Tribute to My Mentor, Maestro Frank A. Salazar

I began writing this immediately following Frank's death in June of 2000. Writing has always been a solace to me; I have thus far 57 volumes of journals that I've been keeping since 1977, so writing this piece became part of my mourning. I didn't work on it consistently, but in fits and starts, a flowing stream of consciousness. Don't be surprised if I add more as time goes by.

---

In the small seaside city of Ventura, California there is a hill. From the window of a low slung split-level house you look out over the blue Pacific Ocean. To the left lay the verdant plains of the county’s green belt and the 101 highway as it snakes up what was millions of years ago a volcano. There, the highway spills over the top of the Conejo Grade on its way to Los Angeles. To the northwest the mountains, sometimes capped in mist, crawl down into the ocean as they amble up the coast to Santa Barbara. Below, when the neighbor's trees have been pruned, you can see the red tiled roofs of Spanish Colonials that mingle amiably amid the peaked and painted Victorians and solidly built Craftsman homes.

The several square blocks of the historic downtown district lie further downward and sometimes the sounds of Reggae and Blue Grass make their way up the hill. If the air is particularly still, you can hear the faint tolling of the bell of Mission San Buenaventura. The pier reaches out onto the water like a crooked arm and in the summer you can see the midway lights of the annual County Fair. During those nights, at precisely nine o’clock, fireworks are launched over the glassy black ocean. Further out, like a string of pearls, lay the Channel Islands. On very clear days you can see the natural rock arch just off the eastern end of Anacapa Island and at night you can see the light of the lone lighthouse on its rugged, windy cliff. There, seals bark and gulls swoop and cry by the thousands. People used to say there was a man who lived out there on that deserted island with his young daughter. If it's true, someone should write about it — it's the stuff of which novels are made.

In the sloping yard below the house are trees of citrus and avocado, a bed of roses, a small patch of lawn, and manicured flower beds filled with small, round, river stones. When the weather is warm you can sit at a table on the deck and breathe in the fragrance of orange blossoms, roses, honeysuckle and jasmine. Sometimes a whiff from the camellia bush floats out from the tropical atrium just off of the living and dining rooms. There is the soft whir of the neighbor’s swimming pool pump, a sound that always bothered the man who lived in this house. He mentioned it every time we stood or sat on that deck during our breaks from the work we did together in the large "view" room just through the heavy sliding glass doors.

I told him one night that the oil platforms on the ocean, lighted with hundreds of white bulbs, looked like fairy pirate ships. He said I was a hopeless romantic, that he only saw the insult to the environment. But this was not a critical comment. In fact, he said it with a tenderness in his voice, like he enjoyed the particular brand of innocence I possessed back then and wished that he hadn't grown so cynical.

To enter the house from the front one has to park on a steep, narrow, winding lane and walk down a set of concrete steps that end in a cool patio where an old tree creates a natural ceiling. In that courtyard few breezes stir and it was here that Maestro Frank Salazar and I sat after dinners, sharing a cigarette, a glass of wine or brandy, and conversations about music, literature, movies, Spain, and the meaning of life.

He'd cut down his smoking to one cigarette a day and he enjoyed that one as if it were the final course of his dinner. He told me he didn't smoke because he was addicted, but because he relished the finer things in life — a glass of merlot from his wine cellar, a sip of Spanish port smuggled back from a recent trip to Madrid, a smoked oyster carefully skewered on a colored toothpick, strong coffee, a broken piece of dark chocolate. His evening cigarette fit perfectly into this still life portrait of the man with the burning, but soft, black eyes and beautiful, smooth, brown hands that revealed no signs of wear or age. I remember writing in my journal when I first met him that his hands were nearly feminine. I wasn't a smoker, but I shared a cigarette with him every time we sat on that sheltered patio. It seemed perfectly natural to do so.

