Art is a Portal
and it matters now more than ever
At long last: the first day of spring! It’s gray and cloudy here today, but yesterday it was so beautiful and sunny and warm that I kept making excuses to be outside at every possible opportunity—I took a phone call as I walked the long way to the fruit stand, read outside for a while on our little front stoop, took the kids out for dinner at a Cuban place in Fort Greene with outdoor picnic tables and colorful umbrellas.
Every year winter hits me a little harder, and that means every year I’m even more deeply delighted by the first signs of spring—our neighbors’ daffodils are blooming and the extra daylight makes me feel like someone plugged me into a socket. I feel creative and energized, ready to hit the farmer’s market on Saturday in the hopes of early asparagus or maybe peas?
Tonight I’m making Ginger Scallion Meatballs, with rice and peas and spicy Japanese barbecue sauce and also cucumber salad with peanut sauce and more scallions—lots of fresh, springy flavors.
This week I sat with an old friend and even though we haven’t seen each other for ages, we plunged right in before the coffee even came—parenting, work, meaning, change, life, life, life. The next day I met a friend for a walk in the sunshine through Chinatown and Little Italy, stopping for excellent meatballs and pizza at Lombardi’s, then really good coffee in Chinatown watching the old Chinese men playing chess in the park.
I didn’t plan this, exactly, but in the last two weeks I’ve seen two musicals and a play, read five great books, watched two great movies I’m still thinking about, and it all nourished me some very deep ways.
Art is a portal, a sacrament, a needle & thread. It wakes us up, challenges us, reminds us that we’re all connected. It reminds us that we all love and grieve and hope. It stitches back together our broken hearts and allows us to dream about a possible world—more whole, more brave, more just.
And it allows us to see ourselves in the wreckage of other stories—sometimes we’re not ready or able to access the depths of our own pain but then a song or a play or a movie opens something up in us, allowing that depth of feeling to release. Art is a sneak-attack, sliding past our rational minds and confronting our secret selves, the ones we keep protected in our day-to-day buttoned-up lives.
You know how strongly I believe that making art matters—that the making of it ennobles us and helps us find meaning in our own experiences, that it’s an exercise in empathy and also bravery, that one of the best things a human can do is MAKE something.
But what the last couple weeks have reminded me also is the other side of that: how experiencing art heals and ennobles us, too—how sitting in a dark theater or staying up late with a book revives us and reconnects us to the world, broken and beautiful as it is.
The Great Gatsby My mom came to New York to watch the boys while Aaron was away on a work trip and I was away on a friend’s birthday trip, and I asked her to stay an extra couple days so we could spend some time together.
We went to Ci Siamo, and I was so excited for her to get to experience one of my very favorite places in the city. I’m a huge fan of Hillary Sterling, the chef, and when she came over and talked with us for a few minutes, I tried to play it cool but definitely, definitely did not.
Of course the star of the show is the caramelized onion torta—it’s worth going just for that (sit at the bar, have a martini, share the torta? Dream happy hour date scenario…), but everything else is excellent too—I love the crab cavatelli especially.
Okay, yes, the show: Gatsby is one of my all time favorite books, and admittedly the Broadway show isn’t perfect—I agree wholeheartedly with this review—but even so, the Art Deco sets were incredible, and being inside a story that I’ve loved for such a long time felt medicinal. I know a lot of it by heart, and for many years I had that last line written on a scrap of paper and stuck up on my wall:
"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past"
Gatsby is a story about trauma and war and memory and the American Dream and the limitations of that American Dream. It’s also about excess and denial and how money insulates some people and makes victims of other people. It’s about beauty and love and memory, and sitting next to my mom—the person who first taught me to appreciate beauty and books and art—felt meaningful and unexpectedly tender.
Redwood Right at the last minute, Aaron and I got tickets to Redwood on a night when both the boys had plans, and we didn’t know anything about it except that it just opened and Idina Menzel was the lead--I love her, so I was up for anything.
I won’t tell you too much about it, except that it’s not like any Broadway show I’ve ever seen, and that I cried so hard that by the end it looked like I spilled a whole glass of water down the front of my shirt. The technology is stunning, and the themes are wrenching. Phew. I’m emotionally exhausted just thinking about it.
And as much as that might make you want to run for the hills instead of to the theater, I think it’s the opposite: at the end of the show, I felt so strongly that art is a portal—it opens up the world, opens up our hearts, takes us to places inside ourselves that nothing else can. I felt like there was a depth of emotion I’ve been carrying that got to tumble out in that dark theater, and I needed it.
