ACROSS
1 Los Angeles 
player
4 Dancer Charisse
7 1938 “The War of 
the Worlds” radio 
broadcaster
10 Chewed-over 
material
13 The Obama 
years, e.g.
14 Cube that rolls
15 “The Murders in 
the __ Morgue”
16 Harlem 
Globetrotters 
promoter 
Saperstein
17 Feel out of sorts
18 Official reproach
20 Diamond, for one
21 Not of the clergy
23 Peaceful ’60s 
protest
24 Sandwich with 
tzatziki sauce
25 Vermeer, notably
28 Cold response?
31 Actor Pesci
32 __ Free: caffeine-
free soda
36 They’re bound 
to sell
37 CIO partner
38 Hides from 
animals
39 Remove, as a 
knot
40 10% of MDX
41 Poky one
42 London gallery
43 Unisex fragrance
45 Strings for 
Orpheus
46 “Just like that!” 
sound
47 High 
temperature
48 Abbr. in job titles
49 2001 Pixar hit, 
and a hint to the 
start of 19-, 22- 
and 24-Down
52 Spanish 
surrealist
53 Poker variety
55 Formally ask for
58 Ignore the alarm 
clock
61 Come before
62 Ceramic 
casserole dish
63 Ancient land 
in the Fertile 
Crescent
64 Still going on

DOWN
1 Authentic
2 Diva’s moment
3 West African 
country
4 Atlanta-based 
health agcy.
5 Traffic directive
6 Guess apparel
7 Luxury voyage 
vessel
8 Seriously 
overcooked
9 “Capisce?”
10 Shrewd
11 Car service app
12 Floor sample
19 1989 Al Pacino 
thriller
22 Website’s list of 
browser data 
rules
24 Magic ring-
wielding 
superhero
26 Get beaten
27 “House” actor 
Omar
28 Borders on
29 Sir Arthur __ 
Doyle
30 Spicy Mexican 
wraps
33 Serves as 
matchmaker

34 Uses a swizzle 
stick
35 Daysail 
destination
43 Mike Trout and 
Mickey Mantle, 
by pos.
44 Hectic hosp. 
areas
50 More pleasant
51 Grenoble’s river
52 British bombshell 
Diana

54 Use the good 
china, say
55 Healthful 
getaway
56 Despot portrayed 
by Forest
57 Drink from a 
kettle
58 “The Simpsons” 
disco guy
59 Cariou of “Blue 
Bloods”
60 Actor Beatty

By C.C. Burnikel
©2018 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
09/12/18

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

09/12/18

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Wednesday, September 12, 2018

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Anxiety in the key of Stevie Wonder 

In April, I’m asked to write 

about an album cover I think is 
important, and I choose Talking 
Book by Stevie Wonder. I admire 
its candor and closeness: the first 
album cover to show him without 
his glasses. He looks more 
vulnerable than on his previous 
covers, 
and 
simultaneously 

more introspective and mature. 
I admire Wonder for his drive 
to evolve, to maneuver through 
new sounds and 
ideas; by 21, he 
was writing and 
producing 
all 

his own music. 
He had an early 
pop phase and a 
“classic period,” 
all by the time he 
was 25. I yearn 
for that level of 
self-awareness, 
self-confidence, 
self-sufficiency.

I listen to the 

album while I’m 
writing, and I get 
addicted. I march 
around town to 
the twangy beat 
of “Maybe Your 
Baby,” 
the 
sly 

chorus 
echoing 

on a loop in my head: “Maybe 
your baby done made some other 
plans.”

Midsummer, I buy a record 

player from an old high school 
classmate for 40 dollars. I’ve 
always wanted a record player. 
I don’t own any records other 
than a few I found for free 
at a yard sale last summer in 
Baltimore — some Tchaikovsky 
and Mozart, the Beach Boys’ 
L.A. (Light Album), a frayed folk 

compendium, 
Eminem’s 
The 

Marshall Mathers LP — because 
until now I’ve never had a valid 
reason to buy them. I ask my 
brother if I can look through 
his 
collection, 
gifted 
from 

my grandfather several years 
ago, and in those cardboard 
boxes, I unearth gold mines: 
Louis Prima, Ray Charles, The 
Beatles, Aretha Franklin. The 
one Stevie Wonder record I find 
is Talking Book, and I listen to it 
about twice as often as I listen to 
everything else combined.

