What She Said: I'll Take Manhattan

We’ve just returned from a quick trip to New York City and as always, it was an adventure for the lover of language.  From the myriad accents and entertaining comments heard on the streets to this hand-written sign I found in the Chelsea Market, I was surrounded by linguistic pleasures for five straight days.

On Sunday we went to the Metropolitan Museum, where we passed on the hour-long wait for the Alexander McQueen exhibit and headed for Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective.  My favorite piece – no surprise -- was "Verb List" (1967-8)", a handwritten list of actions and conditions.

I admit I’m a bit of a Philistine about abstract art, but this piece spoke to me, so to speak.  I loved both its content and its physical aspects: four columns, hand-written by the artist.  I wonder why simply reading these words in conjunction with his drawings was so moving?

In an interview with PBS, the artist described the role of this list in his work:

“When I first started, what was very, very important to me was dealing with the nature of process. So what I had done is I'd written a verb list: to roll, to fold, to cut, to dangle, to twist...and I really just worked out pieces in relation to the verb list physically in a space. Now, what happens when you do that is you don't become involved with the psychology of what you're making, nor do you become involved with the after image of what it's going to look like. So, basically it gives you a way of proceeding with material in relation to body movement, in relation to making, that divorces from any notion of metaphor, any notion of easy imagery.”

Poking around on the Internet, I found several visual interpretations of “Verb List”, including this one that made me smile.

We topped off our visit and my journey through the land of words with the new Woody Allen movie, Midnight in Paris.  It’s among his best, and not only because of the lovely Paris scenes and witty dialogue.  The hero, played by Owen Wilson, is a writer, and without spoiling the plot I can say that writers and their egos, the purpose of literature, and the nature of the creative process feature prominently in the experience. 

Several of the actors were unknown to me, but they play characters who are totally familiar in a literary sense.  If you don’t mind a bit of a spoiler, you can read the New York Times review.

I’m back in the Woody Allen fan club, plus I really, really want to go to Paris.