Into the Wild

In which our formerly intrepid author ventures out of the house

My discomfort in leaving the house is not agoraphobia, but I’m beginning to feel I am verging on it. As I have written elsewhere, along with the requisite solitude, a writer also needs external stimulation; to be out in the world to see, hear, smell, and experience, and even—God Forbid—to interact with other human beings. The slow grinding of my novel has been wearing me into a frazzle, and something had to change. I needed to get out.

So when a major piano competition’s brochure arrived in the mail, I decided to go. I have friends who would have been happy to join me, but that wasn’t what I needed. I needed a solitary foray, my own thoughts. and to get over my resistance to be out in the world alone, thrust upon my own calcifying resources. If necessary, I needed a good kick in the ass. This reluctance to venture forth, by the way, is completely out of character.

I left home at the age of sixteen to go to college. I wanted to study with a voice teacher there. My parents were supportive, but did not come with me. I got on a plane to New Mexico and went. It had been my idea. Yes, my brother was there. But he did not navigate registration, graduation requirements, administrative questions or any of the bureaucracy. I did it all myself. I made mistakes. My parents never saw where I lived, nor visited. They loved me, but they had a—perhaps unfounded—confidence in my ability to handle things.

When I was in my twenties, having made my professional opera debut, but needing to fill space between contracts, on two days notice I packed a bag for six months—including a dozen opera scores to study—got on a plane alone and went to New York to rehearse at a studio on Broadway for a cruise ship show. The first night, the cabdriver didn’t want to drop me off at the apartment the production company had rented for me. He said: a little girl like you won’t last the night. You stay here, you’ll be dead by morning. I walked as far as the filthy entrance, lit by one bulb, and filled with loitering men. I did not go in. I stood with my duffle bag—literally in the middle of the street—and waited twenty minutes in terror until an adventurous taxi came by. Even cabdrivers, I later learned, did not want to go into Spanish Harlem in those days.

I ended up in a hotel across the street from Lincoln Center, but it, too, was shabby and scary. I pushed a chest of drawers in front of the door of the room, and did not sleep. I called a friend and wept on the phone, but I did not call my parents. It would have worried them. New York was the murder capital of the world then, and meanwhile, at almost the exactly same time in Washington D.C., one of my school friends was raped and murdered. Her body was found in the trunk of her car that same week.

I had very little money, and rode the subway every day. The city was utterly out of control. Bums would follow you down the street muttering threats. One guy followed me for blocks saying “I’m so hungry I could kill somebody.” Walking alone, I started singing opera at full voice to keep weirdos from accosting me. It was an effective strategy, but once, on the way to an audition, I inhaled an insect.

Two weeks after arriving in New York, I got my passport in one day, got on a plane, and flew with my troupe to Europe where we picked up a brand new cruise ship in Emden Germany. We deadheaded the ship to Tilbury, England. There was no food for 36 hours, no sleep, and lots of weird mechanical testing going on. The performance group was on the verge of mutiny, but we still rehearsed.

On one occasion, I misread the schedule and missed the last train out of London to get back to the ship. Having spent almost my last dollar on an opera ticket, I had carefully calculated just enough money for a cab to the ship, but not enough for a hotel room. Faced with having to spend the night walking around the city alone, I set out to find the most populated well-lit places possible. Luckily, a London cabbie saw me, and offered to help. He had a daughter my age, he told me, and he hoped someone would have done the same for her.

I was stopped by the police in Leningrad and accused of smuggling.

This is just to suggest that I am not a faint-hearted person. I’m not pretending I was a war correspondent, but I travelled alone, in questionable places, and survived, mostly on my wits, and more than once through the kindness of strangers. I’ve had many rich and varied experiences, not all of them fun.

So, you will understand that leaving the house should not be a big deal for me. Yet in my post-covid rut, things feel different, and when I decided to go to downtown Milwaukee to hear the competition, I actually had butterflies in my stomach. It was an area I had once been in daily. I drove past the mansions on Lake Drive, and the beaches with volley ball nets and Tiki huts on the shore of Lake Michigan, and up the bluffs to the lower east side, feeling increasingly nervous.

When a neighborhood goes downhill it’s a short trip from quirky to seedy. The neighborhood I had known so well, where I had at various times lived and worked, was shockingly different. It was shabby, with boarded up windows. The Starbucks and the fun little shops were gone, leaving chain drug stores with iron gates and shabby nail salons. An iconic furniture store was dead; a block of elegant 19th century mansions where I had worked were empty with a big for rent sign. They, too, had lost their luster.

My nervousness was compounded by the prospect of encountering people I had known well. I felt aged, chubby, unfashionable, and self-conscious, like a character in a Willa Cather novel returning to the big city after decades in the wild west. And, of course, the first thing that happened when I walked into the conservatory was someone calling me by name. There were handshakes, and a couple of hugs, and some intricate how-exactly-did-we-know one another conversations. It was fine.

The place for the competition held many memories for me. The 19th century mansion has since been restored, but it was a little rundown when I stood on the same little stage before a panel of judges and won a $10,000 prize. I don’t remember what I sang, but I remember so well the tension, the focus, and the months of preparation, and it made me particularly sympathetic to the young people restlessly pacing the halls outside. They were all dressed in concert attire, with the women in sequined gowns, and the men in tuxes or the contemporary mode of black pants and mandarin-collared tunic. My own competition had called for day wear. I had shopped carefully and spent too much money on my outfit. It was a cream pleated linen skirt, a cream camisole, and a loose-knit, elegant peach linen sweater that one judge called “a little too casual”, but which made me feel beautiful and perfectly at ease.

The concert hall had once been where hopeful young women and elegant, driven young men waltzed and schottisched and polkaed to an orchestra. Its delicate plaster rose tendrils and vines have been repaired by artisans and are now unsullied by water stains, the matching stained glass roses over the arched windows gleam, and the decrepit folding chairs have been replaced by comfortable seating with little knit socks on their feet to prevent the noise of scraping on the wooden floors. I wish they had matched the chairs to the dusky green vines, and the bright white pleated shades to the creaminess of the walls, but it was still good to see that it was well-cared for.

The Helen Bader Concert Hall at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music. This photo was taken between performances so as not to share photos of the performers.

But the music. The music was splendid beyond my expectations. The pianists were all amazing—none above 21 years old—but one young man’s virtuosity and passion outshone everyone else. He played things I had never heard, things I knew by heart, even things I had always detested, and he made me love them all. He was calm and self-composed, announcing his widely varying pieces, explaining how he linked them thematically. He presented himself well, but he still seemed young and a little unsure while speaking, and I was dying to offer to help him with his French. But his playing stilled the normal rustling and inattention of a modern audience. It was as if the force of the music froze us all. The experience of the sound was so intense that I felt as if the music were pinning me to my seat.

The competition continued into the night, but I left in time to give the dogs their dinners, making sure I would have time to have a drink on the patio with my husband. But my head was filled with the sounds and images and memories I had been needing, which somewhere, invisibly in my subconscious, the wheels are turning into something new to spin across a page.

Tomorrow, a friend and I are going to a goat farm to learn about their milking operations.

You never know what might come from new experiences.