I was once interviewed by a student about being a “professional guitar player,” which seems odd to say, but then again, I do sometimes get paid for doing it, so, yeah. Anyway, she asked me about my musical influences, and I made my typical nods to my father, the Beatles, Todd Rundgren, and Broken Arrow (an amazing band on Long Island I followed religiously as an undergrad). But shortly after that interview, I had a dream about Miss Fleischmann, whom I had forgotten — but now know I loved.
Miss Fleischmann was the music teacher at Forest Lake Elementary School in Wantagh, Long Island, where I grew up. She was young and tall and had a shock of brightly blond, curly hair. She always wore colorful dresses and high heels, and had cat eye glasses on a jeweled chain around her neck. Here is a perfectly romantically blurry image of her from some school kid's crappy camera from way back then:
On Wednesday mornings — the highlight of my week, I now remember — she would push her equally blond, wheeled, upright piano into Mrs. Kasarsky’s 4th grade class for our music time.
I can still remember the sound of her coming down the hall, wrangling that beast by herself, and how the anticipation of her arrival made my heart jump. She would somehow gracefully glide that 700 pound instrument through the classroom door, and ease to a stop in the back near the sink. In her hand would be this week’s song from Carole King’s Tapestry album, handwritten lavender lines on mimeograph paper, back when sniffing that paper could get you high. So, yeah, sex, drugs, and rock and roll all in one place — heady stuff for a 9 year old.
Anyway, Miss Fleischmann would tear into “I Feel the Earth Move” — just rocking out, crushing it while standing at the keyboard, peering over the top of the piano to make eye contact us and pull us in. She introduced us to mystical, spiritual visions with “Tapestry” and invited us to have a social conscience with “Beautiful.” I sang along, loudly, engaged heart and soul. Back before adolescence, and self-consciousness, and my desperate, flailing failures at being cool, back when it was still a joyful, open, unbridled time, she was the soundtrack.
On the set list for my acoustic gigs is a short medley of Carole King songs from that same album — “Home Again” into “So Far Away.” I have often wondered why it keeps making the cut, why it doesn’t fall off the list, even when I don’t play it very often. But now I know: the longing in these lyrics has never been more real to me, nor has my debt to a teacher whom I loved almost 50 years ago.