Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night

Last year I saw the Wojnarowicz show at the Whitney, History Keeps Me Awake at Night. This is an artist who has long haunted me. The grit, the unflinching look at pain. The sexuality, bold, raw, unapologetic. I loved this show. Was in awe. I learned more about him. I want to learn more; I want to read his memoirs. It was also intense for me, in a nostalgic way I guess, to see how 80s his work was (duh). It was just kind of interesting how clearly I could see him as of his time, in a I only can given the passage of decades.

Warhol at the Whitney

Earlier this year I saw the Warhol exhibit at the Whitney, From A to B and Back Again. This was a glorious and immersive show. The vibrancy of his work, the confrontational aspect, making you look and somehow mocking you, our culture, at the same time. It was chronological, with artifacts and memorabilia, his magazine covers and his large scale silk screens. The social commentary in his work, the irony, and the humor all came across. It was fun and fantastic. The energy of the 80s -- the good, the bad, and the ugly.

BlackkKlansman

Last year I saw an intense movie, BlackkKlansman, by Spike Lee. It is about a black man in the 70s who joins an investigative unit in Colorado. He ends up posing over the phone as a white man interested in joining the KKK and he manages to infiltrate the organization, with a white officer standing in for him in person. This movie makes racism terrifying and brings to the surface the violence undergirding this oppression. It is an incredibly tense, fascinating film. Tight and brilliant. The acting and directing are phenomenal.

Hidden Bodies

I finished Hidden Bodies, the sequel to You by Caroline Kepnes. It was very disappointing. It made me realize how much I really loved You, how it was kind of perfect. You had the intense, disturbed, poetic energy on a romantic obsessive. This did not. This follows the protagonist as he heads to Los Angeles. It is no longer in the second person. There is no longer the driven obsession. It's just a story of someone who murders to get their way. Worse, so many wonderful preposterous things happen to him. He falls in love, reciprocally, with a beautiful, flawless, rich girt who loves to fuck and has zero personality. She is fantasy girl. Beck, in You, was actually a drawn character. Even as was seen through Joe's eyes, her individuality and complexity emerged. Not so with this chick. It was really very annoying.

Faberge: A Life of it's Own

There' a fascinating documentary on Amazon called Faberge: A Life of Its Own. It's about the Tsar's famous jeweler. The Tsar had his own jewelry makers and basically his own shop. A large part of the documentary concerns how beautiful, unique objects were created in the palace. Apparently the Tsar's family gave 1,000 gifts a year. The opulence of their life is staggering. It's beautiful: the intricacy, the colors, the craftsmanship, the attention to detail, the decorative flourishes. But this beauty is terrifying when juxtaposed with the starvation of the masses in pre-revolutionary Russia.

A Life of Its Own tells Faberge's own story but continues it after the Revolution, following the fate of the precious eggs -- Faberge's creations that were gifts to the Tsar's family. No two alike, each with a delightful surprise inside, each inspired by a different season or different event. They are amazing. The documentary follows them through the world up till the collector's today.

Waiting for Giovanni

Last year I saw Waiting for Giovanni at the Flea Theater. It is a play by Jewel Gomez about James Baldwin during the time that he was working on Giovanni's room, a novel that is openly about a gay relationship. The characters are his lover, his family and his agent (or publisher) and it is an exploration of what it means to be Black in America, a Black writer, a gay man, and a gay Black man. It is about what is expected of him by those around him and the different pressures he faces. It is about honesty and anger. it is a great play.

Like Life

Last summer I saw Like Life: Sculpture, Color, and the Body at the Met Breuer. It was a fascinating energetic, busy, over-the-top show. Every where was something that grabbed my interest. It spanned over 700 years of works depicting the human body, from classical and renaissance to contemporary. Definitely one of the most engaging shows I've been to. Yes, it was overwhelming, but there was too much to like to be bothered by ways this or that may not have worked.

The exhibition was divided into themes: The Presumption of White; Desire for Life; Proxy Figures; Layered Realities; Figuring Flesh; and Between Life and Art. If I ever had the opportunity to see this show again I would.

