Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

by Sanford D. Greenberg

  I passed by Butler Library and looked up at the names chiseled around its fascia, as I did every day. Homer—top left, most prominent—followed by the university’s century-old judgment as to which of Western civilization’s other intellects were the greatest: Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Tacitus, Dante, Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Milton. I understood the veneration in which they were held in my new world within the university gates. It was almost as if we students, our professors, and the most supreme masters of thought of all time were mingling together at a big party within these few acres on the island of Manhattan. The Olympians became my revered guides, and they were a more diverse pantheon than I had ever expected to meet.

  John Schnorrenberg, our fine-arts professor, young and intensely passionate about teaching, taught us the Parthenon for a full month. As he moved on to Rembrandt and later to Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and Jackson Pollock, he became ever more enthusiastic. Schnorrenberg, a Princeton graduate, would often strut around the classroom, his Phi Beta Kappa key dangling from a gold chain on his belt, as he described, say, the glories of 1950s modernist art. He regularly suggested that we students purchase paintings by a fellow Princetonian, a young artist named Frank Stella. Schnorrenberg was convinced that Stella would eventually be considered a major artist. I came to share Schnorrenberg’s view but could not afford even a Stella print.

  Schnorrenberg also trained us to take a blank sheet with a small hole in the middle and move it so that we could follow individual lines or sections in various great drawings. Doing this line by line or section by section, we learned to be able to “reintegrate,” or reconstitute, each drawing from its parts by memory—a skill we were called upon to demonstrate in Schnorrenberg’s exams. (This rather arcane ability turned out to be one of the saving graces of my later life, helping me reconstitute mental images of a great many works of art.)

  As I settled down for my first physics class in Pupin Hall (in the basement of which a team of scholars conducted the first nuclear fission experiment in the United States in 1939), I noticed at the front of the room a cannonball suspended from a long black chain, next to which the professor stood patiently until everyone was seated. He then grabbed the metal ball, walked it to the side of the room, climbed onto a chair, placed the ball a millimeter in front of his nose, and let it swing to the other side of the room. As the ball swung back toward him, we gasped, expecting it to smash into his face. It did not, of course. Professor Leon Lederman, having made his point, began talking with enthusiasm about the principles of physics. His dynamism and creativity entirely engaged us.

  One day, however, the young professor’s fervor bordered on frenzy as he discussed his own work on an oddity, a subatomic particle he called a “neutrino.” The intellectual complexity of the material as well as the increasingly rapid pace of his speech caused a classmate and me to leave the lecture convinced that the professor had slipped his moorings. Many of us undergraduates were focused on the humanities and so were unaware of Lederman’s international eminence. Now widely known for the discovery of the muon neutrino and the bottom quark, he was to win a Nobel Prize for physics in 1988.

  Although my high-school physics teacher, John Devlin, had primed me with a love for physics, as I started my college years, my unspoken motto was: give me Aeschylus, Euripides, and Aristophanes over Newton, Einstein, and Planck. But it was because of Lederman that I not only gained an appreciation for physics theory but was also able, to a degree, to understand how Enrico Fermi and Paul Dirac and their colleagues changed our conception of reality. Even better for my future was that Professor Lederman endowed me with an intellectual platform without which it is doubtful that I would have been able to engage in the technology-related efforts of my later career.

  Then there was perhaps the most renowned Columbia scholar of the time. I was present at his last class, his farewell to teaching. The great scholar, poet, and author had graced Columbia’s campus for decades. On this special day, he walked without fanfare into a classroom overflowing with eager students dedicated to poetry but also to his persona. He read Milton, Dickinson, and Yeats, commenting on each of them, and then read some of his own poetry. Tall, slender, and bronze-faced, with a full head of white hair, he stood in front of us—Frostian in his demeanor—then slowly sat down on the edge of his desk.

