For me her genius was always in the details. Her earrings, always unique and colorful, yet elegant. Her clothes perfectly tailored to her sinewy form, an androgyny that allowed her to play both pants roles and sensual leading ladies. She could find modernity in between two eighth notes of Bach, reworking a single phrase over and over in our lesson until I felt the run rippling through my body from head to toe. She taught me to obsess over my pronunciation of French, Spanish, Italian and German. To luxuriate over a word, and the meaning and the etymology of that word. She had a way of almost caressing text when she spoke it– a sign of an enduring fascination with texture, as if she could spark a physicality to the sonority and rhythm of her speech. She scribbled down titles of books and poetry for me – all I which I sank into with a ferocity befitting a 19-year-old. She recognized and encouraged my love of reading by teaching me how to read paintings and sculpture. She taught me how to bring my new insights into my art songs and arias. She helped me to make the connections between my voice and my inner life. She understood the transition I made into my own independence. She understood my depth of feeling (that I know we will always have in common). Throughout four and half years, over hours and hours at the piano, in museums, and at coffee, between her studio and Paris - she was teacher and my mentor. I absolutely adored her.
I didn’t see it coming when suddenly the communication stopped during my first semester of grad school. I did not anticipate the pain of having to let her go – when the absence of a relationship between us didn’t even register on her face the next time I saw her, nearly three years later. I longed for her mentorship, her friendship, to tell her about my thesis, to share my adventures and my troubles and my writing with her. As every phone call and email and message went unanswered a seed of doubt began to grow, that perhaps I had not truly known her in all her complexity.
It’s one of those tricky lessons of growing up, when we realize we demand so much of others, as we fail to see or accept their imperfections, their faults. There’s a fine line between admiration and idolatry, I know that now. But at the time I lived within that line, searching for myself all along the way. I mistook her approval for my own self-worth. I credited her inspiration for my own creative inventions, I confused my hard work with her indulgent sense of responsibility for my growth. Most destructively, I tied my dream to hers. I thought if I continued to fashion myself into her mold, I’d rise like Rodin’s Eve –astonishing and independent, sensual and brilliant.
There was a Modigliani at the Tate this past January that reminded me of her instantly. A portrait of a woman. It’s not simply that the image resembles her, it’s the eyes that hooked me. In the portrait, I recognized her, or more precisely, I recognized what I hadn’t seen before. The nameless woman’s pose is cool and secure, but her eyes are restless, anxious almost. She feeds off the viewer, the intensity of her gaze sinking into those who pass the painting. I realized I had blinded myself to my professor’s self-absorption, to the cannibalistic nature of her artistry. While I relied own, she had experimented on me in her own way, working through her ideas and hypotheses in our work. My growth – and namely, my success, wasn’t simple for her. That perhaps reflected in me were her own “what ifs.”
I know that I will always search for her, that I will always feel this sting of disappointment when I think of her. And yet through this loss, I have learned to trust my own instincts, to be wary of manipulation. I owed and owe her so much. But I am learning to separate my dreams from others desires. I realized that all this time, perhaps I already had the intellect and talent to work towards an alternate vision of myself – mine and not hers.
