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Danielle Deadwyler’s Gravity-Shifting Intensity

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story “I like to keep the body active,” Danielle Deadwyler said, as she placed me in the center console of her car. It was a Monday in Atlanta, and we were video-chatting…

Highlights from the Under the Radar Theatre Festival

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Trying to see every play in January is a fool’s errand. The various experimental-theatre festivals all happen at once. Even if you run from pillar to post, you’ll miss something—some dreamy…

Ahmad Jamal Was a Modest Colossus of Jazz

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story The musician Ahmad Jamal, who died on Sunday at the age of ninety-two, was a modest colossus of jazz who subtly cast his musical imagination across a wide spectrum of forms…

Lana Del Rey’s New Album Searches for Transcendence

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Lana Del Rey doesn’t toy with signs—of American glamour and its decay, of female melancholia and racial desire—so much as consecrate them.Photograph by Rich Fury / Getty One thing about Lana…

Nick Cave on the Fragility of Life

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Since the late nineteen-seventies, the Australian musician Nick Cave has given voice to our gnarliest impulses and fears. As a founding member of the cacophonous post-punk band the Birthday Party, he…

My Thirty Favorite Albums of 2021

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Many albums released in 2021 were pandemic records. Some were recorded in isolation; others were slated for earlier release, shelved, then put out into the world belatedly; a lot of them…

The Best Music of 2021

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Some of my earliest memories involve repeatedly slamming a sticky forefinger onto the Rewind and Play buttons of a two-tone Fisher-Price cassette player. Long before I was able to respond to…

How I Learned to Concentrate

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story I arrived at M.I.T. in the fall of 2004. I had just turned twenty-two, and was there to pursue a doctorate as part of something called the Theory of Computation group—a…