Just Kids From the Bronx (6 page)

The Italians in our neighborhood lived to the east of us in small houses, but the Jews lived in apartments. Three-room apartments with maybe six kids. Try to figure that one out. You basically had a small kitchen, a bedroom, a living room, a foyer, and one bathroom. I slept for a period of my life under the stove. Well, I was young. But people were forever sleeping in the hallway or foyer. Or everyone slept in the one bedroom. At one point I slept on a folding cot. For years my sister slept on a small bed at one end of the bedroom while my parents slept together in a big bed in the same bedroom. But that was for a family of four in three rooms. When you had a family of six or seven it was like the Marx Brothers. The concept of having a room of your own didn’t exist. There was no such thing. Sometimes you’d see it in the movies and you would wonder what it was. I mean somebody with their own room, their own bed, their own dresser? What is that? That was somebody else’s fantasy about another kind of life. It could have been on Mars.

In our building of around fifty families, no one had their own phone, but there was one phone and it was in the hall on the ground floor. Because we lived on the ground floor, when the phone rang—and it could be for anyone in the building—I answered it. And that went on for a good part of my life there. I’d answer the phone, “Hello, who’s this?” “I’m looking for Irving Schnabel.” “Okay. Okay. Wait a minute. I’ll ring his bell.” And I would go outside to the hallway entry and I would ring that person’s bell three times. That was the acknowledged signal.
Ding ding ding
. Then I’d go back into the hall. The person would open the door upstairs and I would yell, “Telephone!” “Who is it?” “Didn’t say.” “I’ll be right down.” What a nutty idea! But fortunately phones were in such infrequent use we’d get only a few calls a night.

My mother was the person who said that I could do anything in life. My father was the one who said prove it. It wasn’t as antagonistic as it sounds. He was a man with modest aspirations. A timid man to a large degree. A very decent, hardworking man. But he had no sense that great achievement of any kind was possible. He knew that he was meant to work. And so he worked twelve hours a day every day of his life. But my aspiration to be an artist was something he didn’t fully understand because he couldn’t figure out how anybody could make a living from that.

The most touching thing that occurred between my father and myself was when I went to visit him in an old-age home in Florida, six or seven months before he died. We were sitting, talking, when he said, “You know, you did the right thing.” And I said, “What do you mean?” “You know, you decided to be an artist. I resisted then, but you were right. It turned out to be the right thing for you.”

You don’t get that confirmation often in life. It was like a benediction. Because all he wanted when I was young was for me to be able to make a living.

I have a standard story about the origins of my interest in the visual world. My parents were going out to some kind of event so they asked a cousin of mine to babysit. He came to the house—I was five—he came with a paper bag. I didn’t know what the bag was. He said, “You want to see a bird?” and I said, “Yeah.” I thought that maybe he had a bird in the bag. But when he reached into the bag he pulled out a pencil. He then drew a bird on the side of the bag.

I think it was the first time that I had ever seen anybody draw something that looked like something outside of a child’s crude scrawl. It was as if he had created life in front of me. A bird had materialized out of nothing. Out of a bag and a pencil. I suddenly realized that I was going to spend my life creating life. That I could make something magical occur. I have to emphasize that this was a revelation. It wasn’t logical. I almost fainted. It was like a blinding light. Suddenly! It was like the hand of God had come down. It was that important.

In some cases there isn’t an event like that. There’s just a slow accumulation of things. I think it happens differently to different people, and it also happens at different ages. Or the realization doesn’t occur while you’re that young. You don’t know what to call it, right? You don’t have a name for it. It’s just an interest of yours.

I became a working artist by drawing pornographic pictures for the other kids. “Can you do a naked lady?” “Glad to be of service.” In addition to my own satisfaction in life, I realized there was a job to be done for others and that you could satisfy.

And then, of course, I went to the High School of Music and Art. It was a very optimistic place. It was part of the optimism of that period, where the feeling was that anything is possible. That was a consequence of the emigration of people who were leaving a circumscribed life where they saw no possibilities to the sense that they could prosper and grow and that their children would have a better life. How strange it is now that that has flipped over—the idea that your children are not going to live as well as you. I think that’s a great sadness.

Music and Art High School was one of the great institutions of the city. It’s not fully appreciated for how much it shaped the aesthetic of the city. It created the audience for both music and art. It’s hard to imagine what the city would’ve been like without that school. I think at one point probably two thirds of the New York Philharmonic were graduates of Music and Art High School. The statistics are astonishing. But more than that, it created so many generations of graduates committed to either the world of painting or the world of music.

Once Leonard Bernstein came to conduct the senior orchestra at the school. That orchestra was fantastic. They were doing Beethoven’s “Leonore Overture No. 3,” which has a big trumpet solo in it. It was played by a very proficient kid who could really play the trumpet. As the kid finished the solo, Bernstein yelled out, “You’re hired!” And while he was still conducting, he hired him for the Philharmonic.

I grew up with the extraordinary idea that this was the promised land and that you could achieve anything. I was promised a scholarship to Pratt Institute, because the dean there had come to Music and Art to look at portfolios. He said, “Young man, I’m giving you a four-year scholarship to Pratt.” I said, “Great.” So I didn’t apply anywhere else. Then I took the entrance exam to Pratt and I failed it. I called up the dean—I think his name was Boudreau—and I said, “I didn’t apply anywhere else and I haven’t got a school to go to because you promised me a scholarship.” “Well I can’t very well give you a scholarship if you can’t pass the entrance exam, but I have an idea for you, young man. What I want you to do is to go to night school, and if you succeed in night school for one year, I’ll give you a three-year scholarship for the remaining time in the day school.” So I took the night-school exam and I failed the night-school exam too. I think I’m the only person in the world who failed that night-school exam. Then I took the Brooklyn College exam and got in. After three months of commuting from the Bronx to Brooklyn for two hours each way on the subway, I said I can’t do this and left. I got a job and then got into Cooper Union.

