Memories are in the mind of the beholder…
July 18, 2009 by Pam
My high school orchestra teacher recently died, and it was interesting reading the obituary and the guestbook. Some of that person I recognized – a lot, I didn’t. It’s very fascinating how people will know someone and come away with totally different memories. Of course, some of that may be due to the person’s multi-faceted personality and their choice to highlight one or more aspects of it to one person and not another. I suspect this is what happened with my orchestra teacher.
As one of my high school friends noted, our orchestra director seemed to favor the boys. I had never heard of camping and hiking and fishing trips and taking students under his wing. I do remember a select group hanging out in the orchestra room at lunchtime or after orchestra. Sometimes, there were girls in the group. But the guys seemed to get more attention, rightly or wrongly.
The orchestra teacher I remember continually wore a ratty mustard vest that emphasized girth, often with a purple shirt underneath. The orchestra teacher I remember rode us hard in performing the music. If he didn’t like a musical take, or especially a group of unsatisfying takes, he let us have it. He’d tell us that we were insulting the music and shouldn’t play it all if we couldn’t play it right. Often, scores were thrown and podiums were pushed. Eventually, we were chastened enough to try again and maybe we’d get closer to what he’d want or maybe he’d just give up and let it go. I don’t remember some happy-go-lucky camper – I remember a demanding taskmaster who occasionally had a sarcastic sense of humor, often at some student’s expense. It didn’t matter that you were a teenager – you’d better be able to take the jibe if you were the chosen one. I remember fearing disappointing him.
Of course, we always bring ourselves and our lives into our memories, so maybe I was seeing more disappointment than was actually there. I was receiving plenty of daily disappoval at home from the male role model, enough that’s it’s conceivable I projected the expectation of continual disapproval. I do think there was some hard-driving perfection outside of what I may have been projecting, but now I see it’s possible that I contributed to my memory.
I do remember, though, something that was noted in the obituary – passion for the music. Until I got to high school orchestra, the classical music I’d absorbed since infancy didn’t mean much. There were a few pieces I liked, but it was background music – it was familiar muzak. Once we started playing certain pieces, the brain would prick up and I would know the melody. I would listen more intently to piece and maybe get some background from our recently deceased orchestra director and find I was truly appreciating the piece from a more mature perspective, something that totally stunned my mother. I don’t think I ever fully credited him to my mom. Sorry, Mr. Cina.
The main trait I took away from being his student, was discipline. If you didn’t practice, he’d know. He’d always know. So you put the time in. You played the pieces and the study books and work on your technique. You weren’t told – you just did it. I think I had some discipline before I walked into that fourth-floor room, but it was refined there. It was expected that you would be musically responsible, not only to yourself but to your orchestral colleagues, and there was scorn if you weren’t (What a surprise – there’s that responsibility word yet again in connection with my life…)
I’m sure there’s other examples, everywhere, of one person’s memories not matching another’s. I do think a lot of the time, though, there’s some commonality. In this case, not as much as I would have expected. No matter what, though, our memories are always seen through our lens and we need to remember how we’ve tinted them…
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged childhood, Lane Tech, memories, orchestra | 1 Comment
Leave a Reply
Parallax.
There was Mr. Cina, as he saw himself, as I saw him, as you saw him, as loving friends and family – each individually – saw him. So who was Mr. Cina and what does he have to do with who he actually was?
It sounds like this was a man who loved to hike, to camp, loved his family home, his neighborhood, his neighbors, his students. Certainly, he loved music. It should come as no surprise that I hardly recognized the man in the obituary.
My life intersected with John Cina’s from 1978 through 1981 at Lane Tech High School; I also took private viola lessons from him. To be honest, I did not particularly enjoy Mr. Cina’s company. He made me uncomfortable. He was demanding, a perfectionist, he was funny if he was pecking away at someone else, less so, if it was you. I really remember little else about him, other than he did love the music and that he was always pecking away at someone.
That may be unfair; it may not have been always, although that is how I remember it. It was a tough world. Not the work of music, which was tough enough, but a good tough. Man though, he could be mean and I am not convinced that good music is reason enough for that.
I will, however, accept some responsibility for remembering his as I do. Unlike you, I did not so much wish to please Mr. Cina. I wished with all my heart that he would leave me alone, that he not pick me as an example – really, of either good work or poor. My goal, every school day afternoon, was to fly under his radar. He cannot be held accountable for this. My need to not be noticed was informed by years of fear. I was profoundly shy (although I may not be remembered that way) and did not like to be noticed. I did not like solos; I didn’t even like for people to hear me practice. Music was probably an odd choice for someone so shy, but there I was all the same. Being noticed, in my world, meant you were unsafe and by the time I hit Lane Tech and met Mr. Cina, I had had enough of that. So, to be at risk of being picked for anything, let alone being picked for ridicule? Yikes. My stomach still hurts, thinking of him.
As an adult, I realize that his pecking may have been intended to bring out the best, to make a student want to try harder, excel. It seems to me that that is the best way to interpret his behavior and it does appear that that is how many people did experience him.
Parallax.
From my point of view at the time, he was not benign. For others, walking the same halls at the same time, he was. From my perspective, he was someone to avoid. And still, other students hung around him every day, up in the orchestra room, between classes, after school. Evidently, there were many happy camping trips.
As an adult, now older than he was at the time I knew him, I will not take my back my opinion that he was a persnickety, caustic man much of the time. He was. However, his love of the music and intention for us to play well had an honor about it, and it served us well as a student orchestra. He was a source of inspiration and support to many.
As an adult, I can appreciate the good intention, as well as the result of many who remember him well. I can appreciate that my memory of him does not define him or make others’ memories of him less true. It seems to me that he lived a good life, which is something we can all hope to achieve.