No Ordinary Love
“Stevie Wonder, just like I pictured him.” Seeing Stevie perform every number from Songs in the Key of Life last night at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center was to participate in four hours of joyous hilarious heartbreaking musical prayer with some of the best musicians alive—including a six-piece horn section, two drummers, six backup singers, members of the Brooklyn Symphony, India.Arie, Nathan East on bass (amazing), and, oh yes, the man who’s sung me through every significant love of my life (and I’m not just referring to love affairs). Generous and genius, he played at least four instruments and led long passages of jaw-dropping improvisation. When he sang “If It’s Magic” I broke down in happy tears, and I’m guessing that, along with everyone in attendance last night, I’ll be weeping them all week long. “Don’t block your blessing,” he told us as a reminder to treat everyone with the love and compassion we each deserve. We couldn’t have blocked his bright brilliant beauty if we’d tried.
The Poetry of Errands
I love everyone who works at my local library branch so much that I’m constantly repressing the urge to hug them. (I started a film club that meets there bimonthly; come next Saturday!) Ditto for my sixtysomething dry-cleaner, who tenderly reinforces the buttons on my coats while her husband glowers from his corner. Ditto for the espresso jerks and Muppet critics at my local coffee shop, who wake me up as much as those Americanos do. Ditto for the sweetly serious Fairway cashiers, who slip me so many coupons that I can afford tulips and freesia with my fish and kale. Ditto for the gas attendant who calls me Amish Lady because I do my errands in floor-length polka-dotted nightgowns that I consider too pretty to only wear at home.
This afternoon I have been spring cleaning—laundering everything (even the curtains), changing my duvet cover, emptying out drawers and cupboards and the refrigerator, scrubbing out the microwave and the oven, organizing my closets. I even toted to Housing Works great bags of clothes I’ll never wear again, either because I’m no longer so willowy or because of stains and holes I’d been ignoring. Crisp and clean, that’s Spring 2015. It’s such a neat little poem that it rhymes, a fact I’m admiring with permakitten Grace as we watch the world waltz by our window and I sip a fancy drink with many juices. No sugar, thank you; just so much love.
She, Robot: ‘Ex Machina’
“Ex Machina,” the much-anticipated directorial debut from British screenwriter Alex Garland (“Sunshine,” “28 Days Later”), is brimming with big ideas. About a mogul and his robot, it tackles the construction of gender, sexual desire, and artificial intelligence with a sleek, Scandinavian design that transcends a modest budget but buckles under its own ingenuity–like a dystopian thriller made by those kids at Ikea.
Domhnall Gleeson, contemporary cinema’s favorite ginger-haired everyman, plays Caleb, a 24-year-old coder for Bluebook, a Google-like Internet company, who wins a lottery prize to spend a week with Nathan (Oscar Isaac), the company’s reclusive founder and CEO. It’s no coincidence that Gleeson has also starred in a key episode of “Black Mirror,” the sly, slightly futuristic BBC series about the dangers and delights of technology; in his brief career, the clever Irishman has already established himself as the reigning shorthand for male vulnerability, a topic consuming contemporary science fiction (and, not so subtly, Garland himself). Continue Reading →