The doorbell never worked. I have no idea how many years it has been broken. It makes a "click-clock" sound when the button is pushed and when I asked him why they didn't have it repaired, he only said that he liked it that way. With a little thought I understood this, because Frank was a musical genius — it didn’t have to make sense to anyone else — and I figured that the irritation of a standard doorbell might be disconcerting to his ear. And his doorbell click-clocked a lot. He was a well-known and beloved icon.

The first time I visited his house, I was surprised by its lackluster appearance. He was a county celebrity, a highly respected, if tweedy, "don of the old school" at Ventura College and very well off. Yet, the floors were covered with the old yellow and orange shag carpeting that had been installed in the Seventies. The furniture was covered in well-worn Herculon and the entire wall of glass that looked onto the atrium was draped with open weave curtains that sagged at certain places where the fabric had worn. It was a house that hadn't changed much in twenty years. Later, the carpets were pulled up to reveal exquisite hardwood floors. The drapes were taken down and the furniture was replaced by cool Italian leather, tan suede and teak that had been sanded and polished until it was as soft as peach skin. Recessed halogen lights shone onto the profuse art that covered the walls — he was a passionate art collector.

I especially remember a print of Stravinsky, by Picasso. And books. Every room was filled with books. Books on art, history, travel, science, language, philosophy, humor, and music. So much music. Between the master bedroom and the office sat his study. One wall was covered with shelves of his thousands of musical scores from which he had conducted throughout the 30 years of his career. A bust of Mozart guarded a tin of candy. In another wall was a closet with built-in drawers that held more music, blank manuscript, Marvy felt tip pens, Black Wing pencils, clear rulers, and Wite-Out. Often, he sent me there to get things for him while we worked.

We spent many afternoons and evenings in the view room, where we sat at a long table upon which a sheet of heavy clear plastic protected an Indian bedspread that served as a tablecloth. There, we marked parts. Mostly, we wrote in the bowings and dynamics for the string sections of the orchestra, but sometimes we read and graded term papers together. We talked a lot, but we also fell into long stretches of silence that were punctuated only by the sound of an electric eraser and the heel of a hand as it brushed the paper clean. We drank coffee from delft cups upon saucers that looked like bowls, and we almost always shared a little plate of cookies and red grapes. When we did speak, it was not idle chat. Usually, we didn't even look up, but continued our work of up-strokes and down-strokes, slurs and articulations, pp and ff. At first I didn't like doing bowings because it was tedious and repetitive, but I enjoyed the hours we spent together doing them.

"Doing bowings will teach you more
about composing for the strings than
any book or college course can."
F. A. Salazar

It didn’t take me very long to find out Frank was right. Soon, I found myself marking my own compositions. I knew how I wanted them to sound and I wasn’t going to leave it to some concertmaster, who would never know, to decide. I hummed Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 in G minor to myself, turning the opening measure this way and that, starting first with an up-down-up, then a down-up-down. I tried a down-down-up opposed to an up-up-down. I increasingly found these sessions with Frank turning into vital lessons in composition.

But our real classroom was the kitchen, where, after dinners of meticulously created food, fine wine, and stimulating conversation, Frank and I stood at the kitchen sink washing the dishes. It was there that I learned the most important lessons from him. It was there that, with his dark, marble-like hands submerged into hot water, he put my musical know-how to the test.

"Here’s a chord for you," he'd say. "Tell me what it is and its function in the key of..." and he would spell out the notes of a chord, sometimes easy, sometimes not so easy. Drying the stemware with a cotton bar towel, making sure no spots were left, I’d name the chord for him and when I couldn’t, he’d give me a hint. We also played one of the family's favorite guessing games called, "B is for Botticelli."

It was over that sink that he often expressed to me that he thought I lived a wonderfully bohemian lifestyle and was fortunate to be surrounded by colorful people. He didn’t know that I was barely scraping by financially, that my newest love affair was particularly difficult, that my friends often used my house as a crash pad, that I was dangerously ill and preparing for surgery, or that I was battling manic-depression and worrying where my son's next meal would come from. Our friendship never touched the mundane. I didn't bring my personal problems with me when I went to his house to work or to study with him. I brought only my thirst for his company, my hunger for knowledge and my passion for music. His house on the hill was a haven where no one could touch me. No creditors, no drunken friends, no demanding lovers. Likewise, he never brought his personal problems to me.