Vice

Last year I saw Vice, the biopic about Dick Cheney. I really liked this. Yes, it's about a depraved torturer. The movie made him into a pure villain, and it was presented in an fast, inventive way that made his villainy entertaining. How can you laugh and enjoy this? It was the combination of the horror and the pure drive of his character that gave it a kind of momentum. Vice didn't explore any of the key scandals he was involved in in much depth, but drew them with broad strokes. I remember the Bush administration well enough that I could fill in the blanks. As history this is mediocre movie, but if you understand that and you are up for a colorful portrait of evil, this works pretty well.

Emma and Max

Last year I saw Emma and Max, a play by Todd Solondz, at the Flea Theater. It is a tight focused look at the life of a very privileged couple, and sort of an expose on on the labor and suffering of others that is the foundation of their comforts. It concerns their nanny, a black woman who has endured severe trauma and the rage that lies underneath her servile demeanor.

The script and the acting were all very good, and I loved the sets and the way they were moved by Brittany, the nanny, in a slow, defeated, labored way. The presentation of the couple's obliviousness and their narcissism was both funny and disturbing. At the same time, however, it was familiar and cliched, a well-worn trump in contemporary drama.

The Favourite

Earlier this year I saw The Favourite in the theater. I loved it. It's by the same director of The Lobster, and has a similar feel to it, even thought it's very different. It is weirdly comical, but also incredibly dark, about power games and distrust. The leads are three hard, ambitious women who are in command of themselves, and this is unusual to see in movies. Queen Anne is less in command of herself than the other two, but because she is the queen she holds all the power that everyone gravitates around. I very much liked this movie.

Who Will Run the Frog Hospital

In January I read Who Will Run the Frog Hospital, a short novel by Lorrie Moore. It is so good! I think her prose is intense and just crackles. It's very dynamic and sharp writing. Very well-observed. It's about two friends in high school in the 70s and the course their lives take. The narrator's personality emerges later in the book in a sad, uncomfortable, unpleasant way that kind of illuminates the whole thing.

You

I could not put down You by Caroline Kepnes. The prose is riveting, driven by a crazed momentum with some truly beautiful moments. The story is creepy, harrowing, but not essentially interesting. What makes this kind of amazing is the voice of the narrator, the second person rant/manifesto/confession/love letter. It's a great ride and I may read the sequel, just because I'm not ready to say goodbye to Joe.

Wine Country

I love Amy Poehler and all the actresses in Wine Country. As a GenXer I was really looking forward to this. There were a handful of truly funny moments, and it's good spirited. But in the end it was only meh. Formulaic, obvious, strained, and at times depressing.

A Colony in a Nation

A Colony in a Nation by Chris Hayes is an excellent long-form essay on race and policing in our era. It provides a historical analysis, making an analogy between how lower income urban communities of color are separated from the middle class mainstream and how this boundary is enforced by the government through order maintenance policing. In a relatively short book, Chris Hayes explores these problems with nuance and compassion. He makes what is at heart a moral argument without being heavy handed at all.

Conversations with Friends

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney is very good. It's about two young, college aged friends in Dublin. The narrator, Frances, is emotionally closed off in some ways but very observant and in some ways very self aware. It is about her relationship with a married man, and shifts in her friendship with Bobbi. Rooney does a great job describing different social dynamics and tensions in a way that made me uncomfortable but in a good way. I was surprisingly engrossed and read then novel quickly. I did have trouble with the very end and wish I could talk to someone about what they thought.

The Case Against Adnan Syed

This past week I watched The Case Against Adnan Syed, a four-part HBO documentary about the case explored in season 1 of Serial. The documentary takes off where Serial left. In fact, the response to Serial is a big part of the story, as since the podcast aired listeners contributed information and perspective and the case was appealed in part based on that work.

The Case Against Adnan Syed is ok. It adds a bit to Serial, and it's great seeing the people and the old photos and seeing them interviewed now, about 20 years later. But it's kind of choppy and disjointed. I'm not sure if someone who didn't listen to Serial would get as much out of it. They might be confused.

Frustratingly, The Case Against Adnan Syed doesn't leave viewers with a firmer sense of his guilt or innocence. At least not for me.

