When it comes to art and culture, how do we know if we dislike something… or if we simply don’t have the tools to understand it?

Case in point: For the last 6 years, a friend of mine has been the pianist for an experimental Swedish opera project. It’s a fairly big deal, as there’s a famous Swedish poet involved and there’s enough money attached to let my friend fly all over the world to play for workshops and readings. Last night, the project had its first workshop production in New York, so out of love for my friend and general interest in the project, I went.

As an audience member, a few things were working against me. For one thing, it was 500 degrees in the theatre. (Literally. I checked.) For another, the gentleman sitting next to me had such horrifying body odor that it provoked a synesthestic response. I could taste his smell and feel it like moist fingers on my skin. At one point, it became a swirl of colors before my eyes.

So… yeah. Not the best conditions for approaching the work. But still, I did my best to lean forward and really listen, as I’ve often done when I’ve attend one of my friend’s concerts. (She’s doing really well in the “new music” scene.) As always happens with this kind of music, however, I could not find a way in. I am so utterly unfamiliar with the language of experimental music that I feel like an illiterate foreigner trying to read a native dictionary. When the clarinetist reaches into the piano and plucks the strings by hand, I just worry about her cutting her fingers. When every passage of music sound like a deconstruction of my bourgeois ideas of “melody,” I feel alienated.

But do I “like” or “dislike” this music? Who the hell knows? I didn’t enjoy what I experienced last night, but I don’t think I had the tools to enjoy it. It’s how I feel when I look at a lot of modern art: These giant black canvases on the wall might be saying something, but I don’t possess the artistic literacy to understand them.

Some people—perhaps many people—would say this is a failure of the art… that if it doesn’t reach a willing audience member, then it is failing. But I’m not so sure. We have to be trained how to encounter any art form, from television shows to pop songs to edgy operas to giant sculptural installations. I’ve been absorbing television narrative for so long that I forgot I ever learned how, and it’s the same with pop music. I can assess them easily because I’m fluent in those forms. I’ve been going to the theatre for so long that when a playwright subverts a convention or a designer does something really bizarre, I can use our shared artistic language to appreciate what’s being attempted. I am certain that I’ve enjoyed experimental theatre pieces that would irritate or alienate someone whose life hasn’t included much theatre, but since I talk the talk, I can really engage with the material.

All of this brings my back to my original question: Do I dislike experimental music, or do I just not have the tools to like it?

And perhaps the bigger question: Do I have the energy or desire to acquire those tools? Or would I rather just go deeper into the art forms I already understand?

Do you guys ever wrestle with questions like this?

Hello everyone! Forgive my recent silence: I needed a break to recover from the mind-bending awesomeness of the pop song tournament.

Today, I’m back with a piece on NPR’s Monkey See blog about a recent story on social media “finding” a missing student in Malaysia. Except the kid wasn’t exactly lost. News outlets just manipulated facts until it seemed like he was.

And that troubles me. Here’s a bit of what I wrote:

Both pieces report on a perceived crisis as though it were an actual crisis, treating parental fears like facts. That allows for an uplifting ode to social media, but wouldn’t the stories have been just as interesting without those breathless exaggerations?

Once you read the rest, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Do you think this story is what it seems to be? Or are you also unsettled by the way it’s being covered?

I just reviewed the Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark for NPR. Take a look here.

Have you seen the show? What did you think?

By DOUG STRASSLER

Let’s say you had an old roommate that you were still friends with. Let’s then say that your friend did something pretty stupid, and got caught. And lied about it. And then got called out. Publicly. For alllllllll the world to see.

That’s what happened with Jon Stewart and Anthony Weiner over the course of the last two weeks, since the suggestive tweets of the Democrat Congressman topped Kim Kardashian’s engagement as the top news story of the month. Well, almost exactly: technically, Stewart lived with Weiner’s then-girlfriend, but Weiner was over all the time, and the two have been friends as their careers have skyrocketed over the last quarter-century. (Weiner’s campaign is the only one to have ever received a donation from Stewart).

[Read more →]

Mitchell and Cameron, the resident gay couple on ABC’s Modern Family, have been frustrating me this season. Over at NPR’s Monkey See blog, I just wrote an essay explaining why. As a preview, I’ll say that I’m irritated less by their lack of physical affection than by their general nastiness to each other.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the piece!

Friends have been recommending it for months, it won a Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and it’s being adapted into a series for HBO. Enough said, right? This weekend, I finally took the hint and borrowed a friend’s copy of Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad , an interlocking collection of short stories that has me totally absorbed. It’s one of those collections that only needs a single phrase to capture, say, how young women ignore old women. It’s one of those collections that only needs two pages to make you understand a character’s heart.

It’s also one of those collections that makes people stop and talk to you on the street. On Sunday, I was hustling off the R train to see a play, with the book tucked under my arm, when a stranger walked passed me and said, “That’s a really great book.”

I didn’t catch this at first, since I was surrounded by the Ignoring You Bubble. You have to construct that Bubble in New York City, lest you wind up seeing free stand-up comedy on a double-decker tour bus driven by a homeless woman who just lost her belongings in a fire.

