Scleroderma and Cello
A conversation with the late Carol Buck (Dec. 27, 1941 - Nov. 8, 2021)
From a June 14, 2008 interview by Stefan Laeng for the Charlotte Selver Oral History and Book Project.
I apologize for the relatively poor audio quality due to New York City traffic noise and a thunder storm.
Carol Buck (in the video below) plays her cello and talks about letting the sound vibrate through the whole person, player or listener. Filmed by Vanessa Meade at the 2015 Sensory Awareness Foundation Retreat at the Garrison Institute, Garrison NY.
Stefan: Tell me how did you meet Charlotte?
Carol: I wonder if I’m going to remember the exact time – maybe not, but the early seventies. And I was taking – studying the Alexander Technique with a woman by the name of – something, it’ll come to me later – a young woman, and she mentioned to me Charlotte. She said, “You should go study with Charlotte Selver. She will be on Monhegan Island,” she said, “and she’s quite old. She’s in her, like, early seventies, and she may not be around much longer, and you should take the opportunity to go meet her and take her class. I was at that time working on Broadway.
Photos by Stefan Laeng from the Sensory Awareness Foundation’s 2015 retreat at the Garrison Institute in Garrison NY.
I went to Monhegan in August of that year and I met Charlotte there. And I went to take a – what did she give – a two week class or something, and at the end of the two weeks – actually before the two weeks were over, I quit my Broadway show – that was a big deal to do that – and I was married at the time, and I told my husband that I was gonna stay a little bit longer, and I stayed I think five more weeks.
Stefan: So you didn’t go to a class here in New York first?
Carol: Nope. I went straight there. I met Charles and Charlotte. I stayed much longer, and at the end of the time Charlotte asked me if I would join the Study Group, her first Study Group, that was leaving in December. I just dove right in! And came back from Monhegan, and Charlotte of course and Charles came that fall to the city. They had their place. And I took classes with them. I expressed my intention to my husband that I was gonna go on this trip for nine months, and he said, “if you go, our marriage is over.” I went.
Stefan: And that was the end of it?
Carol: Yup. We’re still good friends. Yeah. So that was when I met Charlotte.
Stefan: Yeah. And the Study Group began at Green Gulch?
Carol: It began in Mexico. And from Mexico to California to Monhegan. We were three months in Mexico. Eighteen of us I believe.
Stefan: In different places?
Carol: One place. Barra de Navidad.
Stefan: The whole time?
Carol: Yes. Classes every day.
Stefan: How come you got so into it so quickly?
Carol: Well, I had been diagnosed, in 1969, with a connective tissue disease [scleroderma], and I had been told that I would be very ill for the rest of my life. And that I would gradually lose mobility and that I should expect to be in a wheelchair. I found out some things myself working on my own, which were very sensing like.
Stefan: But before you knew Charlotte . . .
Carol: Before I knew Charlotte, yes. And – oh by the way, the woman who told me to go see Charlotte was Rachel Zahn – I just thought of that. I discovered basically that I needed to allow change. Cause the connective tissue disease was gradually hardening all of my connective tissues. And I discovered that if I pushed against that – if I hardened, you know, tried to stop that, it got worse. And that if I would just go – basically go inside and feel where the life was . . .
Stefan: How did you discover that?
Carol: Well, I had to! I had to.
Stefan: That’s marvelous.
Carol: And I was gradually getting better. And I did massage, or I got massage, I did the Alexander Technique, and it was this woman who told me to go see Charlotte. And the first class, I remember sitting there, putting my hands over my eyes. It was like, yeah, this is it! There was no question.
Stefan: And how did the disease develop, or not.
Carol: It receded. … One of the other things that I had been experimenting with before I met Charlotte was in playing the cello was allowing the vibrations of the instrument, and of the sound, to travel through my inner (laughs), and that also felt very much like allowing breathing, and all of it just felt like of a piece. And I had – it’s funny, everything’s tingling now that I’m talking about it – I had had a doctor in New York who was the one who diagnosed this illness, and who basically said to me, he said, “oh you have this horrible thing and you’re gonna be in a wheelchair, and I hope you weren’t every planning to have children ‘cause you won’t be able to take care of them,” etc. etc. And then he walked out of the office, and left me sitting there. What am I supposed to do? Die? You know. And it was all a very interesting experience. I remember I finally left that room, and he was eating his lunch in the next room, and I thought ‘I believe there’s another way.’ And I began another way. . . . And Charlotte was extremely helpful.
Stefan: Yes. And she knew about you . . .
Carol: Well, I told her about it. I told her about it. At the time, Stefan, I was unable to lift my arms, I couldn’t brush my hair. So you see – it’s not something I think about very much anymore, you know, ‘cause it’s not there. I have some residual problems with my hands, but that’s it.
Stefan: But can you play the cello?
Carol: I play, but I was no longer able to be a professional.
Stefan: So how did – what did you first discover. There were symptoms of what?
Carol: First my hands swelled up. That was odd. And then they got stiff. And then I got – I mean that’s what I noticed first since that’s what I used to play the cello. Then it spread.
