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So I just got back from West Side Story today--a work I've written about endlessly. It was a pretty great performance, 9/10? A little too busy and unsubtle, but all the leads were great bordering on wonderful. Better than I thought I'd ever see it done. At the beginning scenes and the ending I wiped away a lot of tears as my lip quivered, then I looked over and saw my mom doing the same, then I looked in front of me and there was a woman outright sobbing while her husband consoled her, then I looked next to me and there was a couple younger than me and both the man and the woman were wiping tears. The only person near me who didn't like it was the twelve year old texting on his phone the whole time until I asked him to stop nicely at intermission. He apologized very politely, then kept checking the time during the second half.
What is it about this play that speaks to everybody here so deeply? You can't just explain it rationally. Part of why West Side Story is timeless is because we're still living West Side Story's crisis. and it's basically the same show: still gangs, still poverty, still projects, still racist cops, still misspent youth. It could be set in Baltimore today and all you'd need is David Simon to revamp the script, make the Jets African-American and up the racism of the cops, and it's the same show.
But no, you can't explain it like that, that would just make West Side Story a sociology lesson. It has to provoke deep emotional associations, and it can't just be nostalgia.
No, what we're experiencing is something much deeper. Something almost ecstatic. I come out of West Side Story not just moved, but electrified. Simon Schama talks about that effect in the famous documentary: The Power of Art: "
"In the end, there's only one test that matters. You come into the room, you fix it in your sights. Does it, or does it not attack you in the guts, it does. Does your heart jump? Do your eyes widen? Does your pulse race? Do your feet get a bad attack of lead boots you're so struck down by it?"
There's so much about West Side Story that shouldn't work: the antique slang that probably wasn't even real slang in 1957, the ridiculous love story, the ballet sequence that comes out of nowhere and feels like an ego trip from the choreographer... and yet we buy every bit of it. It's one of those works that moves through our heads in a state of grace. Some works just have that irrational impact on us. It's not many, it's never many, but they exist, and if you're open to it, you usually know it when you see it.
You particularly know it because you keep coming back to them. They marinate in your head like an unfinished dinner in the fridge that gets better overnight, and every time you revisit it, it's a completely different experience. A character may resemble your parent, then 20 years later resemble you, then 20 years after that resemble your child; a place may represent the place you live in, then it becomes the place you grew up in, then it becomes the place it used to be but no longer is. Aristotle called it 'mimesis', but what it means is that we just look at the screen or page or stage and say 'that's me.'
It may not exactly be you, but it's something you know, something you remember, something you love or hate or fear, something you're experiencing right now or expect to experience later, and it goes through a journey into your psyche, and by the time it's done you're not the same person anymore.
What's a little unique about West Side Story is that for a country with so many choices for entertainment, how few of them seem to have that ecstatic effect on millions of people. Sure, all kinds of musical groups can get a whole stadium to bob their heads and raise their arms in a kind of trance, but that's not the experience I'm talking about. I'm talking about the solitary experience, the experience that when you leave, you know that your life can never be the same after it happened, and you know that if you come back in 50 years, it will have the same effect. Not just because of its effect on your emotions or nerves, but it's affect on your mind. The kind of piece where your thoughts complicate your emotions, and your emotions complicate your thoughts. And between the two, something deeper emerges even than the heart: a soul. The essential part of who we become, and by the end of that process, we don't just feel delighted or deflated, we understand.
Russia devoted 200 years of literature to that effect, Italy had multiple hundreds of years of that art, but we in America? We don't think much of solitary creation. Of course, even the solitary creators have help, but in so much of even our best art, the vision itself comes from collaboration. Collaboration can do all sorts of wonderful things, but collaboration can also mean committee. And when a committee creates a work of art, the result is not a person's original vision. Committees generally don't look at a work and say 'let's get more daring'. It happens, but not that often, and I think it's a little harder to communicate from one heart to another.
