January 11, 1965
Wotta day! I'm drunk with power! At Girl Scouts everyone listened to me and went for my ideas. In Spanish I got 100 on a test. I don't know if I want to go to Wykeham Rise or not. I feel so out of place there. I hate playing the piano in front of that jerk of a teacher Mr. N. Speaking of jerks, we still have Mr. V. If he doesn't leave soon, I'll flunk the midterm, which is only two weeks away.
January 11, 2006
Mr. N was not a jerk. He was a pleasant, rather shy music teacher at a small, private boarding school for girls. In the fall of 1964, his headmaster handed him two "townies" with minimal musical training for an enrichment experience. I was a mostly self-taught pianist with performance anxiety; my fellow student, R was a garage band drummer who could not read music at all. Mr. Nowak's solution was to give me private piano lessons and to teach us both a bit of music theory via a small group recorder class. The original idea was that some of the Wykeham Rise students would join the recorder ensemble, but no one signed up.
So alternate Wykeham Rise days I would either spend playing piano for Mr. N and feel like an idiot, or sit and listen to R struggle with the basics of music notation on a wind instrument. How did Mr. N survive the experience? Did he hasten back to his faculty quarters and have a stiff drink? He should have.
January 11, 2023
Number of times since 1965 I have registered for music lessons: once, in 1989. I do still think about it.