Some other time

A short post on NYC, September scaries, and slowing down the clock

Bernstein sometime in the 1950s? Was there ever anyone who looked as at home in black-and-white? © Chicago Classical Review

One of my earliest introductions to musical theatre—and to New York—was the movie musical of On the Town, music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. Apart from kickstarting my lifelong affection for Gene Kelly, the movie immediately anchored New York in my mind as the place where all aspirations began and ended, where sailors could find their dream girls—and have to leave them behind—in the course of a single day. Especially in the dream ballet, titled “A Day in New York,” even the sequences of finding and romancing the elusive Miss Turnstiles are written in a slightly dissonant, mournful key. Even if you heard it out of context, you’d never mistaken this music for an excerpt from Oklahoma! or My Fair Lady—it feels too propulsive, too rhythmic, too rooted in the horns and woodwinds to be anything except an urban musical. (If I hadn’t pursued a career in food, a life in the theater would have been a close second.) Even before I lived in New York, I imprinted Bernstein’s “Danzon Variation” onto every drive into the city, its gorgeous syncopation giving me a rhythm primed for hitting the pavement.

Having spent the last weekend in NYC with a 3yo, it’s not so easy to maintain that syncopation, but a slightly different pace has its own pleasures. Especially with the September scaries on the horizon—looming dissertation completion, lots of great writing projects to chase, and holidays and anniversaries that will sneak up on me way too quickly—I’m trying to relish the idea that my daily to-do list has to be kept short, sweet, and realistic if I’m going to get satisfaction from it. There’s simply no time to waste on things that have less than full gratification and purpose behind them, and yet no point in not savoring the moments I do have to wander. We deliberately made no firm plans this weekend—apart from reunions with friends, our aim was to show our kid the city we’d once called home, to prime her with the New York culinary staples (hot dogs, bagels, pizza, and black-and-white cookies), and to give her a general sense of what it meant to negotiate one’s existence in the context of 8 million other people. It also meant showing her how to strategically hurry up—to catch a train, to traverse a block—and how to slow down, especially when given the much needed opportunity to do so. Perhaps it was a tutorial not so much in how to navigate urbanity, but how to understand and appreciate time when it’s afforded to you.

Tomorrow, she goes back to school. Tomorrow, I return to my desk. Tomorrow, labor begins again. Oh well…we’ll catch up, some other time.

Recommendation: I did get enough time in NYC to sneak away for one sublime theatre experience, the marvelous Kimberly Akimbo (this year’s Tony Winner for Best New Musical). I didn’t realize what a fan I’d become of the show’s score composer, Jeanine Tesori, until I noticed that two of her other shows—Caroline, or Change and Fun Home—were locked into my top ten musicals of all time. She has an unparallelled gift for marrying musical style with character, and it was such an intensely pleasurable experience to hear her music paired with lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire and sung by such a marvelous cast (including a spectacular understudy in the lead role, Colleen Fitzpatrick).

The Perfect Bite: As much as I loved our eating experiences in NYC, I was most surprised to find great food on our way out of town—Aromas, a little Peruvian spot in Norwalk, Connecticut, where we devoured a great pollo a la brasa, lomo saltado, and chaufa de pescado, all with great spoonfuls of aji verde. Can’t wait to try and make some of these dishes at home…

Cooked & Consumed: Recipe testing this week for my side gig with Saveur (see my first/latest byline for them here!) and I was pleased to revisit the process of pasta fatto a mano. I’ll share the recipe more formally when it’s up online, but the pleasures of it—whipping up a batch of dough, rolling and cutting it out, and only barely cooking it in a flavorful broth—are so immediate and visceral that I immediately wondered why I don’t do it more often. Something that, time permitting, I’d like to make a point of reenacting as soon as possible.