So, individual or collaboration, how do these works have that effect on us? Well, I wonder if there are three ways (and I had a little help from ChatGPT on this...): in the works we see the 'concrete America,' the 'mythic America,' and the 'metaphysical America.' In the concrete America, your mind sees sights and concepts just like the ones we know: open landscapes, tall cities, saturated media, money problems. In the mythic America, it speaks to the dreams we have, both when we sleep and when we wake: the freedom to reinvent ourselves, to meet our destiny, to venture into the frontier. The dream that we'll all be free and equal, and the nightmare that we may get only less as time goes on. Metaphysical America is the America of the spirit, where being American stops being a fact and becomes a way of life. Maybe it's a particular American loneliness where we start questioning what all this freedom and prosperity was for. What happens if, when we reinvent ourselves, we lose ourselves or our souls. We're in a country where we're free to believe anything at all, but what happens if we stop believing in anything?
And when you see these three levels of America reflected back at you, it hits you harder than any rational truth would. It doesn't wrestle with things that are true right now, it wrestles with universal values, fundamental moral laws, universal emotions and experiences and conditions.
I think what makes West Side Story so extraordinary is that there aren't all that many pieces in America that unquestionably do that: We have our share, but we are, supposedly, the freest country there's ever been (that's another story...), and yet we haven't used that freedom to make all that much art that probes questions just that deep, and what we do have, even the best of it, feels just a little bit commercial, just a little bit safe. Not everything's supposed to be a 'really good show,' and even in a show like West Side Story, you can feel the audience concessions. The first half-hour of West Side Story is so beautiful, and then you go into America: America is one of the best songs ever written in this country, but it's placed right after Maria and Tonight, two songs so ecstatic that you want to stay in their spell forever, and it yanks you out of that ecstasy so jarringly that you (I) almost resent it. Then, a half hour later, comes One Hand One Heart, another of the most beautiful songs ever written, and West Side Story's built an entirely new head of steam, and you feel yanked back into love and beauty. Then Act 1 ends with deaths on the stage, and Act 2 opens with I Feel Pretty. We were in the world of the The Wire, and then we're yanked into the world of Rodgers and Hammerstein. It's part of West Side Story's greatness that it can be so many things at once, but it's a little bit exhausting, and in the back of your mind, you wonder if they did it because they worried about the ADD of the audience.
But it's true, sometimes commercial considerations make a work better, sometimes populism makes a work better, sometimes 'simpler' is simply better...
In the vast majority of the best American work, that's what we get. For better or worse, artists here usually have to be entertainers first. The unregulated profundities of Dostoevsky and Wagner don't as often happen here. Does that make the work here worse? Maybe a little bit... but it also means that most of our best art is just that entertaining, and you wouldn't just miss out on something that will change you and give you wisdom and a self-transformation, that seems different every time you experience it, but also, you'd miss having a really good time.
I was going to write about which works are on this list and why, but I don't have that kind of time. Here's another f***ing list....
Unnamable, competes with the best of any time and place:
The Simpsons (f*** off it's my list...)
Citizen Kane (a lot more entertaining than you remember)
West Side Story
Moby Dick (under protest)
The Great Gatsby
Death of a Salesman
Leaves of Grass
Our Town
Life on the Mississippi
Alan Lomax Collections
Louis Armstrong Hot Five & Seven
Pinocchio
Emily Dickinson (various)
The Souls of Black Folk
Assassins
Barbecue Cuisine
A Love Supreme
Mad Men
Gershwin Songs
Katz Deli
Invisible Man
Beloved
Duke Ellington: Particularly Blanton-Webster years and assorted longer works
Charlotte's Web
Nashville
Do The Right Thing
Vietnam Veterans Memorial
Gypsy
Grand Central Terminal
Wizard of Oz
The Muppets
The Red Badge of Courage
Levi's Blue Jeans
National Geographic
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
The Times They Are a'Changin'
It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding
Chimes of Freedom
A Hard Rain's-a Gonna Fall
Democracy in America
Varieties of Religious Experience
The Last Picture Show
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Cosmic. Essential for anyone who cares to experience America:
Mahalia Jackson (Move On Up A Little Higher, How I Got Over, Precious Lord Take My Hand, Come Sunday)
Migrant Mother
The Awakening
Company
Follies
The Education of Henry Adams
An American Tragedy
African American Spirituals
Central Park
Waffle House
Absalom, Absalom!
