I had an opportunity to go to Juilliard as a child
I didn’t want it and it turned out later my mother was just going along with what teachers and friends kept telling her.
for six months i took special lessons to do the entrance
I don’t remember anything in particular about the lessons but I kept getting these flashes of being instructed towards ever greater and greater perfection in the smallest and smallest things and I thought of the Olympics and first second and third place were functionally identical to each other but with uneven reward
1984. I was 12. The Olympics were amazing that year.
after six months of lessons I asked if I had to go to Julliard.
I knew what motivated me by then and what did not and would be broken if I had to be forced to be more perfect, to play in front of judges.
I didn’t know if they would put signs up with scores: I almost wish they did but I feel like it would’ve been quiet writing with consequences decided in a secret room.
I have no regrets not going, even if I was wrong.
she listened to me. I didn’t have to go.later on I found out she wasn’t into it either but she was willing to do it if I wanted it
my first piano teacher may have been that kind of sadistic but I was a good student.
my sister who is as much of a student as me did not have the musical ability.
two years my senior, one day the music teacher told her that she would never be as good as her brother.
she cried in the car on the way home and my mother tried to console her because of her art talent.
she felt better but said “but anybody can draw”, not fully realizing at the time her own gift.
she never touched the piano after that
maybe I didn’t want that experience in Julliard.
that harpsichord teacher in the story is the level of evil that angers every fiber because when you’re in a position of power you need to be responsible with that power