Still NYC After All These Years

I am an American, Milwaukee born—Milwaukee, that somber city….(apologies to Saul Bellow). But I’ve spent enough time in New York to fancy myself a tangential native. Real New Yorkers would scoff, of course, because that’s what New Yorkers do. But after 40 years of visits, I have favorite spots, know which subway goes where, and understand the difference between a bagel and a bialy.

I returned last week, after four years. And before I arrived, I was a little apprehensive. I read about post-pandemic changes: crime increases, subway breakdowns, empty storefronts and streets due to the growth of remote work. But New York is still New York, even in a post-Covid world. Walking the streets there remains a thrill like no other.

And we did walk—nearly 40 miles in five days. We took subways, the occasional cab. But the quintessential New York experience is the walk—down crowded avenues, meandering park paths; past overstuffed storefronts and majestic architecture. Even in chilly March, New York life is lived on the street, and soaking it in—characters and conversations, flashes of beauty and jabs of insight—is a particular New York kind of joy.

E.B. White captured it almost 75 years ago: “A poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning. The city is like poetry: it compresses all life. . . .into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines. The island of Manhattan is without any doubt the greatest human concentrate on earth, the poem whose magic is comprehensible to millions of permanent residents but whose full meaning will always remain elusive.”

And, man, you can’t beat the pizza.

All That Breathes

The post-Oscar conversations are dying down already. After all, the ceremony was pretty…um…normal? No fisticuffs or Best Picture mistakes. And, as always, there were losers that should have been winners. For example, All That Breathes.

Shaunak Sen's transcendent documentary focuses on two brothers in Delhi who rescue and care for injured birds of prey (kites) and release them back into the wild. But this simple and small story contains multitudes. Set against the environmental, economic, and political troubles of Delhi, the film turns Nadeem and Saud's story into a beautiful meditation on our place in the world.

It's not a happy place. Their neighborhood is beset by anti-Muslim violence, spurred by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalism. The camera lingers on the poverty and devastated urban landscape: massive garbage dumps, litter strewn streets and caustic air quality. Yet, All That Breathes isn't a didactic call to arms against human folly (though many will lament the eco-devastation it attends to). Instead, Sen focuses on Nadeem and Saud's story, punctuating the film with closeups of their hauntingly beautiful birds. (At one point, Nadeem says they look like "furious reptiles from another planet").  But the director also surrounds the brothers with striking images of life among the ruins: rats milling around a garbage-strewn field at night, monkeys walking along the spiderweb of power lines that run between slum buildings, cattle roaming streets and streams. In one meditative shot, the camera slowly pans down a trash heap, lingering on the detritus of modern life, but also lingering on puddles that mirror the network of delicate tree branches against the gray sky. It finally lands on a millipede slinking along a Twitter advertising banner. It's a strange beauty. As the camera pans dozens of kites perched on a huge garbage dump, Saud says in a poignant voiceover, "Humanity is now their natural environment."

Give Me the Old Songs

I didn’t get a chance this trip to take in the jazz or cabaret scene, but being in The City reminded me of a particular breed of its music. I spent much of the pandemic sitting at an out-of-tune piano, reacquainting myself with the chord changes and melodies of Great American Songbook standards, courtesy of my college-era fake book. Thank you Messrs. Gershwin (George and Ira), Mr. Porter (Cole), Ms. Fields (Dorothy), and all you other masters of the 32-bar song form. If you haven’t a piano handy, and want to keep some this music in your head, you can’t do better than Tony Bennett. Sure, his splashy duet album with Lady GaGa is pure Cole Porter ear candy, but my disc of choice lately has been his recording of Jerome Kern songs with the great pianist Bill Charlap. “The Silver Lining - The Songs of Jerome Kern” leans to the intimate side of Kern (no “Ol’ Man River” here) and Charlap and Bennett are ideally suited to deliver the tenderness required for ballads like “The Way You Look Tonight” and “They Didn’t Believe Me.” Listen to it with someone you love.

The Joy of Scribbling

I’m a scribbler, a defacer of margins. It started back in my early 20s, when I first read Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book. I scribbled in that, because that was the point. Adler wanted us to treat reading like a conversation. Respond with questions, exclamations, smiley faces, or whatever pops into your head. Or—if it’s a book with an argumentative bent—label the steps in the logic with a “1,” “2,” or “3” in the margins to help you follow the reasoning. Then you can sum it up with a “brilliant!” or “bunk!”

Of course, engaging with a book like that requires discipline and energy. So since then, I’ve mostly been a lazy, sporadic scribbler.

Until a few years ago, that is, when I started taking classes at the University of Chicago’s Basic Program—basically Adler’s home turf. Reading heavy hitters like Aristotle, Nietzsche and Virginia Woolf—even in digestible excerpts—requires a bit more diligence than breezing through a David Sedaris collection. Especially if you need to say something about it in a seminar room filled with a dozen very smart folks.

There’s a fringe benefit, as well. Twenty or 30 years from now, you may take a well-used book down from your shelf and marvel (or dismay) at who you were back in the good old days of the 2020s. When I look at my comments from the Aughts or Nineties…. well, who was this person? Really? I considered this idea “brilliant”? This character sympathetic? That one evil? Amazing how our own past is full of surprises.

The Coal Miner’s Daughter

It’s been a while since the great Loretta Lynn passed away. But after spending a half year listening around her career, I owe the critics and writers who celebrated her life a big thank you. My personal corner of classic country is mostly populated by Cashes and Carters—with an occasional detour to the land of Flatt and Scruggs--so I had a lot to learn. If you’re up for some discoveries, here are some favorite items from my crash course. Terry Gross’s “Fresh Air” interview from 2010. Video clips of Lynn smiling her way through anthems like, “You Ain't Woman Enough (To Take My Man)” and “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (with Lovin’ on Your Mind).”  And particularly, the tender and insightful tribute by New York Times columnist Margaret Renkl.

Have a good week.