But even through the Bubble, I noticed that this woman was staring right at my copy of A Visit from the Goon Squad. That meant she wasn’t trying to give me a pamphlet about Jesus, so I stopped to actually look at her. She was wearing a cute blue trench coat and had brown curly hair that made me kind of jealous. She seemed too put together to be crazy, so I mustered all the power of my wit and replied, “What?”

“That book. It’s really good.”

“Oh, I know! I just started it yesterday, and I can’t put it down!”

We about the book as we climbed the stairs out of the subway. “Has she gotten to Africa, yet?” she asked. “Oooh, no!” I said, and I was intrigued to learn that the stories, which so far had been rooted in America, would soon zip off to Africa.

After a few more steps, my little friendship with Trenchcoat was over.

But what a wonderful friendship it was, you know? For a few seconds, a stranger and I found a real connection. We both knew it would be fleeting, but we dove in anyway, sharing our enthusiasm. I love that impulse… that willingness to have a casual conversation, just because it adds little kindness to the day.

That conversation wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t live in a pedestrian-friendly city, but it also wouldn’t have happened if I’d been reading A Visit From the Goon Squad on a Kindle or a Nook or an iPad. If I’d been carting a digital reader, then Trenchcoat wouldn’t have known what I was soaking up that afternoon. Our brief, yet vibrant friendship wouldn’t have been possible.

This is an unexplored consequence of the current digital revolution. By porting all of our media onto digital devices, we lose a signifier that might connect us to another person. This is only true regarding books, I guess, since you could never tell what was in someone’s Walkman, but still… it’s a loss. I’ve had lots of conversations with strangers about the books we’re carrying around.

I’ll probably get a digital reader, but for now, I’m glad I’m still walking around with books in my hands. I’m always up for making a new friend, however briefly.

You may have heard that last night, Blake Shelton, country star and mentor on NBC’s The Voice, tweeted that he was going to rewrite the lyrics to “Any Man of Mine,” an early hit by Shania Twain.

He wrote: “Re-writing my fav Shania Twain song. Any man that tries Touching my behind He’s gonna be a beaten, bleedin’, heaving kind of guy…”

Um… ha?  Understandably, many people were pissed by the apparent homophobia in these remarks, since they suggest it’s funny to beat the shit out of a man who makes an unwanted pass at another man. GLAAD called for Shelton to apologize. I tweeted about it (a lot), and one of my tweets was quoted by the gay news website Queerty.

And then this afternoon, Blake Shelton started defending himself on Twitter.

His first response was this: “Ba! Ha! Reading all my anti-gay hate tweets…. Ha! Ha! If people only knew even a little about me, my family and friends. Dumb asses…”

Then he said this: “It honestly wasn’t even meant that way… I now know that their are people out there waiting to jump at everything I say on here or anywhere”

Then this: “But when it comes to gay/lesbian rights or just feelings… I love everybody. So go look for a real villain and leave me out of it!!!”

And then this: “@glaad hey I want my fans and @nbcthevoice fans to know that anti-gay and lesbian violence is unacceptable!!!!! Help me!!!!”

—

This is a predictable cycle: Celebrity writes something foolish in an online forum. People get mad. Celebrity reacts defensively, blames the people who are upset for being too sensitive, and says if we only knew him or her, then we’d understand how silly we were. Then someone powerful gets to celebrity, which results in a more specific apology.

[more]

[Read more →]

This morning, nominees were announced for the Tony Awards. (Find the complete list here.)

As we tend to do, Roommate Joe and I started chatting about the nominees, and that led to all sorts of trash talk, gossip, and a requiem for overlooked hotties. I’m pleased to present our comments. What are your reactions to this year’s slate?

[Read more →]

I was delighted to be a guest on this week’s Extra Hot Great podcast, where the subjects included the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon, Steve Carell’s final episode of The Office, and the Canadian show Slings & Arrows. There’s also a thrilling Game Time in which win a clear moral victory.

My friend and Critical Condition contributor Katy Shrout just wrote a fantastic essay about the the history of the modern wedding, the changing focus of the marriage ritual, and how all of that is reflected in our fascination with the upcoming royal ceremony.

And before you say, “I don’t give a damn about Prince Hoohoo and Lady Whatzit,” know that by “we” I don’t necessarily mean “you” or “me.” I don’t care about the royals at all, but Katy’s essay speaks to a larger Western attitude that impactseveryone. For instance, after identifying Cinderella as the ultimate marriage fantasy for the 21st century, Katy writes:

The American Cinderella is a girl who achieves princesshood, rather than being born into it, simply by being gifted with the right things. It is a myth of feminine upward mobility, facilitated through consumption, enacted by women especially on the wedding day. It is about rite of passage—how girls become women—and I, for one, would argue the transition is brought about less by Prince Charming than it is by the Fairy Godmother, the kindly feminine personification of the marketplace. You become a woman by becoming visibly beautiful, and you become beautiful by getting the right stuff.

Juicy, right? Katy’s wicked smart. You can find the rest of her essay here.

p.s. — I totally ganked that photo from Religion Dispatches, the online magazine that published Katy’s essay.