulnerable, just as I start to go.
Success has to be in the plan. If not, what? Wish I had my CDs and stuff. Maybe the silence will be good for me. Well, escape only a little bit. I wish I had a puzzle or something. I am amazed at our ability to continue.

Apartment Hunting

For the past six Sundays--my only day off from three "day jobs"--Kip and I have run ourselves all over parts of Brooklyn looking at apartment after apartment, in many different neighborhoods, at many different levels of nice and nicer (some were decidedly not nice) until, this week, we decided to move ahead with a beautiful space on East 7th Street in Kensington. Barring any unforeseen strangeness on the part of the owner, or, say, plumes of volcanic ash, we should find ourselves unpacking boxes and arguing about paint chips on June 1.

So, today, I got to spend the time doing what I like to do best: eat, sleep and watch TV. Kip can sleep through anything, and does, so I usually wake up before him, sit around surfing the Internet and chatting with other early risers, and then after and hour or so, I crawl back into bed and see if I can get a few more minutes rest. Then we lay there petting the cats and talking about what we plant to do with the rest of the day.

We decided that since we didn't have to schedule or re-schedule apartment seeing, wrestle with agents who show up or don't, whose listings are either genuine or not, and whose interest level is probably in direct proportion to the amount of distrustful, shocked looks we tried to hide while they showed us something that had been on the market for many, many months. Not to readers: You don't want to live in an apartment with floor drains in the middle of every space they are calling a bedroom.

There were, however, some incredibly beautiful spaces, and for not that much money. We looked at a place in Crown Heights that retained all the original woodwork from the 1910s, and, oh yeah, had three fireplaces. But, ultimately, the layout was a bit strange and we couldn't figure out how to use the space with the way we wanted. We also looked at a full three-floor house in Lefferts Gardens that was, quite simply, not to be believed. Front porch, backyard, two-car garage, three bedrooms upstairs, three bathrooms, washer and dryer, dishwasher, antique stove, and more and more and more. We decided that we couldn't afford it. Or that we could afford it, but then we'd find ourselves house poor. (Additionally, I didn't want to pay the outrageously high broker's fee to a broker who showed up 15 minutes late in his white Corvette and departed quickly to make it to his martial arts class.)

I'm nervous about the changes ahead. But also looking forward to them. Here's hoping that the cats make friends, that the presence of the dishwasher means that Kip actually does the dishes that I dirty when I cook, that the central air lulls us to sleep every hot summer night, and that the small square of dirt in the back bursts forth with whatever we plant there. Movin' on up, indeed.

Three Upcoming Readings!

FRIDAY, March 26
7:30pm Doors, $15.00 (no one turned away)
One Arm Red
10 Jay Street, #903, Dumbo, Brooklyn
(F to York, or A/C to High Street)
as part of: Great Small Works Spaghetti Dinner.


WEDNESDAY, March 31
8pm, Free!!
Nowhere Bar
322 East 14th Street, Manhattan
as part of: LOVE PANIC!
also with Jimmy Lam, Nyna, Brandon Lacy Campos and Chadwick Moore.


SATURDAY, April 3
8pm, Free!!
envoy enterprises
131 Chrystie Street, Manhattan
as part of: Brother, My Lover
also with Justin Bond, Saeed Alan Siama, Aaron Tilford, and Colin Fitzpatrick

Being Present

I am thinking these days about presence. About what creates it. About what makes it real, or maybe palpable, since what is real and what is unreal, these days, I find difficult to decipher. (And, of course, the other huge question here is: Does real matter?) More specifically, I am thinking about how much energy it takes to be present. To respect another person's presence by showing up, by becoming present yourself.

I am first thinking of how being present can take everything out of you. As evidence: me standing on South 4th Street and Bedford Avenue, waiting on the blessed B62 (which, by the way, hasn't gotten better since the restructuring.) There was a man standing there as well, mid 50s maybe, something slightly off-kilter about his clothing. (But this is New York, and you never know anything about anyone, really.) I notice that he's looking at me. Not looking at me like one New Yorker looks at another New Yorker. He's trying to make eye contact. I get the feeling that he wants to ask me something. (This is natural at the bus stop. People often have logistical or directional questions at bus stops, and I, apparently, look like the kind of person who has the answers.) So, I take the bait, and look back at him.

