Vermont Magazine Fall 2019 | Page 41

A Vermont Hideaway: Neshobe Island
The famed “Algonquin Round Table” held its first
“meeting” in June of 1919. The group met almost every day
for lunch for the next 10 years. The regular crew of writers,
artists, critics, and comedians included Alexander
Woollcott, Dorothy Parker, Herman J. Mankiewicz,
Harpo Marx, and Robert Benchley. Irving Berlin
(Benjamin Lerner’s great-grandfather) was a frequent
guest.
During the 1920s, the group of celebrities had a get-away
retreat located on Lake Bomoseen in Castleton, VT called
Neshobe Island. The island boasts 7 acres of land and is
only accessible by boat during the summertime, making
this destination the perfect location for a Round Table
retreat; its isolation a far cry from Manhattan. The
group would play croquet and try to scare the
mainlanders away from the Island. With hik-
ing trails and lodging, the members of the Round
Table had a grand old time in the Green Mountain State.
But it was hard at first, because there’s a difference
between being able to rhyme words and being able to do it
rhythmically. And I was never really a singer, and my
instrument was always my hands. So it was a process, for
sure. But I got into rap by being a fan of rap music and
then being kind of thrust into that social situation where
it was a sign of status to be able to be in the middle of the
party and rhyme over these beats on command. I thought
that was an incredible skill, and I wanted to be part of it.”
Benjamin was also around 15 or 16 when he composed
his first song on the piano. “I was cooped up in my house,
because I had done some kind of stupid thing. And I didn’t
have any way to express myself… I just sat down at the
piano and started playing things. … I was just playing
around improvising, but when I found a chord progression
I really liked, and I was able to write it down and be like,
“This is me”. That was incredible, because it [went] from
just being able to interpret what other people made - into
[my] own vision! I mean, there’s no way for me to put a price
on it or explain it. It was the first time I had made a musical
creation that wasn’t just some high school, garage band,
rock song or some silly exercise in classical theory
training. It really meant a lot to me, because I’ll remember
that piece for the rest of my life. It was the first time I ever
truly put a piece of my soul on paper musically.”
“The Algonquin Round Table” as captured by the legendary Al Hirschfeld
© The Al Hirschfeld Foundation.
www.AlHirschfeldFoundation.org
“My first ‘A-Ha Experience’ was with alcohol. It’s when I
knew what alcohol did, and I sought-out that feeling. My
friend and I were in his parents’ house … There was this
rusty, musty - like literally had cobwebs on it - case of
forgotten Sam Adams Oktoberfest. It was well past its
prime. And I drank it, and it tasted terrible. It was tepid, but
the feeling it gave me was complete detached bliss … and
the raging voices inside my head telling me I wasn’t good
enough [disappeared] … The first time I ever smoked pot
was a year and change later … It was pretty surreal, because
it gave me this medicated feeling, similar to alcohol, but
less medicinal, more mind-opening. And I was able to kind
of see the world through a different perspective, because
alcohol is a drug, sure, but it didn’t change my conscious-
ness, so much as it dissolved it. Marijuana was a change in
perception of how I perceived the world around me.”
Benjamin, who attends AA meetings regularly, openly
shares his descent into addiction. “At first, it was pretty
suburban. I’d get drunk and throw up at a party and have
to ply my older classmates with a bottle of champagne to
keep going. I’d show up hungover to piano recitals and get
low judging scores, or I’d not study for tests … but I kind of
justified my addiction and the slow downward descent in
terms of my academic success and my success with classical
piano - by making the drugs themselves my identity. I fi-
nally thought that I fit in. And it wasn’t because it was cool.
Unfortunately, it was at this same time that Benjammin Although I guess it was. I mean, I saw the bottles in my bag
started drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana, as well. and the bags of weed that I had as a status symbol - in the
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