"We have something between us that’s all feelings," he said to me one night on the phone after I’d returned home from visiting him. He had just come home from the hospital after undergoing a triple bypass. "It’s not physical or intellectual," he said. "It’s all feelings." Our friendship was very young then, but as solid as concrete. Many times during that conversation he fell speechless, but I knew what he was trying to say: that the love between us was timeless, pure, and full of aesthetic grace. "Apollonian," he once said in his gold Mercedes. "It's like the love between Haydn and Mozart, who were the same age difference that we are."

Before I met him, I'd seen him conduct Mozart’s Mass in C minor. Of course I knew who he was, everyone in the county did. His face was always in the paper, and I'd heard his name for nearly 20 years. After I'd taught myself to compose classical music, a friend of mine wanted to introduce me to this esteemed man who had founded and conducted the Ventura County Symphony.

"No!" I insisted. "He’s the musical pope of the county! He’d never take any notice of me."

But still, at night as I tried to fall asleep, music filling my head and keeping me awake, I'd imagine meeting him. How would he act? What would I say? Would he turn up his nose when I told him I was self-taught?

When I did meet him, I was set-up. I'd allowed my friend to take me to the college music department, where Dr. Burns Taft, the director of the Ventura County Opera Association and Master Chorale, also taught. I was introduced to Dr. Taft and he asked to see my portfolio of compositions, as well as my catalogue of incipits.

"Where did you study?" he asked as we sat knee-to-knee in a large music room.

"Nowhere. I’ve been teaching myself for the past year."

"That’s impossible," he said, smiling as if I were trying to get away with making him believe I was self-taught when I wasn’t. "No one knows these things without studying somewhere, especially after only a year."

I finally convinced him that what I said was true, and not long after, I saw him look over my shoulder and call out the name of the man I had been so adamant about not meeting. My blood froze. I knew Maestro Salazar was standing there behind me.

"Frank, come in here and look at this."

We stood up and I turned to see Frank standing there in his khaki pants, a shirt under a beige sweater, and a tweed jacket. He was shorter than I'd expected and his face looked very kind. Without a word he took my folio and began leafing through it.

"You have a very nice hand," he said, flipping pages and looking my work over carefully. "It looks a lot like mine. Is this one of your students?" he asked Dr. Taft.

"No, I just met her. And, Frank, she's self-taught."

At this, the Frank's mouth fell open. At his insistence I began studying with him at once, and soon the lessons spilled out of the classroom and into his home. A few months after that he told me he wanted me to attend the symphony rehearsals and concerts as part of my education. After about two months, on opening night of The Nutcracker, he stopped me backstage. We were about to leave the area just outside the pit when he said to me,

"How would you like the title of Assistant to the Conductor?" That was when everything changed.

I wasn’t sure what an assistant should do, so I took it upon myself to do what I thought I'd like if I were in his position. His dressing room was empty and cold, nothing but a couple of metal folding chairs against a formica counter top beneath a lighted, mirrored wall. I knew by this time that he liked decaffeinated coffee when he conducted, so before every concert I arrived an hour early to set up his dressing room to include a small coffeemaker of gourmet coffee. I added a place mat and napkin, a china cup and saucer, a plate of red grapes and cookies, and a bottle of mineral water. I made sure his scores for the evening were in order, his baton in its wooden case at the ready. I made sure his name was on his door and then shut it as I left. As time went on it often fell to me to place his scores and an extra baton on the music stand on stage. These weren't glamorous tasks, I know, and nothing that most composers would do, but I was happy to do anything for him, whether it be sharpening his pencils, emptying his trash, or writing cadenzas for his compositions.