Lewis Hyde wrote a wonderful book on how primitive cultures use gifts to diminish hostility but you can’t keep the gifts. You have to pass them on. In most cases, these gifts are physical, but in our civilization you realize that the gifts are cultural and in the arts. That they’re music and painting and they’re architecture and so on. What is this persistent need for music and art and for beauty? What the hell is beauty? Why do we have to keep making pictures and making music? Why?

Everything else is driven by money, greed, and power. The only remaining barrier to all of that is the arts. This recognition that there’s something other than material issues in life. It’s what bonds the species. It is the only thing that has no intention other than to make you feel you’re part of something larger. It really serves as an alternative to religion. And it’s experiential. It reaches a different part of the brain. You just see something and you are changed. And everybody who sees that same thing and is moved by it now shares that feeling too. And you share something that can’t be sold. Something that can’t be made into a commodity. Leonardo’s
The Last Supper
, although it was created as propaganda, as most religious paintings are, makes us feel a spiritual longing. A longing to share an experience with others. That’s the only reason that I can imagine that art exists.

This is my life. Art chooses you. You don’t choose art. You become possessed. This is my commitment and I’ve never deviated from that.

MILDRED S. DRESSELHAUS

Physicist, recognized for her original work in nanotechnology and carbon molecules; Institute Professor and Professor of Physics and Electrical Engineering, Emerita, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

(1930– )

When I was young, we moved from Brooklyn to the Bronx, to one block from the Bronx House Music School, where my older brother had a violin scholarship. What happened ultimately was sad. My parents’ resources all went into that move, but my brother’s teacher, who was the reason we moved, died a few months after we got there. So people at the school recommended that we go to Greenwich House in Manhattan. That’s what we did, even though it was a long ride on the subway from the Bronx to downtown.

My brother was the talented one. He was very devoted to the violin and worked hard at it. He was also a good performer. He started playing violin when he was three, getting scholarships from that age on. I got a scholarship only because he had one. I think my parents and the school both thought I was going to be something like him, but I wasn’t. I loved music, but I always liked academics more, even though music became the gateway to opportunities I wouldn’t have had otherwise.

The kids growing up in our neighborhood didn’t normally leave the neighborhood. They just stayed there. Roosevelt High School was our district high school. It wasn’t too bad but it was just satisfactory. It wasn’t Hunter. I found out about Hunter High through the music school and the middle-class parents whose kids were there.

As part of my scholarship to Greenwich House, I ran errands for them and became a music critic, starting at about age eight. A couple of years later I saw the movie
Fantasia
, which made a terrific impression on me.

For everything that I did I had to write a report. That was good training for the future. Everything that I did there turned out to be pretty valuable, but who would have known that at the time? Even in public school, my teacher said to me early on in sixth grade that attending class would be a waste of time for me, so she gave me work to do for the school. I was like an administrative assistant, learning how to run things. And that’s been kind of useful in life too.

I had no help for passing the exams to get into Hunter High. The teachers told me, “Forget about applying. What they ask on the exam is nothing that we teach you here.” Which was true—but I learned it by myself, getting into Hunter High by having a perfect score.

The problem in junior high school was basically the behavior of the kids. The teachers had almost no time for teaching. They would just try to keep order, which wasn’t an educational experience. For instance, we were told to go to the bathroom at home before we went to school, so we wouldn’t have to go while we were there. It seemed that going to the bathroom was a bit dangerous because girls would get mugged there.

My mother was the breadwinner in the family. She started working at an orphanage, which was a twelve-hour-a-day job. She also had to travel to and from work, which made her days very long. So at age ten I took over the cooking for the family. My father had been emotionally destroyed by the events of the Holocaust and was a manic depressive. That was the diagnosis at the time, but I can’t really say for sure. My mother was very loving and my father loved me too, but he was very disturbed for a long time and couldn’t deal with reality. So it was tough on him but also tough on everybody else.

That particular kind of disease has ups and downs so when he was in the active mode he would be violent, which meant you had to stay away from him. Sometimes we just abandoned the house. My mother had a friend who lived on the east side in the Pelham Bay area, where the neighborhoods were much better. I used to seek refuge there. It was hard because Hunter High School was even farther away traveling from there, but despite that I recognized I was doing pretty well in school and that kept me happy. I’m still that way. I really like what I’m doing, in that I wake up in the morning excited about doing it. And I was that way when all this trouble was happening.

When you grow up like I did, you’re at a big advantage because you’re already taking care of yourself. You’ve been on your own. Nobody made it happen for you. You were making it happen yourself. So when you go to college or whatever you do, you have your own inner drive and confidence. I work in a man’s world. But … I’ve always worked in a meritocracy. And I’m still working productively—because I love doing it.

*   *   *

Note: I saw Mildred Dresselhaus for the first time in Oslo, Norway, where she received the prestigious Kavli Prize for her original work in nanotechnology and carbon molecules. The king, Harald V, was present when Dr. Dresselhaus, in her acceptance speech, talked of her immense gratitude for the honor. She then announced that she was going to give her prize of $1 million to young scientists for basic research. She encouraged others to do so, as well. I was immediately taken with this brilliant person who had such a spirit of generosity.