New York 3

April 19, 2010

I went to church yesterday morning, and T went to the gym. St. Thomas 5th Avenue, in full ecclesiastical sail. I thought the music wonderful–of course–but a little shrill in the treble, Turns out the boys and men are in DC, and this was the B team, which was nearly as good as anybody else’s A team. The homily, on the miraculous draught of exactly 153 fish, was surprisingly evangelical. Surrounded by congregation altos. Wandered the area south of Central Park, thinking my thoughts. T and I met up for a matinee of Red. Here’s the thing: the play is not actually very good, though it is good enough and serious enough that it stands out in the local sea of frivolity. Alfred Molina macho-ed and thundered his way through a role that calls for macho thundering. Eddie Redmayne was beautiful to look at (as much as one could look from the rafters) but played his role as if he were a tiny bit brain-damaged. I suppose that was intentional, though maybe he had the stutters that afternoon. But for his precise, devastating, learned rebuttals to the bullying Rothko to be expressed in that child-like, perhaps borderline retarded, way was a little precious. Rothko came off as a self-inflating idiot, without sufficient talent (except for that of insane self-delight) to be allowed the orotund opinions he had. A hamster kitted out as a lion in order to frighten those weaker–or simply more polite-- than himself. TB loved it, so I have restrained comment.

Dissatisfied with his haircut, TB bought a razor apparatus and gave himself a buzz-cut.

Overate in an Italian restaurant– TB is very particular about where he eats–then split up, he to meet and old friend in the East Village, I to cross over in Williamsburg to see Owen Thomas’s band, Wylie Toms, at Spike Hill on Bedford Avenue. I loved Williamsburg. The part I saw was scruffy and lively and messy and happy, the architecture looking surprisingly like a TV set for the Old West. Loved, the happy bar, and loved Owen’s band when it came on. Owen looked fragile and beautiful and happy onstage. The music was curious but very inviting, lyric-heavy, shot out by Owen’s sturdy baritone, like a love child of Kurt Weill and Dixieland who was adopted in infancy by Leon Redbone. And tutored by Joanie Mitchell. But better than my description of it. There’s a future there. I sat in the bar, listening, thinking how happy I was. One bartender didn’t charge me and the other gave me my money back, for honesty, when I told her I’d already had three. Back to Manhattan then, where I wandered through Times Square, smiling. Back at the hotel, the Swedish bartender and the Finnish guest were lamenting the changes the Icelandic volcano had made in their lives.