Le Vent

Wowza--this video of two Staatsballett Berlin ballet dancers shot at 1000 frames per second, to Radiohead's Everything in Its Right Place. Gorg.

{via Cup of Jo}

March in Cobble Hill

Brooklyn seemed to have burst into bloom overnight! Congress and Bergen were both lined in pink and white blooms this morning. It's hard to beat springtime in New York.

New York in Fog

New York was crazy this morning! Upon seeing the thick fog outside my apartment door before my morning run, I begrudgingly hauled myself back up the steep three stories of steps to grab my camera and then snapped these unedited photos of a completely blocked Manhattan skyline from Brooklyn Bridge Park. (Note: THIS is what the park usually looks like.) Spooky!

View of the Brooklyn Bridge

What you see in the distance should be lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty.

See!? Spooky graveyard.

This spot is normally one of the best views of Lower Manhattan, with the Brooklyn Bridge just to the right.

The Brooklyn Bridge finally emerging around 8am.

Brooklyn Bridge from South Ferry Park. (South Ferry Park?)

Manhattan Bridge

And THEN, after I was all excited about my spooky run, I ran into something REALLY spooky......

A zombie on a movie set. For real.
The end.

Kashkaval

This post was supposed to be about Hand to God, the "well-reviewed, recently shuttered Off-Broadway production that revolves around a demonic sock puppet." It's currently playing for a second round at the Ensemble Studio Theater, uptown and all the way over between 10th and 11th ave. Megan and I tried for tickets two Mondays ago only to find the show sold out, and last Monday, well, we missed the show.

We met at our favorite wine bar, Kashkaval, for a 'quick glass of wine and maybe some hummus or something'. Good intentions, I swear to you. But one glass turned into two, and hummus turned into a platter, stories turned into laughter and two minutes before curtain we found ourselves huffing up the theater steps, tickets in hand. They oversold that show, we quickly learned, and gave away our seats. That happened.

No matter! We are trying again tonight! Third time's a charm, right? Let's talk about Kashkaval.

Kashkaval is the perfect spot to meet before attending theater on Broadway (or at the Ensemble Studio Theater, as we are tonight), seeing a show at the dreaded Terminal 5, or taking a much needed break from an art fair. The wine list is generous, the service friendly, and the food is meant to be shared. We love the giant beans (giant beans? Is that a thing?), hummus, tahini, spinach, and olives. I asked our waitress for the funkiest red wine they served and I swear to you it tasted like a barnyard. Perfection.

Megan and I, after, well, two glasses of wine, both declared it our 'favorite wine bar in all of the land!' But even today, after nothing but iced water (so far) it might still hold true. Yes, it's all the way up and all the way over but perhaps one of these nights I'll make a special trip and stay for dinner. But tonight!--- theater. Round 3.

Everything Matters!

“Everything ends, and Everything matters.
Everything matters not in spite of the end of you and all that you love, but because of it. Everything is all you’ve got…and after Everything is nothing. So you were wise to welcome Everything, the good and the bad alike, and cling to it all. Gather it in. Seek the meaning in sorrow and don’t ever turn away, not once, from here until the end. Because it is all the same, it is all unfathomable, and it is all infinitely preferable to the one dreadful alternative."
-Ron Currie Jr, Everything Matters!

Everything Matters! is the story of Junior, a man who knows from his inception that the world will end via comet in 36 years. Part scrappy prose, part science fiction, the narrative tumbles from there-- a terrifying premise told through the ordinary lens of the struggling family of a man holding the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Braced with this understanding Junior coils and fears, worries and waits. He realizes quickly and ferociously that in a world ending before we can save the dolphins or cure cancer or watch the next generation accomplish anything at all, NOTHING MATTERS. Nothing matters! Nothing matters.

The trick-- dear reader-- is a shared understanding that Currie wouldn't hand us a book with such a grandiose (and perfect!) title without promising us an explanation. And with about 40 pages to go, he hands us our prize for trudging through Junior's resentment and fear. As Junior is offered a second chance, we are handed a much greater understanding of both Currie's motives and, well, life! I felt physically shaken by the last few pages. Shaken and enlightened, if I may be so bold.

READ IT. This book was quite literally shoved into my fingers by the booksellers at The Strand, and here is your written push. This book has taken me days to process and I'd love to discuss it with you.


Next up: Zeroville.

Constellations

“Why should the universe have a purpose…there is a considerable grandeur, I think, in the presence of our spectacularly majestic universe just hanging there, wholly without purpose.”

Phenomenal New Yorker review for this show, now playing at the Royal Court in London. My girl Sally Hawkins plays the lead and the set consists of white balloons. Let's go! Jolly-ho.

The History of Love

“The first language humans had was gestures. There was nothing primitive about this language that flowed from people’s hands, nothing we say now that could not be said in the endless array of movements possible with the fine bones of the fingers and wrists. The gestures were complex and subtle, involving a delicacy of motion that has since been lost completely.

During the Age of Silence, people communicated more, not less. Basic survival demanded that the hands were almost never still, and so it was only during sleep (and sometimes not even then) that people were not saying something or other. No distinction was made between the gestures of language and the gestures of life. The labor of building a house, say, or preparing a meal was no less an expression than making the sign for I love you or I feel serious. When a hand was used to shield one’s face when frightened by a loud noise something was being said, and when fingers were used to pick up what someone else had dropped something was being said; and even when the hands were at rest, that, too, was saying something. Naturally, there were misunderstandings. There were times when a finger might have been lifted to scratch a nose, and if casual eye contact was made with one’s lover just then, the lover might accidentally take it to be the gesture, not at all dissimilar, for Now I realize I was wrong to love you. These mistakes were heartbreaking. And yet, because people knew how easily they could happen, because they didn’t go round with the illusion that they understood perfectly the things other people said, they were used to interrupting each other to ask if they’d understood correctly. Sometimes these misunderstandings were even desirable, since they gave people a reason to say, Forgive me, I was only scratching my nose. Of course I know I’ve always been right to love you. Because of the frequency of these mistakes, over time the gesture for asking forgiveness evolved into the simplest form. Just to open your palm was to say: Forgive me."

"If at large gatherings or parties, or around people with whom you feel distant, your hands sometimes hang awkwardly at the ends of your arms – if you find yourself at a loss for what to do with them, overcome with sadness that comes when you recognize the foreignness of your own body – it’s because your hands remember a time when the division between mind and body, brain and heart, what’s inside and what’s outside, was so much less. It’s not that we’ve forgotten the language of gestures entirely. The habit of moving our hands while we speak is left over from it. Clapping, pointing, giving the thumbs-up, for example, is a way to remember how it feels to say nothing together. And at night, when it’s too dark to see, we find it necessary to gesture on each other’s bodies to make ourselves understood.”
- Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

Happy Valentines, my sweets! Take it easy. Keep it sleazy.