Sitting in my rusted out ’89 Toyota Camry, chain smoking and swilling from a bottle of non-celebratory champagne I contemplated the lyrics to an old jazz standard, “You can’t have a dream and cut it to fit.” I wasn’t planning on driving — I was smashed — but I had to smoke in my car because it was too cold to smoke outside and I was living in a mad woman’s attic, so I was not allowed to smoke inside. The reason that I was living in the attic of an elderly woman — a very Dickensian moment of my life — was that I had arrived in Milwaukee with four dollars. My choices amounted to living out of my car for a week until my ballet contract started or living with an old woman who was so lonely that she would let a stranger — me — live in her house rent free for a week. She needed someone around just in case she got really sick, or fell, or (God forbid) died. Her husband had left her some fifty years ago, after which she rarely left her house. Her rules were: no mess, no noise, no smoking, no drinking and no men. These particular activities were relegated to the confines of my rusted out ’89 Camry.
This woman was so particular that if I even so much as left my dental floss out on the bathroom counter, she would write a passive-aggressive Post-It sticky note about it. She might have been fragile, 80 years old and riddled with M.S., but this woman could write a daunting sticky note. Her behaviors were very odd. She spoke little, refused me access to her kitchen or any communal space. I was only allowed in the attic. The house was huge, mind you, and empty. But it was quiet and safe and three hundred dollars a month, which was all I could afford. She claimed to be allergic to everything and thought she was psychic. She advised me to go to Canada because she thought Bush would surely reinstate the draft and her premonition was that my number would be called soon. She placed crystals around her house to ward off evil spirits, but all the voodoo in the world wasn’t going to stave off the inexorable march toward mediocrity and disappointment.
I was six months into the contract and still living in Miss Havisham’s house. I realized that I couldn’t live like this much longer and began to seriously consider quitting ballet. This is what drove me to smoking and drinking non-celebratory champagne in my rusted out ’89 Camry. In order to make a more informed decision about making a career change, I decided to call another failed artist: my flute teacher. Bear in mind that I hadn’t taken a flute lesson nor spoken to this man since I was eight; I was then 25. Due to unfortunate advances in modern technology, I had actually located his phone number. I lit another cigarette, turned down the dial on the radio and punched out his number on my cell. Ring, puff, swig … I got through.
A female voice answered; trying to articulate through my intoxication I asked for my flute teacher. He was home. I said, “Hey you may not remember, but when I was eight you were my flute teacher … I’m a ballerina now, but I’m thinking it may not have been such a great career choice for me, so I was just wondering if — from one failed artist to another — you can tell me how you coped with moving on?” My flute teacher told me I must have been misinformed. He was not a failed artist. This conversation was not really going as well as I had planned, but I persisted, “Well then how did you cope with retiring from the symphony, I mean, that was your life, that was your identity, how did you move on?” I lit another cigarette. My car battery was going to be shot because I had the radio and the heat running and the engine off.
He told me the following story. There was a man who played the piano brilliantly. He was a world famous concert pianist. One day, after a performance, a man came to him and said, “I would give up everything in my life to play the piano the way you do.” The pianist said, “I did.”
“That’s sad,” I said beginning to sober up and realizing that perhaps drunk dialing my childhood flute teacher was not entirely appropriate. “When I tell that story, everyone always says it’s sad, but it isn’t. There is nothing sad about devoting yourself to art,” said the flute teacher. So he said, but I’m not so sure … sounds a little dogmatic to me.
Unfortunately now, moving on from undergraduate school to law school, I don’t have any of my old bad habits to support me through the transition. I have long given up smoking, drinking and drunk dialing my flute teacher. That night several years ago in Milwaukee it snowed and I smoked another cigarette thinking this was not the first major transition in my life, but hopefully it was my last. The lyrics from a tired old jazz standard floated through my head, “You can’t have a dream and cut it to fit … la di da di da …” I stared through my snow-spotted windshield at the old woman’s house. She turned out the light.
Claire Readhead is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be contacted at creadhead@cornellsun.com [1]. Silk Blue Stockings appears alternate Mondays.
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[1] mailto:creadhead@cornellsun.com