That's what happens with well-kept secrets That cat gets out of the bag and the authorities step in. Yogi Berra said it best: "No one goes there anymore. It's too crowded."
Paul Holdengraber, who hosts the 'Live from the NYPL' series of guests he interviews is one such well-kept secret. Of sorts. He should be on the tourist maps. Maybe he is.
The word is out on Paul, and they're packing them in into a bigger venue at the library, the Celeste Bartos Forum event space, a beautifully domed expanse of floor and stage where Paul has all the electronic toys at his disposal. You can do a wedding here.
My first encounter with this wisp of a man was when, in 2008 I think, he hosted a forum on obituary writing. It was held in the Trustees Room, and the place became packed.
Last night was only my second attendance at a 'Live from the NYPL' with Mr. Holdengraber as the host. When I saw somewhere that he was going to interview Rosanne Cash it became an event I didn't want to miss.
I can't get the umlaut over the a in Holdengraber, but my guess is you can conclude his is a Teutonic name. He is from Austria, with a great accent that likely allows him to get away with tons of things. The NYT did a piece on him when he first arrived in New York from his prior job as a director of the Institute for Arts and Culture at the Los Angeles County Museum. He was 45 when he began his job as director of the 'Live from the NYPL' series. It has taken off.
Mr. Holdengraber is not hard to understand. He is soft-spoken and adds a delightful sound to some American words. At the obituary forum he memorably mentioned one of the most famous obituaries written, Mr. Robert McG. Thomas Jr.'s piece on the inventor of "keeeety litter."
He is meticulously prepared. The time flies. With the Austrian accent and body language in his chair, he could be a Viennese psychoanalyst, probing his patients for their id. He titled last night's presentation, "Who Is Rosanne Cash? An American Life." Rosanne Tweeted before the interview. "That's what we're discussing? omg."
But the well-prepared analyst has everything under control. He opens with a bit of what now is his Superman preamble: "Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound..." Except for Mr. Holdengraber, his purpose "is to make the lions roar...levitate the building. When you come in contact with a great idea, it can change your life."
Paul somewhat quickly ran through the introduction of Rosanne. Her work at Carnegie Hall in their Perspectives Series, topped off with her February concert, were duly noted. This gave Mr. Holdengraber the chance, and us the pleasure of hearing him pronounce, "hardscrabble" as he was outlining the theme of many of Rosanne's songs.
A good wind could probably levitate Mr. Holdengraber. He's neither tall or short, wide or skinny. He is his own storage facility for words and questions that he has prepared by getting to know his subject before the event. His simple gray suit over his prairie collar shirt, and his eyeglass adjustments up and down on his head, like a welder's visor, do give you the feeling that we're watching and listening to a live therapy session.
Rosanne admitted in an earlier Tweet days before the interview that she was a bit nervous. And at the outset, she might have been. It disappeared when she adjusted to Paul's pattern of sometimes lengthy questions and very pregnant pauses. She's a self-described tenacious woman and eventually became a good foil for Mr. Holdengraber.
We were treated to a Rorschach test with Rosanne explaining to us what the various slides meant to her that Paul was presenting on the screen. No surprises. She had given Paul, at his request, examples of some of her favorite things. Family, needlework, roses, an exploding airplane, a favorite example of an interior decorator's work, paintings, a photo of Bob Dylan, who Rosanne tells us is responsible for all the singer/songwriters after him; "without him we wouldn't be here;" the Globe Theater, an English church, a luscious looking piece of coconut cake that Rosanne swears she wants served at her funeral, and a cut from a 1917 silent film, 'Cerene,' starring Eleanora Dusa, an actress Rosanne described as the greatest actress of all time. You'll have to look her up. I had to.
There was a hand-written list from her father. The list had 11 items on it, and I can only remember four. It was not a song list, but a TO DO list filled out by her father some time ago.
Kiss June...
Try not to kiss anyone else...
Pee...
Don't make anymore lists.
At her pre-interview with Paul, Rosanne told us she assumed Paul would want to talk about her father. And of course he did. I'm sure plenty of people wanted to talk to Alice Longworth Roosevelt about her father Teddy, the president. And anyway, Paul's a shrink, so childhood is important.
We got some beautiful snippets of songs from an outstanding sound system of Johnny, so resonant and clear that you swore he might make an appearance. 'The Engineer's Dying Child,' a song I was not familiar did surprise Rosanne. She asked Paul why he used it. We didn't hear enough of the song to find out the ending, but a click to iTunes and your curiosity will be satisfied.
Various cuts from some of Rosanne's recent work were also played for enjoyment and the joy of hearing about them.
Rosanne is a Shakespeare buff. Smitten might be the better word. Check out her Twitter account (@rosannecash) today and see how her enthusiasm for the Bard got her into the Special Collections room to touch Shakespeare's First Folio.