When he arrived at the hall he went straight to his dressing room; we never spoke to each other until right before his stage entrance. Then, he would appear striding around the shell dressed in his tuxedo and carrying a baton, and he'd come to stand beside me. At every concert, as the orchestra tuned up, he'd turn to me and say, "That’s the most beautiful sound in the world." He'd look down in thought, feeling the audience, waiting for the perfect moment to appear on stage. Then he'd look at me again and whisper, "Is my fly open?" and we’d have to stifle our laughter. At last he made his entrance. For six years I stood in the wings watching him conduct, wondering how I'd gotten there. I, a self-taught nobody. After the concerts, he’d stay in his dressing room perhaps 10 or 15 minutes while I stood outside making sure no one knocked on his door. I never knew what he did in there. I never asked. It wasn't my business.

Frank had a little white convertible MG Roadster, and when he cruised around town in it he always donned a flat London cabbie hat that made him look pretty jaunty. He also wore large Andre Previn glasses. He had a large mustache with some gray in it, and an impressive nose. Although not what anyone would call handsome, he had very distinctive looks, and I watched as girls of 18 and 19 flitted and flirted with him. At that time he was 59 and could walk up the hill from the college cafeteria to the music department faster than I could, and I was only 35. He possessed a powerful masculine energy that was tempered with some good old-fashioned boyishness that never failed to draw feminine attention. He appeared more innocent than he probably was, however. One afternoon as we sat working at the table he asked me if I’d noticed a certain girl in his 10:00 a.m. Music Appreciation class.

"She came to me after class the other day and stood so close—telling me how much she enjoyed my lecture." His eyes sparkled. "I was reminded of a joke."

Uh-oh. Anyone who knew Frank well knew that he loved to tell long, corny jokes.

"An old man was walking down the road with his cane, all stooped over and shaking slightly, and he came upon a frog who said to him,

‘If you kiss me I’ll turn into a beautiful woman, and I’ll love you forever.’

The old man stopped, rubbed his chin, then continued walking. The frog hopped in front of him and said,

‘Didn’t you hear me? I’m a beautiful woman, shapely and passionate, and I’ll love you forever. I'll give you anything you want.’

The old man just shook his head and continued walking. The frog hopped ahead of him again and said,

‘Please! Kiss me and I’ll turn into a beautiful, passionate woman who will make love to you and fulfill all of your wildest fantasies.’

The old man stopped, shrugged, and picked up the frog, put it in his pocket and continued on with his walk. The frog stuck its head out and said,

‘What's wrong with you? Don’t you want me to love and pleasure you?' to which the old man replied,

‘I’d rather have a talking frog'."

Frank laughed so hard that he had a coughing fit.

Sitting at that table. Spectacular winter sunsets over the Pacific, the black velvet sky of night, the music floating from the living room: Schubert, Mozart, Stravinsky, Bach, Rodrigo. Lieder, concerti, Goyescas. He looked at me once and said,

"You remind me of myself when I was your age," and I told him I felt that I'd probably be a lot like him when I'm his age. He exclaimed, "Oh no—you'll get yourself into trouble!" to which I replied, "Oh, I'm always in trouble anyway."

We were the same astrological sign, but he didn’t believe in that kind of thing. All the same, we saw many similarities and often commented on them. I still take this as a great honor and compliment.

At one point in our work he made a mistake and I heard a soft, "Fuck!" slip his lips, after which he apologized over and over. I told him not to worry about it, but he said that he was always nervous and embarrassed by his earthiness when he was with someone he admired. I told him that I was earthier than he thought, but that I was always on my best behavior when around him and that it seemed to me that really creative people —we who create and interpret beautiful music and the "sacred" arts— have to sometimes delve into the so-called profane in order to find balance. He looked at me like I was the most incredible person on the face of the earth and said, "You might be as earthy as I am, but you're a mystic." It was my turn to be embarrassed.

Christmas was always a busy time of year. We had the usual performances of Handel's Messiah to produce, as well as the annual, week-long performances of The Nutcracker. I lived about 30 minutes from the concert hall (which was another 30 minutes from Ventura) so I spent a great deal of my time driving between my house, the hall, the college, and the Salazar house. Moreover, I also received commissions for arrangements of Christmas music. By the time the Christmas season was over I was ready to stay in and get back to my own music. Frank, as usual, went back to the college to work when the new semester arrived. While it lasted, Christmas was my favorite time of the year because I was kept busy with music and parties, and I had many opportunities to spend time with him and his family.