As I’m nearing the end of a 

novel I’ve been 
working on for 
six 
months, 

my family flies 
west 
to 
visit 

the 
National 

Repertory 
Orchestra. 
In 

Denver, we see an 
exhibit featuring 
works by Jeffrey 
Gibson, 
which 

incorporates 
beading, 
weaving, 
neon 

lights, electricity, 
video and color 
all over the place. 
I’m 
enamored. 

The 
exhibit 
is 

titled 
“Like 
a 

Hammer,” 
after 

the 
idea 
that 

someone who is “like a hammer” 
is “capable of building up and 
tearing down.”

One material Gibson uses is 

song lyrics, and I spend several 
minutes staring at a decorated 
punching bag entitled “You 
Can Feel It All Over.” The 
description on the wall quotes 
“Sir Duke” and mentions the 
creative venture of reworking 
the words, of channeling joy 
into pain and vice versa. I take a 

picture of the punching bag and 
the description.

Writing the last chapter or 

two of my book on this trip, I 
start thinking about what will 
come afterward: I’m proud of 
the book, and I want to query 
it, to enter it in contests, to find 
an agent and get it published. 
I’m 
indirect 
and 
wishful 

when I talk about these things 
with my family and friends — 
 

“Published? If only,” I say, or, 
“That would be a 
dream come true” 
— but it is what 
I want. If not for 
this book, then for 
the next I write, or 
the next. However 
long it takes, it’s 
what I want, less 
in a dream way, 
more in a goal way.

I’m not close, 

but I do feel closer 
with 
this 
book 

than 
I’ve 
ever 

felt before. The 
prospect 
makes 

me 
incredibly 

nervous. I think 
about 
failure 

constantly. I teeter 
between optimism 
and 
realism, 

excitement 
and 

levelheadedness. 
Day by day, I coach 
myself with the 
same advice Stevie 
Wonder will give me later in the 
summer: “Be cool. Be calm. Keep 
yourself 
together.” 
Someday 

it will strike me as funny how 
that’s what the song tells you to 
do when the music itself sounds 
so jittery and urgent.

I start revising, and as I revise, 

I begin finding weak words in 
all of my writing: “felt like,” 
“slightly,” “kind of.” “Maybe” 
seems particularly common. Is 
particularly common.

Even when Wonder’s songs 

are excited and happy, there’s 
an element of apprehension. I 
know everyone relates to music 
differently, and this could be 
my own projecting. But I can’t 
think of him without thinking 
of the restlessness of “Higher 
Ground,” the bursting nostalgia 
of “I Wish,” the existential 
wariness of “Pastime Paradise.” 
The insecurity of “All Day 
Sucker,” “My World Is Empty 
Without You” and “Bang Bang 
(My Baby Shot Me Down).” 
Sometimes it’s in the melody, 
sometimes the lyrics, sometimes 
both. Yet I continue to associate 
Wonder’s music with happiness, 
the way I always have: music for 
a good mood, for inspiration, 
faith, joy, for picking yourself 
back up again.

I have my first real panic 

attack in June. I’m actually not 
sure if it’s the first I’ve ever had, 
but it’s the first I’ve decided to 
name, anyway. Two hours later, 
I drive the five hours from Ind. 
to Mich. I usually listen to music 
the whole way. It’s a tradition 
I love: singing my heart out, 
alone and loving it. A five-hour-
long concert where the venue 
is my car and the star and the 
audience are both me, no one 
else to worry about.

