You can see the architecture of things in winter.

Structures glisten. Naked trees drip with clear popsicles. We find ourselves alone with ourselves. Everyone else has gone away to someplace warmer/better/more fun or else they are tucked indoors. Even when you live in a relatively warm place, winter still haunts. Chilly scenes, indeed. Deep freezes. A glaze crackled over every surface. Bright blizzard whites. Snow drifts. Flannel pajamas. Nights that last too long and are far too quiet. Winter is about longing and unrequited and freezing. Belle and Sebastian sing of the “solitary cell of your mind,” and that’s winter. You know who your friends are in winter. It’s not picnics and days at the lake. It’s heavy coats and lost mittens. Scratchy blankets and the smell of wet wool. And yet, Blake told us to enjoy the winter. Probably good advice.

More than we remember stays green all winter long. There’s something under there, buried under all that muck. Our job is to tease it out; sharpen our gaze to locate it underneath the melting slush and extra blankets. Winter is about finding what saves us, what keeps us company most. We lose ourselves a bit in the cold; yet can find ourselves if we want–find what survives, what endures. The finest work human beings can do is to manufacture hope. Winter gives us a canvas and a reason to do so. We must remind ourselves to revel in the majesty of the cold, the brittle wonder of an ice storm. Go ahead now, mix another hot toddy, figure out how you are going to scrape together the money for the raging electric bill, button up your overcoat … and enjoy this wintry mix. (C. run time: 47:42; direct link for mobile access: http://8tracks.com/anna-march/chilly-scenes-of-winter.)

from anna march on 8tracks.

-1-

“Misspent Youth”

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

Hysterical

-2-

“The Boy With the Arab Strap”

Belle and Sebastian

The Boy With the Arab Strap

-3-

“Trans-Continental Hustle”

Gogol Bordello

Trans-Continental Hustle

-4-

“She Left Home” (Instrumental)

Jane Birkin

Arabesque

-5-

“Knee Deep At The NPL”

Camera Obscura

Underachievers Please Try Harder

-6-

“Cold & Wet”

Bonnie “Prince” Billy

The Letting Go

-7-

“’Round About Midnight”

Miles Davis

Highlights From The Plugged Nickel

-8-

“Your Love” (The Outfield Cover)

Bon Iver

Bon Iver Covers

-9-

“Moonlight Mile”

The Rolling Stones

Sticky Fingers (Remastered)

-10-

“World Keeps Turning”

Tom Waits

Orphans

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MONDAY, October 12, 2009 – SUNDAY, October 18, 2009

This week in New York, The New Yorker Festival hits town. And yes, while the “Humor Revue,” “About Towns,” and “Kaffeeklatches” seem to have been sold out before they were on sale, there’re still some good readings and “Screen Gems”  available, and a slim, if precariously so, window for getting tickets to sold-out events (see below) – and see a full schedule here; A Festival of Frightening Movies begins at Lincoln Center, and Spike Jonze week continues a the MOMA, in celebration of the Friday release of Where the Wild Things Are.

MONDAY 10/12: Spike Jonze: Award-Winning Music Videos, Short Films and Commercials, Part 2 (100 min.) Museum of Modern Art. 8:00pm.

Brian Evenson and Mary Caponegro read at McNally Jackson. 7pm.

Scary Movies 3, “A Festival of the Frightening,” begins at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and runs through 10/22. Monday night is zombie night with Night of the Living Dead and Dead Alive.

Binnie Kirshenbaum reads at the New School. 6:30pm.

TUESDAY 10/13: Reckoning with Torture – The ACLU, PEN American Center and Cooper Union host this event at which writers and artists along with a former U.S. military interrogator and a former CIA officer will read from recently released secret documents that have brought to light the torture and abuse carried out by the U.S. under the Bush administration since 9/11. Featuring George Saunders, A.M. Homes, Art Spiegelman, Jonathan Ames, Nell Freudenberger among many renowned writers and a special presentation by Jenny Holzer. The Great Hall at Cooper Union. 7 E. 7th St. 7:00pm.

CLMP hosts Periodically Speaking at the New York Public Library – An event series that presents writers from three influential lit mags returns to the NYPL: Vestal Review presents fiction writer Lincoln Michel, Low Rent presents poet Leigh Stein and Tin House presents non-fiction writer Montana Wojczuk.

Lucky Dragons and Rose Lowder: A Benefit for Showpaper – LA-based electronic outfit Lucky Dragons “whose participatory performances jam 21st century musique concrete with the fervor of a tent revival” will “play around” in dialogue with five films by leading French experimental filmmaker Rose Lowder. Light Industry. Tickets, “sliding scale” $5-$20.

