Playgrounds are where we play. Play is an activity in which we relax, or learn, or grow. Playgrounds should be places of happy memories, although we have to take our chances on that.

Last month I revisited a playground, of sorts. I grew up with music, listening, playing, performing. For two years, while in high school, I played in the University of Arkansas orchestra. It was a chance to tour a little, play music I never would have played otherwise, learn what it was like to live with music.

In the end, it was play, something I didn't want to do for a living. This playground was a place of learning, a place of joy, a place where I spent a lot of time learning about music and life.

It's all changed now; friends are gone, and the buildings have changed, too. It has become a place of other people's memories, and their futures, too, all of which crowds against my own memories. Still, it was good to go back through the years, to remember for a while, and finally to place these memories firmly in the past. Step inside with me to one of my favorite playgrounds.

The back entrance to the Fine Arts Center, home of the University's concert hall, and at the time, also home for the music department. The building was designed by Edward Durell Stone, who went on to design the Kennedy Center in Washington and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. This view shows the side of the gallery, connecting the theater (left) with the concert hall (out of view to the right, on the far side of the building).

Part of a courtyard, located between the gallery and Garland Street, on the street entrance side of the building.

A second view of the same courtyard. It hasn't changed much from when I was there, more than 30 years ago. Then, as now, this courtyard has been formal, pretty, and empty. It always seemed like it should be inviting, but when I went out there, I never found a reason to stay. (Since then, I"ve learned why it was always empty; a courtyard should be designed as an integral part of the life of a place, a passageway which provides vital connections. I think that this is the type of design that drove Christopher Alexander to write his books on patterns--books that are ostensibly about architecture, but are really about the whole fabric of culture and living.)

This room will never feel empty to me; I've performed so many times on this stage. It was also a gathering place; you could walk through the main entrance onto the balcony, with its reclining canvas web chairs, and find friends talking, people thinking, instruments, books, life. The balcony is gone now, replaced by a sound and lighting control room. The seating is changed, too; the lecture-hall seats are new. The main floor area used to be open and versatile. The false ceiling is the same, but there used to be a half-dozen Calder mobiles hanging here.

At least the mobiles are still around! But they are now in a closed section of the gallery. The gallery was never closed before; it was always open, always a passageway, always a vital courtyard in the way that the real courtyard outside was not.

There's more, but we'll close here. As I said, my friends of this time and place are gone. The music department faculty has only one vaguely familiar name, and the department itself is in a new building next door.

Memories can remain in the mind, and they can remain in the world, but neither is entirely safe from time. I don't know quite what I expected to find, and what I did find was not entirely satisfying. In a way, though, the closure from this day means that my memories are mine, and I no longer need this place to be as it was, in order to keep my memories as they were.