Photoessay #2107 - Harry Potter and Robert Schwarrtz

As always, writing pieces more substantial than blog post challenges me.

In my first writing class, I tried to write about UCSC in 1970 but found it so hard to remember the specifics.  I now have a piece which features an arc where I enter UCSC with such high hopes and intentions, feel frustrated and thwarted by the end, go on with my life and take up more academic interests now that I have the opportunity as an older adult.

Ross, my writing teacher this summer, suggests that I need to have Harry Potter beginning.  He points out that Harry Potter truly has a terrible home life with Aunt Petunia (though I always thought there was more to her than anybody let on) so it makes his trip to Hogwarts so welcome and fabulous.  So I need to show specifically how things were rotten for me at home and in high school.  It gets the reader involved in the narrator's journey.  The contrast between the two environments.  Enhance the narrator's likeability.

I buy it, truly I do.  But it means I have to dredge up some realistic scenes.  Aack, hard, hard.  They don't have to be true or accurate.  Just believable.

Thinking back on those times, the people.  Of course, I married somebody from that same high school (married 36 years).

I remember Robert Schwartz.  I spent a lot of time with him and adored him.  I sketched out a scene of frustration with him as a character.  My friend Anne suggests leaving him out and keeping all of the positive parts of the scene.  You don't want to really introduce a character if you are not really going to do anything with him.

But what about the real Robert Schwartz?  Enjoy some of his music through this Youtube video.  As a high school student, he was a piano virtuoso.  Nobody, NOBODY could come close to his ability to play the piano.  I remember that he used to take the bus to San Francisco every Saturday to study with a piano teacher there.  Already, he was so accomplished, nobody in Sacramento was really appropriate.  Parents do that kind of stuff now routinely but that was pretty wild in the late 1960s.  And he really was that good.  Funny and sweet too.

So now, I see that he has spent his life in music.  As far as I can tell as I am not in personal contact with him.  I guess I could.  How wonderful to know so early where you future lies.  I look at this middle age man and think, is that really him?  Clearly he looks different than he did in 1968.  Sometimes, some part of somebody will resonate with you.  For me watching the videos, one thing did jump out at me.  His hands.  His hands playing the piano.  I spent lots of time as a teenager watching him play the piano.  Somehow I recognize his hands.

So many choices, I'm finding it hard to pick.  I chose this first one Chopin Presto (fast) because the video is short and shows him a little bit more after he has finished his performance.  That one is only 1.5 minutes.  If you have 5 minutes and would like something more expressive, try the second one.  Still like no other.