Creole Cuisine
The Scarlet Letter
Robert Frost (Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening, Mending Wall, The Road Less Traveled, After Apple Picking, Death of the Hired Man, Home Burial)
New Orleans Jazz (generally)
Mardi Gras costumes
Rear Window
Watchmen
Black Boy
Call It Sleep
Peanuts
Calvin and Hobbes
All The King's Men
James Brown: Live at the Apollo
Fun Home
Go Down, Moses (novel)
Thanksgiving Dinner
Civil Rights Movement Songs
Strange Fruit
Bessie Smith (generally)
John Lee Hooker (generally)
Desolation Row
The Godfather Saga (TV version putting both movies in chronological sequence with an hour of restored scenes is best)
Master's of War
Second Line Funerals
How The Other Half Lives
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Origins of Totalitarianism
Battle Hymn of the Republic
How The Grinch Stole Christmas
Hoop Dreams
The Unanswered Question
Pentacostal Services (generally)
Gone: An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred b'tween the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart
Vietnam War Memorial
Apocalypse Now
Fallingwater
Freedom Highway
I've Been Loving You Too Long
The Assistant
Spirit In The Dark
King Heroin
The Atlantic Magazine
Brooklyn Bridge
A Raisin in the Sun
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Collected Stories of IB Singer
Chinatown
Tangled Up in Blue
The Fire Next Time
Chrysler Building
The Truman Show
The Iceman Cometh
Brokeback Mountain
Porgy and Bess
The Manchurian Candidate
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Blood Meridian
Raging Bull
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Civil War Union Songs
Moonlight
Nebraska
Green Eggs and Ham
My Antonia
Lady Soul
Where The Sidewalk Ends
MAD Magazine
Rain Dogs
The Making of the Atomic Bomb
County Fairs
the Zoot Suit
The Fish Fry
Dispatches
The Crawfish Boil
"Chinese Food"
Armies of the Night
The Southern Breakfast
New York Pizza
Autobiography of Malcolm X
Work Boots
The Giving Tree
Sesame Street
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Gold: a Transcendent Achievement:
Mean Streets (still Scorsese's best...)
A Streetcar Named Desire
The Italian American Dinner
Mullholland Dr.