There is also a cut of what Rosanne does when she's trying to get to sleep and can't. She offered this one on her own, but maybe Paul pried it out of her without her knowing. She is such a fan of Shakespeare that she recreates in her mind Will getting in a boat and rowing across the Thames to the house of the Master of the Revels (the Royal censor, if you will) to ask permission to stage Hamlet. He has to ask permission to stage Hamlet. Perhaps it is an odd image to associate with trying to sleep, but everything can be odd. Rosanne claims it all makes sense when you think of it: having to ask permission.
I have nothing to offer that can compare to that, and the audience didn't seem to either. There's a cut of it on Rosanne's Tweet account. What it tells me, and perhaps Rosanne, is that everyone has a boss. Here's Shakespeare, he's not yet the world's greatest living playwright and poet. He's some schnook in a rowboat, probably wearing ruffles and funny shoes, trying to get to the next part of his life, and he has to hurdle Elizabethan critics and producers. Everyone has a boss. It reminds me of the scene in the movie 'Amadeus' when the king tells Wolfgang that his opera has too many notes in it. What's a fellow to do? Write another opera? We know he did.
Rosanne let out that she likes to read obituaries. This created a little applause from the audience. It used to be if you told the audience you were from Brooklyn cheering ensued. Now, mention you like obituaries and you've reached kindred spirits and create cheering
Given Rosanne's extensive reading and storytelling gifts, it is no surprise that she like obituaries. (Paul got a little excited at that as well.) But why wouldn't she love obituaries? She's of Scotch/Irish ancestry on her father's side and we all know the Scots can make you cry just by saying "hello" and the Irish call the obituaries the Irish sports pages. I hope she has seen, or will soon see 'Obit,' a 90 minute documentary on how the NYT plans and writes its daily obituary page. I've yet to see it myself. It was shown at The Tribeca Film Festival, a New York event I'm sure Rosanne is aware of.
Rosanne did close the evening by singing two numbers: '50,000 Watts of Common Prayer,' and 'Seven Year Ache.' She did try, and partially succeeded, in getting a bit of a singalong going to accompany her on '50,000 Watts,' but I think Rosanne by now knows that a New York audience doesn't do singalong too willingly. It's like herding cats.
Everyone sitting down is about the same height. When Rosanne approaches the standing microphone that has magically appeared in front of her you realize she's not particularly tall. But once she puts her head through the guitar (also magically appears) strap that has CASH on it she is clearly in her element: a singer/ songwriter who is going to entertain you now with some of her works. The guitar is a transitional object for her. She is now as tall as any male or female singer/songwriter; she is now as tall as the Grand Ole Opry, and we're going to get a listen. This answers Mr. Holdengraber's title to the event, "Who is Rosanne Cash?" This is Rosanne Cash. Nice.
One last thing to think about. A vignette from Rosanne's travels tells of her going into a bookstore in Dublin and picking up a rather heavy book on the history of Irish music. The book is hard to take off the shelf and when she gets it down it somehow opens to a page that tells the story of a minstrel singing in the 1840s or so. A one J. Cash. She doesn't buy the book because she thought it was too expensive. But consider the following:
I had a busy afternoon in the city before the 7:00 event. I got a haircut, stopped by the opticians for new sunglasses, did a little shopping, and visited Barnes and Noble with the express purpose of buying two books I recently read book reviews on in the WSJ.
I like the theory of probability. I was first exposed to it in high school, and actually got to apply it in my work. Also at the racetrack, where I constantly try and figure out what's going to be the best bet considering who I like to win and who might finish second.
One of the books I bought is titled "Fluke: The Math and Myth of Coincidence" by Joseph Mazur. The premise is that while we see coincidence in serendipity, there are actual hard numbers having to do with probability that are driving the occurrence of what we are experiencing.
Two examples are illustrated in the review. One has to do with Anthony Hopkins finding a book on a park bench that is the title of a work that is the basis for a movie he is in--the very copy, it turns out, that belonged to the author of the work, and has his notations in it. What are the odds?
The other is the story of an American children's book author, Anne Parrish, strolling through the used book stalls along the Seine in 1929 and spotting a copy of a book she always loved as a child. She buys it and brings it back to her husband, who after a bit of page flipping tells her it is her childhood copy, with her name in it. Goose pimple time, right?
The author, Joseph Mazur expounds on these seemingly random events and assigns probability values to them. He makes calculations. He answers with what he thinks the odds are.
Here's Rosanne, telling us about a book in Dublin, on Irish music, that opens to a page that tells the story of a minstrel whose first initial and last name correspond to her father's name. And I've got a book under my seat that assigns probability to such events.
But here's one for Mr. Mazur. What are the chances that the day after Rosanne's appearance at NYPL the WSJ does an A-Hed piece (front page, below the fold) on Folsom Prison completing a Johnny Cash memorial recreational walk on the prison grounds, not to be used by the prisoners, but the general public? Apparently there is enough land to do this and not compromise prison security.
What are the odds of that? I'll bet he has an answer.
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