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The Arts Intel Report

A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler

Memorial for Us All: Vanessa Williams

July 5, 2020
150 West 65th Street, New York, NY 10023, United States

“Grief is different,” Joan Didion wrote after the death, in 2003, of her husband, John Gregory Dunne. “Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.” Grief is an amorphous process, by turns mystifying, despairing, and enraging. Rituals give grieving some shape. But in this moment of isolation, in which gatherings are banned, loss is all the more disorienting. For the past nine weeks, Lincoln Center has streamed an interfaith service of remembrances—in song—for those lost to the coronavirus. Vanessa Williams hosts the next installment. —C.J.F.