  We were charmed, as always, when he then pronounced Don Quixote as “Don Quicksote.” We carefully followed each of his movements, however slight. He read and spoke with an attitude of wistfulness. “When you are old and grey and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book, and slowly read. And dream of the soft look your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep.” As he finished reciting Yeats, we knew that one day we would take down his own books and remember his aging, soulful eyes. Class ended. We arose as one and began applauding, the duration and intensity of which I have rarely experienced elsewhere. Mark Van Doren turned slowly and walked out the door.

  These teachers, and the great thinkers whose work they carried forward, have been a presence for me ever since. But that bland “ever since” contains a world of significance. I could not know at the time, of course, that the impact they made on me was to be more than what we vaguely and so broadly refer to as “an education.” It was not only the education those teachers imparted but also a respect and admiration for them, for their amazing, infectious passion for work and ideas, that were among the truly priceless gifts I have received. They helped set my sights high, bolstered my self-esteem, and firmed up my determination to emulate them as much as I could. Their example would later help me out of a terrible slough of despond. Without those teachers and the substantial ideas to which they led me, I do not think I would be here. (If that statement strikes you as hyperbole, I urge you to hold off judgment for a while.)

  5

  My Shadow Education

  Not all my learning came in the classroom, nor necessarily all the most important parts of my schooling.

  I had been on the Columbia campus less than a month when I happened to meet a fellow freshman sporting a trendy crew cut, beige corduroys, an argyle sweater, and the suede dress shoe known as white bucks—the regulation uniform of Ivy League college boys of the era. He introduced himself as Arthur Garfunkel. Sometime later, walking back with me after one of our classes, he stopped and asked me to look at, really look at, a certain patch of grass.

  “Sanford, let us consider for a moment this patch of grass on the walk. It’s of the utmost interest to me, this little grass square. Don’t you think it’s odd that it comes right up to the concrete, yet doesn’t go over it? And why do you think it’s green? Grass could be yellow, or even red—and yet it’s green. This I find interesting, Sanford.”

  Then Arthur pointed to the sky, offering observations on the beauty and complexities of color in nature. I knew there were plenty of students who would have written him off on the spot as a weirdo, given him a wide berth ever after, and spread the word among their buddies. We undergrads were being prepared to conquer the world. But to ponder a patch of grass?

  I was not at all put off by Arthur’s personality. Quite the contrary. I had always been an amalgam of doer and dreamer. The dreamer’s world was a secret hideaway for me during the lean, gray years. In the competitive school world, the doer stepped forward as needed and gradually took the helm. But the old dreamer was only dormant, biding his time. Now, as this fellow dreamer spoke of alternate colors for grass, I recognized at once that something of great importance was being granted to me. How little I grasped, at the time, just how great it was.

  Thus began my shadow university education, one that sustains me still.

  For a junk dealer’s boy from Buffalo, Manhattan was a magnificent and magical peach, its sweet riches begging to be sampled—but never to be fully devoured. It was (and is) something of a living museum, some wings devoted to money and deal making, others to the sensibilities and the intellect. For us students, it was definitely mind over money.

>   With Arthur and sometimes my other favorite classmate, Jerry Speyer, I would explore Greenwich Village, Chinatown, Little Italy, Harlem, and many other neighborhoods. Each had its own distinct character: “ethnic” foods (as we say these days), cafés, clubs, music, street fairs, and a feast of distinctive architecture and streetscapes—sometimes inherited from previous ethnic groups that had moved on to the suburbs.

  We were half mad with the excitement—and ultimately the bittersweet frustration—of all the plays that cried out to be seen; the great and small art and history museums and libraries to be explored; the classical, pop, and jazz concerts; the secondhand bookstores (most now long gone); the art galleries on 57th Street and along Madison Avenue.

  As my freshman year moved along, I developed nothing less than a hunger for art. The museums were, for me, sanctuaries, holy places. My two, going on three, years in the city with my eyesight still functional provided me with a storehouse of art—images archived in my memory. I learned to use art to live, not just “appreciate” it in passing.

