My progress felt dramatic—as if the motor neurons were continually forming different groups and alliances to accomplish more things. I could imagine some of them getting together and saying, “Hey, let’s help with this!”
As my excitement grew over the new possibilities, I told Hope that she had been aptly named. She shrugged and said, “Well, it’s a family name. If the family name had been Cucamonga, I’d be Cucamonga Hopkins. Also known as Kook.” Our sessions never lacked for humor.
Although each tiny change seemed huge to me, requiring a whole sequence of adjustments in my artificially built piano technique, I welcomed each one as something akin to a lifesaver. I embraced whatever enabled me to feel more natural, more integrated with the musical ideal, no matter what the cost in time and temporary disorientation.
At the piano, sometimes any movement I made seemed to overshoot its mark. Or I would set out in a new direction, even on a tiny scale, and hopelessly confuse the other motor neurons involved in the approach to a complex musical passage. But I gradually began to call on older, pre-polio motor reflexes to participate. They didn’t work at first. But the larger muscles kept encouraging me to try again. Once I had admitted these impulses into the mix, they integrated relatively quickly, because they were a little closer to the natural reflexes.
These impulses presented themselves most clearly in informal, intimate play-throughs, of course. Sometimes I seemed to be kicking aside some of the careful work-around structures I had devised so painstakingly. But the goal was the same: to present this beloved music as effectively and expressively as possible. And gradually, bit by bit, I found my way into a new beginning.
Once I had gone a certain distance, I couldn’t even remember where I had been a short while before. The newer combinations felt more natural and left the more restricted counterparts behind. It felt as if I were remodeling—knocking out walls, putting windows and doors in different places, enlarging rooms, and streamlining passageways that had become cumbersome.
The kind of work I had done to construct the first artificial post-polio piano technique now helped me to tackle a revision of that same work-around. I already knew how to rebuild a technique without losing sight of the musical goal. The tortuous accumulated experience—from Copenhagen until I met Hope—was helping me to accommodate new possibilities more readily.
Since this was an entirely new training program, I had to call a halt to all public performance for another year. But this time, there was a difference. I recognized that I would end up with something more. The sensations produced by these diagonal patterns were leading to what felt like a more integrated way of moving. I sensed that I would be able to call on some of the more natural reflexes from the distant past to a greater degree than I could ever have thought possible.
It was difficult blending this process with my teaching schedule, but Amelia and Eve explained the situation to my friends on the IHC faculty. Mary Mark, Theresa, Sister Helen Kelley, president of the college, and some of my other faculty friends gave me their wholehearted support.
Hope knew that I would be feeling stronger and more capable as we continued with the treatments. She repeatedly warned me of a factor I needed to keep in mind: As my remaining motor neurons began working harder and more efficiently, accomplishing greater things, that same polio-reduced pool of motor neurons was being used much more during each day and thus was more at risk than ever. She went on to explain that this risk would be present for the rest of my life.
Hope wanted to make sure I understood that periodic rest throughout each day was essential to conserving my remaining motor neurons. She defined a rest period as simply “getting horizontal,” so that the spinal, upper body, neck, shoulder, and arm muscles could relax. While I was lying flat on my back, I had to make sure that my arms rested mostly in the supine (palms upward) position, which would relax the shoulder muscles more effectively than if my arms were in a prone position.
In Hope’s world, there were two groups of people: “polios” and “normals.” The rules and predictions were very different for the two groups. As Hope spelled it out in elementary terms, “the polios” had to expend more overall effort to make any kind of movement. We had substantially less physical endurance, even in simple daily activities, than did “the normals.”
Hope reminded me often that, as a “polio,” my ambition, determination, and obsession in the realm of piano playing could pose a danger to my neuromuscular system. She warned me repeatedly of “burnout”—a lifelong risk.
After Copenhagen and the Vienna conference with Lassen and Aitken, I had been the only one who thought I might be able to play the piano again. But by the time I worked with Hope, I had been accepted in the music world as a pianist, and my only question was: How much would the therapy help in my playing—and in my everyday life?
Amelia had always noticed that it was difficult for me to do certain everyday tasks. She would open doors, pick up a purse or bag or anything else, and move it from one place to another just to save my shoulders. Eve had taken her cue from Amelia; both friends had been enabling me to feel and appear more normal.
Now, after some months of my new therapy, Amelia and Eve told me they could already see some differences. Amelia and I had a talk one evening that began with her observation that I had just offered to carry a bag of groceries from the car for the first time since she had known me. (Not a heavy bag, mind you!) This led to a discussion of the many years I had unconsciously avoided a vast number of activities. We both understood that I was always doing whatever I could, but had lost perspective on what I’d been avoiding.
In the kitchen, for example, it had long been a struggle for me to pick up pots or pans holding any kind of contents. I never removed jar lids or anything similar. My kitchen was filled with gadgets enabling me to do such things when no one else was around. As Amelia and I discussed the general picture, I jotted down some points I could pass along to Hope, who was always interested and asking for specifics.
