Jan Swafford, who wrote one of the best biographies of Johannes Brahms and who taught at the University of Arizona one year, and with whom I've had the pleasure of serving on a couple of panels, exposes Brahms as a master of sarcasm and ironic self-deprecation here. Not exactly the image of Brahms we get from the portraits of the serious guy with the long gray beard, but it does somehow evoke the caricature of the portly man trailed by a hedgehog.
Yesterday afternoon I drove to a coffeeshop at Speedway and Tucson Boulevard to meet an actor/playwright/producer who is moving his theater company from Phoenix to Tucson. It turns out I’d reviewed this fellow—favorably—in the first show he acted in upon moving to town a few months ago, so he seemed happy to make my acquaintance. At the beginning of the interview, he said that he’d mentioned the interview to K., the head of another theater company. K. had purportedly said, “Oh, he’s nice, and very supportive of local theater.” I feigned a smile. “Well,” I said, “supportive but honest.”
“Nice!” I can’t afford to be thought of as “nice.” A critic with a “nice” reputation is one who is too namby-pamby in his reviews, afraid to hurt somebody’s feelings with negative comments. A “nice” arts reporter is regarded as a pushover for previews of a company’s productions, even if that company has gotten ample coverage in the past. A “nice” reviewer is just a cheerleader, not somebody who offers constructive criticism when it’s called for. I’m not nice, am I?
An hour later, the interview concluded pleasantly, I returned to my car and was about to leave the parking lot when a little old lady in one of those motorized scooter-chairs pulled up alongside me. She needed to cross Speedway, she said, but she was afraid to do it alone. Could I help her? She had a small, high voice, and I could hardly hear her over the traffic, and I briefly considered pretending not to be able to understand her. It was 4 p.m., I’d been up for 12 hours, working straight through—radio announcing, CD review writing, webmastering, interviewing (twice). My cold symptoms were still lingering, and my shoulder was still aching from misuse during vacation. I was exhausted, and just wanted to go home and sit down. I did not want to help the little old lady cross the street. For all I knew she might be some raving street person who would mumble some rambling narrative about her hard life and ask for a handout. I did not want to help her cross the street. I hesitated for a moment. Then I parked the car, got out, walked to the corner with her, and served as the tall moving target for vicious drivers as she followed me across Speedway. I did not do it because I’m a “nice” person. I did it only because I couldn’t come up with a valid reason not to.
What do Burt Bacharach and Karlheinz Stockhausen have in common? Find out here.
James Reel's cranky consideration of the fine arts and public radio in Tucson and beyond.