I was talking to a friend about it, and he compared it to Illinoise, in terms of both non-Broadway-traditional and deeply emotional, and I agree.
A Streetcar Named Desire Henry watched the Marlon Brando movie last summer, and then he read the play and loved it, so when we heard that Paul Mescal was in a revival that was coming to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, we couldn’t get tickets fast enough—the BAM is right in our new neighborhood, and the tickets went on sale in those first blurry weeks after we moved it, so it felt special that it was a play he’d just read at a spot right around the corner from a home that didn’t quite feel like home yet.
All these months later, this neighborhood really does feel like home in a thousand good ways. Henry and I went out for tacos and esquites at Tacombi in Forst Greene before the show, and then we took a loop around Fort Green Park before walking over to the theater. The Harvey Theater at the BAM is absolutely gorgeous but also the balcony seating is NOT for people who are afraid of heights—it’s so steeply pitched you feel like you’re going to fall forward into the row in front of you—but what a show!
Patsy Ferran was the most electric, exciting, nervy, bewitching Blanche I’ve ever seen, and Henry and I both agreed that Paul Mescal’s Stanley was powerful and physical and really, really great.
If you can get tickets, I cannot recommend it highly enough—I’d put it up there with my first time seeing Hamilton in terms of “I can’t believe I get to witness this!” WOW.
Reading:
Care and Feeding by Laurie Woolever
A lovely memoir all about the food world in New York and how to find your way through it, especially as a young woman. Woolever writes with a clear-eye about addiction, parenting, relationships. Also, she worked for Anthony Bourdain for many years, and he’s someone who really fascinates me. Totally recommend.
The Tell by Amy Griffin
I feel like everyone I know is reading this right now, and with very good reason. I stayed up way too late and read it in one fell swoop. It’s an important story, beautifully told, about perfectionism, what drives us, how abuse shapes us…and how MDMA can be used therapeutically for tremendous healing.
Show Don’t Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld
Another one that everyone one is reading right now, and I love it so so much. Curtis Sittenfeld has been a favorite of mine since Prep, and this collection is so precise and smart and tender. LOVE.
Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall
I feel like I’m running out of words for “I love it”—what a great problem to have! What a beautiful/sad/moving/gorgeous story about a farm and a family and tragedy and love, all set in rural England.
Tokens of Trust by Rowan Williams
I’ll be honest with you: the thing I most need in my life right now is a little more trust. Aaron and I were talking about it recently and I said something like “I’m just aching for solid ground right now, because everything feels flimsy and fragile and scary.” He recommended this book, and it’s been so helpful for me. Highly, highly recommend.
Two Movies:
My Old Ass Of course any movie about an eighteen year old the week before they go off to college is going to make me cry so hard on an airplane that my seat mate is going to get a little concerned. Also, it takes place on Muskoka Lake, which is a beautiful lake in Canada that we visited in August a couple years ago. It’s a story about being young and leaving home and trusting yourself and taking risks, and I really, really loved it.
The Brutalist Aaron and I watched this over the weekend—we wanted to see it in the theater before the Oscars, but it was hard to find a big enough chunk of time for a three and a half hour movie, and to be honest, it was hard to get excited about sitting for that long in a theater. The boys were at a sleepover, so we snuggled up under cozy blankets and settled in for the long haul. It hard to watch, and also really beautiful, and I feel like the themes of what it means to be American and what it means to make meaningful art are timely in all sorts of ways.
Two Shows:
Pitt I’m not usually a person who watches hospital shows—I hate needles and I’m very nervous in hospitals, so it rarely feels…fun? to watch shows that take place in emergency rooms, but for whatever reason, I really like this one. Maybe it says something about my current anxiety level, but I find it calming to watch, like on a very elemental level, bodies are broken and failing and then people fix them. I like that.
White Lotus I know there’s been a lot of conversation about how this season isn’t as good as Season 2, but I don’t know about that—I think there are some really great dynamics in this season and great fashion details, too, and I’m just thoroughly, absolutely entertained by Parker Posey—“Piperrrrrrr, NEAUUUUUUUXXXXXX!”
I don’t know that there’s a super obvious through-line that unites all these books, shows, movies, plays. But over and over these last few weeks I found myself so deeply grateful for art of every kind and for what it brings about inside us.
So that’s my invitation to you this coming week: experience art, in a million different ways. Put on an album, go to a gallery, read a poem—copy that poem onto a scrap of paper and carry it around in your pocket for a while like a secret. Read a memoir, watch a movie, let yourself feel deeply even just for a couple hours.
Art is a portal, a sacrament, a needle & thread.