Goodfellas
The Clambake
The Adventures of Augie March
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
Pet Sounds
The Cat in the Hat
Converse Chuck Taylor All-Stars
The New Yorker
Closing Time
Bonnie & Clyde
Bless Me, Ultima (**** off it goes here)
Emily Dickinson (various)
American Pastoral
Native Son
Taxi
Graceland
Las Vegas Strip
Long Day's Journey into Night
Portrait of a Lady
The Night of the Hunter
Blue Velvet
The Power Broker
The Right Stuff
Soul Food
Robert Johnson (generally)
Photo of Allie May Burroughs
Ives 4
New York Bagel
Harlan County, USA
Blue Velvet
Blue Plate Special
His Girl Friday
Appalachian Spring
Angels in America
Blood on the Tracks
The Brothers Ashkenazi
Ace in the Hole (movie)
As I Lay Dying
Creative Orchestra Music 1976
Leather Jacket
Highway 61 Revisited
Show Boat
The Moviegoer
The Conversation
Modern Times
Pacific Overtures
The Glass Menagerie
The Problem We All Live With
The Searchers
The Civil War: A Narrative
The Twilight Zone
The Fog of War
Gumbo
Cole Porter (various)
Deadwood
Seinfeld
Cheers
It's a Man's World
The Sopranos
Twin Peaks
Woody Guthrie (various)
Zodiac
Walden
The Immortal Otis Redding
Duck Soup
ET
The Producers
Catch-22
The Executioner's Song
Staples Singers (various)
Coat of Many Colors
Hank Williams (various)
Woolworth Building
Long Day's Journey into Night
Fargo
Alexander's Ragtime Band
Waffle House Breakfast
The Sweet Smell of Success
As I Lay Dying
Touch of Evil
Seinfeld
The Philadelphia Story
Army Field Jacket
Black Church Hats
Drag
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Jimmie Rodgers (various)
Johnny Cash America Albums
America Today Mural
Carousel
Six Feet Under
The Larry Sanders Show
Chappelle's Show
Bluegrass Jam Sessions
American Gothic
The Americans
Contract With God Trilogy
Roots
Go Tell It On The Mountain
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Silver: A Great Achievement
The Fixer
Jewish Deli
Gravity's Rainbow
Ah-Um
The Social Network
Herzog
The Turn of the Screw
All The Pretty Horses
Blazing Saddles
Gas
Corn on the Cobb
The Steerage
Randy Newman (album)
Portnoy's Complaint
Everything, Everywhere, All at Once
Christina's World
Kind of Blue
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Hippie Fringe and Denim
Disneyland
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
There's A Riot Goin' On
Suttree
Church Potluck
Guggenheim Museum
Twin Peaks
Gravity's Rainbow
Dreamgirls
Follies
Other Johnnie Cash
King Kong
City Lights
Vertigo
Ebony
Jet
Washington Square
The Deer Hunter
The Sopranos
Sugar Shack
Rolling Stone Magazine
A Good Man is Hard to Find
Diner Pie
Carol Burnett Show
Born to Run
Network
The Wizard of Oz
Into the Woods
American Graffiti
Red-Headed Stranger
Dazed and Confused
Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Sunset Boulevard
Boogie Nights
McCabe & Mrs. Miller
Paris, Texas
M*A*S*H (TV)
Tom Waits (various)
Animal House
Mister Rogers' Neighborhood
The Apartment
Rothko Chapel
Piano Music of Henry Cowell
Rodeo & Billy the Kid
Exciteable Boy
The Iceman Cometh
The Crucible
Fences & The Piano Lesson
Glengarry Glen Ross
Stag at Sharkey's
Carousel
Groundhog Day
Close Encounters & ET
Fargo
Toy Story
What's Goin' On
Double Indemnity
All About Eve
Pudd'nhead Wilson
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Bronze: A Mostly Great Achievement:
Nighthawks
The Wire Breaking Bad
The Best Years of Our Lives
Black Saint & Sinner Lady
Sula
Kind of Blue
The Color Purple
Ah Um
Erasure
The Apartment
Playboy
A Face in the Crowd
Friday Night Lights
Flannel Shirt
The Americans (TV show)
Dog Day Afternoon
Macaroni and Cheese
White T-Shirt
Badlands
Magnolia
Tapestry (album)
Apollo Theater
Wise Blood
Koyaansqatsi
Deep Dish Pizza
Twin Peaks
South Park
Some Like It Hot
Singin' In the Rain
Girls
First Reformed
South Bronx Housing Projects
Stagecoach
Easy Rider
Gone with the Wind
Nebraska
Get Out
Air Jordan Sneakers
The Big Lebowski (pinnacle of Western Civilization)
Casablanca
Days of Heaven
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Not my thing but game is game
There Will Be Blood
To Pimp a Butterfly
Autumn Rhythm #30
Walden
The Grapes of Wrath
Howl
The Waste Land
2001
Hamilton
No Country for Old Men
The Tree of Life
Inside Llewyn Davis
Letterman Jacket
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