Every year on Christmas Eve he and his wife held a Posada, or open house, which lasted from morning until the last guest left, often in the wee hours. The kitchen was warm and steamy from large pots of menudo and posole simmering on the stove. His wife, Judi, made the hottest food I've ever eaten and still, Frank poured Tabasco on everything. In a newspaper interview, when asked the secret of life, he replied, "Eat more chili!" And he didn't mean the stuff that comes in cans, he meant the chili verde Judi made — hot enough to make you see God.

"If your nose runs it's good. If you sweat it's better, but if you cry it's perfect!" was his motto.

I always looked forward to these parties because, besides the food and wine, there was always live music and colorful, interesting people, mostly musicians, artists, and professors. It also served as the family's Christmas tree decorating party and each guest was expected to hang at least one ornament on the tree. I always chose (why, I don't know) a cast iron Eiffel Tower.

One year I was invited out Christmas tree shopping with the family. We went in their Benz to a local tree farm and as the others selected a tree, he and I followed along behind, talking intently. He told me something very important, and at the time I told myself to remember what he said to me, but I didn't write it down in my journal, so now I have no idea what it was. I always knew that one day I would lose him — why didn't I write down absolutely everything? I look through those old journals now and see how much I didn't record.

I remember a particular afternoon when I walked in to find him sitting at our work table. He was looking at some 8x10 publicity photos. He held one up as I took off my jacket and lay it over a brown leather Mexican chair.

"Isn't this great? Doesn't he look like a young Henry Miller?" he asked, not even saying hello.

I sat down at my usual place, took the photo and looked at it. Yes, it did. Frank had some friends who were members of the Motion Picture Academy in Hollywood, friends with whom he played tennis and attended pre-release screenings of major motion pictures. Knowing I was a lover of the works of Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller, he spread the photographs out before me.

"What is this?" I asked, spotting Uma Thurman in a sultry, sexy pose straight out of the 1930s.

"Look at this!" he whispered in awe. He showed me a photo of Maria De Medeiros, who was cast as Nin. "This is a new movie," he explained. "It's called 'Henry and June.' We saw a pre-release viewing of it last night and it has changed my life. Ah, to be 30 again!"

I had been reading his complete unabridged set of Nin diaries, borrowing one at a time and devouring it during the week so that I could return it and get the next one the following week. He told me that throughout his life he had always looked for his Anaïs—his muse—and that I was she, although he respected the fact that ours was and never would be a physical relationship.

"In real life I'm a Henry Miller, but no one thinks of me that way. They all think I'm so hapless, so tame, so SAFE. Just a harmless absent-minded professor. Women don't take me seriously anymore." He leaned closer and whispered, "I'm not safe you know, well, I wasn't. I know the kind of life Miller lived, because I've lived it too. That's what put this zipper in my chest. Never live a lie. It'll get you one of these," and he pointed to his chest where the scar from his recent open-heart surgery showed just a little above the opening of his Ralph Lauren polo shirt.

I read the diaries differently after that and my own changed too. A few weeks later, I read one of my entries to him while we stood in the kitchen drinking wine and nibbling on tortilla chips and too-hot guacamole. It was an entry I'd written while sitting in a local cafe one night, drinking wine and listening to live Spanish guitar music. When I finished reading, he stopped dead still, gazed at me and said,

"I never knew you wrote like that. You should be a writer as well as a composer."

Later, when I began Night Music, he told me he wasn't so sure I should choose to write Mozart's "memoirs."

"That's a sacred cow you're messing with. People will crucify you if you don't do it well, and they'll tear you apart you if you do. You can't win."

I gave him a copy to read, but right before I left the area in 1999 his wife gave it back to me. For as long as I live I'll wonder if he ever read it and what he thought of it.

