Even as I advance into old(er) age, my nose remains resolutely pressed against the creative life window, somewhere among hoping, assuming, and planning for another career of some writerly sort.
So I was interested to read the obituary of "Patricia Travers Violinist Who Vanished", in Sunday's NY Times.
Travers, who died in February at the age of 82, was a child violinist who made her solo debut at the New York Philharmonic when she was just 11. From there, she went on to appear with symphonies throughout the US and Europe; record Charles Ives on Columbia; and perform on the radio. She even went Hollywood, with a role in a comedy about a music camp. (I don't recall ever seeing "There's Magic in the Music," but it's hard to believe it didn't appear on "Boston Movietime" at some point during my childhood. I'm guessing that Patricia was the serious, quiet, brainiac kid, not one of the Mickey-Judy, 'hey, kids, let's put on a show' exuberant teens who wanted to strike up the band. Don't know for sure, but I'm guessing this clip might be from "Magic." Sure looks like a swell camp, doesn't it?
In 1951, at age 23, she gave her last performance, playing Brahms with the Boston Symphony.
With that, she hung up her bow, moved back home with the 'rents, and wound up managing her father's commercial property business (and playing for the entertainment of her parents).
Her tenants knew her as the landlord.
The "narrative arc" of Travers' life is familiar to those who study child prodigies:
“Prodigies are much less likely to go on to become major famous creative geniuses than they are to become unheard-of and drop out,” Ellen Winner, a professor of psychology at Boston College, said in a telephone interview on Friday. “What it takes to become a prodigy is very different from what it takes to become a major creative adult.” She added, “Most do not make that leap.”
Although I do wish my creative genius had been encouraged or at least acknowledged, all this certainly makes me happy I wasn't a child prodigy.
At the age that Travers was playing to stellar reviews at Carnegie Hall, my highest level attainment was being able to simultaneously read a book (at age 11, likely some goopy teen romance like "Double Date," or "Sixteen"); roll my straight, limp, baby-fine hair in spoolies; eat ice cream with Hershey's sauce (from a pale yellow melmac bowl); and carry on a conversation (or fight) with a sibling. All while watching a re-run of Wagon Train, and mooning over the wagon train scout, Flint McCullough.
When I wasn't using my hands to spoon in the ice cream, I might have been using one of my father's discarded razor blades to saw the covering off one of his discarded golf balls. Ahh, the pleasure of peeling off the last of the cover and tackling the tightly wound strands of rubber to get at the magic center: a tiny ball the size of a small clay-ie marble, but with the most remarkable bounce and whiz possible. Those suckers flew. So it was worth all the stings suffered when the sawed off rubber strands spronged out an lashed your face or hands.
Prodigy? Not I!
But while it is certainly too late to become a child prodigy at this point, I still retain a belief in the possibility that I may one day become an old lady prodigy.
Still, I wonder what Patricia Travers thought all those years.
Did she regret the many years of "lost" career - it's not as if she just stopped performing; she didn't teach or seemingly have anything to do with the violin. Did she fret about her "lost" childhood? Did she just shrug it off - that was then, this is now?
From the write-up in the New Jersey news, she certainly doesn't come across as a misanthropic, hermit crank - just a pleasant, quiet older woman. Which is, I guess, what I'm on the way to becoming - unless I do become an old lady prodigy, or give in fully to those still wispy tendencies towards misanthropic, hermit crankhood.
Fairewell, Patricia Travers. I hope you had a good life. It does sound as if you did.
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