WEDNESDAY 10/14: Lorrie Moore, whose novel A Gate at the Stairs was just released by Knopf, reads at Symphony Space. 7:30pm.

Garfunkel and Oates, the LA-based comedy duo, Riki Lindhome (My Best Friend’s Girl) and Kate Micucci (Scrubs), whose song “Sex with Ducks” caused a mild stir in the political blogosphere, perform at the Gotham Comedy Club. 208 W. 23rd. 6:30pm.

Daniel Johnston, the legend of lo-fi tape-recorded-in-my-parents-basement music performs at Highline Ballroom. 431 W. 16th. Indie-folk band The Dodos play at Bowery Ballroom. 6 Delancey St.

Nick Lowe - English singer-songwriter performs at City Winery. 9:00pm.

Victor Lavalle, author of Slapboxing with Jesus, reads at The New School. 6:30pm.

THURSDAY 10/15: Scary Movies 3 at the FSLC – director John Landis will appear in person to present his Lycanthropian classic An American Werewolf in London.

FRIDAY 10/16: Tickets to The New Yorker Festival can still be got on Friday from 12-4:00pm at Cedar Lake Theatre, 547 West 26th Street, or online here. Tickets will also be available for sale one hour before the scheduled performances.

The New Yorker Festival – “Fiction Night” is just that, a night of readings, many of which are still, surprisingly, available. Some highlights are Daniyal Mueenuddin and Salman Rushdie; David Bezmogis and Jonathan Franzen; Edwidge Danticat and Junot Diaz; George Saunders and Gary Shteyngart; Jonathan Lethem and Colson Whitehead; Joshua Ferris and Aleksandar Hemon; T.C. Boyle and Mary Gaitskill.

Where the Wild Things Are, the new film, an adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s children’s book, directed by Spike Jonze, and co-written with Dave Eggers, is released nationally. This is Jonze’s first feature film since Adaptation (2002).

Spike Jonze: Award Winning Commercials and Jackass: The Movie (2002). MOMA. 8:00pm.

Legendary punk singer Patti Smith performs with her daughter Jesse at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in celebration of the 50th anniversary of photographer Robert Frank’s collection “The Americans.”

SATURDAY 10/17: The New Yorker Festival – Saturday presents a kind of pu-pu platter of filmic/music happenings and specialty talks and panels. See Malcolm Gladwell give a talk on dogfighting felon Michael Vick, watch Alfred Hitchcock’s “Shadow of a Doubt” with David Denby, or listen to “conversations with music” between Sasha Frere-Jones and Neko Case, or Bon Iver. Some interesting panels include “New Math” that will likely deal with statistics, sports, politics and urban ethnography.

SUNDAY 10/18: The New Yorker Festival – Sunday at the festival is more relaxed, interactive and art-oriented with outings to the studio of Chuck Close and puppeteer Basil Twist, a “Humor Revue” with Woody Allen, George Saunders and Noah Baumbach, “Kaffeeklatches” (which somehow implies the subjects will have their guard down and maybe say things that will make you feel like you know them as people, or unintentionally reveal something too personal), like “Heroes and Antiheroes” with Donald Antrim, A.M. Homes, Gary Shteyngart and George Saunders; There’s “Radical Opera,” a panel at which Rufus Wainwright and superstar theater/opera/TV director Peter Sellars will tell you how blow-away opera is becoming and that it’s not dying, it’s just no longer Brunhildes in horns.

The Tag Reading Series – The “inter-borough, inter-state and nearing international!” reading series continues in Brooklyn: Jami Attenberg (The Melting Season) introduces Kristin McGonigle (New Yorker, originally from Philadelphia) who introduces our own Michelle Orange (Brooklynite originally from Toronto), who tags Mary Miller (who lives in Mississippi) who reaches back and tags Nicolle Elizabeth (Brooklynite originally from Boston), landing us safely back in Brooklyn. “They’ll be reading stories that got started by an overheard remark and an unfinished Fitzgerald story idea, about bad women with worse judgement, and an aging psychic.” The Cell Theatre. 338 West 23 St. (between 8 and 9 Aves). 5:00pm. $5.

Spike Jonze: Award-Winning Music Videos and Short Films, Part 1. MOMA. 2:00pm.

***

Send info about notable things happening around New York to rozalia-at-therumpus-dot-net.

Illustration by André da Loba.

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