Well, I've said that before, in 2010, and again last March. I've seen all I want to see, and I like my routine at home with my lovely old dog, and I look forward to my next colonoscopy more than my next flight. Still, in case I ever go again and want to remember what I learned, or in case I never go again and just care to savor the experience I had, here's what I want to remember:
A bag of peanuts is not worth $300. Using Google.flights, I compared prices for round trips at my preferred times, and found Frontier Airlines for $300, half what was listed for competitors. Buying my ticket was like playing a video game, because offers popped up at different places on my screen, to choose a seat, to carry on a small suitcase, to have more leg room. Each offer required lightning-fast reflexes to admit, deny, affirm, reject. For all the stuff that my no-frills ticket lacked, the flight was fine. I had the window and an empty seat beside me going up, and my friend Susan was beside me going home. So my round trip ticket was only 2/3 the cost of my seat at the Metropolitan Opera, and all the underwear and black tee shirts I needed were able to fit in my laptop bag with room for regulation-sized hygiene products and a book of crosswords. I win!
Frick 'n' Friday. Susan and I took off from Atlanta around 2:30 and arrived in just enough time to check in at the Empire Hotel and hail a cab to reach the Frick Gallery in time for our reservations 6:30-8:30. We arrived at 7. I didn't expect a musical welcoming committee, but attractive young staffers greeted us in a chorus line. This was evidently a regular Friday evening occasion for art and music. We toured several rooms, serenaded by a couple of young men who played jazz bass and saxophone from music on their phone screens. They were stationed in a central courtyard while Susan (a painter) and I wandered through the surrounding rooms. They got special applause from the crowd and some words of encouragement from me when they played a gorgeous ballad by Monk, "Ask Me Now." Are you guys from Juilliard, I asked. "We wish," they laughed. To my question, the bassist said he had no regrets about not choosing the harmonica, as he struggled to lift his instrument to the exit.
You can love 18th Century Art, too. Mr. Frick had great taste, we thought, as his collection includes many pieces by Whistler and early impressionists. We like a lot of dramatic and opulent 17th century stuff, too -- Frick has lots of Rembrandts. But the 18th century has left me cold.
My takeaway from the Frick was how much I enjoyed the rooms devoted to the 18th century. A portrait of British General Burgoyne by Joshua Reynolds captured so much nuance of personality! We both disliked some "blobby" cloth in the backgrounds, but came to realize that these were like stage curtains gathered up to reveal the backdrop. So our subjects were star actors in front of blatantly artificial natural scenery. There were little domestic dramas in several Vermeers, too. I took a photo of Susan, herself a painter, between a Vermeer (drama: what's in the letter that the smirking maid reads to her startled mistress?) and a Rembrandt. Thanks to Android and AI, it was a cinch to erase another guest for an unobstructed view.
The two of us enjoyed a Goya piece that gave a lot of attention to the woman's face and hardly any detail to the torso.
We had both known Hogarth from disgusting etchings of London debauchery, but we liked a Hogarth painting of a smiling woman with her frisky dog. We enjoyed noticing that the features in the face of a girl and the cat at her hand were very similar. "This is a fun room," I told my phone, and "I'm enjoying the 18th century for the first time."
Everybody ought to have a goal. Saturday morning, with nothing else on our agenda, we visited the former home of my hero Stephen Sondheim (see my page of postings devoted to him and his work). So many nights in sleep I've dreamed of finding myself in that home on "Turtle Bay" close to the river. There was no bay, and the only turtles were figures in the wrought iron gates. But I was so excited to be on the street where he lived. Fun fact: My dad's business partner Alfredo owned the property.
Take a jacket. We walked across the street from our home, the Empire Hotel, to see the opera THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY. An hour later, we dined a few blocks north of Lincoln Center at Chama Mama, a Georgian restaurant. The temperature was balmy, but the first breaths of a vicious Nor'easter made it chilly for those of us seated on their terrace. Still, we enjoyed bread with a variety of pastes made from walnuts mixed with ingredients such as yams, beets and other plants.
My Time of Day is the Dark Time. Before sunrise the next morning, I walked to Columbus Circle, observing men as they stocked their food trucks. I saw one man ordering breakfast from another, and I enjoyed how thirty or so pigeons that feasted on seeds that one chef had thrown in the pool of light that his service window cast on the pavement, where he could watch them as he prepped food for the day. Except for those men and a couple of cars, I had New York to myself. I thought of Frank Loesser's favorite song from his own musical Guys and Dolls, a recitative for the gambler "Sky Masterson" that begins, "My time of day is the dark time / a couple of deals before dawn...."
Noon Departures are Easier. Delays (which we had) are less dreadful when you know that you'll still be back in time to feed dinner to your dog.
