Blogging Life Archives - Page 2 of 2

http://vimeo.com/107398710

A lot of people may be under the impression I don’t do much writing anymore. In a sense that’s true, because I don’t blog as much. But I do have a fairly busy writing schedule. As one of the editors of Chance, I’m often slammed with beautiful and ambitious pieces. For instance, in the current issue, I have a lengthy profile on the work of Kenneth Collins of Temporary Distortion. It’s not online so you can only get it by purchasing a lovely, lovely copy of the magazine online or on newsstands around NYC.

I also have a feature in the current issue of American Theatre magazine, on the amazing scenic designer Mimi Lien. That one is online. We had a great chat, including this personal favorite bit:

“Okada described what he wants to do this way: ‘I don’t want to create the image onstage—I want it to be in the actor’s head, and find the most direct way to put that into the audience’s mind,’” Lien explains. “That may not involve creating that image onstage at all. It may actually be a combination of movement and text that creates what he calls a ‘richer image’ in the audience’s mind. What that meant to me is that I needed to create the most blank and neutral space possible. It was one of the hardest artistic design questions I’ve had to wrestle with.”

Since Lou Reed passed away Sunday, I feel like I’ve been reading nothing but remembrances, reminisces, and reassessments of his incredible artistic career, to say nothing of the various experiences friends and acquaintances had with the famously obstreperous man himself. (Is it me, or is that word coming up with strange frequency tied to his name? NB: It’s me; I Googled it. It comes up twice.)

For me, my abiding memory of Lou Reed will always be the time I saw him at the Kitchen, wearing New Balance sneakers and waiting near the bathroom for Laurie Anderson while holding her purse. It’s just such a human image, you know?

But I didn’t know Lou Reed, never said a word to him, and was in the same room as him maybe a half dozen times. I’m not part of Lou Reed’s orbit and though I’m sad to see him gone, I won’t belabor the nonexistent connection. What inspired me to write, actually, was returning to Lester Bangs’s legendary interviews with Reed, and in particular his famous 1973 interview for Let It Rock out of the UK. (You can read it here at the Guardian.)

Re-reading it today, I was struck by how in-the-moment it reads. Bangs isn’t necessarily one of the people we associate with New Journalism, but read it for yourself–it’s about as intense a narrative interview as you can get, from Bangs’s unsparing depiction of Reed’s self-destructive boozing to his willingness to put himself into the narrative, from recording his torture of the blitzed rocker after a mediocre show, to his own almost sentimental experience with a way-too-hip nine-year-old for a denouement.

My mind immediately went to Gay Talese’s legendary Esquire profile “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” which is easily one of the most revered magazine stories ever published. Talese was of course refined and arty in a way I doubt Bangs could stand; it’s like comparing Nelson Algren and Truman Capote. But both are such intense, sensory, and subtle experiences. The difference is that Talese reads like he spent weeks finessing the hell out of that piece, while Bangs’s reads like he spit it out in one rash take while that little brat at the end is bugging him.

Either way, I found myself reading some fantastic journalism today, which reminds of why I do what I do at the same time I find myself despairing that I’ll ever write something half as good as these brilliant pieces.