John Rahn to the Rescue 1981

I was 22 and had been living at home while at school, commuting by bus across Lake Washington to the UW, following a more or less self-prescribed path to fulfill my firm ambition and expectation to finish my undergraduate work, get a masters and a doctorate, and finally to become a famous and renowned professor of composition somewhere. It was that somewhere that I had never thought through, and the slowly dawning realization that I would soon need to apply, and to go, to elsewhere for graduate studies was, I admit now, terrifying. I sent out a few feelers, but had no clear idea where out there would be a good fit and that might be willing to consider taking me on.

John, knowing how fascinated I had become by the various works of Benjamin Boretz that he had shared with me - both in our lessons (the score of ("...my chart shines high where the blue milks upset...") was open on the piano in his office) and in theory seminars, notably Language ,as a music and Meta-Variations: Studies in the foundations of musical thought - suggested that I write to Ben for advice. Had Ben been teaching at a school that had a graduate program that would have been an obvious choice, but that was not the case as far as we knew. So I sent off a "Hi there, I feel like an increasingly square pig in a narrowing round hole, and am at a loss as to my next step" letter. I didn't know this until later, but John also wrote him a short note of introduction, for which, and for his timely encouragement, support, and tireless opening of intellectual doors, I am ever grateful. I also found out even many more years later that I was one of only two students who had ever written Ben a letter. Try it kids!

One evening that Spring, much to my surprise and amazement, I got a call from Ben. This in and of itself was a total flabbergast to me, who hadn't a clue that a venerable figure such as Ben would condescend to pick up a phone to call a nobody, and to my great excitement it turned out that Bard College was starting an interdisciplinary MFA program to take place during Summer terms and he asked if would I like to apply and come out East in June. Neither I nor my family were in a financial position to accomplish that so suddenly but I thanked him profusely and applied for the next year. The application, as I recall, was little more than a single sheet to provide a name and address.

And so a year later, in June of 1982, a day or so after an end-of-school-year party held at the house Neal was sharing in Wallingford, wherein I was introduced to his kid sister Karen, who would become my spouse 5 years later, I was launched across the continent to who knew what out in the sticks 100 miles north of New York City, in a mysteriously foreign sounding Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, never having gotten a clear idea about how to fend for myself in any significant way, and never having been so far from anyone I knew. But all that will be story for a later chapter.