I was not that moved by the death of James Brown, as I have never listened to his music in more than bits and pieces. Obviously, that also means that I was never that moved by his music, or I would have explored it further.

But the drawing in the "Goings on about Town" section of the Dec. 25/Jan. 1 issue of The New Yorker did move me: a red-black-brown-and-green image of James Brown singing, one arm raised in the air to celebrate or preach, with the caption "James Brown plays B.B. King's on New Year's Eve." Since he died on Christmas Day and I read the issue only during the first week of January, this picture became very moving suddenly (reminding me of the photos William Hurt looks at in Smoke, thinking they are all the same, but suddenly his dead wife is in two of them).