When I was little, I jammed my pinky toe and middle toe on the wheel of my bed. My foot turned deep blue and pink and I fell onto the floor in tears. My mother made me pour hot water on it and sit by the sink. I couldn’t walk.
I asked her to bring me my cassette player. I had a tape of “The Nutcracker” music I bought from a bargain bin at a local drug store. By that year, I’d performed in “The Nutcracker” for two years in a very small role with the Mobile Ballet.
While I waited to heal I played my tape. I started to dance around the small bathroom space, recalling all the “Waltz of the Flowers” choreography in midsummer. Then I looked down at my foot, I was mid-susu and didn’t realize it. I was healed.
That was the first time I thought Tchaikovsky was synonymous with magic.
This fueled my lifelong obsession with the Russian composer. That winter at a rehearsal for “The Nutcracker” I stepped out of the stage door to view snow flurries falling, a rarity in Mobile. On stage dancers were rehearsing to his romantic and glistening “Sugarplum and Cavalier pas de deux.” It was another magical moment amplified by his work.
I experience obsessions in phases; darting frequently from one art form, musician, art movement or author to the next. I fall helplessly in love with someone or something, just long enough to learn everything I can about it before settling on another. I’ve gone through my “Turandot” phase, where I listened to the opera night and day and sung all the parts in my living room with a Chinese fan, and my Puccini phase which followed shortly after. There was the Bournonville phase, when I rented all of his ballet videos from the university library, the Angel Corella phase, the Philip Glass phase, etc. But I’ve always been in my Tchaikovsky phase. It is the only one to never leave me.
In studying the composer I read his letters and diaries. Tchaikovsky wrote of New York City, which makes me particularly happy to share that with him. I see signs of him everywhere. He remarked about the sizes of the buildings, the people on the streets. He conducted the opening of Carnegie Hall, and when I pass it (which is rare) I see him standing outside in my mind.
Today I was flipping through a gigantic volume of his letters and stopped on a quote from him about the city.
“The view was splendid but I felt quite giddy when I looked down on Broadway,” he wrote.
This morning after breakfast, I turned on the television and an episode “Chamber Music Showcase” was on CUNY titled “Glass Man.” The episode was all Tchaikovsky: photos of his life, portions of his Serenade for Strings, and beautiful panorama’s of Russia.
There was not one detail in the film about Tchaikovsky’s life I didn’t already know. I find that most biographies of him (or anything written about him) are exaggerated. Sure, he suffered from illness and nervous breakdowns, but do not let anyone convince you that he was a “mad-man” or a fragile piece of glass, as the episode suggested.
I find within his letters great reason, compassion, and wit. He was someone who found joy in simple morning walks, mass, and solitude. In my mind, I see Tchaikovsky the same way I see myself, as a person with the inability to laugh at myself, who takes any small misfortune to be a sign that the end of the world draws near, only to wake the next day feeling fine.
