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My Favorite Things
By
Published: Jan 01, 2008
Category:
Beyond Classification
“The best thing that ever happened to me,” men sometimes say, speaking of their wives.
The line hits my hot button hard, and my inner Tourette’s wants me to respond: “Dude, please, your wife is not a thing.”
Not to be a crank about it, but I think the distinction isn’t small. I see the blurring of this verbal distinction not as linguistic laziness but as a peculiar phenomenon of Modern Times: There’s me, and then there’s everything outside me, and everything outside is some kind of…. object.
Well, My Favorite Things are things. My Favorite People are people. And the people come first. Not that the things lack value. But it wouldn’t be much of a life if I had to sit here, alone, surrounded by my toys — even if many of them are tasteful, high-minded cultural artifacts.
If I’m only appropriately grateful for Things, I am nonetheless deeply grateful for them — because my idea of acquisitions seems to be about books, movies, music and the occasional product. Cars? Ours is so old it doesn’t have drink cups. Residences? Down to one. Bling for the wife? Nothing that requires a safe.
I starting thinking about things I value as I was watching a performance from distant 1961: John Coltrane and his group playing “My Favorite Things”. It returned me to that classic four-song album. And also to things I’ve loved for long enough to be more than seasonal crushes.
Start with my iPod, my energy source at the gym. And more, my esthetic companion. The other night, as I walked through the snow into Central Park, I listened to Bon Iver — music made in the cold, for the cold. Then again, with these buds in my ears, sometimes I think happiness is just a great set of headphones.
This scene from "Y Tu Mama Tambien‘. To watch it without context is to see Maribel Verdú, drunk and drinking more, as she drops a coin in a jukebox and dances back to the two young boys she’s traveling with. What they don’t know: She’s a month away from death by cancer, and she feels it — and it’s that knowledge that transforms an erotic moment into a glorious last flowering.
Peace Coffee at 6:30 in the morning, Sant’ Eustachio after dinner with friends.
A Pur Water filter system, living in our refrigerator now for two years. Cost: $28. Enough filters for a year: $160. Savings to the environment, to say nothing of what used to be a gusher of cash for bottled water: incalculable.
Josh Ritter‘s music, because as much as I love it, I never like the new stuff as much as I hope to, and then I’m forced to confront my expectations and limitations, and in that effort, everything expands.
I could do this all day. I’d better just list….
BOOKS
A Sport and a Pastime: The first James Salter novel I read, and the one that imprinted deepest. France, money, youth, sex — every element rings the bell. And you can tell it’s Salter from the first sentence.
Bel-Ami: Guy de Maupassant is taught in school as a master of the short story. This novel is just that good: worldly, vivid, and with a main character so bold he’s hard to hate.
Cakes and Ale: Of Somerset Maugham’s novels, this was his favorite. Well, he’d know.
Jesus’ Son: Is this black humor or tragedy with giggles?
The Foreign Correspondent: Like all of Alan Furst’s novels, the time is World War II, the setting includes France, and the subject is espionage. But the spies are real people, not superheroes, and the sense of place and time is exact.
After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie: For a woman, life with no money is a condemnation. Jean Rhys serves up the ashy taste of desperation better than any writer I can name.
Man’s Search for Meaning: Viktor Frankl emerged from a concentration camp with his family dead and his optimism intact. And we complain about modest inconvenience?
The Glass Key: Dashiell Hammett makes a politician lighting a cigar into a riveting event.
The Killer Inside Me: You won’t feel normal for a day after you finish this one.
Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking: Marcella Hazan’s cookbook is the most grease-stained in our kitchen.
Pure Heart, Enlightened Mind: A young American has an aptitude for Zen that takes her to Japan and then all the way out.
MUSIC
Big Mama Thornton: What seems raw and elemental turns out to be subtle and profound.
J.J. Cale: If it weren’t so quiet, you might almost have to dance.
Astral Weeks: Before there were “personal” CDs, there was this.
Bob Dylan: All of it, but this year, the bootlegs.
Leonard Cohen: For all that happened after Suzanne took him down by the river…
Otis Redding: No death stops the world. But I can’t imagine anyone will take the place of the King of Soul.
Catch A Fire: Before he was Bob Marley, superstar, there was a group simply called The Wailers.
Amadou & Mariam may be blind, but they hear joy and sing it over traffic, sirens and playgrounds. You will indeed feel as if you’re at an open-air weekend concert in Mali.
Beethoven Violin Concerto: Of all the versions, I come back again and again to Jascha Heifetz.
Ascenseur Pour L’Echafaud: Miles Davis at his most accessible level of cool.
Vespers of the Blessed Virgin: Claudio Monteverdi’s service takes me to the essence of harmony.
The Koln Concert: Keith Jarrett’s improvisation would be anyone else’s greatest composition.
MOVIES
Local Hero: Bill Forsyth’s comedy gets deeper and more meaningful — the nominal subject is drilling for oil off Scotland — with each passing year.
After the Wedding: Susanne Bier takes a philanthropic act and reveals the deep personal history behind it.
Dodsworth: William Wyler, probably the greatest American director of the ’30s and
’40s, looks for the love in a privileged marriage.
In America: Jim Sheridan’s immigrants have so much to say, not just about this country, but about wanting better for your family.
L’Atalante: Jean Vigo’s silvery dream of a film.
A pattern here? Not in subject. Only in execution — every choice shows an actual artist working at the height of artistic ambition and accomplishment. In short: classics. And favorite things.
