TALES OF LOHR: HANIF ABDURRAQIB'S "A LITTLE DEVIL IN AMERICA"

Considering some "Notes In Praise of Black Performance"

Regular readers of this newsletter, social-media followers, and anyone who’s found themselves unfortunately dragooned into a conversation with me in the last month or so knows one overarching fact that is driving my existence at this moment in time: I am going to New York City. In just nine days, in fact, I will board a flight for my fourth annual weeklong visit to Gotham. For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been deep in trip-prep mode, buying travel toiletries, finalizing reservations for shows and concerts I’ll be taking in, museums and restaurants I'll be visiting. But I’ve also been readying my mind and body for an element of this excursion that all of us engage in when we travel, an aspect of public leisure that is far too seldom seriously considered, in any real depth, by many of us. The lion’s share of my New York visits is always occupied by arts and music consumption. Thus, I am currently engaged in the process of preparing to present to the world, for seven days straight, as Aesthete Matt. Last week’s clothes-shopping outing was a critical component of this getting-into-character procedure. Is this shirt hip enough for the kind of guy you’d see hanging out in a basement jazz club in the Village? Are these trousers too dressy for taking in a burlesque variety show on the Lower East Side? If my new Doc Martens don’t fit right, how will all of New York know that my glasses and sensible haircut in no way subdue my sometimes covert but still vital rabble-rouser’s edge?