{"id":631,"date":"2006-12-18T17:59:36","date_gmt":"2006-12-19T01:59:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/archives\/2006\/12\/18\/aspen\/"},"modified":"2006-12-18T17:59:36","modified_gmt":"2006-12-19T01:59:36","slug":"aspen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2006\/12\/18\/aspen\/","title":{"rendered":"Aspen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Making friends for the world to see
Let the people know you got what you need
With a friend at hand you will see the light
If your friends are there then everything’s all right<\/em><\/p>\n

"Friends"
Elton John<\/p>\n

In 1994, I fell off the edge.<\/p>\n

I’d been declining for years, ever since my wife moved out.\u00c2\u00a0 Then I lost a body part, my father died, the ground shook and I just couldn’t right myself.\u00c2\u00a0 The road to recovery was led by an M.D. recommended by the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute.<\/p>\n

This guy was different.\u00c2\u00a0 Unlike all the previous shrinks I’d seen, he absolutely would not tell me what to do.\u00c2\u00a0 If I called him freaking out, he’d just respond that we had a lot to talk about, and that he’d see me the following Wednesday, or Friday, or whenever the next of our three weekly appointments was scheduled.<\/p>\n

Eventually, this doctor spoke.\u00c2\u00a0 And he told me I had an investment in being different, in being screwed up, and that he just didn’t believe it, no matter how hard I tried to convince him.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, he’d listen to me complain, he just wouldn’t respond.<\/p>\n

The road back was a long hard slog.\u00c2\u00a0 It included a brief rendezvous with my wife that turned out to be fruitless, as she vanished into thin air once again.\u00c2\u00a0 And then Jim Lewi invited me to come stay with him and his wife Lori in Vail for a week.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t know him too well, her not at all, I wanted to cancel, I didn’t think I could cope, but with my shrink on vacation and the Lewis eager for my arrival, I departed.\u00c2\u00a0 And had my best week of the nineties.<\/p>\n

During that skein of days, Jim told me he was going to have an artist development conference, eight months hence, in Aspen, his new hometown.\u00c2\u00a0 The first Aspen Artist Development Conference was punctuated by fantastic snow.\u00c2\u00a0 Which I could not partake in the benefits of, my back having just gone nuclear.\u00c2\u00a0 And not skiing, and not being a card-carrying member of either the artist development or touring fraternities, I felt a bit disconnected.\u00c2\u00a0 I was there, but I didn’t feel INCLUDED!<\/p>\n

But the next year was different.\u00c2\u00a0 The turning point was at dinner.\u00c2\u00a0 With Jake Gold, the head of artist development at Warner Brothers and a few other people in the restaurant at the Hotel Jerome.\u00c2\u00a0 It was there that I found out my shrink was right, I WAS just like everybody else.\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody had the same stories.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe the band names were different, but each of us had listened to the records, gone to the shows, we had our tales, we were addicted.<\/p>\n

My life started to change.<\/p>\n

Shortly thereafter I promulgated a new theory in psychotherapy.\u00c2\u00a0 That the rewards came from being a member of the group.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not about being the outcast, or the star, but residing right smack dab in the middle, where everybody else is.\u00c2\u00a0 Just one of the peeps, hanging out.<\/p>\n

The hang at this year’s now-named Aspen Live was UTTERLY FANTASTIC!\u00c2\u00a0 If I was stuck on a desert island with the eighty or so people in attendance, I wouldn’t feel lost, I’d feel satiated, HAPPY!\u00c2\u00a0 There were no cliques, everybody interacted, there was a sense of COMMUNITY!\u00c2\u00a0 I’m privileged to call these people friends.\u00c2\u00a0 And these friends, they’re all that count, they make my life work.<\/p>\n

Maybe in the next few days I’ll lay out what actually transpired at 8,000 feet.\u00c2\u00a0 The riveting presentation by the creator of "CSI", the confrontation with the man from Google, Larry Weintraub’s statement that MySpace was more powerful for Taking Back Sunday than the band’s Website.\u00c2\u00a0 But for now, I’m still high, still reveling in the connection.\u00c2\u00a0 Remembering Andy, Brian, Lori and Nichol waiting for us at the top of the Alpine Springs lift for nearly ten minutes.\u00c2\u00a0 Rick Mueller, Mark Kates and I arguing about Bryan Adams’ comeback potential.\u00c2\u00a0 The massive $153 a head dinner at Matsuhisa where we not only got into the minutiae of the Ticketmaster Website, but seemed to cover everybody’s love life.<\/p>\n

We’re finally back.\u00c2\u00a0 After we were stuck inside of Mobile with those Memphis blues again.\u00c2\u00a0 Killing all day in the airport waiting to ultimately catch the last plane out.\u00c2\u00a0 So I’m in Santa Monica physically, but my heart’s still in Aspen.<\/p>\n

I only hope you have as such close friends as I do.\u00c2\u00a0 I treasure them.<\/p>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Making friends for the world to seeLet the people know you got what you needWith a friend at hand you will see the lightIf your friends are there then everything’s all right "Friends"Elton John In 1994, I fell off the edge. I’d been declining for years, ever since my wife moved out.\u00c2\u00a0 Then I lost […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s96vPs-aspen","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}