Stefan: So is that – do bones fuse, or tissue . . .
Carol: No, tissue, it’s all tissue.
Stefan: And it’s progressive, usually.
Carol: Yes.
Carol: What I had was called scleroderma, which means hard skin.
Stefan: So did you go back to the doctor and take . . .
Carol: No. No point.
Stefan: Certainly not to that one!
Carol: Yeah. I subsequently did find another doctor who was a Viola player and who felt it was very important to listen to his patients, and he was just completely different than other doctors, and he actually had me come and speak to his students, his interns. And he would sometimes have other patients contact me.
I met Charlotte in the early seventies, yes. And I did have my cello. Because one of – I mentioned to you about the vibrations going through – I found that if I would allow the vibrations to resonate, that the sound of the instrument changed in a way that would fill a space without effort. And it was after that time that I actually gave my debut in New York City at Carnegie Recital Hall. And I remember this feeling of allowing the resonance, filling the hall, and the fact that I was able to play still at that time. Charlotte had a lot to do with it.
Stefan: So that was after you met Charlotte.
Carol: Yes. I think it was in 1979, so it was quite some time after. And I used the sensing work quite a lot in my own teaching of the cello.
Stefan: You’re also a cello teacher.
Carol: Well, I taught for years. I don’t at this time.
Stefan: Yeah. Can you say something about that – how you used it?
Carol: Yes. It’s such a competitive business, the music business. And so much tension and pushing and striving. And what I often would do, working with someone, often people would come to be if they were going to be auditioning for some Philharmonic or the opera or whatever, and I would work with them. And I would take the cello away from them and ask them to sit, and they’re like, “What are you doing?” You know that kind of thing. And see what would happen if they would just allow themselves to sit on the chair, you know? And then have the cello come to them, and what did they feel. And then to draw a bow across the string without any fingering, again to begin to feel how enlivening that was without having to do anything, and build from there.
And it was very wonderful. Wonderful, both for me and for the students. And also, when you’re going to do an audition somewhere, there are so many things that you don’t even think about beforehand, like walking into the room. You’re walking into a room and everybody’s going to judge you, and people don’t practice that. So, I would also have them, without the instrument, open a door – what does it feel like to open a door and walk into a room? And then to just feel their steps as they walked into a room. What does breathing think about it? You know? I still do it occasionally.
I remember a violinist who was auditioning for the Metropolitan Opera. And she was an extremely tense, small person. She was very (demonstrates by inhaling forcefully and quaveringly), you know, she was very good. But I suggested that she take a walk over to Lincoln Center and walk around, and feel what it felt like to walk there, you know? And she got in! It wasn’t because she walked it – well, whatever – she got in.
I worked privately with Charlotte too.
Stefan: Oh you did? Tell me – you’re the first person to tell me that.
Carol: Really? I’m trying to put it all back together because it’s all of a piece, you know. . . . She asked me to bring my cello to the schoolhouse, and – ‘cause I had talked with her – I’d actually played in class, I think. And, oh yes, I remember playing a Bach Suite in C Major, and I remember at the end the foghorn went on, and it was the same note! And what I remember is Charlotte coming over and putting her hands on my chest, and she said, “You are still sounding.” And she sang the pitch. Which was still resonating. And she asked me that if I would come back with the cello and she would put her hands on my feet, and on my knees while I played, and I went back – on my head, you know.
She asked if she could hold the cello. She sat, took the cello, and I helped her to draw the bow. We did some work, I believe we experimented with sounds, making sounds without the instrument. She loved the music. . . .
Stefan: Could she hear the cello well?
Carol: Yes. I think that was part of the, you know, the fact that she could feel it, and because the cello touches the floor, she could feel it in the floor. And because of the way that I was working where I was allowing the resonance in my body, and I felt that what happened was that once my body started to vibrate, the air did. And this seemed to be what she was acknowledging – that she could feel it.
She did not act seventy- whatever she was. She acted – oh, and she looked – years later when I went back with my kids, my son was quite young at the time, and we went several times, several summers, and I remember going back when Tony could talk. And we were coming to the dock, and Tony asked me, he said, “Mom, is that girl who is old going to be there?”
Carol: Charlotte just looked this – the girl! She was the girl who was old. Which was such a wonderful description.
Part of her wanting to have me come and work with her was the music – she just loved the music so much – and because it was helping me to soften my tissues.
Stefan: So this may be an unanswerable or stupid question, but – I mean you say you let the sound vibrate, reverberate in you – so you could also not do that. And would you say most people or musicians might not?
Carol: . . . I would say that there are those who do it without thinking. Definitely. And there are people who harden themselves against the vibration, and they want to act as a sounding board that pushes it out. But a sounding board actually vibrates, which was always what I would say. And it’s an audible difference. It’s really an audible difference.
Stefan: Would you say it’s noticeable to an audience?
Carol: I would say it’s noticeable. I wouldn’t say people would know what was going on. But it’s definitely noticeable.
Stefan: We’re right at the heart of what the work is about here – and Charlotte’s allowing for something to happen – that you can only allow. You can’t do it.
Carol: You can’t do it. You can’t make it.