"My wife died," he said. "Two weeks ago. She was 62 years old." "I'm sorry," I said. He said thank you, and we stood there a minute, quietly, waiting on the bus, with this fact suddenly between us.

For the rest of the day I carried all that around with me, and before I crawled into bed, I spent an hour playing thrashy folk songs on the guitar, maybe annoying the neighbors, until all that was out of me and I felt like myself again. He needed to say it out loud. He needed to give some of the weight to someone else so that he could go on with the motion of living. This makes sense to me. Sometimes saying something out loud can make it real. Or sometimes we say things out loud that aren't true at all, and it's a way of feeling the realness of them, if only an instant, like trying on a new pair of strange glasses, or like sliding your feet into a pair of your father's shoes. That guy just needed me to be present. Or, by default, my presence contributed his relief. Even if he made it all up, I was there, and we shared that weird, horrible, tragic conversation. And there was nothing to say afterward.

Second, I went to MoMA to see the Marina Abromovic retrospective. In addition to filling the 6th floor with lots of photos and videos, there are several recreations, or "reperformances" as Abromovic is calling them, by actors, dancers and other performance artists, of her previous work. Meanwhile, for the duration of the exhibit--about 700 hours that is--Abromovic herself will be seated at a table in the main atrium. Museum guests are invited to sit across from her for a duration of their choosing and do nothing but meet her gaze and feel whatever you feel, in a piece called "The Artist is Present." This is what it looks like, from the outside:



Sitting in a chair for an hour is difficult. Try it for 700 hours, all the while under the gaze of lights, viewers, the art world, critics, fans, people who hate you, etc. Marina ain't kidding, y'all. I've been thinking so much about presence after seeing this piece because of the way the reperformances failed to create the kind of excitement, mystery, emotion, verve--any of the things you feel when you see "The Artist is Present" in the Atrium.

So then what is creating that feeling? The situation is so simple, and other than blinking and the slight movement from her breathing, she didn't move at all for the half hour I stood watching her. So how can it be that the reperformances don't carry the same weight, if the actions are the same as in the original pieces? And Abromovic herself has been coaching and training the performers for the past several weeks. It begs the question, what is performance? Is it the sum of the actions, or is it the intention behind the actions? (I recall Yeats here and "how can we know the dancer from the dance?") And if the reperformers are supposed to be truly in the moment, and truly present, then why not call them performers? Why divide the past from the present, if what you are looking for--I think--is the magic of the moment?

In the new piece, Abromovic is basically doing everything at once, controlling every aspect, either directly or indirectly, by just being present. One museum-goer opted to sit across from her for about two hours. This made me angry--this person was taking up so much time, other people were waiting, how selfish! But what does that say about my sense of time? What does that say about my own selfishness? What does it say about what I think about the act of being present, and the limits, or extensions of it?

One of the things I like most about "The Artist is Present" is that the catalog copy calls the piece "generous." Such a rarity in art, I think. A kind of slow, meaningful present generosity.

Tuesday Evening

Mario and I sat at the Gray Dog on University this evening and drank tea while we talked about lemon cookbooks, citrus cookbooks, his sister, his niece, my nephews, cooking, romance, books, writers, tops, bottoms, Daddys, the problem with Daddys, and on and on. Also about how it takes a certain person who can tell you a certain thing, and other people can tell it to you, but you don't hear it unless it comes from that person.

Then we walked over to find the new Comme de Garcons Black store, (which is on 10th Avenue and 17th Street if you're looking.) They have about 50 pieces of clothing, all blacks and some whites mixed in. The men's section has fewer pieces, but they are all fabulous--if you are the kind of person who can wear that stuff, which I am not. (Though I really loved these flannel overdyed things which are right out of the future and also the now, know what I mean? Mario tried on an insane pair of dropped-crotch pants and we discussed how one could wear them. The salespeople, two of them, both adorably hip and skinny, helped describe how someone would wear these pants--how they were dress down-able, or up-able. How the wool has a certain sheen so it's "you know, more," she said.