Amelia observed that my stance had “grown younger and more vital.” That was probably because I had increased strength in both the back muscles and core muscles needed to hold me up. She also commented that I seemed less withdrawn.
“I hate to say ‘withdrawn,’ because you’ve always talked with enthusiasm,” Amelia explained. “Your voice was higher-pitched and had less volume than it does now. You had vitality in some ways, but especially in a group there would be a noninvolvement.” We agreed that my lack of involvement was a natural attempt to save my weakest muscles from further strain. I had also modified talking, gesturing, and body stances in order to save energy by avoiding unnecessary movements.
Amelia went on, “Only in walking did you really extend yourself. Anything with your arms—you tended to break the gesture, or just let the arms lie. Neurological damage can go with supinated hands; and that was one of the first things that I picked up when I met you—that your hands were in the posture of supination. Strong people usually rest their hands pronated. All of your postures were quietly animated, but not assertively expressed.”
“How did I pick up a dish, or serve you a plate of cookies, or . . . ?” I asked.
“Well, usually with the smallest gesture possible. You still rock the teapot rather than picking it up,” Amelia answered. “You would usually wait for someone else to open a car door. You didn’t even notice it. When you met people, most of them thought you were very nice, and they liked you very much, but didn’t see you as warm or involved. It was obviously self-protection. One of the things that I’ve noticed as your recovery has moved along is that everyone has suddenly started talking about what a warm person you are.”
On the neuromuscular front, I still had some distance to travel, and wasn’t about to turn away from treatment when I went back to performing. The ongoing therapy program—with Hope until she moved back to Maine, and then with a onetime Rancho Los Amigos colleague of hers, “MJ” Sullivan—continued to bring gradual neuromuscular improveme
nt well through the next ten years, with occasional sessions beyond that time.
In September of 1969, I decided that the new version of my piano technique was ready to try out in live performance. I began a series of more ambitious play-throughs at Eve’s, Carolyn’s, my parents’ home in Rancho Santa Fe, and informally at IHC to see how it might hold up under pressure. In October, Eve received the shocking news that her husband, Truman, had died suddenly. She flew immediately to Boston to be with her sons and their families, staying with them a couple of weeks after Truman’s memorial service.
At about that time, our inner circle of play-through hosts suffered another sad loss: the composer Francis Hendricks. He and his wife, Katie, had been warmly encouraging and willing to host such evenings for me ever since I had begun to play again. They had both become good friends. Not long after Francis’s death, Katie called to let me know that she was planning to move out of the area, and to ask if I would be interested in his piano. She said Francis had always enjoyed my interaction with his Steinway concert grand, and she knew that he would have been happy for me to have it. The ridiculously low price she quoted told me that Katie really wanted me to have the piano.
My only hesitation was not if but where. A concert grand wouldn’t fit into my Malibu apartment. Fortunately, Joan Palevsky, a friend of the Immaculate Heart music faculty, had a large living room in western LA and offered to house the piano for as long as necessary. Her only condition was that I sometimes practice on it when her children were home from school so that they would hear live music played by a friend. She also offered to host as many play-throughs as I wished.
Sherman and I had stayed in touch during my self-enforced hiatus from concert tours. He had moved to Bloomington, Indiana, and his activities on behalf of the Indiana University performing artists had turned into a full-time job. He assured me that he would be happy to help get things restarted for me, but suggested that I might be better off with an artist manager based in New York City. He was interested to hear that I had already been talking with someone in Los Angeles who was willing to become an interim personal artist representative.
Chapter Fifteen
A Time of Triumph and Transition
My new interim personal rep was Whitfield Cook, a novelist, playwright, and screenwriter—most notably for Alfred Hitchcock’s films Strangers on a Train and Stage Fright. A handsome man with silver-streaked hair and a resonant speaking voice that would easily have projected from any stage, Whit was in his early sixties at the time we met at one of my play-throughs, or soirées, as some of the attendees were calling them. Whit and his wife, Elizabeth, divided their time between Los Angeles and Connecticut, since his activities were based in both LA and New York City. Once he had heard part of my story, he wanted to hear more.
When we got together for a lively discussion over lunch, Whit’s enthusiasm was at a high level. He was in between projects of his own and intrigued by a field that was new for him. Although he had written and produced his own plays in New York, he had not yet tackled the world of classical music performance. But that was about to change. He was teaming up with his friend Margaret Wharton, who booked classical concerts in Southern California, to form a partnership called Wharton-Cook.
First, Whit wanted permission to revise my official biography. Since the request was coming from a writer of his stature, I was all ears.
“Well, for one thing, no itsy-bitsy at the piano!” he exclaimed with a hearty laugh, referring to the usual practice of chronicling a performer’s early years. “Let’s get right to the drama!” His proposed revision would start in the present, with an intriguing statement, and then dip back into my earlier life to fill in details.
Next, he wanted to introduce me to some of his friends in public relations, especially Rupert Allan of the Los Angeles firm Allan & Ingersoll. Rupert’s younger brother, Chris Allan, managed the firm’s New York office, and Whit saw Chris as an ideal person to handle my story with sensitivity.