This time, I worry about 

everything 
that 
crosses 
my 

mind. I listen to half of “Hem of 
Her Dress” by First Aid Kit, two 
or three minutes, then turn the 
music off in the middle of the 
song. The rest of the five-hour 
drive I spend in silence.

I get startled easily. I say 

this sentence all the time as 
half-explanation, 
half-apology 

for jumping into the air when 
someone 
surprises 
me 
by 

opening a door or saying “hello” 
when I didn’t know they were 
there. Lately, it’s been getting 
pretty comical. A dog will start 
barking, and I’ll fall out of my 
chair. Sometimes I even gasp, my 
hand flying to my heart like I’m 
a woman out of some Southern 
melodrama. 
I 
don’t 
know 

whatever got me 
to be so uptight 
(“everything is 
all right,” my 
mind sings), but 
this is one of 
the things about 
myself 
I’ve 

decided to just 
go with.

Sometimes 

I get tired of 
music. I love it, 
and I surround 
myself 
with 

other 
people 

who love it, and 
it 
seems 
like 

they never get 
tired of it. But 
I do. I get tired 
of books, too, 
reading 
and 

writing. 
My 

passions 
stem 

from the works 
and people who 
make me back 

up to the things I love: Mitski. 
 

“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the 
Galaxy.” Haydn. Tomi Adeyemi. 
First Aid Kit.

This happens to me toward 

the end of Aug., with Stevie 
Wonder’s Down to Earth. I’m 
finally about to start querying 
my science fiction novel, and 
Down To Earth is exactly where 
I’d like to be, so I put it on shuffle 
at the beginning of a 20-minute 
car ride.

I’ve never heard of it before, 

and when I press play, I’m 
expecting to have to skip songs, 
make 
concessions. 
But 
I’ve 

underestimated Wonder, who 
was only 16 when he released 
it. The album wraps me up 
and carries me away. Suddenly 
there’s no place I’d rather be than 
here, “Sixteen Tons” trailing me 
like a ghost on a moonlit drive. 
Pulling up next to my mother’s 
house to “A Place in the Sun,” I 
spend five minutes accelerating 
and reversing, inching my car 
closer to the curb, even though 
it’s the suburbs and nobody 
cares. No one will crash into me 

LAURA DZUBAY

Daily Arts Writer

UNIVERSAL MUSIC NEW ZEALAND

MUSIC NOTEBOOK

How I learned to 
dance on two feet

MUSIC NOTEBOOK

I’ve always been a bit of 

an awkward dancer, far more 
comfortable tossing my body 
around in a crowded concert 
pit than following any sort 
of rhythm. Being a closeted 
homosexual for nearly 20 
years certainly didn’t help, 
fueling my anxiety over my 
outward image — constantly 
battling the “faggot”s spewed 
my 
way 
throughout 
my 

teenage years, the “Still no 
girlfriend?”s from my family, 
the urges to belt out some 
Britney Spears lyrics at the 
top of my lungs.

It was, in no lesser words, 

exhausting.

And then I moved to college 

and I began to go to house 
parties and then bars where 
dancing is the social norm, 
and I was absolutely mortified 
(unless my BAC was a bit 
higher than what is considered 
“healthy,” of course). I was 
mostly conservative on the 
dance 
floor, 
moving 
only 

one foot at a time, never 
daring to risk the fluidity, 
the natural ease of two feet. 
The 
deeply 
internalized 

homophobia 
of 
my 
youth, 

steeped in Catholicism, was a 
fickle venom, infecting all my 
actions with “What if this is 
too gay?”

Making the full leap from 

punk and indie to pop was a 
bit of an awkward period in 
my life. Spending my high 
school years as a “scene” kid 
whose 
playlists 
consisted 

heavily of Passion Pit, A Day 
To Remember and Modern 
Baseball, I only began to really 
explore my love for pop music 
during my last year living in 
my parents’ home; I waited for 
eight hours in line for a Marina 
and the Diamonds concert, 
accompanied by flashes of 
embarrassment with an outfit 
on that was far better suited 
for Warped Tour.

