The Voices That Have Gone, Part 2

Many years ago I was a student in a small, exclusive, private liberal-arts college, which ironically is very close to where I now live, but might as well be a million miles away. The college was in a beautiful green bower separated from the daily world of dirt and commerce, and my current neighborhood, just down the road a few miles, is mired in that daily world (as Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, “all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil”). The college was rich, and even the poor girls there, like me, were able to feel that we were in some intellectual aerie where we could live joyously in the realm of our lofty thoughts. My neighborhood, on the other hand, is mainly working- to middle-class, and you don’t get the sense of much lofty thinking going on in these parts (though lofty drinking is another story). Sometimes, in fact, I feel discouraged to be writing my dissertation in such an anti-intellectual milieu. But I suppose we should bloom where we’re planted.

In spite of all the beauty and the intellectual cosseting, I really hated that small private college. First of all, I was one of the aforementioned poor girls, and it pained me that I could never have the beautiful things, wear the beautiful clothes, or even be as beautiful as the rich girls who dominated the student population. And rich girls are indeed beautiful, because, as my friend Robert explained, powerful men marry beautiful women. But the place was also seething with darkness, with a kind of extreme adolescent amorality. Hard drugs and outré sexual experimentation abounded. Although I was not immune to their powerful allure, at the same time I felt an almost physical repulsion for the things I saw in my midst. I think that on the whole, the college was a very sad place, full of students on antidepressants and professors desperate to feel that what they were doing – educating the decadent rich – was a morally important endeavor.

At this college, however, I learned to sing. My happiest times were spent in the music building, where I would practice late into the night. I had a work-study job in the music library, and my Friday night shift was an orgy of delight as I raided the LP collection, discovering Puccini, Satie, and Harry Partch. A young graduate of the college worked there too, Mary L., who was then getting her master’s in voice at another institution. She became a lifelong friend and mentor to me, and her voice remains to this day the absolutely most beautiful voice I’ve ever heard in my lifetime. My hair used to stand on end whenever I heard her sing. She excelled especially at French mélodie. She never had a career in music; a difficult divorce, and later the demands of mothering a large family, preempted the energies that would have gone into making a career if that had been her priority. Her voice is one of the great, overwhelming secrets hidden from and by the world.