There were many nights this past month when, instead of staying home to write about what I had seen the night before, I went out to see something else. At a writers conference in Grand Forks, North Dakota, several years ago, a writer said to the audience (it was either Arnost Lustig or Josef Skvorecky, I can’t remember which), “It’s not so glamorous to be a writer; while you’re out drinking and dancing, we’re home scribbling.” I think he’s right. Lustig or Skvorecky’s claim can help explain why this month I haven’t done much scribbling at all.
It started in the last couple weeks of October with Zadie Smith, the young British novelist and short story writer. She is an excellent speaker; her lecture at the University of Minnesota’s Coffman Theater was so smart and elegantly-constructed, and her voice is so nice; my pleasure in listening to her, to the way she put things, combined with the fact that I was sometimes simultaneously annoyed by what she was actually saying, made for a titillating kind of experience (Smith was lamenting—maybe even as she pretended, via reference to similar historical laments, that it is foolish to do so? I’d have to listen to her lecture again, to be sure—that writers of books are fighting a losing battle for readers, who prefer distracting themselves with scraps of information on the Internet, a claim I hear a lot but I’m not sure I believe. I suspect that people who don’t like to read books have always been able to find ways to distract themselves, and that people who do like to read them are continuing to find as much pleasure as they always have in reading books even when they too feel as if they should be doing something else). At the lecture, I was looking forward to seeing a friend I haven’t seen for a few years, and apparently we circled each other several times, but the place was too crowded (seats filled in the big auditorium ten minutes before showtime, and students were crushed in crosslegged up and down both aisles. They asked a lot of questions about Smith’s books, and if they hadn’t actually read them, but had only sneaked some identifying info off of the mighty Interwebs, they were very clever about hiding it). The place got so hot that Smith had to take off a few layers of clothes. My friend and I never found each other. I had wanted to go out with him for a drink, and was too worked up to go home yet, so I stopped at a secret (“hidden” is a better word, as I discovered today that they do have a website) jazz performance space with no sign out front. My sister had told me about it but I couldn’t remember exactly where she’d said it was or how I was supposed to get in. I circled the block a few times and finally decided to go ahead and open the same door that five minutes earlier I’d seen a young man enter; he had looked as if he too was trying to find a hidden jazz club. Then I just followed the sound of the trap. The musicians playing a big-band kind of sound were top-notch, the ceiling is low and covered in drooping velvet, the audience sits in mismatched folding chairs, there is a little kitchen around the corner and a donation bucket. I loved it and am going back soon.
Later in October I went to the Loft Literary Center to see the great Nuruddin Farah, whose book From a Crooked Rib is one of my all-time favorites, one of the richest and most thoughtful depictions of a young female character that I’ve ever seen; I liked his reading from his new book Crossbones, which is about pirates. I did think he was unnecessarily mean when he shamed an audience member for asking a question he didn’t want to answer, though that might just be the Minnesota in me. The question was about the political situation in South Africa, where Farah spends much of his time. He implied that the woman ought to have known better than to ask about South Africa when he was there to discuss a Somalian novel. He’s right, but he might have made his point gently; it was awful to see her face contract and turn white as if she were going to puke.
I can’t say much about the first Spotlight Series of the season at MacPhail Center for Music, which was centered around exploring the mutual influence dance and music have on the creation of the other; the show, which took place early in November, was conceived of and curated by my sister, Julie Johnson, and as it is my policy not to write about the work of family members and close friends, I will not go on about how it was a brilliant idea brilliantly executed, nor talk about the contributions of Jeff Lambert and Tamara Ober to the show. (If I did not think my policy was such a good idea, I would also talk about all the darlings in The North Country Bandits, who I went to see play later in the month at the 331 Club; I meant to stay only an hour but was there until two, dancing crushed up to the stage until my feet were sweating in my black rubber boots.) I will say about the MacPhail show (since I only know one of them a little) that seeing the final act, Saltee, the self-described “indie, urban, organic, neo classical hip hop groove trio” live for the second time (the first was in the outdoor performance space at the Cedar Cultural Center) reminded me that they are about as good as live music gets: gorgeous lyricism, lashing beats, weird swooping electronic stuff all over the place, an ardent and whip-smart sense of humor. It’s both cool and fun and it breaks open my heart. Saltee, made up of Mike Michel on guitar, Carnage the Executioner on beatbox, vocals, and vocal manipulation, and Jacqueline Ultan on cello, performed with breakdancers J-Sun and Dancin’ Dave, who made excellent use of the beautiful Antonello Hall stage, with its golden floor and sweeping view of the city’s night skyline. (The entire back wall, when it isn’t covered by a screen, is a window.) The punchy and athletic b-boy J-Sun has feet so slippery one would think that the ordinary laws of friction do not apply to his shoes; and watching Dancin’ Dave, who specializes in boogaloo and popping styles, is like looking down into rippling water at a man moving below the surface, to a musical pulse. Watching them pass off to one another, I would get upset when they had to stop for a drink of water, I couldn’t get enough.
That was a highlight of the month, but so was Minnesota Opera’s Anna Bolena, with the superb Keri Alkema in the title role, singing so impossibly soft, in her highest register, at the very end of a show that I think was nearly three hours long (she and the others took an awfully long time to die), and with Lauren McNeese, who as Jane (Giovanna) Seymour sang with mixed desire and regret while lying down with her neck thrown back over the edge of a bed and the asshole King Henry VIII lying over the top of her. At the Cowles Center, Zenon Dance Company, a group whose really remarkable versatility—in the artistic range of the dancers, but also in the company’s fresh-eyed and eclectic choices of music, choreographers (I especially liked the work of the Minnesota-based Wynn Fricke), and lighting and costume designers—created the kind of show (put on to celebrate their 30th fall season) that constantly surprises with variously evolving brands of magic. All the way home my friend Andy and I were practicing lifts on Hennepin Avenue. There was more in the month of November, including Monday and Tuesday nights spent on the couch screaming whenever sweet Nicholas David (known to me previously as Nick the Feelin, bent over a keyboard on a corner of the stage at Famous Dave’s or Mayslacks, in bands that, even when they had the same name week to week, always seemed to fluctuate between about three and about seventeen people) advanced on The Voice, but I’ll wait to write about him until either we have to welcome him proudly home early, or he wins.