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Opinion | Dear Harry and Meghan, Some Friendly Canadian Advice (Published 2020)

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Some advice for those about to head off-campus for good.

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LONG ISLAND OPINION; An Open Letter to My Two Mothers (Published 1989)

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Dear Taylor Swift,

Please forgive this letter from a total stranger. So many people must be calling you up for favors and asking for your time, as Joni Mitchell once sang about so persuasively.

I'm one of those people. I am going to ask a favor.

But not for me. I'm asking you to do a favor for the music.

I'm pretty sure you don't know me. I'm almost as old as your father-not quite, but he and I are part of the same generation. I've devoted my life to music, but mostly jazz, a niche field with niche concerns, but where I get to spend time with other people who deeply love music. In my own small way, I've tried to be an honest broker, working to earn trust and promote a fair and healthy music ecosystem.

That's the one thing we have most in common. We both love the music.

We want to see it flourish-not just for ourselves, but for other, better reasons. We want see it flourish for the good of all musicians. And for the benefit of the fans. And for our communities. And, most of all, for the future.

More than anybody, you have the power to make this happen. You are the right person to create the change we need, and now is the right time.

And we so desperately need help:

For the first time in 500 years, an increasing number of people listen to music, and don't even know the name of the artist or the song. This is not by chance, but is an intentional move driven by powerful interests-with the goal of shifting control from artists who create to technocrats who merely aggregate.

The streaming platforms prefer a situation where fan loyalty is to their app, not the musician. And they don't care if this turns music into something bland, interchangeable, and generic-because their power is enhanced, and that is their highest priority.

Musicians only make pennies on new albums-or fractions of a penny-where previously they made dollars. Middlemen flourish (more than ever before!) while creative artists suffer.

Composers are also losing their income streams in the face of endless lawsuits, publishing catalog buyouts, and inroads from AI. Hundreds of well-funded businesses are pursuing multiple plans to disempower them, or make them totally irrelevant.

Live music is in even worse shape-venues have never fully recovered from the pandemic. I know so many outstanding musicians who are making less for gigs, unadjusted for inflation, than they were decades ago.

The major record labels don't care. They have lost the ability or interest (or both) to launch and nurture new artists. They would rather buy up the rights to old songs than create new ones. Their obsession with the past is scary.

Indie radio, music media, and other traditional supports of music culture are also in irreversible decline.

Everything feels broken everywhere, all at once.

These are huge challenges. Never before in modern memory has the music ecosystem been so damaged, so stagnant, so exploited by outsiders.

Who can we turn to? Who will fix this?

They have proven again and again that they don't love the music, just the cash. It's not just a question of how poorly they pay musicians-it's also the other moves they've taken to kill fan loyalty, boost generic AI-driven sounds, manipulate listeners, and make music less exciting and independent.

I don't trust them, and you probably don't either. They should be allies of musicians and music lovers. But they decided to align themselves with the streamers instead. That's a foolish move, because the streamers are natural enemies of labels. Their partnership will have an unhappy ending. But, in the meantime, musicians and fans pay the price for this unholy alliance.

They suck cash out of the music economy, and use it to support other projects. Apple would give music away for free if it would sell more devices. Spotify uses its music-driven cash flow to invest in podcasts and audiobooks and all sorts of non-music ventures. It's hardly an exaggeration to say that ten thousand musicians live on peanuts so Spotify can cut a deal with Joe Rogan.

Radio stations are dying, and those that survive are almost all corporatized, streamlined, and formula-driven in a way we've never seen before in the history of broadcasting.

They are downsizing and disappearing. Local coverage of music is almost non-existent now in most cities, and even national coverage of established stars is in a tailspin. It doesn't help that almost every well-known media brand in music and entertainment is owned by one company. (Go read the bios of the people in charge, and tell me how much you trust them to create a healthy music culture.)

Hollywood unions are much more powerful than musician unions. For various reasons, musicians have never been very good at collective bargaining. Hence traditional tactics of labor organization are unlikely to reverse the poisonous trends outlined above.

Whenever they pass legislation about music it's designed to help the corporations. For many years, Disney and other entertainment companies exerted the most influence on these laws. More recently Google, Apple, and other tech companies have shaped legislation. But musicians and music lovers have never had a say in these things.

So who will help us?

Taylor Swift will help us.

