Don't Forget to Write

A Magical World of Music

After returning to the ground floor, I had a bit of time to kill until my next class in Shepherd's Hall, and decided to spend it by exploring the building. At over 150 years, it was the oldest on campus. It was the shape of an arc, three stories tall except for a thin central tower which may have been five or six stories, and it was all designed with gothic architecture. There were gargoyles and creatures carved into the stone around the building. There was a long lobby area through the entrance decorated with art, including a copper bust of Abraham Lincoln. The bust was dark and dirty after years of wear, except for the nose, which shone like a brand-new penny from students rubbing it for good luck. On the other end of the lobby was the grand staircase. At the center landing, where the stairs made a 180-degree turn, was a big window that faced North-East. In the distance, just to the right of the projects that surrounded my apartment building, I could see the top of Yankee stadium.

On the second floor, there was a large mural of classical-art style painting along the high ceiling area in the center, where guest speakers and lecturers often spoke. Outside of that large hall ran the corridor which curved in the same arced shape of the building, the walls covered in classic paintings and photographs. A whole section of the corridor was covered with black and white photos of a day when Albert Einstein gave a lecture. Another wall honored the 8 Nobel Prize laureates who studied at City College.

The main staircase only went to the third floor, anything higher than that would be in the thin tower at the center of the building. Near the staircase, however, was an elevator. Curious as to if it would bring me up higher, I stepped in. It creaked and shook, but brought me to the fifth floor. From that point, only a thin stairwell could bring people up to the higher stories. I climbed the stairs and was surprised to find that this windowless tower of the building was taller than it looked, and even more surprised to find that the top couple of floors were dedicated strictly to music studios. There were a handful of small sound proof rooms with pianos and benches in all of them. I thought this music studio area was the top floor, but I saw an old metal door that read EMPLOYEES ONLY. I opened it and saw another staircase, which led up to yet another EMPLOYEES ONLY sign on a metal door. There were no wires along the doorframe and there was no visible alarm light, so I opened the door slowly, then once I was sure no alarm had gone off, went through, taking off one of my shoes and lodging it in the door to prevent it from closing and locking me out.

On this roof there were high walls with elegant sculpting on the top edges and gargoyles on the corners. The staircase I had come out of was under a metal box, on top of which stood a tall flagpole. The high walls were too high to look over. I could only see the sky above me, which was now turning gray with thick clouds. The disappointment of not having a view was compensated for by a feeling of camaraderie with the people who had come to this same place as some sort of adventure, or escape, and planted their cigarettes on the floor like the flags of conquering explorers. I pulled a pen out of my pocket and stuck it in the mouth of one of the gargoyles. "I claim this as part of Pete-topia!" I said. The gargoyle stared back at me with clear dissatisfaction.

***

Once in the classroom, I put all of my will into maintaining attention - straining my brain and trying not to get frustrated at my lack of understanding as the words from the lecture whirled around my head like barely-decipherable ancient runes. A constant worry that my brain would forever be damaged like this form the concussion floated around my thoughts.

My professor, who went by Rich, was a mad genius. The class was a psychology elective, Theories of Personality, and he put on a show each time he taught it. He told stories about his past clients, his time working in a psych ward, his personal crazy life, and all the while he would write a word here, or a doodle there, and as the lecture went on he would draw lines that connected these letters, words, short phrases, and pictures back and forth, circling them, all in tune with his stories and his lesson, and it made perfect sense when you were watching him do it, but if you were to walk in at the end of class and look at the board, you would have no understanding of anything that was written, drawn, or connected. It would look like the scribbles of a madman. But, to anybody in the class, the madness on the board made absolute and total sense. At the end of class, he would look us all in the eyes, piercing through his pupils' pupils, into our minds, checking to be sure we retained the information. He stood in front of the white board, sometimes breathing heavily, like an artist revealing his grand opus at a museum. Except, rather than being protected behind glass for months or even years, Rich's masterpiece would be erased and replaced within the next few minutes. I enjoyed this class, and I respected Rich as a professor. You just don't get that kind of enthusiasm from educators, so when you do, when you catch that rare soul who only exists to educate and to be educated, appreciate them, soak them in, emulate them if you can.