This morning in bed, during the tea service, Richard Toon echoed a concept he often considers and that seems especially plangent these days: “The past is invariably seen as a mistake.” To wit: You can’t believe what they used to think was true, or beautiful, or worthwhile! The idiots.
Laurie Stone
What’s New (Always)
My Brilliant Friend has returned. Beyond love this show. What women say to each other when only they bare speaking, what they feel about each other throughout their lives, the prints they leave on the skin of other women, there is no more interesting contemplation. A world that is the world behind a door, past a clearing, down a ravine. Lenu’s mother, pointing to her belly while her daughter stares off, smoking a cigarette, “You’re not better than us, you came from here. Where do you think your brains come from? I could have done what you did if I’d had your opportunities. I would have done better.” A few moments later to the daughter, “You can’t stand me.” Lenu, “Yes.” The mother, “Me, neither.”
The Way We See (and Hear) Now
“Westside Story 2021.” A yes for me. We watched it through, surprised and moved by crazy young love brought vividly to life in this cast’s Tony and Maria. I kept thinking, no, they have a chance, they’ll get out of the Shakespeare play they were born in, like the street where you were raised and the language that formed you. Valentina will give them bus fare and Anita will not betray them after she is almost gang raped. Justin Peck’s balletic remastering of the Robbins dances. The screenplay by Tony Kushner. The Spanish spoken throughout without subtitles. Spielberg’s camera adds wings to the play, turning it into a movie that’s a play set in the way we see things now. Every story is about the time it’s told in, not the period depicted, and this one is about something’s coming. Gustavo Dudamel conducts the rapturous, jazzy Bernstein score that doesn’t get old. And never will.
Hunt and Pecker
From the department of don’t stand near me because I’m vomiting. In the current New Yorker, from a profile of Wendell Berry by Dorothy Wickenden, subtitled, “Wendell Berry renounced modernity sixty years ago, but his ideas have never been more pressing.”
Address Code
When I read remarks from people prefaced with a series of identity markers (like bar code)—as a gay, het, trans, white, black, disabled, poor, rich, and so on—as if this is who you are, I think, this is not who you are. I think, this tells me nothing I can smell, taste, see, touch, hear. I think, who you are is the bird song you heard through the window that morning, or wished you could recapture from that visit to Tuscany. I think, you are your face in sleep. You are the way you lick the bowl and the way you hold out your hand for a dog to sniff.
March of Time (Morris Dickstein R.I.P.)
I am thinking about Morris Dickstein, who died a few days ago, and who in 1968 taught a seminar on Blake at Columbia University that was so alive with the love Morris felt for the great poet of freedom and sex and with the love Morris felt for the students who came each week to watch his face light up as he spoke about Orc, Blake’s avatar of rebellion, we would never forget the feeling of being there.
French Kiss
In an episode of Call My Agent, the French TV series streaming on Netflix, Andréa, who is gay, winds up having angry, hot sex with a man she detests and who has bought the talent agency at which she is a partner.
Reese Pieces
I watched Legally Blonde (2001) for the first time last night. I have become interested in Reese Witherspoon. The turning point of the story is a piece of sexual harassment, and I found it moving.
Stanley Crouch Faces the Music
Stanley Crouch died today. We hadn’t been in touch much the past few years. I’d heard he was sick. I don’t know the ailment. I’m sad and shocked. Sad. I always liked him. We got along. I don’t know why. People like you, and you think okay, I like you too.
At Camp We Sang “Dixie”
Struck by the non-response of her Facebook friends to the following post, Laurie Stone kept her movement of mind going…
Virus-Apocalypse
More notes on now from the author’s Facebook page…
The Y of It
Real talk in real time on the Warren/Sanders rift…
Impeachment (and After)
There is no grand narrative. There is no way to game this. There are no distractions. Get whatever scum undead hunk of putrid, writhing jelly you can get while the getting is good. And then get the next one.
The Thing (A Month of Facebook Posts)
July 5: Stop reporting on the Thing as if he were a real anything.
God and Plot: Season Two of “Fleabag” and “Killing Eve”
Phoebe Waller-Bridge is god. So it isn’t possible to care about the follower of the lesser god, God, as we are asked to do in Fleabag season two.
Mueller Day
Originally posted on April 18th…
TV Diary III: “My Brilliant Friend”
Laurie Stone posted on My Brilliant Friend–the TV adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s novels—as each episode appeared. Here are her responses to the final shows of the season…