Harlem School of the Arts January 2010
Scene 1: A metro train to the city on a cold but sunny autumn day. It is mid-morning and the train is half as full as the early morning commuter trains but twice as loud. A few seats away from me there is a group of 8 or so teenage girls and four or five adult women. The girls are excited to be going into the city. This is not an every day thing for them. They kneel on the seats to lean over the top of them and talk, giggle and occasionally scream with laughter at something one of their friends has said. They are all white, each with long silky hair which they play with as they turn this way and that in their seats. Their excitement grows as the train curves away from the Hudson River and begins to snake its way through the Bronx. The conductor announces over the loud speaker “Harlem 125th Street” and as he finishes one of the girls screams and literally jumps down onto the floor. “Harlem!” She yells from in between the seats, “Get down!” Everyone laughs. She and they are all middle class white girls and women and her exaggerated fear of going through Harlem even on a train is what passes as a joke where they are from.
Scene 2: I am sitting on a grey metal fold out chair in the hallway outside of the second floor classrooms of the music department of the Harlem School of the Arts. Q is in the classroom directly in front of me and the door is shut. Here in the music department parents are allowed to sit in class but I do not. Q is better with me outside of the class and Baba Don’s baritone voice giving instructions to his twelve students makes it difficult to concentrate on my writing. To my left is a long corridor with several closed doors. A drum beat comes barreling out on and off as an unseen student stops and starts on his way to becoming a musician. To my right is another long corridor and more music floating down towards me. The notes of a piano mingles in the air with the beat of the drum. The pianist is a black teenage girl who is taking private lessons from a white man in his sixties from some Eastern European country. She begins to play Chopin and I am taken away for several minutes on the waves of the music; sweet, celebratory, melancholy. In a classroom nearer to me is a teenage boy who is Asian and studying the clarinet. His teacher is black and is having him go over and over one section of a classic jazz song that I recognize but do not know the name of. Sitting here on the cold metal chair, with our coats on the floor and my laptop on my lap I am happy. Truly, without hesitation happy.
I look back at my laptop and start to write. A couple of minutes later the father and son who arrive at this time every week come around the corner. Like the majority of the other people here they are black and I’m guessing middle class. The father is a tall skinny guy with a sympathetic face. He’s attractive enough to play a tall skinny nice dad on TV. I’m guessing his son is about 10 years old. He is tall for his age and very talkative. He reminds me of Q. I love this father and son team. I stop writing to listen to the son chatting on about his week, his music, school, what they are going to do later, what he is practicing on his various instruments (he plays several.) The son takes private lessons here. The father helps his son take off his coat and he begins to pile up the coats and sheets of music and bags on an empty chair next to them. A young music teacher walks down the hall and turns to go down the stairs and the father shouts (to be heard over all the music) a hello to him before he disappears around the corner.
“Who was that?” The boy asks.
His father tells him and the boy, not turning around shouts in his loudest voice “Hello Mr. ………..”
The young teacher, who by now was half way down the stairs, comes back up.
“Hello!” He is smiling and he says to the boy ”You caught me running to another class!”
“You teach advanced guitar right?” Asks the boy.
“Yes, right.”
“I want to take lessons from you!”
The teacher looks at the father and smiles.
“Well, call me and I’ll look at my calendar and your dad will look at yours and we’ll figure something out. Probably can’t be until the spring though as I’m pretty booked up and I think I’ve heard that you are too.”
The father laughs quietly. He’s a soft-spoken guy. “Yes, we ARE booked up alright.”
“No we’re NOT!” Laughs the boy. “We’ve got some time. Maybe Saturday afternoons, or um…I think Tuesdays. Can you do Tuesdays; do ya got anything on Tuesday in the afternoon? Aren’t we free then dad on Tuesdays?!”
The father and the teacher laugh out loud.
“Free? I don’t know what you mean by free. You, I suppose are free, but when are you going to do you homework? And me, no, I’ve got stuff to do.”
The teacher smiles “There’s always stuff to do!”
“Besides,” the father looks at his son, “when are you going to practice from all the classes you’re taking now?” The boy sits in the chair smiling as the father looks at the teacher “On Saturday mornings he takes guitar at the school for the blind downtown. Then we come up here for piano lessons. During the week he has two nights a week of music lessons again at the school. This boy’s schedule is packed you’re right about that!” the father laughs and he and the teacher smile at each other, the boy too is smiling as he sits in his chair.
“OK then,” the teacher looks down at the boy in the chair who is looking forward but not at the teacher. The teacher places a hand on the boys shoulder and leans down to him as the boy continues to look forward but leans an ear into the teacher,
“you’ll give me a call and we’ll get you on the calendar, OK?”
“For Tuesday!” the boy responds.
The teacher laughs. “For sometime in the spring!”
The teacher says his good byes and goes back around the corner to run down the stairs.
“Good-bye!” shouts the boy, “See you on Tuesday!”
The father laughs as he gently helps his son stand up and hands him his walking stick “You don’t give up, do you?”
“No” the boy is smiling, happy, confident, “why should I?”
