My Father's New York

It pains me these days to read the Goings On About Town listings in The New Yorker because my Dad personified those pages.

In his way, he was the ultimate appreciator of the arts in New York and always knew what was going on about town.

Not only that, he managed to see an awful lot of museum and and gallery shows, opera, orchestral and chamber music, film and Broadway shows. Even before he retired this was true.

For him, the arts were not an option, they were a necessity. I imagine they fed and sustained him; they kept his critical mind strong, his powers of taste and discrimination intact.  So as I look at The New Yorker it just doesn't feel right that culture in New York City continues even though my father's not around to enjoy it. Here is a sampling of this week's listings that might have interested him:

KT Sullivan at the Algonquin Hotel singing the work of Jerome Kern.

Brazilian performers Romero Lubambo and Gal Costa at the Blue Note.

The Giorgio Morandi show at the Metropolitan

Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night at MOMA

Kirchner and the Berlin Street also at MOMA

All My Sons at the Schoenfeld

Billy Elliot at the Imperial Theater

The Opera, The Philarmonic, Carnegie Hall...

I feel the need to check what's going on even though I rarely get a chance (or make the time) to take advantage of all of  New York's cultural bounty. Not like my dad did. He was an inspiration in that way. He'd get the cheap Family Circle seats at the Metropolitan Opera (which he claimed were excellent); he'd go to TKTS for Wednesday matinees; pay the minimum donation at the Metropolitan Museum (because he went there so often); he was a regular at the art galleries in Chelsea, at Christy's.

He was a man-about-town making a serious effort to keep up with the arts: exactly the kind of person artists make art for. Those for whom art is a necessity not an option.