Newsletter 152: The Beautiful Evaporation of Live Theater

I’ve decided to start putting some of the best newsletter essays here on Medium, so more people can read them. You’re still better off just subscribing. This one’s from March 2019, about seeing “To Kill a Mockingbird.” I saw the Meat Loaf musical last weekend and loved every goddamned second of it. I apologize for nothing.

One of the strangest things about living in New York City is that you end up seeing fewer of the things that make up the New York of the popular imagination than the people who don’t live here do. My parents, who have lived in the same tiny Midwestern town for nearly 70 years, have been to the top of the Empire State Building, but I, who lived in New York for nearly 14 years, never have. I’ve never been to the Met, or the Statue of Liberty, or St. Patrick’s Cathedral, but my parents sure have. They would go during the day when they were visiting me, while I was busy with some job I didn’t care about and ended up not mattering one bit. I rarely saw Central Park, I’ve been inside the Guggenheim just once (and it was to deliver a package) and the only time I went to Windows on the World was to see friends perform a private party there (and all I did the whole time was complain about having to go that far downtown). Living in New York is so all-encompassing and overwhelming that you don’t realize how much you’re missing out on, and…