equus

you may not know this, but one of the only reasons anyone reads my blog is because once someone i work with saw daniel radcliffe at starbucks. (i kid you not: that got linked somehow on imdb, and legions of ladies who love hp came running.) so i may be about to quadruple my readership. we shall see.

my cousin was in town last weekend, and as a fellow theater-lover, he wanted to take me to a show. (and no one turns down free broadway!) he let me pick between "equus" and "spamalot", and as i am more into the order of the phoenix than [insert clay aiken reference here], i chose the depressing play about a horse. (also, clearly i am not a claymate, as i could not come up with an aiken reference. i consider this a personal victory.)

"equus" is an interesting show, as it takes a horrific actual event (the blinding of horses), and tries to suppose a reason behind it. daniel radcliffe plays the stable boy who is locked up after maiming the horses he seems utterly enamored of, a wounded boy who has a religious-ecstatic relationship with the animals. as an actor, he did quite well, i thought, at moving between the sullen bits in the hospital and the scenes that show his life pre-crime: at the beach (when he first sees a horse), dealing with tough parents, going on his first date. the play and production itself left something to be desired. as dictated by the script, it's a spare production with very few set pieces and a lot of blocks that get moved around by the actors an almost distracting amount. it's extremely talky, and richard griffiths, who plays the psychiatrist, was saddled (ha! horse pun!) with much of the monologizing, which he seemed somewhat fatigued by. the most evocative element was the horses, played by men in delicate metal horse head-pieces and hooves, who truly moved like the animals, stomping and strutting and reacting to the slightest irritant. (horses are actually an excellent metaphor for the mental state of this play, i think, in that they are so on-edge, so uneasy, and also so controllable by their man and master.)

overall, i am glad i got to see it, but it wasn't the experience i was expecting. i am an emotional person, easily moved, and even i left the audience dry-eyed. the play didn't produce any new emotions in me, i felt no sympathy for the characters or their situations--in a way, it felt very clinical. which i suppose is alright for a play that rejects religion and experience and is essentially about psychiatry.

art attack

i've had family in town off and on for the last two weeks, which is both fun and exhausting. it has meant some home-town-touristing, which i always enjoy.

this past weekend my cousin was visiting, and was very interested in visiting MOMA. i am always game for some modern art, so saturday morning we got up early (crack of 9 am!) and headed up there. we started from the top to try to beat the crowds, and s and i spent a good hour enjoying the fantastic show joan miro: painting and anti-painting i have long enjoyed miro's work for his whimsical reinterpretation of familiar subjects, a kind of soft picasso i think (all of the creative placement without the sharp edges of cubism.) my favorite part of the show was a series that placed collages side-by-side with the paintings they inspired. miro had given himself the exercise of painting from combinations of cut outs from machine catalogs, and it was incredible to recognize the curve of a handle of the plummet of a lever in the painting. it is the kind of display of process that you don't usually get to see, and that i think is so interesting. i think my love of art history stems from a kind of nosiness--i don't just want to look at the piece, i want to understand it in a larger context; who made it, and why, in what time and place, in response to what or whom. it also gave me an idea for a show i would like to curate (either in life or my head.) s was looking forward to looking at music, but i felt it was poorly arranged. there were some interesting pieces, but with little access (only one pair of headphones, MOMA? in a media exhibition? seriously?) we only had a couple of hours in the museum, so we moved much faster than i would've liked through their permanent collection and some new photography, thought it was wonderful to see what we could. and now i know i need to go back sooner rather than later.

(we skipped their big show, van gogh and the colors of the night, in part because it required timed tickets and in part because i didn't feel the need to stand ten-deep in front of the night cafe. i would like to try to see it some other time, however, perhaps on a weekday.)

a couple of weekends ago, i took myself to the guggenheim to see my beloved building uncovered post-renovation. i admit to being somewhat divided on the current exhibitions. catherine opie: american photographer is a well-curated look at her career, from early portraits of friends and self to later series' on families and nature ("icehouses" and "surfers".) her portraits are gorgeous, often close-cropped faces or bodies on display with vivid saturated backgrounds. her early portraiture focused on members of her los angeles community, with a lot of tattoos, piercings and indeterminate (or undiscovered) gender. (it was pretty interesting to watch the faces of my fellow gallery-goers.) i was especially taken with her later series, "domestic", in which she photographed lesbian families at work and at play, in really intimate, touching photographs. her outdoor work was really lovely as well, especially the "freeways" series, which looked like something out of an apocalyptic italian art film, all swooping curves and abandoned stretches.

