Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Interview: Clark Griffith from They Came to Play

By Juniper of West and Clear

One of the films in this year’s Lone Star International Film Festival is going to be quite a treat for Fort Worthians. They Came to Play is a documentary filmed here in Fort Worth covering the events of The 2007 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs.

Even better, there will be a preview showing of the film hosted by LSIFF this Thursday at The Modern (tickets available here), including live performances by some of the contestants featured in the film, a cocktail reception, and a question and answer session with the filmmakers.

Clark Griffith, third place winner of the competition in the film, just happens to be my next door neighbor, so I wanted to share my own experience getting to know the man in the movie…

***

Now, we just moved into the house next door to Clark in June. He and I shared a few front-porch conversations and some friendly neighbor banter, but for the most part he seemed a little shy and reserved. Or, maybe like he just didn’t like me.

That all changed one afternoon about a month ago. I don’t remember exactly what we were talking about – maybe I was asking about his career as a pianist – but out of the blue Clark announced “OK, you’ve passed the test, you can be trusted,” and he invited me inside his home.

In that brief second before crossing his threshold, a feeling like I might be walking into a modern-day Mozart’s home washed over me. I envisioned stacks upon stacks of piano books, a baby grand with a bust of Beethoven on it, and maybe some ornate antique furniture or artwork.

But once I got inside, a more comfortable reality set in. I wasn’t walking into a shrine to the piano gods so much as a more typical cluttered home of someone with a genuine creative talent.

There was a collection of items sitting on every reasonably flat surface, a digital piano (gasp!) instead of the baby grand I had imagined, clothing hanging on the workout equipment… and on the dining room wall there two pairs of kitchen tongs hanging side-by-side from screws.

I just had to ask: “What’s with the tongs?”

“Oh, I couldn’t find a logical place for them in the kitchen,” was Clark’s matter-of-fact explanation. The quirkiness of the reply, though it caught me a little off guard, also put me at ease in a strange sort of way.

I continued pointing at items around the room and asking about them, and Clark humored me and my curiosity in a way that indicated guests probably didn’t come over much. With our nervous little show-and-tell behind us, he worked his way over to the piano.

Music began to fill the air, and the transformation was instant. The music seemed to bleed out of his wrists effortlessly, erasing everything around us.

“I’ve got to interview this guy,” I thought.

***

Clark Daniel Griffith was raised in Phoenix by a symphony performing mother and engineer father. He was the youngest of four boys and was raised in the Church of Christ. His parents met while she was a student at The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and he an engineer for RCA in New Jersey. “They met in church, of course,” Clark says with a smirk. I’ll get back to that…

Clark was the only son to show promise musically. He started to clunk out "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on his own one day at his grandmother’s piano. His mother was immediately at his side, “and she said ‘sing it’, and I did, and ‘find it’, and I did.” His mother played piano, timpani, and sang soprano. She was his teacher for two years and then sent him “to the old lady down the street.”

Clark says his talent defined who he was. Sitting on the front porch one evening, he described his affection for music in terms that were poetic, even inspired, yet undeniably real.

“Music is to my soul what oxygen is to blood.”

“Music is the language that my brain uses to talk to itself. I’m lucky that I have the ability to get it from my brain and then out, because it would be very frustrating if I couldn’t do that.”

Clark followed his mother’s path and studied at the Curtis Institute, majoring in composition. The move from Phoenix to Philadelphia was “like being let out of jail for someone like me,” Clark said.

After graduation, he moved back in with his parents, reluctantly. “It was painful, as it should be,” Clark remembered. They had since moved to Albuquerque, and so began Clark’s Texas roots. Instead of accepting the poor life of a musician, he took temp jobs, learned computer programming on the job, and ultimately made a career in programming. It was an amateur musician’s dream: a job that paid the bills and allowed him to play music on his own terms.

***

Now about that Church of Christ smirk I mentioned earlier. I asked Clark, after seeing his face when he mentioned the church, how it worked out being raised by parents of that particular faith.

“Yeah, they don’t like fags, so that’s how it worked out for me. That’s a deal breaker for those people,” Clark said, leaving me a little unsure whether he was totally at peace with the subject and just being succinct, or whether he wanted to change the subject. I went on, truly enjoying getting to know Clark more deeply as we conversed.

Clark has been openly gay for about twenty-five years, and that part of his life is something They Came to Play doesn’t shy away from. The film looks intimately into the lives of several of the performers, who come from a wide range of backgrounds.

Being gay isn’t really exceptional in this day and age, not even here in Cowtown. Hell, we recently elected our first openly gay city council member.

But Clark is also HIV positive, and has been since 1984.