You Don't Nomi

Last night I got to see a screening of You Don't Nomi, a documentary by Jeffrey McHale about the 1995 movie Showgirls. I never saw it, mainly because it got terrible reviews and also just looked godawful. You Don't Nomi looks at it as a disaster, dissecting with precision the copious tone deaf and absurd elements. But it also analyzes Showgirls as a spectacular cult phenomenon, and a stunning piece of absurdity. It manages to explain it, mock it, and pay tribute to it all at once.

The documentary uses footage from the director's earlier and later films to great effect, juxtaposing images and thematic tropes that recur over his oevre. It covers all the reviews that exuberantly panned it. It shows it's life in camp culture from San Francisco drag scenes to off Broadway spoofs. It explores the career of the lead actress whose performance is generally recognized as bizarre.  It really does an amazing job of exploring the film. Even though I never saw it, I feel like I understand its life. The scenes from the movie were utterly fantastic. You Don't Nomi is a very funny and very fun movie.

Beyonce Homecoming

I watched the documentary Homecoming about Beyonce's Coachella concert last year. It was phenomenal. The theme of the concert is an homage to historically Black colleges and universities and the concert is modeled on homecoming ceremonies, with dancers and singers and a huge marching style band on bleachers on the stage. The documentary is mainly concert footage but it is interspliced with scenes from rehearsal, quotes from important Black figures in American history, and Beyonce narrating her experience putting the concert together. She has so much vision. The concert was so powerful. I love her stomping assertive singing and dancing style. Her total command. There are a hundred people on the stage an it must have been an intense concert to be at live. Still, the documentary conveyed the enormity of her talent and the intensity of her performance.

Bel Canto again

I read Bel Canto by Ann Patchett again. I had loved this book when I read it years ago, and remember it as such a pleasure. But I didn't remember anything that specific about it and when I couldn't think of what I wanted to read I decided to go back. I'm so glad I did. It's really so beautiful. Her writing is lovely and her characters are drawn with such kindness. It's about a hostage crisis, a fancy birthday party held hostage by guerrillas for months, but it is not a political thriller in any way. It's a love story.

Run

Earlier this year I read Run, a novel by Ann Patchett that takes place during one 24 hour period in the aftermath of a car accident. The story centers around a family of three brothers, two of who were adopted as babies and are black, and the older son, and their dad. They lost their mom in their childhood, and her absence, or presence, is felt throughout. The car accident brings a young girl into their lives, and she seems to fill a hole that all of them felt. Ann Patchett writes with such love and compassion and beauty that this was a wonderful read. Still, it seemed to fall short of the other two of her novel which I have read, Bel Canto and Commonwealth.

Less

Earlier this year I read Less, a novel by Andrew Sean Greer about a gay man approaching his 50th birthday around the time that his recent ex is getting married. He is a midlist writer who had one very well-received book at least a decade before. He decides to travel around the world, taking advantage of a bunch of random literary opportunities like teaching gigs and lectures and residencies. This is a hilarious novel. Laugh at loud funny. It is also insightful and deeply touching. The ending is sentimental and totally worked on me, tears streaming down my face though the last pages.

Us

The other night I saw Us, a horror movie by Jordon Peele. It has a kind of cool story -- about a lower world of "tethers", our shadow selves, that come to destroy us. It's scary but not unbearably so. It follows a lot of traditional genre tropes, but has a fresh, eloquent take on them. It is visually arresting in parts, very well filmed. The lead family's doubles were scary and the idea of a horrific mirror image of yourself is powerful. When the double family first establishes themselves, the son of the "real" family says, in awe, "it's us" -- perhaps my favorite moment. Some of the odd and stark images echoed The Shining, but it was in no way derivative. I'm going to be thinking about the idea of tethers for a long time.

My Year of Rest and Relaxation

Last fall I read My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh. This novel is about a depressed and alienated rich young woman. Her parents have died, she is just out of college, and she has a large inheritance. Unable to find a way to engage in life, disgusted by everything around her, she embarks on a project of trying to sleep for a year. She does this with large amounts of medication that is procured through a hilarious and bizarre psychiatrist (this was my favorite part of the book). The protagonist has a friend from college, a kind of adrift girl, endlessly and obsessively and unhappily striving for improvement and control over her own life. They are mismatched and the protagonist has nothing but disdain for her. Although there are many moments of glimmering insight and strong writing, what is most memorable, especially because of the ending, is her treatment of her friend.

Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power

Last fall I read Rachel Maddow's book Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power, about US military operations since Vietnam. This is not a topic I know much about or have ever shown particular interest in. I read it because of how much I like the perspective on contemporary politics that she offers on her show.

I loved this book! It was informative and kind of mind boggling. She describes the policy shifts over the years that have expanded executive power and moved the country toward privatization (without, I think, using the term "neoliberal", thankfully). Drift is chronological, from one war or military action over the other, and for someone of my generation it was fascinating to review events that I lived through. I remember the Gulf War and Bosnia. I had opinions about that at the time. But the truth is,  I wasn't paying that much attention. So it awakened an awareness of my own lived past. And gave me perspective on events that are happening right now.

Drift has a clearly articulated argument about the way American wars have drifted out of a central place in our political or social discourses. This argument is laid out through really quite incredible writing. Her sentences are very well crafted, and this strain of history is told with a sense of humor, employing colorful examples and surprising detail. In addition, in spite of the grim and disturbing subject matter, Maddow conveys a sense of the absurd, a kind of agog delight in the audacity of political actors and the often strange unfolding events. Because of this, in addition to being informative, it was also very much an enjoyable read

Between the World and Me

Over the summer I read Ta-Nehisi Coates' beautiful letter to his son. A meditation on race and the experiences of being black in the US, Between the World and Me insightfully and painfully conveys the impact and enduring suffering of racism. It is written in simple yet exquisite prose, and is a quiet, intimate read that made me feel closer to Coates as well as changed by story he tells.

McCain: For Whom the Bell Tolls

I watched the HBO documentary McCain: For Whom the Bell Tolls last summer, months before he passed. The documentary is a sentimental tribute and only briefly looks at him from a critical perspective. Straight line story from the torture he endured in Vietnam to his final days as senator voicing some resistance to Trump. There are interviews with him at his home as he struggles with the brain cancer that he knows it terminal. In spite of resenting how un-critical it was, I was quite moved and teary at the end.

Meridith McNeal: A Portrait of My Mother

On Sunday I went to an incredibly beautiful exhibition at Kentler International Drawing Space. Spotlight on the Flatfiles featured a body of work by Meridith McNeal, Portrait of My Mother. One wall of her exquisite watercolors features small painting of items that once belonged to her mother. These keenly focused works are each unique, and you feel the presence of the person who owned the simple, lovely objects. McNeal's eye for detail captures not just the texture of an item, but the subtle texturing of all our possessions from the years we handle them and use them -- that is, what they reveal about us. McNeal's mother passed a little over a year ago, yet the force of the woman was keenly felt.

Also in the exhibition are selections from McNeal's series on windows. These larger pieces expertly engage light and reflections and transparency of fabric with a delicacy that is stunning.  The images in the paintings are framed with specificity that is mysterious and inviting. I have long admired Meridith McNeal's artwork and this exhibition shows the full force of her talent.

Dance Me: The Music of Leonard Cohen by Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal

Over the summer I saw the most amazing, moving, transporting event at BAM. Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal created a dance performance with the music and words of Leonard Cohen that was such a deep tribute and interpretation of his work. It brought me in to his music more, and there was something so lovely and special about the whole evening. The choreography was incredible, breathtaking. The poetic eroticism of his songs, and his unique lugubrious voice were lifted by these amazing bodies and surprising and intelligent movements. It was a total, immersive experience that I am so glad I was able to see. There's nothing else like Dance Me: The Music of Leonard Cohen by Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal.

The Book of Merman

Last summer I saw an exuberant and quirky musical, The Book of Merman. It is a take on The Book of Mormon which I never saw, so I'm sure I didn't get a number of references and gags. But it didn't matter. This was totally fun. Two Mormon are proselytizing door to door. One is very uptight, in a sweet, naive way, and the other is holding in his fabulosity. They knock on the door of "Ethel Merman" and the play is the three of them interacting. It's a musical and the numbers are fantastic. Each is different -- something I hate about some musicals is how one number resembles another so much that it is hard to distinguish them and they blur into each other. The actors were very talented and the show was uplifting in a light but smart way.