“It was never just about the saxophone. In more than three decades wielding his tenor sax with Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, from its beginning in 1972 to his death at 69 on Saturday, Clarence Clemons was as much a symbol as a sideman.”
Category: people
Christopher Hitchens On Losing His Voice To Cancer
“Deprivation of the ability to speak is more like an attack of impotence, or the amputation of part of the personality. To a great degree, in public and private, I ‘was’ my voice. … Now, if I want to enter a conversation, I have to attract attention in some other way, and live with the awful fact that people are then listening ‘sympathetically’.”
John Waters On Bad Taste
“Taste is style, and to know bad taste of course you have to have been taught the rules of the tyranny of good taste … I thank my mother every day for teaching me proper table manners – which fork to use, all that stuff – even though it led to a career that humiliated and embarrassed her.”
At Age 81, John Cullum Gets (And Wants) No Rest
“But summer at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park … should be a snap for John Cullum. After all, this is a man who not too long ago opened August: Osage County with what amounted to a 16-minute monologue, then made a brisk walk to his second performance of the night.”
The Bons Mots Of Nico Muhly
On Pierre Boulez: “His opinions are so dumb. But the music! I just love it! All that gorgeous post-Debussy faggotry!” On Wagner’s Ring: “I just hate the way Siegfried treats his poor dad. I can’t bear abuse on stage.” To his interviewer: “Oh God, I can’t bear it when older people pontificate about the way younger people relate.”
Timothy Leary’s Archive Goes To New York Public Library
“The material documents the evolution of the tweedy middle-aged academic into a drug guru, international outlaw, gubernatorial candidate, computer software designer and progenitor of the Me Decade’s self-absorbed interest in self-help.”
Remembering Wilhelm Reich, Prophet Of ‘Orgone Energy’
“Shunned as a crank and menace in one northern European country after another, Reich embarked in 1939 for America … Reich’s appeal was emotional, not rational – the appeal of a born loser who never stopped believing that he was a winner. As such he was a perfect complement to American intellectuals – born winners who never stop thinking they’re losers.”
The Family Project: Rage, Dylan Thomas, And Dad
“Just as D.J.’s eccentric mannerisms and dramatic storytelling made people uncomfortable, the same mannerisms, performed by the son, became a trademark. … Just as D.J. used rage to hide from regret, Dylan used it to further his poet’s identity. The father and son would feed off each other, each raging himself into a state that was alternately more wronged and more poetic than the other.”
James Franco’s Latest Project: ‘Museum of Non-Visible Art’
From the artist statement for the project: “Composed entirely of ideas, the Non-Visible Museum redefines the concept of what is real. Although the artworks themselves are not visible, the descriptions open our eyes to a parallel world built of images and words. This world is not visible, but it is real, perhaps more real than the world of matter, and it is also for sale.”
David Mamet Says All Britons – Especially Writers – Are Anti-Semitic
“There is a profound and ineradicable taint of antisemitisim in the British. … And the authors of today ,,, I’m not going to mention names because of your horrendous libel laws, but there are famous dramatists and novelists over there whose works are full of antisemitic filth.”