B E B E R E

Be, if you could do it all over again, what would you have done differently?

I'd have pushed harder on my mom, a very technically proficient but emotionally bereft pianist. She hated that instrument and would not allow us lessons. Rather than pussy foot around as I did (lessons en cachette) I would have devoted more of me to the piano rather than on my paths of least resistance (woodwinds then academics).

Would loved to have worked in, say, Warner Brothers Studios in the 40s or the 50s (especially under Carl Stalling) or on any of Quincy Jones's Big Band projects. What gives me so much joy to listen to now is their music, the music of Les Six (especially Poulenc and Milhaud), Alberto Ginastera, Jobim.

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I'd not have been so panic-stricken a soprano as I am now. Mom used to pass out in the choir loft at church. I'm told I'm powerful and proficient and should work harder towards cultivating my solo voice. Instead, I sit in the back of the alto section where I feel I'm more needed and try to both project and blend.

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I'd not have let her throw out drawings that other parents would have put on their fridges. She'd look at what I brought home from school, tell me that it didn't look like anything and toss it. My dad, though I saw little of him, tried to encourage me as much as he could. I remember him telling me one day to write on a big piece of butcher the words "I Can't Draw." I did. He told me to outline the letters in whatever color I liked. Then to draw a bunch of stars around that. Then some flowers. Outline the flowers. Make lightning-bolt-jagged outlines around all that. Shade in whatever I liked in whatever colors I liked. Sign it. He put that on his fridge.

When I was depressed, my dad found through extension school a drawing class for me to get me out of the house and to stimulate my brain. The instructor said that I had a lot going on. Said that I was very German Expressionist. Told me to get as large sheets of paper as possible to do my work on. Let me program the class music. She was a godsend, was better for me than therapy up to that point. I cherish the drawings. Here was someone who knew something telling me that my work had merit.

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I'd have forced the Polish/German issue more. Bilinguals aren't "DPs" as they were known in her generation. (Bilingual/Bicultural means more than Black/white or Spanish/Anglo.) I'm native-fluent in a couple languages aside from English now. I wish they were my family's languages, though.

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Just because I don't look goddamn Dravidian Ashkenazy like the rest of Joascha's side of the damn family doesn't mean I'm not beautiful. Just because I didn't start smoking to curb my appetite doesn't mean that I'm fat. Height, strength, curves and red hair are perfectly okay, damnit.

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I'd have married the walloon when I had the chance. Not only for his Tintin collection, but for the fact that he understood me more than anyone has to this day - both in the emotional sense and in the sense that we could converse in a funny, mixed up creole of languages between us. His family approved of me, too.

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Since where you went to school means more than how much you actually learned/absorbed, I wish I'd have sucked it up financially and gone to the Dior or Chanel school rather than the Donna Karan one that gave me the better deal. It fricking sucks to have to live in a culture where one is constantly outranked by people with a better pedigree , even if they aren't necessarily more intelligent (or even sentient in some cases). Class may not be everything, but it's pretty darn close to it in some places.
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Eh bien, continuons.