Music was arguably more crucial at the ancient Olympic games than at the globalized modern ones, where it not only buttresses big ritualistic moments—the opening ceremonies, the doling out of medals—but insinuates itself into the…
Posts published by “David Yearsley”
Among the countless contradictions that the Olympic Games bring into relief is that between private and public music. There is a chasm, unbreachable even by the world’s best long-jumpers and sharpest-eared eavesdroppers, between the individual…
Is it a terrible thing to sound old when you are still young? Narratives of artistic development often seek greatness in late style that visionary realm explored as the struggles of the world recedes and…
It’s a set-up that itself sounds like the scenario for a musical: big-time London theater-makers transplant a flop from the West End to a regional summer stage in an off-the-beaten-track American town in order to…
There’s that mythic line from America’s long-abandoned manned lunar space adventures: “Houston, we have a problem.” Nearly fifty years on, I can correct that statement from my hotel room in the city’s so-called downtown some…
When Bernie Saunders informed Rolling Stone last year that he “really loves music” and that his tastes were “eclectic,” I believed what he said. In his short interview with the magazine there was no evidence…
The notion of the zeitgeist has fallen into disrepute as too metaphysical, too German. No longer does the spirit of the time manifest itself in art and culture; instead, things trend, manipulated in shape and…
When far from home in foreign cities, slowed by saddle sores or jet leg, menaced by security pat-downs or highwaymen’s pistols, the traveler is often beset by two contending impulses: avoid your own expatriate countrymen and women like the plague or seek them out as glue for your own identity fragmenting under the strains of the journey.