Joan Palevsky, who wanted to spread the word about an Immaculate Heart College faculty member performing again on the concert circuit, joined Whit and me for some lunchtime brainstorming and offered to handle any public-relations expense to get things going. The year before, Joan had gone through a divorce from Max Palevsky, an early computer developer and at that time an important figure at Xerox. The settlement gave her the funds to do anything that interested her, and she had begun to contribute to arts and educational organizations in the LA area. Joan had been a teacher at UCLA before her children came along and felt passionate about the importance of arts and education. She had no interest in spending money on material things and once confided to me, shaking her head at the expensive clothing in Beverly Hills shops, “I couldn’t put that much money on my back!”
Sherman, who loved the new bio, thought Whit was on the right track and was delighted to hear about the PR potential with Chris Allan. I had been cautious about accepting any performance commitments in 1969 while my work with Hope was still bringing relatively dramatic neuromuscular changes, but I couldn’t resist a couple of invitations to celebrate the Beethoven Bicentennial in early 1970. It seemed fitting that I could make yet another cautious “comeback” in the warm glow of Beethoven’s last three piano sonatas—my beloved trio of 109, 110, and 111.
For the fall of 1970, another European tour was taking shape, which would include some benefit performances for the physically handicapped. Two important East Coast concerts—at Boston’s Jordan Hall and New York’s Alice Tully Hall—were scheduled for later that fall. The Tully Hall appearance would be my long-delayed New York City debut, by which time I would have turned thirty-seven.
I planned to devote the first half of the fall program to Beethoven—the Bagatelles, Opus 119, and the magnificent Opus 111—in honor of the Beethoven Year. For the second half, I decided to play the Fauré Barcarolle No. 5, along with Scriabin’s Sonata No. 5.
While planning this program, I was browsing in a music store one day and saw a tall, thin volume of Karol Szymanowski’s Études, Opus 33. Its text was in Polish, and its pages were still uncut. Peeking into the uncut pages, I saw some unusually interesting piano writing, somewhat reminiscent of Scriabin. After I had brought the volume home and carefully separated the pages, I found twelve miniature études—some only a page in length and each one linked to its successor without pause. As I began to explore them at the piano, I discovered a glowing mosaic of colors and textures, and recognized this work as the perfect addition to my fall program. The short “studies,” touching briefly on a variety of piano techniques, contained considerable delicacy and subtlety. There were luscious harmonies in the more spacious pieces and sparkling passages in some of the livelier études. How Nana would have loved this, I thought, knowing that I would be calling on her Polish spirit for extra insight. The next time I talked on the phone with Mom I told her excitedly of my find. “I’ll be listening!” she said, summing up her ongoing enthusiasm about my playing.
Eve was especially delighted that I would be playing in Boston, her hometown, and even thought about flying back for the concert. But her health was of increasing concern. At age sixty-three, she was experiencing some mysterious symptoms, and the health-care professionals she had consulted in Santa Monica and at UCLA had so far only pinpointed extreme hormonal imbalances. She had begun to feel that, much as she loved Malibu, she should be closer to her trusted medical people. With Amelia’s help, she found an apartment in Santa Monica.
Once Eve was set up in Santa Monica, where she could feel less anxious, Amelia and I tried to figure out how we could be close by, given Eve’s unpredictable up-and-down health condition. So Amelia and I launched a housing search, mostly on Sunday afternoons. We couldn’t find any condos or apartments that would accommodate the nine-foot Steinway concert grand presently visiting at Joan’s home. We also looked at some houses that we might share, but to get a room big enough for the piano, and to have two sets of personal quarters, made the price of a hou
se far too high for our combined incomes. We began to view our quest as an extended one.
Meanwhile, I had to do some planning on the concert re-entry front. Whit and Rupert wanted Chris Allan to get advance PR going in New York, since Sherman was no longer able to set up interviews and meetings for me.
Chris and I first met when I went through New York in February during my “re-entry” Beethoven tour. We met at the Russian Tea Room on 57th Street, over a bowl of borscht and multiple cups of tea. Chris was wearing a blue shirt and an Italian-cut jacket, a combination that set off his dark eyes and dark hair. I was taken with him from the beginning. We talked a long time and must have lingered for at least three hours, every so often ordering more Russian-style munchies and tea.
We talked mostly about our personal devotion to music and art. I was struck from the start by Chris’s attitude toward the arts, which seemed more European than American. He seemed to understand someone like me, who had been willing to risk everything to rebuild my ties to music. Chris had been an Air Force pilot in the Korean War and had survived harrowing experiences, receiving the Distinguished Flying Cross for his heroism. He had returned home to devote himself to the arts, and well understood the connection between onetime trauma and heightened dedication.
I felt a wonderful connection with Chris. When I was with him, the city itself seemed to take on a different character. Ever since the polio attack, I had felt some fear of New York—fear of how “the polio girl” would be received if I ever were to play there. Now, suddenly, New York was Chris. Because of him, the city felt friendlier, more inviting.
To Play Again Page 22