Cleanup Work
Subject: Re: Reality
This past year, I have thoroughly enjoyed reading practically each and every one of your emails for the truth and wisdom they contain. However, the ending of today’s email depressed me. As the mother of an 18 year would-be rock star, I was thrilled (until 5 minutes ago) that my son (who had previously expressed interest in blowing off college to “work on his music”) is heading off to be a freshman in the music conservatory at Purchase College next week. I’m worried that you wouldn’t include studying Studio Composition in your advice of “So stay in college. Earn a professional degree”. And since I think so highly of you, I decided to do what I’ve never done until now which is to bother you with an email. What IS your opinion on Bachelor of Music degrees? Useless or useful?
Many thanks,
Alice Tamkin
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From: Bob Lefsetz
To: Alice Tamkin
Subject: Re: Reality
1. If he actually learns to read, write/compose, he’s ahead of the game.
2. If he wants to be a rock star, give up. But only he’ll learn this. A few do make it… I don’t know your kid, but if he’s talented, self-confident, perseveres and can work every angle, leave him alone in the dark and he’ll find his way home, he’s got a chance…otherwise he’ll just be disillusioned.
3. Life is long. I’d go to a traditional college and one always has time to go broke playing music.
4. As for music education being a way to make money…at least he’s studying something real, as opposed to marketing, but it’s very tough out there.
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It is not my job to give you hope. I am not a website or an app promising you success if you just pay me a few bucks (hopefully every month!) The entertainment business is littered with scoundrels trying to make a profit off your hopes and dreams. I am not one of them.
And I know you hate me for it. At least those not giving kudos.
I saw that movie “Milk,” wherein Harvey’s political opponent said he wasn’t worried about Harvey beating him, because Harvey didn’t give people the one thing they needed, HOPE!
I am not running for office.
What do I know?
There will be entertainment in the future. There will be musicians, visual artists and dancers. But despite more people participating, looking for our attention, ever fewer gain mass appeal.
And it’s all right if you’re plying the niches. As long as you don’t harbor a fantasy of crossing over, as long as you’re happy.
And if you’re happy playing in your bedroom and never selling a thing, that’s fine with me too.
But my inbox is inundated with acts with websites and videos and iTunes downloads hungry for attention and a helping hand to make it. I ask you to align your dreams with your effort. Being successful is more than talent, more than practice, it’s first and foremost a personality issue. Can you befriend people and have them work to your advantage? Madonna excelled at this! Not that you have to be manipulative and dishonest, but it helps!
As for help… If you read me and get a few tips, that’s great. But success comes down to you. And in the arts, it’s extremely elusive.
I’d love to have you prove me wrong! I’d love to have something I say sucked ultimately triumph in a new incarnation down the road.
But this hasn’t happened yet. Because it’s easier to look in the mirror and perform affirmations, saying you’re good enough and deserve success, and quite another to actually achieve it.
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As for those blasting me that Lance Armstrong never failed a drug test and is innocent… If you were raped and four people saw it but the rape kit was lost would we have to let the rapist go free? Because there’s no physical evidence?
Testing is just one of the means employed to ferret out doping, it’s not the only one.
Please read these two articles:
Witnesses Made Case Against Armstrong Potent
“And in the doping world, that is known as a nonanalytical positive – an athlete implicated not by a positive drug test but by supporting evidence.
In recent years, it has become the new way to catch athletes who cheat.
‘Science can’t decide everything,’ David Howman, director general of the World Anti-Doping Agency, said. ‘These days, you need to complement a testing program with the gathering of evidence with other methods. To build your case, you put together strands that make one strong rope.'”
And:
Armstrong, Best of His Time, Now With an Asterisk
“Maybe the most telling segment concerns an Irish masseuse named Emma O’Reilly, who was Armstrong’s personal kneader during the 1999 Tour. (She was also asked to make a mysterious run from Spain to France, to deliver some mysterious material across the border.)
During the 1999 Tour, O’Reilly said, her workload had been lightened when one cyclist, the aforementioned Vaughters, dropped out of the race. That left her more time to minister to Armstrong and one other rider. On the team bus, she claimed, she heard several top team officials fretting about a positive test by Armstrong for steroids. They were in a panic, saying: ‘What are we going to do? What are we going to do?’ Their solution was to get one of their compliant doctors to issue a prescription for a steroid-based ointment to combat saddle sores. If Armstrong had saddle sores, O’Reilly said, she would have known.
In ‘Confidentiel’ (page 207), O’Reilly quotes Armstrong as telling her, ‘Now Emma you know enough to bring me down.’
That backdated doctor’s note in 1999 nullified the finding of steroids. Lance rode on. Five years later, during an early stage in Belgium, I referred to a ‘positive test’ in 1999. One of Armstrong’s top advisers sidled up to me in a prerace staging area and said, in unmistakably legal terms, that a nullified result was not a positive test. I granted the legal distinction but always remembered the urgent and specific way that message was delivered.”
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I got an e-mail from Xeni Jardin, who is battling breast cancer, that Livestrong helped a lot of people navigate cancer treatment, that the organization was praiseworthy. She implored her Twitter followers to testify, and a number of them did.
But I still refer you to the “Outside” article I referenced in my original piece:
“Nevertheless, the notion persists that Livestrong’s main purpose is to help pay for lab research into cancer cures. In an online ’60 Minutes Overtime’ interview after the May broadcast, CBS anchor Scott Pelley said Armstrong’s alleged misdeeds were mitigated because ‘he has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for cancer research.’
Pelley isn’t alone in getting that wrong: a search of The New York Times turns up dozens of hits for ‘Armstrong’ and ‘cancer research.’ An Associated Press story from August 2010 described Livestrong as ‘one of the top 10 groups funding cancer research in the United States.’ The comments section of any article about Armstrong will inevitably include messages like this one from ESPN.com: ‘keep raising millions for cancer research lance, and ignore the haters.’ At one point, the foundation brought in a PR consultant to try and clarify the messaging, but Armstrong himself says there’s only so much they can do. ‘We can’t control what everybody says they’re wearing the bracelets for,’ he told me.
At the same time, though, Armstrong and his supporters help perpetuate the notion that they are, in fact, helping battle cancer in the lab. ‘I am here to fight this disease,’ he angrily told journalist Paul Kimmage at a press conference held during his 2009 comeback. In 2010, the foundation agreed to let an Australian hospital call its new research facility the Livestrong Cancer Research Center. And when I recently visited my local RadioShack, a major Armstrong sponsor, the clerk asked, ‘Would you like to make a donation to the Livestrong foundation to help support cancer research?’
No wonder people get confused.”
