"I go to screenings, then plays, then after-parties, then clubs"
About this Quote
It reads like a breathless itinerary, but it’s really a manifesto for a certain kind of urban power: the power of being everywhere, and being seen being everywhere. Michael Musto isn’t bragging about stamina so much as telegraphing his job description. For a nightlife columnist-critic, culture doesn’t live in a review copy; it lives in the room, in the after-party, in the club at 2 a.m. The sentence’s rhythm matters: “then... then... then...” is a drumbeat of compulsion, a conveyor belt of scenes. No adjectives, no reflection, just forward motion. That’s the point.
The subtext is that New York’s cultural economy runs on proximity. Screenings and plays are the respectable front door; after-parties and clubs are where status consolidates, where artists, publicists, and gatekeepers exchange the real currency: access, gossip, and permission. Musto’s list collapses high and low culture into a single circuit, quietly mocking the idea that these worlds are separate. You can file a serious opinion about art and still need to know who was in the VIP banquette.
There’s a sly irony in how transactional it sounds. The line resembles a schedule you’d recite to justify your presence, like a passport stamped by institutions and dance floors. It captures an era when cultural criticism was also social choreography: the critic as anthropologist, hustler, and party guest, reporting not just on what happened onstage but on who mattered afterward.
The subtext is that New York’s cultural economy runs on proximity. Screenings and plays are the respectable front door; after-parties and clubs are where status consolidates, where artists, publicists, and gatekeepers exchange the real currency: access, gossip, and permission. Musto’s list collapses high and low culture into a single circuit, quietly mocking the idea that these worlds are separate. You can file a serious opinion about art and still need to know who was in the VIP banquette.
There’s a sly irony in how transactional it sounds. The line resembles a schedule you’d recite to justify your presence, like a passport stamped by institutions and dance floors. It captures an era when cultural criticism was also social choreography: the critic as anthropologist, hustler, and party guest, reporting not just on what happened onstage but on who mattered afterward.
Quote Details
| Topic | Live in the Moment |
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