i was less taken with theanyspacewhatever, the major exhibition that has taken over the rotunda. i enjoyed pieces, but felt the whole was lacking a unified theory. there were some interesting interactive bits--i took my shoes off to sit on the pillows and view "chew the fat", i enjoyed a beverage as i watched a film in "cinema liberte", and i would've killed to spend a night in the revolving hotel room. i particularly liked the hanging signs, though embarrassingly i now cannot remember who created them. i think that there were also pieces missing when i attended (this space left intentionally blank for performance, perhaps), which made it oddly empty at times, which felt strange for the exhibition supposedly welcoming back the museum after their big renovation. i don't mean to sound cranky--i love the guggenheim, i've just seen better shows there. i will go back, however, to see the jenny holzer illumination one friday. i love me some jenny holzer.

the change we need

i know no one comes here for the politics, but i have two things i would like to talk about.

1. the amazingness that was the 2008 election. i woke up at 6:30 am to vote, and walked around the corner to my polling place and stood in line with tears of pride in my eyes at the other people waiting with me to vote for a new future. there were families and my peers and old ladies with walkers, and i felt like this was something to remember. i sat on pins and needles the rest of the day at work, and watched the election returns in the apartment, where i could hear the cheers and fireworks go up in my neighborhood when they called the election for president-elect barack obama. (i wish i could've shared it with someone, but alas, s had to work and when i went to meet a friend, i went to the wrong place. oops.) it felt like an important night to be alive.

2. when i went to nyu, every week an anti-war protest marched down broadway, until their yelling and clanging became sort of routine. i haven't seen a protest in person in awhile (had we all given up?) until tonight when i got out of work, and gay-rights activists were marching down broadway for civil unions. (it was also fairly anti-mormon, i guess in response to the recent sickening passage of prop 8 in california.) i teared up once again, this time not with pride but sadness. i was incredulous that such a hateful thing could pass in this country. for a people who claim to support freedom, we do an awful lot of oppressing of our own fellow citizens. the cruelty we are capable of continues to astound me. what i don't understand about the gay marriage issue is how anyone else's union, gay or straight, could detract from your own. if someone doesn't want to get married in your church or temple, why should it matter to you that they now have more rights in caring for each other and their family? it doesn't. love is love, no matter whom it is between. in an age of anger and fear, we should be celebrating every opportunity we have to join two people in love.

i will be back to regular programming soon. tomorrow, perhaps.

boo.

i love halloween in this city. truthfully, i can see people in costumes more regularly throughout the year here than other places i have lived, but on oct 31, people really come out of their shells. there were costumes on the streets, costumes on the subway, costumes at work. i spent the week in a tizzy, trying desperately to find my dress (s and i went as ned and chuck from pushing daisies--apparently we are the only ones who watch that show, but whatevs), and finally found something at the atlantic center last night (thank the gods for target, am i right?), where children were trick-or-treating through the mall.

i always wondered where children trick or treat here in the city. we were encouraged to sit outside our building with candy if we wanted to, but i got home a little too late for that. seventh ave in park slope hosts a huge halloween parade, and i saw some darn cute kid costumes. little critters, a lot of tiny superheros, even a miniature buckingham palace guard. though what i particularly loved were the parents. to see a joker pushing a stroller . . . well, it's a pretty funny anachronistic visual. (side note: s was wearing a tie and cardigan with dress pants and converse as his costume, and said to me "i could've just gone as a park slope stay-at-home-dad" and i laughed so so hard.)

we went to a really fun halloween party thrown by my neighbor, and had a great time, despite having to explain our costumes to all of the tv-less attendees. there was candy aplenty, and some pretty potent punch, as well as a great dance party. i think i'm kind of an elaine when it comes to dancing. my moves aren't too smooth, but they're pretty entertaining. for me, at least. the best part was the homemade pinata, a "punkin" (pumpkin with a mohawk) filled with adult treats like scratch-off lottery tickets and mini bottles of dewar's. i was the only one who wanted to take a whack, so to speak, and so i kicked off my shoes and went in swinging. i haven't laughed so hard in awhile. it was a great night.

happy halloween to all. i hope you had a sweet night.