On Jacob Lateiner.

Throughout my entire senior year at Juilliard, I have hated Jacob Lateiner. This cranky, old, sick, senile, nearly-deaf performance class teacher seemed to make it his purpose in life to ruin mine; a policy-ridden, by-the-rules narrow-minded man who knew how to do nothing but take attendance and threaten to fail students for too many absences. I really hated him. What difference does it make whether I am performing in his class or outside of school? Isn't the latter a more formidable option for students' careers?

Last week, Mr. Lateiner asked me to take him home. He couldn't stand by himself, and after every 20 steps we would have to take a break because he went out of breath. We stopped by his studio on the 5th floor where he took a deep breath from his inhaler, pulled out a Marlboro Red and poured two glasses of scotch before exclaiming, "it helps me with the trip home." I called a car service to take us back to his luxury apartment on 92nd St. and I helped him into his living room. As he was pouring himself another glass of scotch and scarfing down another Marlboro Red, I looked around the living room and talked to him a bit, before I realized a few things.

Here was an old, dying man sipping his scotch, living in the past. Black and white pictures of his adventures with Heifetz and Piatigorsky adorned the walls. Letters from Elliot Carter, Roger Sessions, and even Picasso were framed. Though I'm not sure whether he has ever been married, he now lives alone, and can barely function. I began to realize that his life had been lived for the sole purpose of art and art alone; and because of that, when he dies in the near future, he will go down in history as one of the major giants of the piano. And all of a sudden, I couldn't hate him anymore.

But I also realized something else. Looking at his glasses of scotch, his Marlboro Reds, his old scores, his books on art, and his dedication to American modernism, I saw a glimpse of my own future and I didn't like it. I realized that I want more than this, and I don't ever want to be like Mr. Lateiner. Art alone for me, is not enough; I need love in my life, perhaps even at the expense of art.

I feel like a literary pansy right now. I'm on the 5th floor computers at Juilliard in a completely empty building after school has finished, practicing on a completely empty floor, waiting for my chinese food delivery to come. I leave for Montreal tomorrow in what might prove to be another futile attempt at a career and life for which I tirelessly work.

It's been a long and hard week, and today I finished my first degree since middle school. Sometimes I feel compelled to write reflective posts.

I need sleep.