How the String Bass Saved My Life

I had just started seventh grade when I asked my father one evening to tell me what special talents I possessed. What could I do well? I’d noticed that most of my classmates were good at doing one thing or another…sports, dance, wearing new clothes…things that brought them fame and friends. I wanted friends. I wanted to be special in some way, only I couldn’t think of how. So I sought the advice of Solomon the Wise Man who had all the answers. What he should have said was “You’re good at making up stories. You could write for the school newspaper.” Or, “You like playing dress up. Maybe you could take a sewing class.” Then I would have gone away with a mission in mind. But no. He was Solomon the Wise Man so he replied as would any self-respecting hairy man sitting cross-legged on top of the Himalayas. “I can’t tell you what you are good at. That is something you will have to find out for yourself in time.” Solomon was useless. “Find yourself in time.” Bah! I didn’t have time. I was in Junior High, being swallowed up in a fog of invisibility. I might as well be dead. No once would notice. Young teenagers, they think like that. It’s now or never. I saw no reason for living, that is until I saw an advertising billboard with a picture of a man playing a Piccolo and thought, “Aha! I like music! I’ll learn to play the Piccolo!” The next day after school I marched over to the music room and announced to the teacher I would like to learn to play the Piccolo. Instead of saying OK, he frightened me by asking why the Piccolo in particular. “Uh…it looks like fun?” “Does it have to be the Piccolo or would another instrument work as well?” “Uh…I guess.” “How about learning to play the string bass?” “Uh…OK.” Did I know what a string bass was? No. Did he need a bass player? Yes. Was I disappointed? Definitely. I showed up in class and realized a string bass was as far from a Piccolo as you could get and still be in the same room. I’d missed the first few weeks of school where he taught students how to hold their instruments and create noise, so it was literally a case of being tossed into the pool and told to swim. I didn’t even paddle; I went straight to sinking. A few days later I returned after school and told the teacher I wanted to quit. He said “No, you can’t quit.” What? I was stunned. Every time I wanted to quit anything else, my mother always said yes. That way she wouldn’t have to pay for Brownie uniforms or dance shoes. But he said NO.

Before the tears could spill down my cheeks, he explained further. “It’s too soon for you to make a good decision. Keep coming to music class until the end of this semester. Then if you want to quit, you may.” Bless his heart, the man saved my life. Had I quit then I would have been left with no reason to show up anywhere and no one to notice I was missing. As it turned out, by the end of the semester, there was something special I could do, somewhere special I could go, and good friends to share the fun. It was still touch-and-go the first few weeks. Even though I hadn’t yet learned to read music or play the bass, I was thrown into the orchestra because they needed a bass player. (Isn’t that always the way with bass players? Needing a bassist got me snuck into the USC concert band without actually being enrolled there. I was offered a waiver of academic requirements if I would go to UCLA because they needed bassists. There are religious schools who paid me to play bass during psalms and avoid plucking the strings during prayers. I’m telling you, if you want to be sought after, play the double bass, that is unless you want to march in a band, in which case don’t bother.) A substitute teacher decided I should demonstrate my part for the rest of the orchestra to hear. Unfortunately, I had no idea what my part was. When he walked over to show me, I was trembling so badly, he said, “Stop shaking! I’m not going to hurt you.” This public humiliation made me determined to never be in that position again, so I wheedled my parents into renting a bass for me to practice on at home. They surprised me by agreeing, and every day I would saw away without a clue as to whether I was in tune, in time, or in trouble. I practiced until my fingers bled, slapped on bandages, then practiced more. Later on, our Junior High music teacher decided he had enough string talent to form a quintet that he could coach after school, so five young ladies plunged into this co-op with serious dedication. The highlights of our career were turning the teacher’s office into a girls’ private hang-out room and publicly butchering the fourth movement of Mozart’s “Eine Kline Nachtmusik.” This string quintet, and the friendships that bound it together, were so critical to my survival that my mother tried to get the Principal of the High School in which district I lived to let me transfer to the school all the other players were to attend. That was the first time I saw her cry. She came home from this fruitless effort and burst into tears. We were desperate, so we reached out to my sister for help. She had attended the High School of my dreams and still knew the debate coach there. He remembered her well because she had been his star student, winning a National Debate competition and bringing glory to all. He asked if I would be a good debate student and she assured him I would, so he pulled strings and got me transferred. When I showed up for the first debate class, I noticed photos of previous winners lining the walls. I pointed to one and said, “That’s my sister” to the young woman sitting beside me. “Bette Mattison was your sister? She’s the one who married the [competitor school’s] Debate Coach!” This infamous act happened six years prior, yet it was still a scandal in the local debate world. My sister was famous. I got respect. That lasted for one class. Then I quit rather than say words out loud. The debate teacher was disgusted and never forgave me. I didn’t care. I got to stay with my sting quintet, where I didn’t have to talk or argue my point with anyone. Our quintet confidently occupied the orchestra teacher’s office like divas and hung a mirror on his wall for our preening. He didn’t quite know what to do with his inherited musicians, but OMG, did we have fun and learn things under his tutelage! By now we were a tribe. Many of the music students’ parents were professional musicians, so we had unparalleled after-school coaching. Peter Schickele, of P.D.Q. Bach fame, was sent to our school to study our abilities and write classical music for High School orchestras. When he wasn’t composing the two pieces we later recorded, he left us in tears of laughter with his comedic performances. We created a music club and and gave concerts at lunchtime. Just because we couldn’t catch a football didn’t mean we couldn’t wear athletic sweaters with thick appliquéd logos. We held award dinners. We were nerd heroes. Our concert program one year included the Overture to the opera Salome and it has a tricky bit for the bass, so I stayed after school one day to practice. The next day, our teacher asked me to play it for the rest of the class. I shakily managed it and he followed with, “Are you in All Southern?” I nodded no, because I didn’t know what he was talking about. “Why not?” This time I just stared at him blankly. He said, “Never mind; I’ll take care of it.” What he did was enlist me in a group of young musicians pooled from High Schools throughout Southern California who practiced together two, maybe three times and were then sent on road trips. I played Brahms’ Fourth Symphony in Lancaster. (For you non-Californians, at that time Lancaster was the epitome of nowhere in the middle of a very empty desert. But I played Brahms there with students who later performed in Carnegie Hall, so…) Now you see how the string bass saved my life. Everything good, from the friends I made to the husband I acquired and my sense of belonging, came from a wooden box big enough to paddle in like a canoe. Did I continue playing? Yes, somewhat. Pick-up jobs mostly. Then life intervened and the bass sat idle long enough for my husband to convince me to sell it so he could buy a ham operator radio set. From that day forward, every time someone says, “Calling Radio Moscow; come in Radio Moscow,” in my head I hear the Dance of the Sylphs played solo in bass clef.