Not long after I began attending Ventura College in 1986, I found myself in a depression that I couldn't shake. Here I was just starting college at the age of 34 and working a nowhere, minimum wage, full-time job that took every bit of physical strength I had leftover from the 15 units I was carrying. Through no fault of my own I'd found myself back in my parents' house and I was also a single parent. And don't mention the homework. I wasn't 18, or even 21. I began to wonder if I should give up this classical music thing, go back to accounting, move out with my teen-aged son and GET A LIFE. One afternoon I mentioned all this to Frank, hoping to get a little sympathy and some sound, fatherly advice. Instead, I got a cool look as he said matter-of-factly,

"If music isn't your burning desire, then get
out now; we don't need you. Having great
talent is no excuse to whine. In fact,
it's every reason to do just the opposite,
because you're supposed to be an ambassador
of music. Don't give music a bad name."

I don't have to tell you that this called me up short and I never again whined to him. Not that chasing down a musical career is all easy or all difficult — but to succeed one must also fail, and gracefully. Besides maintaining the balance, it ensures that we gain strength of character, willpower and self-respect. I can never thank him enough for teaching me this valuable lesson early on, before I might get big-headed and expect to be treated deferentially. There's always someone who's not as good and there's always someone who's better. All I try to do is do my best. If that gets noticed, great. But if not, great. Either way I will have lived a life of integrity and of living up to my personal best. It's not about if I win or lose, gain fame or remain obscure. It's about getting to play the game at all and having been blessed with the talent to do so.

"Let us try to realize that we exist for the music
and not the other way around."
Elly Ameling

At the end of my third semester, having maintained a 4.0 GPA and claiming a permanent place on the Dean's List, Frank suggested I apply for a certain scholarship. He wrote a bang-up letter of recommendation and I secured another from Dr. Taft. Even the dean of the college was on my side, being a friend and admirer of Frank's and a patron of the symphony and familiar with my reputation. Frank even went to bat for me with the board that was to decide if I should receive the scholarship or not. As it turned out I didn't get it. Frank looked at me, crestfallen, and told me,

"They said music isn't a viable career choice for someone your age. The student who got it was pursuing a career in real estate." He was irate, but I just shrugged.

"That's okay. I can compose with or without a scholarship."

As it turned out, I didn't finish my last semester because I couldn't afford it. I didn't really mind though, because I had our private studies as his only in-home pupil.

Sometimes, when you lose, you win.

I miss Frank a lot. Being in Oklahoma, so far away from Ventura is... not difficult, but alien. I'm used to a certain open-minded attitude toward life, a quality of life that permits one to live it to the fullest, take chances, step off the cliff and don't look down. Here, everyone plays it safe and everyone's face shows the hard seriousness of life in the Bible Belt. To these people caught in the hamster wheel, life is serious business, and "Don't ya be thinkin' 'bout breakin' them rules, cuz if ya do, no one'll be there to hep ya. Ya got yerself a good life here — that artsy-fartsy shit don't pay the rent. I hear the outboard motor factory is hiring right now. And goddammit, get rid of them hippie clothes!"

Frank never said a word about the way I dreamed about my future. Once, after I told him about a party I'd had over the weekend, he said,

"You have such a colorful life, but you never invite me to your parties."

"Ah, Frank, they're not big deals. Just me and my friends sitting around with a box of wine and getting stupid."

"But that's what I like!"

"You mean you'd really come if I invited you?" I asked and he flashed me an impish grin.

"No, but I'd appreciate the opportunity to respectfully decline."

From that day on I always invited him to my parties and you know what? He actually came to a few.

I remember a Christmas party that he attended in 1997. I was living in a 1919 Mediterranean penthouse overlooking the Pacific. He spent most of the evening hovering over a crock pot of drunken weenies. I guess he was used to classier, catered affairs, but he ate a lot of those weenies while he sipped at his one beer. I'll never see or eat a drunken weenie again that I won't get an image of him standing there feeling very bohemian.

