It’s Wednesday, which means the Silent Reading Party is tonight! You can get your ticket here.
Reasons to attend:
1. Paul Matthew Moore’s piano music is the only relaxing thing left in this hell-world.
2. Special guest E. J. Koh will be there!!
3. This is a way to chip in a little to help The Stranger (where would you be without our election endorsements?!) while getting the live-music equivalent of Xanax broadcast into your brain.
If you’re not familiar with the Silent Reading Party, here’s what the New York Times had to say about it:
My silent reading party begins the same way every week, promptly at 6 p.m., with the now very familiar initiation of a Zoom call. A piano player’s hands appear in close-up among the gallery of boxes on my screen. His set list, a mix of Eric Satie and Radiohead instrumentals, will be the only sound. Like the windows of a New York City apartment building at night, other boxes soon come to life. People are in their homes, on their couches or in bed, all with a book. A hundred, then two hundred, absorbed in their reading, muted.
There’s a gray-haired woman at her kitchen table, more daydreaming than reading. There are couples, some eating bowls of pasta; a mother and daughter snuggling on a sofa; a woman petting her dog in front of a fireplace; a young man and woman sitting in armchairs dressed in a suit and sequin gown, martinis in their free hands. One week, I counted five cats, nine dogs and 22 glasses of wine. Inside one unforgettable box was a woman lying on her red leather couch, her book resting on her chest and her eyes closed — she’d fallen asleep. This lasts two hours. It’s mesmerizing, found performance art.
It is also literally the safest possible party you can attend right now.
Grab a ticket and get your snack tray ready—given the heat, I’m getting out the blender to make an icy beverage—and see you at 6 pm!
