Ascending a Memory

Today I am going to do it. I will exit my parked car, walk to the west edge of the campus and gaze down into the gorge that separates the school from the residential street beyond. I will grab the sturdy wrought-iron handrail, walk down the steep stairs, cross the bridge, and ascend back up into the neighborhood where I once lived. This staircase is burned into my memory, for I traversed it daily when I studied here at the North Carolina School of the Arts in the 1970s.

Of course, the staircase of my memory is not the one we see today. This one has level, tiered concrete steps and a nicely crafted wooden bridge with solid railings raised many feet above the creek. The sides of the gorge have been reinforced with stone blocks, and an atmospheric bench stands on the landing, just in case one needs a rest! Trust me, this structure did not span the gulch in 1971.

Back then, the school was new and small, her campus consisting primarily of a grandiose building that had been a high school in the 1920s, a theater whose details I cannot recall, and a dorm. The library was at the end of the main building, probably in the same spot as the original high school library. Along that corridor, two classrooms had been turned into a dance studio. Going to the library to borrow musical scores, one inevitably passed the open door of this studio and could feel the thick air and sweat pouring off the dancers.

The school was in its N-I-C-C period: New, Intense, Colorful, and undeniably Crazy. The late sixties hit this place hard. There were kids of celebrities enrolled too, which made it even crazier. I remember seeing the son of Dave Brubeck. I also remember longing after the gloriously handsome Kurt Yaghjian, famous for his heartbreaking portrayal as Amahl in the early televised runs of Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitor. I wanted to talk to him a hundred times, but never got closer than the front row, soaking in his dashing portrayal of Nathan Detroit in the school’s lavish production of Guys and Dolls. 

Three of my biggest revelations came to me here at this school. First I discovered ballet, shocked to learn that dancers’ feet bleed while their muscular bodies torture themselves to create ephemeral beauty. Secondly, I fell head-over-heels in love with opera—a love that continues to shape my life today. And finally, I had my perceptions of music turned upside down by the most significant teacher of my life, my piano teacher Clifton Matthews (about whom I have spoken in my courses, in talks, and in these pages).

But as sometimes happens in life, a person can wander into a garden of riches and still not know how to harvest its fruits. Defeated, I left after two semesters, not grasping that I had been utterly changed or that the foundations of my life’s work had been laid.

Rather, I saw myself as a failure, unable to meet the rigorous standards for surviving the program. I lacked the all-important perspective that whispers into one’s ear: “Okay, you are behind right now, but just hang in there, and you will make it!”

Where does a staircase or gorge fit into all of this? I’ll tell you.

Late at night, after grappling with Prokofiev sonatas or Bach fugues, I would emerge from the practice room, put my head down, and trudge towards the gorge to walk home. I have a vague memory that the school did not like us to use this unsafe passageway, and that the neighbors on the other side were upset to find “questionable arts’ students” popping up in what was essentially their back yard.

Still there was no other way to get home. I had no car. And, yes, sometimes I slipped a bit on the root-gorged, slanted terrain above the spot where some wooden steps were laid. Those steps were slick most of the time because a seasonal creek ran through the bottom of the crevice. The “bridge” was laughable: made of decaying wood, slimey and creaky. The only light came from the streetlights ahead or the diminishing rays of campus lighting.

Winded from the climb, I faced no gleaming homes as one does today. These stately 1920 houses had not undergone their trendy restorations back in 1971. Rather, they were suffering a fate common to such intercity residences: a quick descent into disrepair while a cold-hearted manager diced them into ill-maintained apartments. I know how bad they were because I lived in one of them.

Today I reside again in Winston-Salem, in a graceful neighborhood with more trees in one yard than grew on our entire ranch in Texas. I find myself frequently on the UNCSA campus for two happy reasons. First, a beloved colleague from SMU, Dr. Michael Dodds, now heads up music history at School of the Arts. Many of you know him, either because you took his classes at SMU or because you have profited from his expertise in our courses. How glad I am to be reunited to his family (our kids played together, and now our grandkids play together). Sometimes, too, he invites me to step in to my “ole alma mater” and teach a class held in the same wing where I despaired over music history fifty years ago.

But the second reason I am here regularly is even happier: my granddaughter has been “promoted” to the 1st level of UNCSA’s Ballet Prep Program–their path to serious study of dance. This means she has outgrown the realm of “kids’” ballet and is immersed three times a week in real classes—barré, conditioning, creative movement—under the tutelage of professional teachers.

And so I am no longer the bedraggled student of my memory, but the “waiting grandma” who loads up her car with books, a laptop, and a thermos of tea. I can get a lot of work done during an uninterrupted wait of 2 ½ hours. Sometimes I walk around too, looking in the faces of the young student artists who populate the campus, I contemplate the ocean that took me from those difficult years to today. Each visit, I gaze on these stairs, comparing the ones in my memory with those standing here today. I’d like to think they make a valid metaphor for my life.