The 7th Step Club inside Oregon Stare Penitentiary does many fine things, both for other prisoners and for the outside community. Last week they had a rare treat.
Talk about a tough audience: The first guy I talked to at the opera last week had robbed and killed a man with a baseball bat.
The next guy I met had murdered both his parents.
They were among about 120 inmates at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem who were given an opportunity to watch a performance Wednesday night of excerpts from Mozart’s “Magic Flute” put on by students in the University of Oregon School of Music opera program.
It was the first time, as near as anyone could recall, that opera had ever been performed at the state prison, which has operated at its current location since 1866.
Opera, with its exquisitely over-the-top fantasies of death, power, jealousy, unending love and ultimate destruction, turns out to make a perfect foil for men who lost their way, long ago, to the real-life seductions of drugs, alcohol, murder, rape and robbery.
When the music began, the prisoners, who ranged from barely 21 to stooped, graying and wrinkled, sat up straight, watched and listened — hard — to the magnificent music.
The unusual performance was part of an outreach program devised by Nicholas Isherwood, an opera baritone who runs the program at the UO.
“We take vocal music out to people who can’t make it to the opera,” Isherwood explained to the inmates, who sat primly at long tables in the prison’s old dining room. Each man had an enormous cinnamon roll, fresh from the prison bakery, and milk in a paper carton at his place.
The performers — seven student singers and a keyboardist, with Isherwood to narrate — sang from an informal stage whose only backdrop was a bank of pay telephones and a sign warning in English and Spanish that conversations may be recorded.
“You are our most important audience of the year,” Isherwood told the men. “If there is anyone who would have a really hard time getting to the opera … .”
The audience cheered.
The prisoners were members of the Seventh Step Club, a self-help group that is one of 13 inmate organizations at the prison, which houses about 2,000 men in all.
“This is the first time we’ve had opera,” club president Lee Warren said. “They’re very excited. When we were out running amok and getting in trouble, what were we doing? Drinking! Now we are making changes in our lives. I’m trying to fill that gap with positive stuff.”…
Inserted from <Eugene Register Guard>
7th Step Foundation, PNC (the group that operates this website) partners with 7th Step Club in OSP. We attend their meetings behind the walls regularly and provide friendship and guidance upon their release.
I do wish that the reporter had concentrated more on the positive things these guys are doing instead of the sensationalism of their offenses.
Thank you very much, Mr. Isherwood and U of O students.
I am a man who is 59 years old. My name is Jack and I am an addict. I have spent the last 26 years of my life inside a prison made of steel and stone, before that I lived in a prison I carried in my mind. My low self esteem was beaten into me by the hard angry fists of my grandfather. You cant bury something awful inside yourself and then pretend its not there while you fight another war, that makes you break all of your own rules. Maybe I am simply talking about honor, I could not define it in myself, but I recognized it when I saw it in others. I was convinced that as a virtue it had little to do with being reasonable, I knew that absolutely it was as dishonorable for a man to allow himself to be used, as it was for him to use others. I have moments of memory where I slip back into an era that would always be mine, whether I wanted it or not. Where I lived a life of" NOT ENOUGH "… not good enough, not fast enough, not quiet enough, every statement punctuated with violence, I can feel myself begin to sink into a dark recess of pain and grief that will not cauterize with time. I can feel the caution lights start to flash in my head, then I know by the heated energy that rushes through my stomach and surges through my chest and rips open the sealed up places in my brain that I had forgotten or wanted to believe never existed. The hyena will have its way, just as the caution light is locked on red, you cant even have the pleasure of loathing yourself, because the metamorphosis to which you’ve committed yourself is now the only self you have. Everyone has a need for their past, sometimes it pulls harder on you than your future. I have liked the past better than the present or even the hope of the future. There have been times when I have fallen and betrayed my future with my past. The past is like a rodent that eats its way inch by inch through entrails and chews at your liver and stomach, severs tendons from organs until finally when you are alone in the dark it sits gorged and sleek inside your head, its eyes resting, its wet muzzle like a kiss, a promise whispered in the air. I have found in the rooms of recovery, a place of redemption, and a road to a bright future where hope and peace lay, a chance to be part of my own life instead of being ran over by it. There is no trap so deadly as the one we set for ourselves.
I would like to share my experience with 7th Step in the hopes that others who may find themselves in a similar position can benefit from what the club and its members have to offer. For those of us who are ready to change the reward is well worth the effort.