Terri Hendrix's Comment, and Response

Some months ago, I went to, and reviewed, a concert by Terri Hendrix at the Carver Center in San Antonio. As I said in the review, I wasn't there as an avid fan of her music, I'm just married to one. But I enjoyed the show for the most part, and the thrust of my review was that, while Ms Hendrix is no Paul Simon, she has succeeded at two art forms, songwriting and performing. About the worst thing I said was that I wished she wouldn't give away the ending of the upcoming song while she and her band tuned their instruments. 

Some weeks later, I received a comment from Ms Hendrix. (It came, for no-doubt-technological reasons I don't understand, on a review of a taco house on my other blog.) This is what she wrote:

Dear "Other Curmudgeon," I discovered what you wrote about my show at the Carver by accident. I've done music for over twenty years. I've performed and recorded long enough to know how I sound, and to know that when I talk my speaking voice sounds shaky from time to time. The is due to both a neurological condition and the medication I take to control my seizures. I was diagnosed with epilepsy in 1989. I took intensive vocal training to be able to continue to sing. This is why the "wobble" is there when I speak — but not when I sing. Flaws aside, what saddens me, is that people like you, the ... ahem, "Curmudgeon" are out there taking the seat of someone who should have been there in your place. The show was sold out. You took the seat of someone that does not thrive on seeking someone or something to put down. Had you done your research, you would know that I only play listening rooms. I'm most known for how at ease I am on stage. And I am at ease. I'm myself — naked in song. For the record, I have not played Gruene Hall as a "real" gig since 2003. It's a bar. I make my living playing university arts centers and performance arts centers all over the world. Most are all slightly bigger than the Little Carver. Your blog was not meant to be cruel. Nor did I find it as such. It was honest. But you are uneducated in my music and what I do and who I am, nor did you bother to research me or even sign YOUR REAL NAME to it before you posted. And that's just plain rotten. Please attempt to find less to pick at and a little more to pick up. With Respect, Terri Hendrix

My first thought, on reading this, was that Ms Hendrix had mis-read my review, and had responded in anger, without reflection. Having no way to contact her (her comment had no reply-to address, nor did I find one on her web site), I posted a notice on this blog asking her if she would read it again and confirm her understanding of it. 

Enough time has now passed in silence for me to think that she has either not stumbled across my second post, or has chosen not to respond. A part of me thinks that maybe I should remain silent as well, and not publish her comment. But three things prompt me to publish it, and respond to it. First is the simple view that to hide uncomplimentary commentary is a form of deceit; my self-respect demands that I acknowledge it. Second was her suggestion that only proper students of her work are entitled to attend one of her concerts. And third was the suggestion that there is something unscrupulous, or deceitful, or, in her words, "just plain rotten" about my guarding my anonymity in this blog.

Regarding the first part of her comment, she refers, probably ironically, to her tremulous speaking voice as a "flaw"; I thought it was a charming, even endearing attribute, because I thought it showed that she was extremely nervous about performing but had overcome that. Turns out it's just a neurological condition, and a side-effect of treatment medications. Overcoming serious illness is certainly a good thing, something to be pleased with; just ask anyone who's had any kind of serious illness and lived. But to my mind, overcoming the paralyzing fear that I imagined she must have suffered would have been a much greater personal achievement, with all the romance and glory of a protagonist who faces, and overmasters, fear. Well, it turns out I gave Ms Hendrix too much credit.


As for the comments about her chosen venues, I stand by what I said: the setting for the concert I attended seemed stifled and overly formal for a show such as hers; why she would implicitly denigrate a venue like Gruene Hall, I don't know.

In the next part of her comment, she criticizes me for daring to buy a ticket to her show, when it could have gone to some more deserving acolyte. How dare she suggest such a thing. I find that comment arrogant in the extreme, and as anyone who knows me will attest, I know arrogance. I hope it is just her misplaced anger talking. Her performances are open to the public, and no one has a greater right to attend than me or anyone else. If she wishes to restrict her audiences to people who can pass her muster for being deserving, she ought to require some kind of test, instead of taking money from any undeserving gift-giver who would dare to intrude on her worship service. (That's my anger talking.) And she compounds this by suggesting that, in order to attend her shows, I must first do some kind of research about her and her music.  I gave my reason for attending at the beginning of my review: I went because someone I care about likes her music, and I hoped to be lucky enough to be entertained myself. I don't think I'm under any obligation to delve into her musical history or philosophy, and if Ms Hendrix really thinks I am, then she's just way too full of herself.

