Here comes a special girl!

Alright! so here I am staying at the Biltmore Suites in Baltimore. Peabody audition tomorrow. Feelin good, feelin good.

Sitting in my 20's art deco style room on a king size mattress, rollers in my hair and a personal kitchen in the next room. It would almost be too convincing if I had an ash tray next to my bed and a long cigarette filter in my mouth.

Baltimore is sooo smaaaalll. My gosh. I walked around town in less than 20 minutes. After taking the ghetto light rail from the airport (which warmed my heart, thank god for black people) No seriously, I haven't seen a brotha since I left Philly. Its all Country Crock out there. After settling in my room, calling my boyfriend who was nothing but boring, I decided to go out and venture for some long awaited grub. Peabody was only two blocks away so I passed by in a matter of seconds walking as if I were already a current student. Yano, fast with no regard. Then I wandered into a used bookstore and chatted up the gentleman behind the desk. He was rather friendly and well prepared to help me with whatever conversation I wanted to have...like every other person I met that evening. Like, The record store guy who gave me a food voucher for all the swanky restaurants. I used it for the Mediterranean food place just up the street. and...like, the Turkish guy working there that gave me big teeth and a discount on my takeout. yay.

On the way home I called my buddy Mike Parker, who has now relocated to Hawaii. He was sitting on his beach sunbathing nude while reading an academic study on The Music of Thailand. "Oh Deekus, I was thinking of you while reading about these here xylophones." Its always a treat to talk to MP. He's always excited about something. and truthfully, that's an important contact to have especially when you want to visit.. or when you're down in the dumps for getting a quasi-rejection email from the first school you auditioned as you're about to play for HIS teacher tomorrow afternoon and--what the fuck! University of Miami, those fuckers and suck it! I didn't want to go there anyway. I'm not mad, really, I'm not. Just irritated. buh.

Anyway, so here I am. Collecting myself before the big day tomorrow. I can't believe I'm actually doing this, I must be nuts. But, all in all I feel pretty prepared. Pretty fantastic, as Quyen would say.

To continue with the creme filling..yeah, I never made it to Texas.

A month before my scheduled departure, I managed to get in contact with one of Bob Van Sice's (lets just call him Big Bob for now on)..eh ehm... Big Bob's former students who had recently graduated from Yale School of music. He was a serious fucker and was making his way up the solo marimba ladder--real fast. I mentioned I had been living with a serious Bach connoisseur and have great ambitions to eventually study with Big Bob, or one of his students. So, on account of my ambitious email, he invited me to Miami to play for him, check out the school, and see the prospects of my getting in to study. In other words, he wanted to see how "good" I was. At that point, he was in the process of moving his shit from NYC down to Miami to take Ney Rosauro's position as head of the percussion department. As soon as I could, I jumped on a plane and got my ass down to Miami.

To make that story short. I played and I scared the shit out of him... he told me that I have a lot of work to do. He recommended I contact and study with his good friend in Cleveland, and in the meantime fly to Miami for monthly/bimonthly lessons, which he would not charge me since I'd be traveling by air. I said thank you for the 4 hour lesson, and headed back to Ohio.

He called his buddy in Cleveland and said

"Dudey, she cant play the snare drum, you gotta help her! I can't do anything with that!"
"Alright. Whatever dude, bring her to me."
"She's got potential though, if she works real hard, she might be able to get in."

and as you can see, from the note up top, I didn't. 6 months later.