Mario, who was my boyfriend once, talked with them about the clothes for a few minutes. I was reminded what it was like dating him--how this whole other language came out when he started talking clothes with other clothes people and how it made perfect sense to those who were speaking it. I've always been fascinated by inner-circle talk--the industry chatter of lighting designers, chefs, hairstylists, mechanics, piano players. All that stuff.

Then we walked down 10th Avenue to find Chef Morimoto standing on the sidewalk in a t-shirt and sweats, talking to a woman. Then we walked across the street to the new Colicchio and Sons (formerly CraftSteak) to look at the menu. It looked exciting--no more $100 steaks that no one is buying--more home cookin' with a few surprises, big flavors and classics shifted a bit. And then there was Tom himself, standing inside in his chef's coat, talking to some staff. The hostess stood watching us through the window, and I felt like if I had made eye contact, she'd have beckoned us inside and we'd have wined (or beer'd, as there is a whole new "Tap Room" menu as well) and dined ourselves silly. We didn't, but knowing that we could have--that was enough.

New York in January

Two Things

1.
I'm not really a skier. Too much equipment, too much boots and poles and gloves. Too many layers. I like all the things that surround skiing. The whooshing sounds the other skiers make in the powder. The slow, swaying ascent to the top of the lifts. The warm fires in the lodge--though I've really only been skiing in places where the lodge looks like a cafeteria. I like the way your body feels spent and accomplished at the end of the day, and the hot shower that accompanies the exhaustion when you arrive back home. The Frito-Chili Pie that you eat to replenish the energy that you spent, the wine you drink and the champagne bottle you put out on the porch to chill and forget to open.

But the skiing itself--ostensibly the point--is another story. I'm scared of it. I'm afraid that if I start down the hill then I'll never stop. I'm afraid of the uncertain motions that the earth feels like its making underneath you. I don't like that the green circle trails at one mountain have no resemblance to the green circle trails on other mountains, and that you don't get to see the elevation changes in the trails when you study the map they give you. I don't like that your friends tell you that you can "do it," and you believe them, and then you nearly expire of frigid disbelief in what your body can accomplish on its own.

I think to really enjoy skiing, you have to be a little bit outside of your body, or, rather, you get the most benefit, the most pleasure from the skiing experience when you are willing to let go enough that you feel like you're flying. You want it to feel effortless. And so, paradoxically, in order to feel those real moments of effortlessness, you have to really be grounded in your body--you have to let your body make thousands of tiny movements and adjustments as fast as your body can make them. The movements have to be totally instinctual, unconscious.

Earlier this week, while I was at the top of the second section of a blue square trail--Fox Tail at Mountain Creek, in Vernon, New Jersey--I started thinking that maybe the only way to be outside of your body, is to really become it.


2.
The B61 bus is now the B62. Well, actually, they have split the line into two lines--the B61 now runs from Red Hook to Downtown Brooklyn, and the B62 runs from Downtown Brooklyn to Long Island City. Apparently, the Red Hook section of the line kept making the buses late, and then they would all stack up and make for a line of five or six buses all hitting a single stop at once. Or, they would all sit around at stops waiting to get back on schedule--and this makes the riders late.

I'm not sure where a person finds out about this before it happens. I found out when I was standing on Bedford and South 4th Street and the B62 arrived, which was a bus I'd never heard of. And I take buses a lot. There was a sign inside the bus that explained their thinking. I'm on board with this--ON BOARD, get it!--but I'm curious to see if it actually changes anything about how long it takes to get from one end of town to another, or if it actually makes the buses less late. What they should really do is stop that dumb curb installation at the intersection of Classon and Flushing Avenue--THAT'S why the bus uptown from there is always so dang late, because to squeeze all those lanes of traffic into the one within a single block is absurd. But I know why they do what they do. They do studies, right?

All this is to say: changes are happening.