Lorde’s 
Pure 
Heroine, 

Taylor Swift’s Red and Lana 
Del Rey’s Born To Die were 
absolutely 
critical 
albums 

during this volatile period 
in my life, helping me get in 

touch with a vulnerability I 
repeatedly swallowed out of 
fear. Lorde’s “Ribs” helped 
me make peace with growing 
up; “All Too Well” gave me 
a glimpse of the intimacy 
I denied myself during my 
adolescence; 
“Off 
To 
The 

Races” showed me the power 
in femininity.

Slowly but surely, I began to 

surround myself with people 
who made me feel more at ease 
in my own skin, mostly fellow 
queers who helped me find my 
rhythm in my newfound love 
of pop. Without even realizing 
it, I began to dance with two 
feet, to allow my hands to 
rise above my head and fall 
to my knees. After living 
years and years on a tense 
ledge threatening to crumble 
beneath me at any moment, 
it was like having lungs that 
fully inflated for the first 
time. I had finally learned to 
love the music that had always 
drawn me like a magnet.

I mentioned before that I 

didn’t notice when or how I 
began to dance with two feet 
because it was like learning to 
ride a bike. Now, the occasional 
instances of homophobia don’t 
hurt me the way one would 
expect anymore, like a slap 
to the face or a dagger to the 
heart. Rather, it now serves 
as a reminder to shake my ass 
the second I hear the deep 
bass of Ariana Grande’s “Into 
You” burst through a speaker, 
to share a drunken screech 
of excitement at the opening 
saxophone 
of 
Carly 
Rae 

Jepsen’s “Run Away with Me” 
and let it all go when Lorde’s 
“Supercut” rings through my 
ears.

I went out to Rick’s a few 

days ago, possibly the most 
oppressively 
anti-queer 

establishment in Ann Arbor, 
and rather than feeling the 
effects of the old venom that 
haunted my veins, I finally 
noticed just how comfortable I 
finally was on the dancefloor. 
Like learning how to ride a 
bike, the hypervisibility that 
is inevitably forced upon me 
in a space like Rick’s didn’t 
cost me my newfound rhythm 
rather reinforced it as a life 
skill.

DOMINIC POLSINELLI

Senior Arts Editor

here. I just want to hear the end 
of the song.

A few minutes later, like a 

cliché or a fiction, I pause in 
the middle of “The Lonesome 
Road” and turn off the car.

I don’t think about Stevie 

Wonder all the time, or I didn’t 
use to. Most of the moments I 
thought about him this summer 
didn’t feel like landmarks at the 
time, and it’s only in looking 
back that I see any thread at 
all. At the time they only felt 
like moments that were worth 
attending to. I’m hoping that’s 
the case with this piece of 
writing; I’m writing it because 
I can’t sort through myself 
alone and no musician can do it, 
either, not even Stevie Wonder, 
but there are times when it 
feels like the two might help 
each other along. This piece 

isn’t meant to be entirely about 
Stevie Wonder, but I wouldn’t 
have included him if I’d thought 
it was entirely about me, either. 
It’s about something in between 
somewhere — about the way 
music enters our lives, not 
only as a soundtrack, but as a 
translation of something very 
close to us, a message to be 
decoded.

It occurred to me as strange 

the other day that “Angel Baby 
(Don’t You Ever Leave Me)” 
never got as popular as “Uptight 
(Everything’s 
Alright).” 
It’s 

catchy and just as upbeat. Maybe 
it’s because it’s a more insecure 
song and people really do want 
everything to be alright. Then 
again, “Superstition” was a hit, 
so maybe I’m wrong. Maybe 
people love a good anxiety 
story.

Even when 

Wonder’s songs 
are excited and 
happy, there’s 
an element of 
apprehension

Sometimes I get 
tired of music. 
I love it, and I 

surround myself 

with other 

people who love 
it, and it seems 
like they never 

get tired of it. But 

I do

6A — Wednesday, September 12, 2018
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

