Luke Bronin's Cultural Life.
You will want the two-term mayor of Hartford in your book club, poetry class or band after discovering the highlights of his cultural life.
Welcome to the third edition of Now You Know. You will be enriched by spending a few minutes learning what Luke Bronin reads, watches and listens to. The Yale graduate and Rhodes Scholar also shares reflections on coming through the storm of serious illness.
The former Navy reservist cannot resist the charms of Taylor Swift on the morning school run. Full marks to the Democrat’s daughter for sharing the delights of Derry Girls with her dad. She has a future. So does her father but he does not disclose here what it might be after he leaves office on December 31st, when he may have time to get back to the dobro.
Favorite author or book.
Maybe risking eye-rolls with this one, but it’s a tie with two clear winners. One is Moby Dick, and the other is War and Peace. I go back to each of them every few years and get consumed by them for a few weeks. One of my favorite memories is staying up all night more than twenty years ago on the deck of a whaling ship at Mystic Seaport for a twenty-four hour reading of Moby Dick, where everyone signed up to read a chapter aloud. Apparently, they still do it, though I probably couldn’t do the full twenty-four hours anymore. But there’s nothing like the poetry, depth, irreverence, mysticism, darkness, and humor of Moby Dick. Also love that you can pick it up and turn to any chapter and just enjoy the language, even if you’re not reading it front to back. War and Peace is the well I go to when I feel the need to check out and wrestle with the question of what really matters. The hunting visit to the uncle in the country is one of my favorite parts of any book.
The book you are reading.
Right now I’m reading two books — Barkskins by Annie Proulx, and A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. I had to take a break from A Little Life because it was just too intense and painful, but I’ll probably pick it up again. Barkskins hasn’t moved me as much as The Shipping News did (an earlier Proulx book), but I’m really enjoying it. My favorite books so far this year were Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (brutal and beautiful) and Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr.
The book you couldn’t finish.
Could list a bunch here, but my biggest failure is probably The Power Broker, Robert Caro’s biography of Robert Moses. Started it three times. It’s a great book, but massive. And while I tore through all four volumes of Caro’s Johnson biographies, I’ve never made it past the first half of The Power Broker.
The book you’ve long intended to read but never get to.
Also stiff competition for this one — so many books I haven’t gotten to. For fiction, The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis has been on my shelf for twenty five years, so that’s one answer. Some day. And for non-fiction, Gordon Wood’s The Creation of the American Republic.
Most memorable live performance.
The 2018 Farm Aid concert at the Xfinity Theater in Hartford is one that I’ll never forget. Incredible lineup, including Chris Stapleton, who I think is the best, most soulful contemporary country singer and songwriter. The show culminated, of course, with Willie Nelson, who may not have the vocal dexterity he used to have but still has all the power. In the encore, I got to join the ensemble on stage to sing This Land is Your Land, and I’m not sure that many moments in life (other than with my kids) will rise above that.
Your best binge.
My oldest daughter and I recently binged the show Derry Girls. Haven’t laughed so hard in years, and we’ve already gone back to rewatch some episodes. Just as funny the second and third time.
Favorite TV series.
Gotta be The Wire. Runners up are The West Wing, Madmen, the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and Derry Girls.
A YouTube video you find yourself returning to.
A young Steve Irwin telling the TV show host and cameraman that a python is at that moment biting his neck, and then asking the cameraman to change the angle on the shot so that he can see better. Obama singing Amazing Grace. Lucille Ball in the chocolate factory.
Favorite piece of music.
Favorite song of all time is probably Thunder Road. And it’s my go-to karaoke song, even though it deserves to be treated better. Favorite album of all time is probably Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks. And if I really just want to lose myself in music, my two favorite pieces are Samuel Barber’s adagio for strings or Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto. Either one stops time.
The music that cheers you up.
Bluegrass, in general. Especially if I’m driving somewhere with the windows down. That said, if I had to pick one album to cheer me up, the one that comes to mind is Grateful Dead’s American Beauty. They’re great songs, and they open a lane back to a time in life when the future felt like it stretched out endlessly. Never really was a “Dead Head,” but there’s something about those songs that’s so free and easy and the underproduced and imperfect sound makes it better.
If you could own one painting it would be…
Almost any large canvas painting by Wolf Kahn. And probably one without a structure, just the trees. I feel at home in the New England woods, and his paintings bring that sense of home and contemplative calm — but with such striking, unlikely colors that make them mysterious and dreamlike. Deeply familiar and other-worldly at the same time.
The lyrics you wish you’d written.
Going to give more than one. First, almost any line from Kris Kristofferson’s Bobby McGee. “Feeling nearly faded as my jeans…” “With those windshield wipers slapping time…” Also, although I’m not much of a drinker (and not a user), it’s hard to beat “well I woke up Sunday morning, with no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt” in Sunday Morning Coming Down.
