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Picks for May 2009

"The Body Broken" by Lynne GreenbergBook: "The Body Broken" by Lynne Greenberg. Greenberg is a professor at Hunter College here in New York. She narrowly escaped death in a car wreck when she was 19 years old, and made a "miraculous" recovery. She went on with her life, got a law degree, got a Ph.D, got married, had two kids and built a life. One day, seemingly out of nowhere, she was in excruciating pain, and after navigating a labryrinthe of medical tests and different doctors, found that her neck was still broken, a couple decades after the car crash. Thus began tests, procedures, drugs, surgeries, and a descent into horrific chronic pain. She is a poetry teacher, and much of her spiritual and psychic strength came from poems—many of them directly about pain. This was an upsetting, but ultimately redemptive story. She did not get "cured" of her pain, but she found new resources to live with it, and a change of perspective about pain itself that saved her life.

In TreatmentScreen: I am just obsessed with "In Treatment" on HBO. Can we all talk about how incredibly great Gabriel Byrne is, on every level? He is one of the most nuanced, technically astute and emotionally accurate actors I have ever had the pleasure of witnessing. The story lines are so complex, and so real. I think I most enjoy the last of each set of episodes, when Paul Weston visits his own therapist, played by the great Dianne Weist, and all the tension he has held as a therapist through the other sessions dissolves, and he devolves into the rest of us. In my opinion, this is absolutely the best thing on television.

Mary StuartPlay: I took my daughter to see "Mary Stuart" on Broadway, with the eminent British actresses Janet McTeer and Harriet Walter. It was just nominated for seven Tony awards. It was beautifully dense and wonderfully staged. A pleasure.

Fox Miss KenichiMusic: I met a lovely woman in Germany last year, a friend of drummer Earl Harvin, and I saw her again this past March when I played in Berlin. She is a musician, but I had never heard her, and asked her to send me her record. I got it a week or so ago, and it is fantastic. The record is called "Fox", her stage name is Miss Kenichi, and it is released on Strange Ways records. Her writing is absolutely beautiful. The arrangements are minimal, and perfectly set up her songs. This is an odd and fascinating little gem of a record. If you can find it, you’re in for a treat.