Earlier tonight, I saw New Orleans' punk-hipster-brass big band, Why Are We Building Such a Big Ship perform at an art opening at sculptor Thomas Beale's Chelsea space. Beale's work has a certain inborn tension between the complex, layered forms he creates and the organic materials he uses that suited the music perfectly (and vice versa). It was an otherwordly good performance, imbued with the "vaguely post-apocalyptic" ambiance that first intrigued me in my friend Rob's description of seeing them perform last week in Savannah. If you're in New York, go out of your way to catch one of the shows they're playing this weekend. My mother was born in New Orleans and spent much of her life there as a young woman, and I was fortunate to live there for a year in the late-90s (it was a rare year that there were no hurricanes but I still remember her native shoulder-shrugging attitude about what to do in the event of one: "Close the shutters, have a party," or something to that effect). I had to leave the opening early tonight to attend another event, and once there, several people told me I had a certain glow about me; it was certainly due to this first stop of the evening and its sparkling quality. It was a party!
Related, previously: The Lux Lotus Travel Guide: Rob Walker on Savannah.
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