Going For A Song: Early Days 4

My working in the bars played a part in my leaving my job at the insurance company. It helped me to go from there to study
Radio and Television Arts at an Institute of Technology, in Toronto, knowing I had some way, slender as it was, of supporting
myself through my studies. Who knows what all the motivations were for enrolling in this course. Perhaps some adolescent
notion of the "glamour" of television, and the "Arts" in the course title may have been part of it. The good part of the experience was some of what lay under the "Arts' aspect of the course. This was where I became acquainted with the books of Graham Green, J.D. Salinger, John Steinbeck, and others, which may have helped pave the way for my interest in writing
later on. As time went by the rest of the contents of this course, became more and more disappointing to me. There was an
emphasis, it seemed to me, on things like how to put "the smile in your voice", when you read a commercial. For someone
who had never been impressed by anyone speaking in a saccharine laced voice, which smacked of insincerity to me, this was
not something I wanted to learn how to do. On microphone or camera, not showing what you really felt, because you were
being trained to be a "cool professional" was something else I felt I didn't need. The man, put on a pedestal for us to
emulate, was someone, who at the time, had been involved in more radio and television commercials than anyone else. He, of
course, could never be my hero, given I had always looked for authentic qualities in the people I admired. I persevered with
this course, for two years and up to the Christmas break of the third year. At the end of the second year my report card said that I had achieved the level of "honours" in my studies. By the third year, the grumbling about the unsatisfactoriness of the
course reached a cescendo, among the members of my class. By then I was missing classes as I earned my living musically at nights, and not feeling I wanted to persvere any more in a charade, left four months before graduation. So far as I know, I was the only one of my complaining class mates, who left before receiving his or her final certificate. Who knows? Maybe
saying I was leaving the insurance company to study Radio and Television Arts, was all along, only a subconscious smoke
screen, to soften the blow, of heading towards what I really wanted to do, which, at the time, revolved around music.........
Quester.