Summer School Session 1: Old Men, Young Men

Around age 10, after two years of tearful tantrums and rebellion against practicing on the Jones family’s glorious and virtually untouched baby grand, the piano and I parted ways, citing compatibility issues. The piano wanted me to learn how to play music in 3/8, and my decidedly non-mathematical brain said, “No fucking chance. Not gonna happen.” The notes promised me I’d know them by reciting things like “All Cars Eat Gas” and “Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge,” but my heart said “All Cars, Who Cares?, and Every Good Boy Sort Of Has Cooties, But Is Also Sort Of Kind Of Cute.” Songbooks tried to win me over with remedial versions of timely pop hits like “Wind Beneath My Wings,” and “Take My Breath Away (Love Theme from Top Gun!),” but my advanced eight-year-old cultural meter proclaimed, “Bah! I am already over you, songs that will function only as nostalgia and punchline material in the future. To the television!” And so my prolific music career ended before it started, leaving me more time to memorize words to Mariah Carey (pop songs with longevity!), and fantasize about Zack Morris while watching him stop Jesse from ruining her life with caffeine pills.

Of course, in my adulthood, nothing has been as disappointing to me as my inability to play and read music. And as someone who has written pretty regularly about the subject, I often wonder if a deeper understanding of the technical components of music would lead to more pointed and poignant expression of my ideas. Is it really the minor key that makes this song to sound so morose? What is a minor key exactly? What makes up a key, period?

Since I’ve never been able to concentrate much on non-fiction or un-aided instructional readings, I decided to pursue my musical enlightenment in the only way the academic, structurally-inclined Jewish girl in me knew how – by signing up for a class at the Y.

My first attempt at the 92nd Street Y’s Beginner Music Theory class was short-lived. I made it to two classes – just long enough to review the bass and treble clefs using a set of meticulously constructed note-bearing flashcards - before I had to call it quits to take a job in the infamous Dub Room (a job that, in it’s earliest incarnation, occupied me from the awkwardly scheduled hours of 11am-8pm).

Nothing much stood out about the makeup of that first class, except that I remember hoping for it to be populated by hot Jewish guys with a fetish for evening hour extra-curriculars, and ended up swimming in a sea of old people. But since I have always enjoyed excelling in an academic environment, I consoled myself with the thought that even though I wouldn’t be making out with my classmates, I’d probably be kicking their wrinkled asses in class participation. (Mind you, there are no grades or tests and not even a modicum of encouraged competitive energy in this classroom setting, aside from the assertion to “challenge yourself.”)

When I walked into the classroom on the first day of my second attempt at Music Theory two weeks ago, the class element struck me as basically the same, if not a bit more fragrant with comedic possibility.

There are about fifteen students total, five of which are women in their late forties to mid sixties. This is the repetitive-question-asking contingent of the class. One woman in particular, who is taking piano lessons concurrently with the theory class, asks questions between every other breath, which explains why her instrument of choice is not the clarinet. At the end of the first class she addressed us all, asking, “Does anyone live near 55th and Lex? We could be study partners!” Much to her dismay, the entire class had decided, just that moment, to move to Brooklyn.

There is also a decent collection of early-to-late 20’s males, many of whom are trapped in the dorkiest of classical music clamshells (I love me some nerds, but I need a popoccultcha man. Or at least a sci-fi dweeb.). As the only class representation of the mid-twenties female, I get these sexy Beethovens AAAAALLL to myself.

But the classmates who are really going to make this class worth the rush hour trip on the green line, revealed themselves quite gloriously.

First was Elliot, who is roughly 200 years old. When our instructor asked Elliot if he had an email address for the class contact sheet, Elliott responded saying, “Yes, after four months I finally learned how to use it. It’s Elliot at yahoo dot com. Yahoo, like the drink.”

Yes, Elliot, like the drink! I am now working on an Elliot version of the Teddy Ruxpin doll in which a motorized, talking old man explains the origins of his email address over and over again.

In the getting to know you segment of the class, Elliot also revealed that he has been playing the harmonica for 70 years (!!!), the guitar for 50 years (!!), and the banjo for 5 (!). He’s a little winded, and his fingers are damned tired, but for the last two hundred years, he has found that an artificial chocolate drink both gives him the pick up he needs, while unlocking the key to new technology.

The other gem of the class was revealed immediately after Elliot in roll call. The name Karen was called, and a muffled, pubescent voice from the back of the room corrected, “That’s my mom. I’m Dylan.”

As we went around the room answering the questions, “What do you do?” and “Why are you here?” - answers that prompted others to say things like, “I’m in risk management and I’d like to read music,” or “I’m an actor and I want to play the piano” - Dylan responded in hilarious deadpan, “I’m in the ninth grade,” and then revealed that he plays guitar and is in a band, the name of which I’m dying to know. His expression throughout class suggested that the real answer to the question “Why are you here?” was “My mom made me come,” which makes me all the more desperate to co-opt young Dylan as my study buddy and facts-of-life advisee. I can only pray he lives in Brooklyn.

Thus, the promise of wisdom pearls from the class bookends of Elliot and Dylan may finally make it worth it for me to break out of my 4/4 shell. We’ll see how it goes.