Reporter’s Notebook: Bye Bye, Byline

With this story, I bid wistful farewell to nearly 14 years of reporting and writing for The Current, with the initial assignment in 2010 to cover arts, leisure and people — with “leisure” biting the title dust somewhere along the way.

During my first decade at what was then a fledgling enterprise, I wrote three features weekly, on average. During the pandemic, with shows and openings canceled, it dropped to two. Minus vacations, a rough — and mind-blowing — tally is around 1,800 stories, mostly devoted to artists of one stripe or another. 

Early on, people asked, “Is there enough to cover here?” but that has rarely been a problem. Of greater concern to me was my lack of expertise — despite growing up in Manhattan — in the visual arts. I discovered that if I ignored my novice nervousness and substituted curiosity, it helped reveal the artist’s process.

For example, take Carl Van Brunt, a longstanding Beacon gallerist and artist. In a 2016 exhibit at Theo Ganz Studio, he was excited about the digital paintings he was making. I couldn’t hook into the “fractals,” so I asked him if he could “walk me through a painting,” on the spot. He immediately became animated. Here’s an edited version of the result, as it appeared in the story:

Pointing to a leaf-like cluster motif repeated throughout one painting, Van Brunt noted: “This is one fractal. I think of it as like a walk in the woods with a camera. You take photos, then go through the images, and one strikes you and that becomes the beginning. You then play with color for the background, generate or discover other fractal images that go with that background, and overlap them.

“It’s a process of composing and layering, eliminating and adding. Finally, you reach a balance, expressive of a truth unable to be described in words or other forms.”

The results, he says, are “indeterminate, like music. I feel like I’m discovering things rather than making things; I’m finding things that are there.”

And I, too, was finally feeling it for the fractals.

Some of my favorite stories came during the pandemic. I began a series called Something You Don’t Know About Me. How else would you discover that your nonprofit-running neighbor had worked with macaques, babboons, chimpanzees and bush babies in a primate lab? Or that another neighbor, a Norwegian-born translator, was teaching herself ventriloquism?

Then there’s Richard Saunders, proprietor of Hudson Rogue framing in Nelsonville, who casually mentioned he used to be a pilot and that “maybe some people might find that interesting.” They did.

“I was flying south of Teterboro when this row of lights loomed up in front of me,” he told me. “I realized it was a jet, coming into Newark airport. I immediately hit his wake turbulence — the air that spirals off the wings — and my plane made a sharp roll to the left. I flew off my seat and my head hit the ceiling before the plane righted itself. Those moments were a little hairy.” 

The frustrating thing about this series is that, as much as I tried to cajole people into sharing their stories, they always countered: “But there’s nothing really interesting about me.” I beg to differ! Surely you have a little something? 

Another group of people I’ve enjoyed talking to is teenagers. Their point of view inevitably expands mine. I’m always impressed by their advocacy and their sense of humor. 

One of the most eye-opening interview experiences I had was speaking with Haldane actors before they performed The Laramie Project in 2019. Their impassioned discussion was inspiring. 

It felt well-timed and a bit spooky that my last few stories coincided with this year’s high school musicals — because those who know me even a little know I love a high school musical.

When Gordon Stewart, the founder of what became The Current, hired me in July 2010, the day before launching Philipstown.info, he said: “Now go on out there and find some stories.” I daresay I did.

Here’s the first one I turned in. It was posted July 10 and is surely the shortest piece I’ve ever written: 

Cooling Off at Zuzu’s

A Tuesday afternoon scorcher, in that refuge known at Zuzu’s, in Beacon, a haunt of many a Philipstowner. Even the video gamers at the Macs look too wasted by the heat to do valiant battle today. Flipping through a newspaper is as arduous as it gets. But the strains of trumpet solos give the place a sense of air, while the concoctions of Mike, the regular Tuesday afternoon java-bearer (and music-chooser) seem to lower the temperature to something fine and mellow.

After 14 years, the skirmish between practicing creative writing and those forever-looming weekly deadlines is not abating, and my conviction grows that it’s the right time to jump ship and see what ocean I land in.