Member-only story
This is about getting in there and doing it versus reading a bunch of articles that tell you how.
In 1970, I was the second youngest student at Cal/Arts, founded by Walt Disney. I was also one of the first students at the school. It was so new, in fact, the campus wasn’t even ready. We had to take over a defunct Catholic girls school in Burbank, complete with swimming pool (whose privacy was protected by very tall hedges all the way around).
It was a wild atmosphere that first year. There were initially no age or education requirements to get in. You just had to have shitloads of talent and a lot of drive. So there were all the post-grad students, and then me (15) and one 11-year-old flautist who was a savant. When he practiced, there was always a group of ten or fifteen of us in the hallway, listening, rapt, mute.
There was no grading system. There were “experience reports.” You wrote an essay about whatever was going on for you, and they decided whether you were serious enough to stay on or not. We dubbed the student lounge “Walt’s Malt Shop,” and people smoked pot openly there (decades before it was legal). And the swimming pool? So private, we routinely took all our clothes off and skinnydipped. I never told my parents what it was really like. I let them think Walt Disney thoughts — Mickey Mouse and Bambi and stuff…
