Will you bear with us for a minute? We’ve got some things to say. Scroll down a bit to get to the week’s best events if you aren’t here for the Truth about the Summer Industrial Complex. (Which culminates with us telling you about this week’s best event: a screening of MY DINNER WITH ANDRE on Friday, kicking off Annie Baker’s curated film series at Lincoln Center)
The seasons tell us what to do, especially summer. With the sun booked to work overtime every day and farmers’ markets churning out the year’s best hits (berries! tomatoes!!), what can we do but be outdoors, overdose on produce, sit in the park after work, go to a beach on the weekend?
We love summer, even if it is the bossiest season. But we also feel protective of summer, because it’s the season most at-risk for abuse: from brands pushing consumerism, from trends pushing sameness, from our collective desire for nostalgia in the moment asking “girls, what kind of summer are we having?” instead of just letting us have the summer we’re having.
The Summer Industrial Complex churns away, ruining even the best things like music, clothes, and community. Musicians play stadiums built for sports, not acoustics, and the result is eye-watering ticket prices with none of the magic of an appropriate venue. And let us please, for two to three run-on sentences, curse the name of music festivals! Which strip artists of all context until everyone, even the greats!!, become uncanny karaoke versions of themselves. And if you’re dumb enough to attend, don’t think the VIP lounge makes it any better. Readers, there is no place more humiliating than a VIP lounge at a music festival, where you’re forced to drink a new hard seltzer brand and should be ashamed of yourself.
And then you have Bank of America or whatever sponsoring Pride and a lingering anxiety about whether or not you have the right sunglass shape, and you won’t get it right until, as dear, brilliant Friend of the List Mel said over drinks a while back, “two years too late.”
The problem with Big Summer is: the promise is too great, the bar set too high to do anything but fall short in disappointment.
To resist the Summer Industrial Complex, may we suggest the event of the week (or screening the movie at home if you don’t already have tickets, which have sold out), which in turns suggests a different way to live:
My Dinner with Andre at Lincoln Center on Friday
Part of Annie Baker’s curated film series
This is our favorite movie. We watch it often, the same way we read Philip Larkin’s Church Going about once per week before bed or play Sky Ferreira’s Everything is Embarrassing about once per day. It’s art that delivers, soothes, entertains, and opens itself to endless ways of understanding as you yourself grow up and learn more.
Here’s the gist of My Dinner with Andre: Wallace Shawn plays a playwright who’s just trying to survive in New York. He’s 36 in the film and, depending on your age, that might be the fact you can’t get out of your head. He’s en route to have dinner with Andre (Andre Gregory, Shawn’s real-life creative soulmate), but dreading it. As he rides the subway to the restaurant, Shawn’s voice-over paints a picture:
“I’ve been trapped through a series of odd events into agreeing to have dinner with a man I’ve literally been avoiding for years. His name is Andre Gregory. At one time, he’d been a close friend of mine, while also my most valued colleague in the theater. But then something had happened to Andre. He’d dropped out of the theater, he’d sort of disappeared.”
The rumor is that Andre has gotten kind of weird. Wally continues:
“You’d hear that someone met him at a party and he’d be telling people that he talked with trees…Obviously something terrible had happened to Andre.”
Editor’s note: sounds like Andre is actually doing everything right. But Wally ends up at dinner because:
“A mutual friend ran into Andre recently, leaning against a crumbling old building and sobbing. Andre had explained to George that he’d just been watching the Ingmar Bergman movie, Autumn Sonata, about 25 blocks away and he’d been seized by a fit of ungovernable crying when the character played by Bergman had said, I could always live in my art, but never my life.”
And then gregarious Andre enters the scene, gives Wally a big hug. “You look terrific!” Wally says. “I feel terrible!” Andre laughs.
They sit down to dinner, and then they talk and talk and talk. That’s the whole movie. By the end, spoiler, Wally feels a renewed sense of awe, wonder, and love, having been so moved by a conversation with a man he didn’t even want to see that he feels like a new person.
Here’s what we’re getting at: to fight the Summer Industrial Complex, the urge to travel to Italy solely because of Instagram or whatever: the most incredible moments of your life can happen inside modest rooms, at tables with someone you maybe didn’t want to see but then who changes your whole goddamn life.
As summer shouts, “Big! Loud! Expensive! I’m the marketing department and you are in a brand activation!!” remember that you can just go out to dinner and exceed low-set expectations and live a happier life even if your sandals are from last year or whatever.
We wrote that on molly, hope it makes sense.
And now: the week’s best events, briefly noted.
🆓 = costs $0, 🎨 = art, 🎼 = music, 🎬 = film, 📚= books, 🌳 = nature, 🎭 = performance, 🧠 = extra smart people, 🍸 = drinks available, 🦩 = party/friendly vibe
🔑 Click the venue link under each listing for full event details.
