My Alma Mater

Rufus Wainwright and I went to the same High School (different times)-Millbrook in upstate New York. He wrote a song about the place, which appears on his first album. Our man Jon Brion produced the record, and handled the incredibly strange and elaborate string arrangements. The song is a personal gem to me...capturing as it does some intimate aspects of the place...the feel of the train ride up from New York City, the steeple rising above the pine forests... and my favorite:

And all the evening breakdowns
will soon be washed from their hands
the next very day
as they make way
eating the apple to the chapel

which describes perfectly the feel of walking to assembly each morning in the chapel,
gossiping with classmates about nightime travails and adventures, which of course run rampant at boarding school.

MILLBROOK