An old cardboard box that yielded my New York City High of Performing Arts Yearbook and a flood of memories, revealed my portrait. I looked innocent enough, with a riveting quote beneath: “I know what is missing in the barrel rather than what is there.”
Perhaps it was a time-honored insecurity that adolescents might disclose about themselves?–A Catcher in the Rye moment for a teenage girl?
Reva Cooper, in the Drama Department, and my best friend at the time, admits that her quote actually belonged to Constance DiGiovanni, but was misprinted.
A simple exchange of inspired words between the two would have straightened things out:
Reva: “Music is my Best Medicine.”
Connie: “Cry the Beloved Country for Wasted Youth.”
So as we three exited our star-struck school, it was in the spirit of an empty barrel, music medicine, and wasted youth worth crying about.
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The seeds of insecurity…
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