A True Conservatory Student...

For three years, starting in tenth grade, I attended a Christian based performing arts school. Up until that point in my life I had been homeschooled.

At one point, I thought those three years were and would always be the best years of my life. During those three years I also thought I was crazy, spiritually enlightened, and on the brink of doom all at once.

T. was our principal, the founder of the school, our English teacher, and choir director. Almost half of the employees at the school were his relatives. When I interviewed to be accepted to the school, T. told me, “The only thing we don’t do here is goth. Our children walk in the light of Jesus.”

What I learned was that the “the light of Jesus” was deeply dependent on T.’s mood that day.

Within the school, there was a term for being a dedicated student – someone who was artistically creative, academically strong, and demonstrated spirituality and spiritual gifts (preferably prophecy, since it was T.’s own gift): the “True Conservatory Student.” If one were to ask T. to define what being a “True Conservatory Student” meant, he would say “If I tell you to jump, you need to ask how high.” In other words, our level of success was dependent upon his perceptions.

As painfully obvious as this all sounds, we were ready, excited even to hang on T’s every word. Here in our small town, we had been gifted with a man who spoke directly to God. If we listened to him, then our path to fame and recognition would be smooth.

He gifted us with a new way of thinking that we couldn’t see mirrored in the people around us. If anyone else had been asked on a Tuesday afternoon to look at the angels hovering over the school building as part of their English class, they wouldn’t have seen anything. There were spirits all around us he said, but most people, people who weren’t creative ,didn’t see them.

Maybe that was what was wrong with me.

Before coming to the Conservatory, I had been deeply involved in the Southern Baptist Church. As a child I was tasked with teaching younger children scripture and making sure that they memorized it. I was on a pedestal. The granddaughter of a deacon, too serious to have friends my own age, too concerned with pleasing the older and wiser members of the church whose eyes always seemed to be on me. Blame it on the time in history, my rural environment, or the culture of the church, but when I started having public panic attacks in Fall of 2015, I felt like my good Christian persona had been shattered. Without the pedestal, I was just another person. Or worse, I was a person who couldn’t keep it together.

But if what T. said was true, that the reason that I struggled was because I was special, wasn’t it all worth it?

Looking up into the sky, a “floater” drifted across my vision.

“I see it.”

“I know, you have always seen them.” T. looked down at me with a warm, crooked smile.

Years later, I asked my friends if they had seen anything that day, amidst all the smiling and nodding. No one did, but we lied because we wanted to be one of those special people who could see angels. A True Conservatory Student.

A True Conservatory Student felt more comfortable at school, with the people that understood them, than they did at home.

A True Conservatory Student worked tirelessly, radiating energy and passion. Even if they had repeated the same dance routine for four hours. Even they stayed at the school until dark to finish set designs.

At any moment in the day, T. could call a meeting to address all of the students – regardless of whether we were in class or not.

Every morning, we also had a scheduled meeting we called “Morning Meeting.” If the Conservatory was a church, then Morning Meeting was our Bible study. During that time, T. might talk about the day’s schedule, or he might tell us about a prophetic vision that had come to him the night before. Morning Meeting was where we learned how to be True Conservatory Students.

We learned that to be a True Conservatory Student was to be right with God. Because God had called T. to begin this school while he was still in college, there was a special blessing over the students, teachers, and mission of the school. If someone were to speak against that truth, then terrible trouble would befall them.

God had removed the previous choir teacher from the school via stroke and killed one other person.

Maybe that was why not one of us thought it was strange when T. would reference things like rumors in the community that he was a pedophile. Rumors we had never heard.

A few months after my graduation as valedictorian of his cult, T. was arrested on multiple counts of child sexual abuse.

This past year, he was convicted and sentenced to 240 years in prison. The count was so high that half of the cases against him were dropped. In effect, he was given a life sentence.

~ Victoria Richard