These women were so large… so encompassing in their warmth and passion, even for their audience of white women, that I was stunned—this is the way we can all go, I thought, if we have the courage, we who are all hurt to some greater or lesser degree by the cruelties and injustices of this society.
Doris Duke and Me: Dancing
Doris Duke practiced with Martha Graham’s company in New York and proudly wore their black satin jacket with her name and the company’s name on the back.
Doris Duke In Love
Was Doris Duke in love with, or—more cogently—did she love any of these men, or the six or seven others who took up portions of her life? Hard to say.
Doris Duke, Pop Music, and Me
Doris, high-diving, surfing in Hawaii, battling the waves on a stormy day off Newport as she had ever since childhood, might have resisted pop music’s anthem of female submission.
A Terrible Admission
I must make a terrible admission: I believe Stephen Sondheim is the most talented composer of this century or any other. Yes—not Bach, Mozart or any of the other so-called on greats we are called on to worship from grade school on, but dear, beautiful, ironic, soulful Sondheim.
Bailouts in the Land of Duende
Today’s Spanish newspaper announces that the bailout from the European Union, a sum of money too large for me to imagine, is going to happen, although a woman I spoke with yesterday says no one knows where the money is really going-probably to the banks, as in the U.S.
Something Changes in Me… Music and Revolution
Perhaps we no longer believe we can roar.