Just Kids From the Bronx by Arlene Alda Read Free Book Online

things. I think it happens differently to different people, and it also happens at different ages. Or the realization doesn’t occur while you’re that young. You don’t know what to call it, right? You don’t have a name for it. It’s just an interest of yours.
    I became a working artist by drawing pornographic pictures for the other kids. “Can you do a naked lady?” “Glad to be of service.” In addition to my own satisfaction in life, I realized there was a job to be done for others and that you could satisfy.
    And then, of course, I went to the High School of Music and Art. It was a very optimistic place. It was part of the optimism of that period, where the feeling was that anything is possible. That was a consequence of the emigration of people who were leaving a circumscribed life where they saw no possibilities to the sense that they could prosper and grow and that their children would have a better life. How strange it is now that that has flipped over—the idea that your children are not going to live as well as you. I think that’s a great sadness.
    Music and Art High School was one of the great institutions of the city. It’s not fully appreciated for how much it shaped the aesthetic of the city. It created the audience for both music and art. It’s hard to imagine what the city would’ve been like without that school. I think at one point probably two thirds of the New York Philharmonic were graduates of Music and Art High School. The statistics are astonishing. But more than that, it created so many generations of graduates committed to either the world of painting or the world of music.
    Once Leonard Bernstein came to conduct the senior orchestra at the school. That orchestra was fantastic. They were doing Beethoven’s “Leonore Overture No. 3,” which has a big trumpet solo in it. It was played by a very proficient kid who could really play the trumpet. As the kid finished the solo, Bernstein yelled out, “You’re hired!” And while he was still conducting, he hired him for the Philharmonic.
    I grew up with the extraordinary idea that this was the promised land and that you could achieve anything. I was promised a scholarship to Pratt Institute, because the dean there had come to Music and Art to look at portfolios. He said, “Young man, I’m giving you a four-year scholarship to Pratt.” I said, “Great.” So I didn’t apply anywhere else. Then I took the entrance exam to Pratt and I failed it. I called up the dean—I think his name was Boudreau—and I said, “I didn’t apply anywhere else and I haven’t got a school to go to because you promised me a scholarship.” “Well I can’t very well give you a scholarship if you can’t pass the entrance exam, but I have an idea for you, young man. What I want you to do is to go to night school, and if you succeed in night school for one year, I’ll give you a three-year scholarship for the remaining time in the day school.” So I took the night-school exam and I failed the night-school exam too. I think I’m the only person in the world who failed that night-school exam. Then I took the Brooklyn College exam and got in. After three months of commuting from the Bronx to Brooklyn for two hours each way on the subway, I said I can’t do this and left. I got a job and then got into Cooper Union.
    Lewis Hyde wrote a wonderful book on how primitive cultures use gifts to diminish hostility but you can’t keep the gifts. You have to pass them on. In most cases, these gifts are physical, but in our civilization you realize that the gifts are cultural and in the arts. That they’re music and painting and they’re architecture and so on. What is this persistent need for music and art and for beauty? What the hell is beauty? Why do we have to keep making pictures and making music? Why?
    Everything else is driven by money, greed, and power. The only remaining barrier to all of that is the arts. This recognition that there’s something