  Then there were the riveting and breakthrough new films: Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, and Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima Mon Amour, among others. We saw these in the movie houses on the Upper West Side, such as the New Yorker (now replaced by a supermarket and high-rise apartments) or the Thalia, or at “art houses” down in the Village.

  The musical menu during those days was equally sumptuous: rock and roll or jazz some evenings, classical music other times. Imagine going to Greenwich Village in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Everybody was playing there—Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Dave Van Ronk, Richie Havens. Jazz clubs all over town featured the likes of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Art Blakey, Ron Carter, and Duke Ellington. One of our haunts, not far from campus, was the world-famous Apollo Theater in Harlem. (Decades later, Jerry would be instrumental in restoring it to its former glory.)

  There was no end to the city’s pleasures and gifts. A single individual could not possibly attend every event, every exhibition, given even a hundred hours in a day, every day of the year. It was truly a moveable feast for us, which we dined on as we could, given the constraints of time and cash.

  While Arthur and I disagreed on the comparative appeal of musical instruments (guitar for him, trumpet for me), we were in accord on the music itself. For one thing, we agreed on the beauty of the “Kol Nidre,” the poignant Ashkenazic prayer sung on the eve of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Perhaps, we once brainstormed, we could take the best of Jewish music, such as the “Kol Nidre,” which Max Bruch had made world famous in his variations for cello, meld it with the best of Christian music—Johann Sebastian Bach’s Mass in B Minor—and produce a transcendent sound.

  Certain musical experiences from those Columbia years remain especially clear in memory. In one, a young man moved to the front of a stage, bowed appreciatively, and took his seat at the harpsichord. With a flourish, he began to lead the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5. The sound of the brilliant and uplifting music, carrying the precision of Bach’s day, seemed a parallel to our dynamic technological era. The forceful conductor, the young Leonard Bernstein, somehow captured what I thought I was in the process of becoming.

  Another time, I was settled in the second-to-last row at the old Metropolitan Opera house, having purchased a ticket for fifty cents. The visual presentation of the performance covered the vast expanse of the opera house’s stage in such splendor I almost felt my senses paralyzed. While the story of Aida was tragic, the music of the “Triumphal March” presaged a great future. My future. Or so I—an eager, somewhat arrogant young man—thought at the time.

  I sometimes meditate on that moment at the opera.

  So it was my first years at Columbia. One day, as Arthur and I rested on the sundial on College Walk, he hesitantly revealed that he liked to sing. I asked him to sing for me. He demurred. To reassure him, I told him that I played the trumpet. After a short pause, he sang, “Bye bye love. Bye bye happiness. Hello loneliness. I think I’m gonna cry-y.”

  “Arthur, that was terrific,” I burst out, pleased with his singing and his selection of an Everly Brothers song. “Have you been singing long?” I asked.

  “Well, mainly to myself,” he said. “When I went to temple with my parents, when I was five or so, I learned some of the melodies. They stuck with me, and after school I sang them to myself on the walk home. I like to walk alone and sing. It’s great when no one’s around because I can let go. I love the feel of it.”

  “I used to sing the Hebrew melodies to myself, too,” I replied. “I was too shy to sing them to others.”

  He sang a few notes of a different sort of melody, one that I suspect he made up on the spot. It was simple but sweet. Then I joined in and we sang the song together. Dum dum, dad a dad a dum—in just those “words.” Then, once more. Even as I write this, I rerun our singing of that little tune in my mind. The moment was mystical, inexplicably so. Somehow the day…the delightful aspects of college life…the pleasures of the city…and above all our budding friendship all merged in an overwhelming exhilaration—a joy never to be forgotten by either of us.

  Another occasion—this was still during our freshman year—found Arthur and me sequestered late at night in a corner booth of a dimly lit restaurant, V&T Pizzeria on Amsterdam and 110th. Tables were scattered haphazardly throughout the room, covered with red-and-white checkerboard cloths. Our conversations in the past had been mostly fleeting, tucked in between classes or during chance encounters on campus. That night we were relaxed, with seemingly endless hours at hand to share confidences.