Tuesday, June 11
222 Tuesdays at Giorno Poetry Systems (Bowery), 4-7p 🆓 🦩 🎨 📚
An evening celebrating the opening of The Pleasure of Rebellion. Tonight celebrates the life and work of Black lesbian and feminist writers Alexis De Veaux and Cheryl Clarke, who will be in conversation with author Alexis Pauline Gumbs and Scholar-in-Residence and curator Briona Simone Jones at the Schomburg Center (Harlem), 5-8:30p 🆓 🎨 📚
PRESENTATION CLUB at Singers (Bed Stuy), 8:30p doors, 9p show 🦩 🍸
Wednesday, June 12
Member Summer Nights at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden (Crown Heights), 6-8:30p 🌳
Suzanne Harris’s An Anarchitectural Body of Work: A Conversation at Printed Matter (Chelsea and virtual), 6-8p 🆓 🎨 📚
Sherrilyn Ifill and Isaac Julien on the legacy of Frederick Douglass at MoMA (Midtown), 6-7:30p 🆓 🎨 🧠
Byline One Year Anniversary party and reading at Time Again (Lower East Side), 7-10p 🆓 🎭📚 🍸
Thursday, June 13
4N Exchange: an evening with Special Special and 4N at Printed Matter (Chelsea), 6-9p 🆓 📚🎨
Brianna Rose Brooks’ Come Back As A Flower opening reception at Deli Gallery (Tribeca), 6-8p 🆓 🎨
Book launch: Eugene Richards on Remembrance Garden at the International Center of Photography (Lower East Side), 6:30-8:30p 📚🎨 (even is free with $5 admission to ICP Late Night)
Art in Conversation: Continuum Chamber Collective (featuring the New York City premiere of Chinese composer Jie Yang’s Duo Sonata) performance at James Cohan Gallery (Tribeca), 6:30p 🎼 🎨 🆓
Abrazos de Luz curated by Guadalupe Maravilla at Performance Space New York (East Village), 7p 🎨 🎭
Book Launch: The New York Pigeon (2nd Ed) by Andrew Garn in convo w/ Rita MacMahon + Catherine Quayle at Powerhouse Arena (Dumbo), 7-9p 🆓 📚
A Night of Stop Making Sense: a screening and conversation with the Talking Heads at Kings Theater (Flatbush), 7:30p doors, 8:30p show 🎬 🎭 🎼
Friday, June 14
Tour the Park Avenue Armory (Upper East Side), 11a 🎨
Angels and Puppets: The Stage on Screen with Annie Baker film series kicks off with our favorite movie of all time, MY DINNER WITH ANDRE at Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center (Upper West Side), various times through June 20 🎬
Cause Celebre Juneteenth Performance: Last Chance Café at the Society for Ethical Culture (Upper West Side), 7-8:30p 🎭
McNally Editions Summer Party at McNally Jackson (South Street Seaport), 8p 🆓 📚 🍸
Saturday, June 15
Tour the Park Avenue Armory (Upper East Side), 11a 🎨
Schomburg Center Literary Festival at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (Harlem, runs from from 515 Malcolm X Blvd. and 135th Street, from Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Blvd. to Malcolm X Blvd), 11a-6p 🆓 📚
and 135th Street, from Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Blvd. to Malcolm X Blvd.Last day to see Maurizio Catellan’s Sunday at Gagosian on 21st (Chelsea), 10a-6p 🆓 🎨
Last day to see Tiptoeing Through the Kitchen, Recent Photography group show at Luhring Augustine (Chelsea), 10a-6p 🆓 🎨
Last day to see Sahara Longe’s Sugar at Timothy Taylor (Tribeca), 11a-6p 🆓 🎨
Last day to see Huong Dodinh’s Transcendence at Pace Gallery (Chelsea), 10a-6p 🆓 🎨
Last day to see Andy Woll’s New Paintings and Aaron Zulpo’s California Deserts at 1969 Gallery (Tribeca), 10a-6p 🆓 🎨
Last day to see Therein the Beauty group show at Marinaro Gallery (Noho), 11a-6p 🆓 🎨
Last day to see Lindsay Burke’s Stain Maker at Marinaro Gallery (Noho), 11a-6p 🆓 🎨
Last day to see Jerrell Gibb’s Language of Tears at James Cohan (Tribeca), 11a-6p 🆓 🎨
Last day to see Yun-Fei Ji’s From One Place to Another at James Cohan (Tribeca), 11a-6p 🆓 🎨
Last day to see Gesture & Form: Women in Abstraction opening reception at Almine Rech (Upper East Side), 10a-6p 🆓 🎨
Last day to see Thu-Van Tran’s In spring, ghosts return at Almine Rech (Tribeca), 10a-6p 🆓 🎨
Last day to see Leelee Kimmel’s The Wilds and the Shore at Almine Rech (Tribeca), 10a-6p 🆓 🎨
Last day to see Lauren Quin’s Logopanic at 125 Newbury (Tribeca), 10a-6p 🆓 🎨
Last day to see Amy Sillman’s To Be Other-Wise at Gladstone Gallery (Chelsea), 10a-6p 🆓 🎨
Last day to see New York, N. Why? group show (featuring work from big boys like Alex Katz and Keith Haring, and many others) at GEMS (Two Bridges), double-check the time but probably 12-5p 🆓 🎨
East Village Zine Fair co-presented by Printed Matter / St Marks and 8-Ball Community at Printed Matter on St. Mark’s (East Village), 11a-7p 🆓 📚 🎨
Salon Lulu presents The Luncheonette, a day of happenings featuring Julie Gorton portraits and other performances at Two Bridges Luncheonette (Two Bridges), 2-6p 🆓 🎨
Musicians for Justice: Juneteenth Jazz Jubilee Benefit Concert for Music on The Inside at Adler Hall at The New York Society for Ethical Culture (Upper West Side), 7p 🎼
Sunday, June 16
Green-Wood’s Greatest Hits walking tour at Green-Wood Cemetery (Greenwood Heights), 1-2:30p 🌳
Meet the BIG LIST
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THAT’S ALL, FOLKS
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