And of course lots by Bob Dylan, including so many lines from Shelter from the Storm. And from Mr. Tambourine Man: “Yes to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free…”
The poem/song that makes you wonder.
The Lake Isle of Innisfree by Yeats. I love people, politics, and action. But sometimes I also feel that deep urge to withdraw and be still, closer to the earth. Don’t know whether I ever actually can or will, but Innisfree does make me wonder. I read it recently for the first time in a while, and maybe it’s just that the last eight years have been a long and consuming eight years, but the poem was more powerful than ever. But one of my other favorite poems is sort of the opposite of Innisfree — Tennyson’s Ulysses, which is full of restlessness, determination, aspiration. So together, they really make me wonder about where and how best to find fulfillment. In stillness, or in action.
The instrument you wish you’d learned to play.
Pedal steel. When I was in college, I worked on learning the dobro, which is the closest I got. Don’t have a shred of skill left and wish I had kept that up. But the instrument that I never learned and really wish that I could play is pedal steel. It’s so beautiful and full, and it can be so haunting and mournful, too.
Your guiltiest cultural pleasure.
I try to get mad at my son for watching Mr. Beast on YouTube, but I can’t help thinking some of his videos are hilarious. [Note: Mr. Beast has more than 38 million subscribers on his YouTube channel, making him a cultural phenomenon.] Also, for a long time I didn’t tell my kids that I keep listening to Taylor Swift after I drop them off at school.
You wasted an evening…
Watching clips of Tim Robinson’s I Think You Should Leave back to back. Like, yesterday.
Something that ought to be better known.
How much of our bodies are made up of separate organisms, especially in the gut — and the role they play in everything from physical resilience to mental and emotional responses. This is something that I paid a little more attention to as I dealt with colitis, and especially after I had my colon removed altogether last year. It’s scary, humbling, and kind of awe-inspiring to think about how much of what we think of as our “self” isn’t really ourselves at all. And also to think about how little we really understand about our own bodies, even now.
A recent discovery.
I recently listened to a series of lectures from Alan Watts, the zen philosopher and self-described spiritual entertainer who lectured in the ‘60s, and I’ve already begun listening to them a second time. The lectures are, as advertised, entertaining. But they really did make me think differently, at least briefly. Can’t claim to be very good at hanging on to the lessons, but maybe they planted some seeds.
Two podcasts you try not to miss.
Try not to miss the Ezra Klein Podcast and tried not to miss “Intelligence Matters” by Mike Morrell while he was doing it. (The second one’s on hiatus now, so I have to find another one.) Ezra Klein has such a stunningly broad range, and he makes you feel like you’re in conversation with some of the most interesting people in the world. And since my day to day is focused on problems that are as local as you get, Mike Morrell’s podcast kept me connected to one of my other passions, which is foreign affairs and national security. Need to find a good replacement. Also listen to the BBC Global News Podcast.
You’re having a fantasy dinner party, you’ll invite these guests…..
Bruce Springsteen, Jerry Brown, Ada Limon, Kendrick Lamar, Sonia Sotomayor, and Colin McEnroe.
The place you feel happiest.
Two answers again. One is just at home reading with one of my kids. Second is on the Connecticut River. My folks live in Essex now, and I’ve been able to get out kayaking on the river some weekends. Especially in the early morning when the water is still, it’s so peaceful and also so full of life. I love it.
Books and movies you would recommend to an aspiring politician.
For books, two: Carl Sandburg’s biography of Abraham Lincoln, and Robert Caro’s biographies of Lyndon Johnson. For movies… I know, I know, but still… The Godfather and The Candidate. (Currently free on YouTube.).
A speech that continues to inspire you.
A few again. First, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s final speech… “I’ve been to the mountaintop.” Churchill’s “Never Give In” speech. Barack Obama’s 2004 convention speech, which I heard in person and which stopped me in my tracks as I was walking around the hall. I hope that we can someday recapture its spirit, which seems so impossibly distant now: “[T]here is not a liberal America and a conservative America; there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America.” And although Douglas MacArthur is rightly controversial, his farewell speech to the cadets at West Point — “duty, honor, country” — gives me chills every time I hear it.
And now a few words from the editor. Since Luke Bronin is the mayor of Hartford, this is a good time to pay a small tribute to its greatest performer, Sophie Tucker, a singing star in much of the world for six decades of the 20th century. She maintained strong ties to the region and was a generous benefactor to her local synagogue and the Hebrew Home. When she died in 1966 at age 79, a railroad car was hired to bring mourners from New York to her funeral at Weinstein Mortuary. The New York Times reported 500 people attended.
Miss Tucker’s vast and enduring appeal is not immediately apparent in the 21st century. Carol Channing tells a short story about Sophie and a casino stick man.
Here she is singing the song that made her a star, Some of These Days, in one of her many appearances on the popular Ed Sullivan Show.
Connecticut is so lucky to have him and you. Kevin, this is fascinating stuff. Though I could never stomach treacly Yeats. But amen to Bobbie McGee.