Musicians have to help themselves. And they can do it-if they have the right leader. At this moment of crisis, you are that person.

I don't say this flippantly. And it's not just because you're the most popular musician on the planet.

You have also shown your willingness to take on the system. Even better, you have gone to battle against power brokers in the music business-and have won!

And that's just a start. You're also proving that live music not only can survive, but actually flourish in the digital age. Other superstars have taken the easy way out-playing shows for high rollers in Las Vegas or setting up shop on Broadway for tourists and elites.

But you didn't do that, Taylor Swift. You're bringing live music everywhere, creating the most popular music tour in history. The numbers blow my mind. You're taking your music to five continents, showing people in a hundred cities that a concert can be the biggest entertainment event of the year.

Your total tour revenues are more than the GDP of most nations. In Singapore alone, more people tried to buy concert tickets than the entire population of the country. In the US, 2.4 million people purchased tickets the first day they went on sale-that's never happened before.

By the time your tour ends, you will have generated more demand for live music than any artist in history-with huge beneficial effects for everybody. When you show up in town, it gives a Super Bowl-sized boost to the entire local economy.

Along the way, you have made so many other contributions to the music ecosystem. You treat everyone generously-paying out $50 million in bonuses to your team. Even truck drivers got $100,000 bonuses. You've also made donations to food banks, employed locals, and have even purchased carbon credits at twice the level of the emissions of your tour.

You also revitalized physical music media by convincing a million or so fans to buy their first vinyl album-boosting demand for LPs to levels not seen since the last century. You've actually done more to help record stores than the record business.

Nobody else is doing these kinds of things with such impact. It's not even close.

So I feel that destiny has blessed us.

For the first time in ages, the superstar musician at the top of the hierarchy is brave, independent, generous, and willing to challenge the system. You stand up for artist rights. You stand up for live music. You stand up for people. And you do all this with a grass roots power base that nobody can match-no politician, no billionaire technocrat, and certainly no other performer.

Musicians have never had that kind of visionary leader.

But it has happened elsewhere. And we can learn from this.

Back in 1919, the four most powerful creative visionaries in Hollywood decided to unite the artists. That was even the name they gave their business: United Artists.

The people behind it were not business executives. They weren't investors or financiers. The four people who founded United Artists were the three most popular movie stars in Hollywood (Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks) and the most famous director (D.W. Griffith).

They proved that artists can control their own destiny.

Of course, that battle is never over. Even now, creative people are on strike Hollywood-they are demanding a fair and honest system. I think they will prevail. There's a long history in Hollywood of artists uniting to confront the powerful.

But that's rarely happened in music.

We have had some attempts. The Beatles launched Apple Records, but they couldn't even solve their own differences-so they never had the impact on the music ecosystem they might have had. In more recent years, TIDAL seemed like it could be the answer, but the same musicians who launched it eventually made their peace with the existing power structure, and never achieved the transformative change they might have created.

You can be that change, Taylor Swift.

I'm asking you to launch a business-or let's call it a cooperative, because I think you will want to have other artists participating as stakeholders.

I won't try to spell out all of the details here. (But I've shared some suggestions in other places.) I suspect that you already have many ideas of your own about this. And we both know a few trustworthy people who can contribute their own expertise.

But the larger picture is crystal clear. We need-and deserve-a trusted organization that nurtures the musical culture, enlists the participation of the best creative artists of our time, and has direct distribution to the fans. Instead of rewarding middleman, it will reallocate cash to showcase and support artistry. The music will come first-instead of last.

If it were necessary, I'm confident that you could raise enough money to buy out Spotify or a big record label or a ticketing company. Or all three. Maybe that's an option, but you don't need to do that.

You can create something better from scratch. You can bring together all of the best things about music into a single operation owned by musicians and run by people who love music -encompassing streaming, physical albums, and live music.

You can create a unifying vision. You can build something that's fair and transparent and gets people excited about music again.

Others will join you. And it can happen quickly:

Dozens of superstars will follow your lead-because you've proven that you can take on the system.

Lesser known artists will also join you, you just need to make it easy for them to participate.

Even some record labels may decide it's better to work with you and other musicians, rather than partner with the ruling technocrats.

And, of course, the fans will join you too. Tens of millions of them, maybe hundreds of millions. They love you and trust you, and will ensure the success of your initiative.

