so the weather people say in a couple of hours. My window broke about three weeks ago now are being held together by very strong tape. Strong enough? I should make some alternate plans, but I have not. My next door neighbor will let me sleep on his couch in an emergency, but I am not sure that he is even home. Taking a risk...but let it happen.
Christmas Eve last year...do you remember? I went to Carnegie Hall to watch Jaime Laredo conduct his amazing youth symphony in an all Mozart program. The Marriage of Figaro Overture, followed by Violin Concerto number 4 (very beautiful) and then after intermission, the Jupiter Symphony, Mozart's last symphony. The violin concertos are very similar to the piano concertos, most of which he wrote later---they have very vigourous and full first movements followed by incredibly warm and sensitve second movements, and then the end. Mozart wrote all of them (there are 5) very early in his career, then never returned to them. Yes, thatwas a different time for all of us.
Christmas day was usually a slow day for me. Somehow I can't remember how I spent last year---but two years ago, Christmas day is very vivid in my mind. First, a movie at the Quad---beginning at 11:00 A.M., a movie about the first Jews to settle in Miami Beach---then off to Brooklyn to Franklin Avenue and Fulton Street, then the bus that leaves Franklin and Fulton and heads south---just a sightseeing trip to pass the time. The bus winds its way through Crown Heights until it reaches Ocean Avenue, where it remains for most of its trip. I get off at Church Avenue, then walk west until I reach the F train station, then F train home---but wait! All that travel and the day is not finished yet. Time for another movie, this time at the movie theater at Lincoln Center (oh how I hope it opens again soon) to watch a movie that is part of a Jacque Tourneur retrospective---he was a very active director in the late forties and early fifties---most of his movies were second features of double features (that is the way movies were shown then) but had an inventiveness and skill that transcended the material. I don't remember the name of the movie that night---it was made around 1947, and was about American, British and French diplomates putting together the ruins of Berlin. Not great as a movie---the British diplomat was played by Robert Coote---who later created the role of Colonel Pickering in the original My Fair Lady===ironically the Lincoln Center theater revival of that musical was having a performance as I watched the movie. Great irony---at least for me. Finally, the day was done---the Tourneur retrospective lasted about two weeks more, but that was the last movie in the group that I saw. I had seen two earlier---cowboy movies--good guys against bad guys with the good guys always winning---and I had enjoyed them, but did not want to go any further. So much for that day.
Tomorrow, more time in the apartment internet surfing and (hopefully) reading until 4:30 when the Saints-Viking football game begins. Then following every play, and hoping that the Saints win by more then 7. More of the same Saturday, when there are three football games being played, but hopefully I can get out a bit as well. It is going to be cold (very warm now) but I will need some variety. Let's see what happens, will report soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment