Thursday: I took a long ride on the G train to Word in Greenpoint so I could meet @bookavore, aka Stephanie Anderson, in person. It’s a great store, cozy and well-curated. I bought Carl Wilson’s Let’s talk about love: a journey to the end of taste, which I’d been wanting for a while, and Richard Poplak’s The Sheikh’s Batmobile: in pursuit of American popular culture in the Muslim world, which I confess I bought in part because the cover was so striking. Fortunately the subject matter is also relevant to my interests.
Stephanie said I should also go to Greenlight Books in Fort Greene; I filed that away.
Then my increasingly problematic shoe situation reached crisis levels. The soles of my three-year-old flats were mere moments away from wearing through to the wet sidewalk. Solution: emergency shoes.
Not the most stylish shoes I’ve ever bought, but I think the frumpiness of the old-man-slipper shape is redeemed somewhat by the leaf detail. And really at that point I would’ve gone for any damn shoe with something resembling arch support.
Thus shod, I met Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman at an Ethiopian restaurant, where we discussed a number of things including Welcome to Bordertown. Then we split up, them bound for Laurie Anderson, me to meet Jess and her friend Rebecca for Pina Bausch‘s Vollmond.
Vollmond was unlike any performance I’ve seen. It felt like I was growing new brain cells, or at the very least developing new neural pathways, throughout. My delight in discovering Pina Bausch‘s amazing work is matched only by my sadness that she won’t be creating any more.
After the show, we decamped to Habana Outpost’s breezy courtyard.
(Photo from their website. It was a lot darker when we were there.)
We talked about the show, of course, but part of the power of the work was that you couldn’t capture it verbally. During the performance, I kept trying to translate the movement and music into words, and then telling myself to shut up and just experience it.
Then small world syndrome made itself known: Rebecca turned out to be the owner of Greenlight! I firmed up my plan to visit.
Tomorrow: A Grumpy writing date, red dot Greenlight, and some Gibsonian episodes