Orange County Register

The two Tims at USC on Tuesday

I am sitting in a room with Tim Page. Or, I was. He is reading aloud his students’ latest assignments. Apparently, at the last session, he had sprung the recording of Alvin Lucier’s “I am sitting in a room,” in which the composer speaks that phrase and a little more into a tape recorder, and then records the recording and plays that back, and then records that and plays that back, some 45 minutes in all of sonic digression and increasing distortion … apparently, Tim had sprung it on them without warning, and asked each of them to keep a diary of their impressions, aggravations and descriptions in real time. They did a rather smashing job of it, his students Sasha, Allison, Colin and Patrick.

The class is a 400-level arts journalism course at my alma mater, USC. Page is on sabbatical from The Washington Post, where several years ago he won the Pulitzer Prize for his elegant and perceptive music criticism, to teach this class and one other, a music course on Modern Mavericks. He’s living in Hollywood for the nonce and gets around without a car. I didn’t know that could be done. Tim is also in the initial stages of writing another book.

Tim and I go way back. I first met him in the mid-80s, when he was a young freelance critic at The New York Times. He came (by train) to visit us even younger critics in the Peabody Conservatory’s graduate music criticism course. If memory serves, we read through our assignments then, too, and he offered generous praise and gentle suggestions on how we could improve them. I remember being inspired by the idea of a guy just five years my senior and obviously so friendly having already made it in the world that I so desperately wanted to join. Since then, we have kept in touch, he’s followed my progress and me his. He continues to provide encouraging words and has even recommended me for a job or two.

In the arts journalism course, the seven of us (Lisa, his teaching assistant, was also there) sat around a table and just had a conversation. Lording it over his pupils is not Tim’s style; though we were reading through the diaries, the class was free form – we went off on a “Tristan” tangent at one point – and he listened as much as he spoke. On the spur of the moment, he had Patrick boot up his laptop and we watched this. The afternoon was nostalgic for me, tromping through my old campus, passing by my dorm and the music quad, recalling the anxieties and hardships of that particular period, which seems to have happened to another person, not me. But I was also reminded of how stimulating it can be to converse with colleagues (I count these bright students among them) on subjects dear to all of us (writing and the arts). It doesn’t happen often enough these days.

Tim says he’s happy here, living in L.A. and teaching at USC. I can see why. I have always felt that I didn’t want to teach, but sitting in on his class, I could almost imagine myself doing it. One day, perhaps. But then, Tim makes everything he does look easy. Just read his books sometime. 

The Felix Chevrolet sign Tuesday, across from USC

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