  We talked about women who attracted us—his were thin and delicate, almost fragile; mine were more full-bodied and sensual. Sports—his Phillies, my Yankees. Then we agreed on something: Lenny Bruce. “Yeah, I’m a dummy,” Bruce would say, “a real dummy, me and my ten Lincoln Continentals.” There were other lines and other comedians. We laughed a lot. Arthur’s humor veered away from the traditional or the obvious. He enjoyed mockery and imitation. His humor lay not so much in the substance as in intonation and mannerisms.

  Suddenly it was after midnight. What must the V&T employees have thought about Arthur and me sitting there, hour after hour? Two men, old, tough Italians, watching these two college kids drinking soda, their two or three slices of pizza having been consumed hours ago, their greasy napkins wadded up on paper plates. What could they talk about for so long?

  In truth, just about anything. Arthur and I had known each other for only a few months, but we were already old friends. There were many such V&T nights, each exhilarating and exhausting.

  Nothing about our friendship up until then excited me more than the day when, as we strolled casually toward a bookstore on Broadway, Arthur somewhat sheepishly, and with the sardonic smile I had come to know, reported that he had just joined a fraternity that was a rival of my own. I stopped walking. My eyebrows shot up. I reached out to shake his hand in an effort to mask my lack of enthusiasm, but he stepped closer to me.

  “Now, Sanford,” he said, “listen to me. I am going to give you five reasons why you will be my roommate next year. Here are the five reasons: Your nobility. Your devotion to pursuing a lifetime study of music, the arts, and literature. You find beauty in all of life’s corners—a passion I share. We will form a pact: should either find himself in extremis, regardless of the cause, the other will come to his rescue, notwithstanding his life circumstances at that time. Finally, you’re cool.”

  I thought I had heard correctly, but I was puzzled. How could he have joined a rival fraternity yet still wish to room together? Those were the days of stilted social patterns. I figured this must be another twist of his skewed humor. But the serious Arthur had shown itself. His evidently authentic feelings struck me forcefully. I knew it was a singular moment, one never to be forgotten. As my wise grandmother would have said, it was b’shert—destined to be. I raised my hand slowly, shook h
is, and responded, “Yes—of course.” “Cool” was the style of the day.

  Once we started rooming together, Arthur and I would sit long hours at our desks working, or pretending to. Arthur would often act up. “Sanford, perhaps you can assist me with this proof. This is a very interesting one, don’t you think? I find calculus interesting. Really, what would we do without it?” Then he would shout to Jerry Speyer, who had joined us as our third roommate. “Jerry, don’t you find calculus of the utmost interest?”

  Jerry would come in and shake his head. “What are you talking about, Arthur?”

  “Sanford is going to help me with my homework. He’s my tutor. The way Aristotle tutored Alexander. Isn’t that right, Sanford?”

  We took endless notes in class and at lectures. Arthur’s handwriting was beautiful—he practiced it as a draftsman does. He wanted to be an architect.

  Jerry’s was lilting but scrunched up. We were extremely mindful of the caliber and value of the education we were receiving and paid close attention. At least I did, but when I would occasionally glance over at Arthur, I often saw his gaze slide from the page to the window. “There he goes,” I would think.

  “Now, Sanford, listen to me,” Arthur would typically begin our conversations. Or, “Sanford, let me be clear on the matter.” Or, “Sanford, it’s a very interesting point you raise, but have you considered the alternatives?” Or, “I would like you to give me reasons why the sky is blue, Sanford, and they have to be convincing ones.” Sometimes: “I recommend a trip to the library, Sanford, in order to answer the question at hand. Libraries are one of the best things the planet has to offer, in my opinion.” Then there was the frequent, “Perhaps, Sanford, if I sing this number for you, all will be clear and nothing will be confusing, and we can begin to address the larger, more pressing questions of the day.”