Taylor Swift, you are the one person who can make this happen. I believe this is your destiny.

Don't let us down.

With warmest regards,

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I'm asking a favor-but not for me. I want you to do a favor for the music.

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The following open letter from a teenager is by Naomi DeLaet, a freshmen at Plainwell High School in Michigan.

Dear World,

Please stop telling us that high school is going to be the best four years of our lives.

It's not.

Most of us are lucky to not cry three or four times a week, or to not break down completely because of stress. And that's the best case scenario.

We do understand why the academic parts are so hard. We know we need that to prepare ourselves for college. We also know we need to get jobs, and to do a sport (or maybe two or three), because sports are important and Mom really likes seeing us in that jersey. We need to socialize with our families. And besides that, if we don't pass our classes then shame will fall on the entire family, and...

Suddenly there's not enough time in the year to do it all, much less do it all every day, for four years.

World, it's not exactly fair for you to claim we're all lazy or moody or unsocial, or whatever else you like to dub us as. We really do try. We do our best. For most of us, our best is good enough, and we're praised for it... and constantly used as a comparison bar for the rest of us. Diversity, appreciated or not, exists in everything, and high schoolers are no exception. Some of us, both in and out of the ring, just have better skills, better luck, or better help. And that's not our fault. Sometimes, the ring is to blame.

The 'ring', being, of course, not some Lord of the Rings reference, but an analogy to a fighting ring.

School.

Most of us agree education is important, and that we're lucky to live in a first-world country where we have a school. And that is true. We are extremely fortunate. But for many who go, school can be a little on the Please Get Me Out Of Here side of the spectrum. And it's not because of the curriculum.

In a school environment, we not only have to worry about passing our classes and the academic aspects; we also worry about the social part. This means understanding the etiquette of making friends, keeping them, and following all the social cues that didn't come listed in the Student Handbook. These rules are hard to follow, and not everyone feels bound to uphold them. High school sometimes feels like a piranha tank that's been mistaken for a nice, unassuming goldfish bowl.

After looking at this load balanced precariously on our backs, then yes, it's quite easy to see why so many of us get cranky.

So we're asking for a bit of elbow room. Just another inch or two. We don't need later curfews or bigger allowances, although those would be nice. And we aren't asking for more college advice, either. We've got enough information spinning through our heads already.

What we need is simple: time, patience, and forgiveness.

It's not always easy to like us, but giving us time doesn't have to be intimate. It can be as small as going for a fifteen minute run, or explaining a homework problem, or just going past the standard 'How was your day?' question after school. We have something to say, if you're willing to listen. We also ask you to be patient with us because it's hard to be a teenager, and we're not going to learn anything very quickly, whatever you're trying to teach us. And we're probably not going to do much of anything right the first time, either, so we need forgiveness. We're going to mess up. Grades, social situations, time management; anything and everything. It's unavoidable. It is impossible to go through high school and have time to do everything perfectly. That doesn't happen for anyone. (Excluding, of course, teen-fiction book characters, Disney princesses, and aliens.)

So please, please just be understanding.

You were here not so long ago. You remember.

And if you don't, then please try a little harder. And not just to remember your high school days, but to help us out. It's a two-way street.

We'll try harder, too.

Thanks for keeping us,

Teenagers

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An Open Letter From a Teenager to High School Teachers Everywhere

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Please stop telling us that high school is going to be the best four years of our lives. It's not. So we're asking for a bit of elbow room. An inch or two.

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Dear March,

Listen, I get that you, like all aging singles on OkCupid, have commitment issues. But I'm gonna need you to get some help. Go to therapy like the rest of us. Dig into your childhood issues. Journal. Join July as they work through their insistence on being a wet blanket and hotter than balls simultaneously.

Do whatever it takes.

Last week it was seventy-four degrees. I wore Crocs. So pleasant. A couple days ago it snowed. WTF, March? And this was not the good kind of snow that flirty February offers, but sleet and hail and rain and fog too. There was an icon on my weather app that I had never seen before. That's how off the rails you are, March. Tim Cook is having to invent new graphics to predict what mayhem you'll be bringing us next.

And don't get me started on your wind. Yes, great. You can blow. You blow real nice. But thirty miles per hour is a tad excessive. Try a lighter touch, a gentle flutter that makes my hair look more "Giselle living her best life on the beach post-divorce" and less "my hairbrush is actually a rummaging raccoon." I don't need a bunch of plastic bags and empty pizza boxes showing up in my yard like some crappy holiday decor. What I need is for you to get your shit together, March.