Finally, she says that because I don't hold my identity out publicly, there's something rotten about me. I sense a small irony in this, coming as it does from someone who herself hides from the public when off stage. I can easily imagine good reasons for her to keep her contact information private. She, apparently, hasn't imagined mine, but assumes I guard my identity in this forum for nefarious reasons.

Well: I know my reasons, and that they are sufficient. I feel no need to justify my choice in this matter to her, or anyone else. Yes, I know that a lot of sleazy people do mean things under the easy cover of anonymity afforded by the internet. But there are also lots of other reasons for keeping one's identity private, not the least being the same reason she keeps her address and phone number hidden. It's not just stage performers who would deter cranks and crackpots. She has no right to impugn my integrity on the strength of her ignorant assumption. 


And notice that I say "private," not "secret." Who I am is known to many people, people whose views I respect and whose good opinion I covet. I rely on them, as well as my own sense of right and wrong, to keep me honest in my comments on my blogs. 

Intentional Ignorance, Political Fuel

Remember how, years and years ago after a shooting in Arizona, everybody in the media was talking about toning down the rhetoric? What, was that really just last January? My mistake.

Here's an example of how media, both liberal (as in this example) and conservative (watch any broadcast of the Daily Show Starring Jon Stewart for an example from the Fox News Follies) use language to ramp up the tone of rhetoric, even when they know, intellectually, that what they're saying isn't true:

In the March 30-April 5 issue of the San Antonio Current, one of those weekly throwaway "alternative" newspapers, is a report about divisions in the local Democratic Party organization, caused by bigoted comments by its local chairman, who managed to alienate with a sentence or two just about anyone who isn't a heterosexual Hispanic. A group called Stonewall Democrats (after the 1969 riots in Greenwich Village that followed one too many police raids on a gay bar, and gave birth to the Gay Pride movement) endorsed several candidates for local office. One of the candidates who met with the group, the Current reports, "said that if she were endorsed by Stonewall she would not carry that endorsement on her website or campaign literature. 'Many in our area would look at that as something that would be divisive,' Ivy Taylor told the group."

Then the Current sinks into intentional ignorance. "Interesting to note," it continues, "that 'divisive' was the same word she later used to describe [the party chairman]'s comparisons of Stonewall to the Nazi Party, in effect placing Stonewall's potential endorsement on parity with Nazi comparisons."

The writer of "The QueQue," the column where this appears, is not an ignoramus. He or she (there's no byline) regularly delivers intelligent insight into matters of local political interest. But even this intelligent, capable writer is willing to stoop to this kind of disingenuousness in order to score a petty point. 

Ms Taylor is right both times: an endorsement by Stonewall would be divisive in her conservative district. And Lord knows that the party chairman's comments were divisive, in spades. But the fact that both are true, and  the fact that she accurately used the same word to describe both, doesn't mean she's "in effect placing Stonewall's potential endorsement on parity with Nazi comparisons." 

The Current ought to be ashamed, but I bet it's not.

Sauce for the Gander

The real problem with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's approach to dealing with labour unions is that it doesn't go far enough.

Walker is trying to strip the state's employees of their right to bargain collectively with their employer, on the theory that the labour unions have been too successful in their work, and have gotten the state to make promises it won't be able to keep. Although this problem really should be laid at the feet of the state's less competent representatives in bargaining -- i.e., politicians and their appointees, and those who, at Walker's urging, recently voted to bankrupt the state through corporate welfare bonuses -- it is a potentially powerful way to turn the clock back to the era of the robber barons, when it was viewed as the right of each labourer to make his or her own individual employment contract.

John D. Rockefeller;
one reason we need
labour unions

But if Walker is successful, we will be beset with the same problems that gave rise to labour unions in the first place: the widespread abuse of the labouring class by the capital class.

What then is to be done?

Well, for starters, let's take Walker's idea a step further, and say that, just as labourers cannot come together to select representatives to bargain on their behalf, neither can capitalists. No more corporations or partnerships, no more joint ventures or trusts. Everyone with a dollar to invest in the capital system must make his or her own individual investment contracts. No more of this system of shareholders choosing knowledgeable people to sit on a board and choose other knowledgeable people to operate a business. Everyone has to do it on their own.

Each state agency will have to negotiate its pen and paper purchases independently with individual producers of supplies. Each state executive will have to hire and fire his or her own secretary, each crew chief will have to staff his or her own crew ... and will, of course, have to devote some time to learning personnel laws, and defending the lawsuits that result.