SOME ENCHANTED OSCAR

SOME ENCHANTED OSCAR

(and other things I experienced, read, and saw in the last two weeks)

I am a little postpartum-y. My spring NYU writing class ended. We had—as my grandma used to call it—great rappaport. After my first lesson on creating a scene (show, don’t tell), my students created wonderful, dramatic scenes. Scenes that turned into poignant essays about their broken hearts and broken families, among other things. Courageous people. The group felt safe. The lawyer, who initially struggled to reveal himself, did so big time by the end. The end. Although some will renew their vows with me next semester, others won’t pass my way again. Not the woman who is returning home to Brazil and the guy who is moving to Spain. I’m lousy with the temporariness of it all. I am not big on good-byes.

I am also not big on the conspicuous consumption of silly, silly things. The newest owner at 15 Central Park West, Manhattan’s most expensive apartment building, a widow, is a self-made billionaire (NY Times Real Estate-March 18). She had a business idea. And ran with it. Like wow! I was intrigued. I read on. Until I got to the part in the article about her living room and how she decorated. With a Steinway player piano that plays Bach and Broadway tunes. Like oy!

I was reading the March Vanity Fair in the bathtub. A piece about Dr. Arnold Klein. Talk about despicable. Talk about disgusting. Talk about stardust in one’s eyes. How much Demerol is too much Demerol? Michael Jackson’s enablers were clearly not friends. My magazine got wet. Fine. I did not want to look at Dr. Klein’s face or read about him anymore.

My April Vanity Fair is dry. It has an interview with Mike Nichols. I love his work. And him. When my friend, Ruth, and I saw the Cindy Sherman exhibit at MOMA, we played “Which famous people would you like as a close friend?” I was undecided about Cindy Sherman. I was positive about Mike Nichols.

Unless he has a piano that doesn’t need a human to play Bach and Broadway tunes.

Broadway tunes–The recent PBS documentary on Oscar Hammerstein made my spirits soar. I grew up on Rodgers and Hammerstein, Frank Loesser, Lerner and Lowe, and Irving Berlin. My parents took me to their musicals when they opened. I’ve seen them again and again. I’ve played their songs on the piano since I was 12. My mother would stop whatever she was doing with my first bar of “People Will Say We’re in Love,” appear in the living room, sit down on the bench beside me, and sing. My short, twinkly-eyed father, more a song and dance man, bopped around the living room in his Bermuda shorts, channeling his inner Stanley Holloway when I’d play “With a Little Bit of Luck” and “Get Me to the Church on Time.” I miss my parents. I miss those times.

I miss leaving the theater singing beautiful love songs and great, catchy tunes.

I miss the Some Enchanted Musicals by those Some Enchanted Guys.