New York 4

November 17, 2012

Gratuitous shopping in the morning, then a trek to the Helmsley to retrieve my cell phone, which was not in the lost and found, but rather in the cushions of the very chair in which I had been sitting, Went to MOMA. I had to check in with Starry Night. There was a great crowd around it, as I suppose should be. The featured celebrity was Munch’s The Scream. Here’s the odd things about that: the original is less attractive than any of its reproductions, It looks like a child’s crayon drawing, Behind it on the wall was, however, a real masterpiece, Munch’s The Storm. The Scream was hard to see because people couldn’t refrain from having their picture taken in front of it, hands over ears, screaming, Impressed by, and confused by, the Quay brothers. Root soup and mimosas in the café at a table of teenagers who were dishing as they do on Gossip Girl, though more wittily. Napped, then walked by night from the Edison to St. Luke in the Fields on Hudson for an evening of new music. I’d gone specifically to hear Jon David’s Stabat Mater, but the entire evening was quite wonderful. Music is beyond the point of aiming to be merely provocative; each of the pieces allowed the ear inside them, provided a key to how they might be read. Exhilarating, actually. I also noticed a gratifying concentration on the word, the music word-driven, the settings of text actual settings of text.  I was exhausted afterward. Anxieties about transportation vanished when I got the first taxi I pointed to on Hudson. Water and Reisling at the Glass House (The Rum House packed to the ceiling) and then to bed.