The Unclad Soul

I am a Netflix and Amazon Prime fanatic. There are so many good series on these streaming platforms. I have written about some of them here before. I recently started watching “Mozart in the Jungle,” an Amazon Prime series and a Golden Globe winner. It is in its fourth season and I have watched from the beginning. I’m now into season 3. And I’m totally captivated. The show is about relationships, ambition, failure, jealousy, and of course, music, and a passion for life, all set around a New York City symphony. The characters are smart, talented, zany, conflicted, and charming. A retiring and testy maestro, (Malcomb McDowell), is replaced by the young Rodrigo, a Mexican genius and a playful eccentric. Played by Gael Garcia Bernal, Rodrigo gives the series a magical energy and joy that fits perfectly with the other talented actors. Early in the series, Hailey Rutledge (the loveable Lola Kirke), a sweet twentysomething oboist trying to earn a spot in the symphony, is aske...

The masterminds of 911, whether they intended to be or not, were geniuses. Not because they managed in the most terrifying way to collapse the Twin Towers but because their hideous act successfully severed our nation from its bearings. They didn’t just viciously murder nearly 3,000 Americans and temporarily shut down various financial institutions and disrupt the flow of commerce for a while. That wasn’t their goal. They created an ominous, debilitating, relentless fear among us. A terrorizing fear that still to this day remains in force in the lives of so many Americans. A fear writhing and twisting in hate. An irrational fear. A fear that gallops headstrong through our churches and schools, our Congress, our businesses and our homes. And that fear has made us so distrusting of people, so neurotically detached from reality, so emotionally hardened, bigoted and vengeful, that it is in many ways destroying us. That’s what terror is supposed to do. Weaken. Cripple. Confound. Torment. Di...