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When I first went to Paris, I did so instead of returning to Pomona
College for my Junior year. Looking around, it was Gothic
architecture that impressed me most. And of that architecture I
preferred the flambuoyant style of the fifteenth century. In this
style my interest was attracted by balustrates. These I
studied for six weeks in the Bibliothèque Mazarin, getting to the
library when the doors were opened and not leaving until they
were closed. Professor Pijoan, whom I had known at Pomona,
arrived in Paris and asked me what I was doing. (We were
standing in one of the railway stations there.) I told him.
He gave me literally a swift kick in the pants and then said,
“Go tomorrow to Goldfinger. I’ll arrange for you to work with
him. He’s a modern architect.” After a month of working with
Goldfinger, measuring the dimensions of rooms which he was to
modernize, answering the telephone, and drawing Greek
columns, I overheard Goldfinger saying, “To be an architect,
one must devote one’s life solely to architecture.” I then
left him, for, as I explained, there were other things that
interested me, music and painting for instance. Five years
later, when Schoenberg asked me whether I would devote my life
to music, I said, “Of course.” After I had been studying
with him for two years, Schoenberg said, “In order to write
music, you must have a feeling for harmony.” I explained to him
that I had no feeling for harmony. He then said that I would always
encounter an obstacle, that it would be as though I came to a
wall through which I could not pass. I said, “In that case
I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall.”
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