I didn't find out about Frank's death until a week after it happened. I was living in Denver at the time. Lynette stepped out to get us some iced tea from the Taco Bell across the street while I was web surfing. I'd gotten an email from a woman I used to work with, who'd attended the Christmas party with the drunken weenies. In her note she chatted about her daughter's wedding and so forth, then she wrote,

"One last benchmark and a very sad one: Frank Salazar died this last weekend. I hope to God I am not the first one to give you this news. Please forgive me if I am!"

A concrete block falling on me from a 20-story building could not have hit me harder. I recoiled from the desk and stumbled back across the room, feeling a peculiar panic take hold of my heart and mind. I don't remember much else after that, but Lynette tells me that when she returned she found me crouched on the floor in a corner of the room. Over the next few days I heard different reports. The Ventura paper said that he'd died at home, while someone else —was it his daughter on the phone?— said that Judi had taken him to the hospital for a routine check of his medications and he suffered a heart attack with no warning whatsoever. I always see him in my mind grasping at his chest — his dark eyes wide, and gasping,

"No, not yet. I haven't finished reading Don Quixote in the original Spanish!"

Lynette and I had already planned to go to Ventura to get my belongings out of storage, and we left two or three weeks after Frank's death. I figured I'd missed his funeral and that broke my heart. When we arrived, I called his house and spoke to his daughter, who told me that his memorial service was going to be held the very next day, at the mission. I couldn't believe it. We met Marty (an ex-girlfriend of mine) the next morning for a champagne brunch in Ojai and then the three of us went to the mission.

As we sat inside, my most recent ex showed up and sat next to us. So there we sat, I on the aisle and to my right Lynette, Marty, then my ex, Lisa. During the service, which was nearly all music, Marty caught my eye and with a humorous, knowing expression on her face looked at Lisa, herself, Lynette, and then me in turns. The humor of the situation hit me and I had to work really hard to keep from laughing out loud. I swear I could feel Frank standing beside me laughing as well and saying,

"It's ok. This is what life's about. Here you are sitting at my funeral with three beautiful women whom you've loved. I couldn't ask for a better tribute from you — Bravo!"



The highlight of the service was a performance of the slow movement from Mozart's 3rd violin concerto by the brilliant French violinist Gilles Apap, whom Frank esteemed enormously. He introduced it, saying that Frank had told him the slow movement was his favorite piece of music in the whole world. That has always been my favorite too, but we'd never mentioned this to each other. We were still connected. It was perfect. Apap played as he walked down the aisle amongst the mourners and then back up and I knew Frank was there, loving every minute. I felt him.


Earlier that year, after I'd left Lisa and moved back to Denver, I didn't call Frank for a very long time — six months, I think. When I'd left Lisa, she went to Frank and Judi and told them all kinds of terrible lies about me and my "motives" for "snaking my way into the family." I was inconsolably embarrassed. As I wrote earlier, I'd never brought my personal problems to our friendship and neither had he. It was a nobility we carried between us, an unspoken code of integrity. When I learned of what she had done I was mortified and just couldn't talk to him. Finally, in early June, Lynette, seeing how much I missed him, urged me to call. I did so and after I heard him lapse into a coughing fit, I asked him if he was okay. He told me he was better than ever, that he'd been sick with a cold, but other than that he felt great. Toward the end of our conversation I approached the subject that had kept me from calling him sooner.

"She told you guys a lot of lies, Frank–"

"I never heard any of it," he said. "I know who you are."

Before I hung up I said, "I love you, Papa." And he told me something I'd never heard him say before:

"I love you, too."

In the small seaside city of Ventura, California there is a hill. The window of the low slung split-level house is emptier now and the large windows overlooking the blue Pacific no longer hold the form of the small-statured man who so often stood there gazing out, his head full of music. The roses still bloom year-round and the motor of the pool pump next door still whirs, but the patio no longer holds a little cloud of white cigarette smoke and the furniture is no longer stained with brandy or red wine. The city that my mentor built culturally, and the people whose lives he touched, will never be the same. I will never be the same.

---

Leave a message on the Maestro's
"Find-A-Grave" memorial page