He recalled watching his boyfriend die of AIDS back in Albuquerque. “a really good place to have AIDS, by the way, they had all of their ducks in a row in the way of HIV care.”

The frankness of that revelation took a second to catch up with me, but when it did a heavy reality came crashing into the room. My quiet, unassuming neighbor, surrounded by his odds and ends, playing world-class classical piano for hours a day with nobody around to hear it, has a disease that probably scares many people away.

I paused for a minute, overcome by my frustration that the society we live in has STILL not come to grips with AIDS, and still stigmatizes many who have the disease… including my own brilliant neighbor.

***

I feel lucky that of all the Amateur Van Cliburn competitions that could have been made into a documentary, the filmmakers happened to choose the one in which Clark played. Mostly for selfish reasons, because I have a friend who possesses a certain musical genius.

But any good friend would feel lucky for Clark too, and I do. I love that the music he performs mostly for himself will once again dance through the air in front of a much larger audience.

“How did you come to compete in the Amateur Van Cliburn?” I asked Clark.

“Well, they were holding it just right down the street.” He smiled - a little mischievously. “If they ever found out about me they would be very furious that I would be so rude as not to show up.”

“That’s what you decided?” I asked, laughing.

“Yes. I heard the contest on the radio in 2005, I think it was, and heard someone playing… I found out that the person who won in 2005 was an old classmate of mine from Curtis, who was also a composition major who played the piano…it sounded like fun…so I submitted a CD.”

Clark had plenty of competition even to get into the Van Cliburn - 120 applicants were reduced to 75 participants. After four days of preliminaries and two days of semi-finals, Clark found himself among the final six contestants.

“I was REALLY excited to be in the six, because that meant I got to play my long program for the judges, 30 minutes,” he said.

“Did you make any mistakes?” I asked, half-joking. From what I had heard him play earlier, I figured he must have played flawlessly. Apparently, it was just my untrained ears.

“I made plenty of mistakes…. Some people are spot on, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it was inspiring. But I felt like I was sort of presenting myself to my judges, my priests, to see what they thought of me…’Hey, you’re third!’ is what they said.” At this point, I went ahead and added modesty to the list of things I admire about Clark.

***

Clark, who likes to sometimes sign his name Qlark, “just to screw with people,” now lives on disability and fills his days with playing his piano, making YouTube videos based on his variations of the Goldberg Variations and visiting family and friends.

His videos are unique compilations of his talent, computer abilities, and odd humor.

I asked if he would compete again in the Van Cliburn, perhaps even attempt to win it.

“If my circumstances are the same then as they are now, I may do it again….I’ll probably get that petty (to be number one). My Goldberg Variation videos…..well, I’ve covered one through thirteen. It was supposed to be a month long project, but it didn’t work out that way. The hard ones are coming up. This is what I’m working on now.”

“What’s so hard about the ones coming up?” I asked.

“Because there’s a lot of notes on the pages,” he said, with what now I’m figuring must be his trademark smirk.

Clark will be seeing They Came to Play for the first time with the rest of us on Thursday evening. He was filmed at TCU during the competition, at his home, and even his parents were interviewed. He says his narcissistic side is excited about being a part of it, but he worries he may not come across very well on screen.

“Are you excited about the film?” I ask, trying to play cool about how excited I am about seeing the film with him.

“Well, yes, along side terrified. I’m really very unlikeable. I’m just convinced that I come off horribly. I have a lot of time to think, and I look back across my life and I look at how I’ve treated people and how I treated jobs, and I think, ‘Good God, you’re the laziest man alive and you have no social skills, whatsoever!’ But, oh well. That is what happens sometimes when you’re really, really, really good at one thing.”

No, Qlark, not unlikeable. Just… well, artistic. Which gives you the license to have salad tongs on your wall and to create Goldberg Variations videos with images of Prince, nature scenes, and blocks of cheese… and it all seems to make sense.

***

Toward the end of our interview, Clark sat back down at the piano and played some more.

He told me that he wore out his mother’s baby grand by the time he was fifteen, and that now he prefers digital pianos because he can change the sounds, play with headphones at night so as not disturb his landlord upstairs, and because they don’t wear out as quickly.

Though, this is his second one.

We talked some more about life, dreams, and what we would do if we had unlimited time and/or money. He asked about any vices that I have.

“Gin,” I answered.

“Ah. Bombay Sapphire is one of God’s true gifts to humanity.”

And that was the moment I knew we’d be friends forever.

***

You can meet Clark Griffith and other They Came to Play performers this Thursday at 5pm at The Modern. Tickets to the event must be purchased online.

Pegasus News content partner - West and Clear

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