TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 129

[Tobie Shapiro]

January 23, 20000000007


Dear Occupant,

	I got tired of waking up too early and 
dragging myself around all day, so I decided to 
make it official and I just set my alarm for when 
I keep waking up.  This way I did it on purpose. 
I'm sure you understand.  It was a tactical move. 
I'm onto myself.




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The auditioner


	I told Dweller we needed to separate for 
two weeks so we could figure things out.  Then I 
had to have a place to stay.   I don't know why I 
decided to be the one to vacate, leaving Dweller 
in the fairy tale house we'd just bought.  Maybe 
because I was the one who wanted the separation, 
therefore I was leaving rather than kicking 
Dweller out.  And this two weeks separation.  I'd 
never heard of a two week separation that wound 
up with the two parties getting back together.  I 
need two weeks to think about it seemed like a 
bit of denial.  But I still needed a place to 
stay.  I went to my cello teacher, Millie Rosner, 
who held court over a flock of cellists of every 
age, and I asked if I could stay with her.  This 
was a logical move on my part, and also a stupid 
one.

	It was logical and stupid for the same 
reason, because taking lessons from Millie was 
more than just taking cello lessons, showing up 
for an hour every week, then going home to 
practice, then showing up again the following 
week.  With Millie, it was more like joining a 
benign religious cult where everything centered 
around the cello and Millie.  She was not without 
her vanity, and she luxuriated in the bath of 
attention that twenty students thinking of her as 
their guru provided.  There was the lesson one 
day, and once a week there were critiques where 
all, the cellists hung around, each performed 
what he or she was working on, and everyone else 
critiqued the player:  "Coming along nicely, 
Sean, but the vibrato's too wide, and you're not 
getting an even tone in twenty third position on 
the A string."  Twenty third position would be 
like the left hand, the one that presses down the 
strings, playing way up on the fingerboard near 
where the bow works across them.  I tell you this 
because I don't expect everyone to be a cellist 
like Millie did.

	At the close of each day, cellists who 
lurked about, or commuted, or were just driven to 
come back for another evening at Millie's feet 
would hang around her, maybe stay for dinner, 
maybe just forage in her refrigerator.  She 
always had fresh baked something set out for the 
students, and almost always there was an 
assemblage of cellists for dinner.  Millie had 
extra rooms in her house, a big old brown shingle 
on Russell Street in Berkeley.  There was always 
at least one person staying in the rooms, maybe 
their parents had kicked them out.  Maybe they 
were down on their luck.  Maybe they were taking 
on a trial separation from a spouse.  The rooms 
were nearly always in use for something.

	So asking Millie was logical.  And she 
had an extra room for me.  She opened the door 
onto a large bedroom with bare walls and all the 
blinds pulled down over the windows, so that the 
only light coming in was the slatted shoots of 
lights rushing in from between the blinds.  I was 
very grateful and asked if there were anything I 
could do to repay her.  "Just practice," she 
said.  I went home, fetched some of my things and 
brought them back to my new room.  I contemplated 
the bare walls.  There had to be something more 
colourful in the room, some decoration, some 
attention to aesthetics.  There were picture 
hooks sticking out of the walls, absent any 
artwork.  They must have been left over from a 
previous owner who had covered the wall with 
family portraits, because every few inches, there 
was a rectangle of darker paint on the wall where 
a picture had been, a nail in the middle.

	I decided to hang up my clothes as 
decoration.  A magenta skirt here, a flowered 
blouse there, outrageous pants over here.  It 
created just the effect I was looking for: 
colourful wandering Jew.  In the next few days, 
Millie worked me hard knowing that part of my 
decision to leave my husband for two weeks was to 
focus on the cello.  She suggested I go 
professional and audition for the Oakland 
Symphony.  The pay was abysmal, and the perks 
even worse.  No one could live on a musician's 
salary.  Everyone had to hold down other jobs, 
too.  But it was the right direction to go.  The 
auditions were in a week, and it took me four 
days to get the cello parts so I could practice 
them.  That gave me three days to rehearse, which 
is not enough.  You can't cram for a performance 
exam.  The learning process needs to be tended 
like a garden, planted in the spring to push up 
daisies in the summer.  When I finally got the 
parts to practice they were rough: Richard 
Strauss's Merry Pranks of Till Eulenspiegel, 
chromatic.  There are published editions of 
excerpts from famous orchestral pieces.  Where 
they are the thorniest, that's where the excerpt 
is captured.  I chewed on that for eight hours a 
day for three days, but that was not enough.  The 
auditioner was also supposed to perform  one 
movement of a well known concerto from the 
western classical repertoire.  Well, this would 
suit me.  I'd been working on the Haydn cello 
concerto for a few weeks.  I could do the first 
movement.  I tried to get ready for this audition 
but this auditioner didn't have enough lead time, 
and feared the worst.  Nevertheless, she showed 
up at the designated time and place.  They usher 
you in, check your name off on their list and 
show you to a practice room.  They say, "We'll 
come to get you.  Relax."  Oh, sure.

	I took out my cello and sat there 
listening.  On all sides of me were audible 
greetings from other auditioners: violinists 
playing the Mendelssohn and Beethoven concertos, 
clarinettists rehearsing the Mozart clarinett 
concerto, violists riffing through Herold in 
Italy.  I tightened my bow and began with the 
Haydn cello concerto.  I played a few lines, then 
stopped to contemplate.  Next door to me came the 
report of another cellist playing the Haydn 
concerto, only much faster.  I put my head down 
and wept.  What hopeless stuff was this?  I 
loosened my bow.  I sang softly to myself some 
calming psalms and I hoped for the best.

	Soon enough the messenger came for me.  I 
followed.  He brought me out to the stage in the 
vast auditorium.  The judges were out there in 
the front row, but the auditioner was prevented 
from seeing them, as they were prevented from 
seeing her, because there are screens to hide the 
identities.  When I set up on the stage, I was 
greeted by Larry Duckles, whom I knew and had 
played with many times.  It was his job to 
introduce the auditioner.

	"This is auditioner number five," he sang out to the theater.

	"Tell the auditioner to play one prepared 
movement from a concerto in the standard 
repertoire," came the order from the judges.

	Larry looked at me.  "You ready?" he said in a whisper.

	"As ready as I'm going to be."

	I got myself into my trance and began. 
There was something wrong.  I kept forging ahead, 
but I wasn't getting the tone I usually got.  I 
was confused.  It was as if someone had drained 
all the sound from my instrument.  I finished my 
piece.  I looked at Larry and said, "The 
auditioner sucked."  He answered, "The auditioner 
always sucks."  Then I noticed what was wrong. 
I'd forgotten to tighten my bow.  This would be 
like an oboist leaving the reed at home, or a 
pianist playing with gloves on.  I had sabotaged 
myself.  Tobie didn't want to play in the Oakland 
Symphony for $5,000 a year.  And so Tobie didn't. 
The auditioner left the stage after scrawling 
through Till Eulenspiegel's awful pranks and 
Stravinsky's Firebird.  She packed up and went 
back to Millie's, afraid to tell what had 
happened.  It was just too embarrassing, too 
neurotic, too funny.  Dark humour, boys.  Dark 
humour.



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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net