Sure, you give us nice things too sometimes, like sportsball madness and a whole holiday devoted to day drinking. I don't mean to sound ungrateful. I appreciate these things, I do. It's just hard to focus on them amid your never-ending rollercoaster of drama. I was pretty happy about the colorful blooms you had recently given us, for example, until I walked outside this morning and all my tulips' heads had been chopped off by the random cold snap, Game of Thrones-style. Shame!

And yes, it's hard to be an in-between month. We all have divorced parents; we know what it's like to be caught in the middle. You don't have the easy advantages of winter or summer. But you know what? Tough shit. Life's not fair. Take a page from October, that affable in-betweener. Clear skies. Mild temperatures. Festive foliage. Invite them to coffee and ask what their secret is. Take detailed notes while you sip on something pumpkin-spiced.

Or if you simply can't stomach sucking up to one of the other months, just pick a side, any side. Ally yourself with winter. Go full frost. Ally yourself with summer. Lean in to White Claws and mosquito bites. I don't care. JUST. PICK.

For all of our sakes, I am begging you: pull yourself together.

Until next year,
Emily O. Gravett

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Dear March, Listen, I get that you, like all aging singles on OkCupid, have commitment issues. But I'm gonna need you to get some help. Go to thera...

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Dear Sleep,

We've been together for a while now, and I am tired of doing all the heavy lifting in our relationship. I feel like you've been phoning it in. I am not asking for much, just for you to be there at night. And on rare occasions, a long flight.

I know we've had some ups and downs over the years, and I accept responsibility for my part in it. I didn't "get" you at first. I was cranky, a brat. I cried a lot, threw tantrums, refused to go to bed. I didn't know how important you were. In my defense, I was also teething.

We were solid all through adolescence, sometimes too solid, maybe. Perhaps we became too codependent, seeing each other all night, all morning, and even a little in the early afternoon. But it was a blissful time, except when my dreams took a turn and focused primarily on the male leads of General Hospital and 90210. I know you'd like to forget about that phase. We don't have to talk about it.

I admit I neglected you during my college years: all that boundless young energy and the novelty of being away from home. We didn't see each other at all, except for the occasional nap. But I knew you were near, waiting for me to be ready again.

But here we are today in adulthood. This should be our best time together, the time I need you most through staggering work responsibility, chronic stress, relationship issues, yet you stopped showing up for me.

I have given in to all your demands: I no longer consume caffeine. I bought a fancy new memory foam mattress (the one advertised on NPR). I take melatonin (and valerian root, glycine, ginkgo biloba, L-theanine, kava, and tart cherry juice). I grow lavender and make DIY lavender oil to spritz on my face. I sneak into my neighbor's apartment to take a relaxing bath since I only have a shower.

I downloaded all the meditation apps and rotate through them nightly while doing breathing exercises and counting backward. I eliminated blue light from all my screens. I even banished the color blue from my life, except for the sky, but I try not to look up much.

I know routine is important to you. I go to bed at the same time every night, even if I have company. I tell them to enjoy themselves, there's vodka in the freezer, and I go to bed because that's what we agreed on.

I rub magnesium oil on the soles of my feet and leave a slimy trail on my way to the bathroom. I keep my bedroom cool. So cool that my dog has to wear her coat to sleep in it. And dark. So dark that I step on my dog every time I get up.

I use a blanket that's weighted, very weighted. To get up, I have to shimmy my way out sideways and roll onto the floor. I do all of this for you and I wait. And wait. But you don't show up. And when you do, you're always late and you never stay. Is there an emergency slumber party somewhere? Is it someone else?

I told you I could be flexible. I'm willing to have an open relationship with you. I don't mind if you start seeing other people. In another time zone, like New Zealand or the Marshall Islands. But you have to be there for me. At least five nights a week.

Sleep, this is not an ultimatum. I would never do that. But you should know that if you're not there for me tonight, I'm pulling out the big guns. I've invited Ambien and Lunesta over, and you know they always show up with their Side Effects.

I hope you make the right decision. Either way, I'll see you tonight.

Sincerely,
Viktoria

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An Open Letter to Sleep: We Need to Talk

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Dear Sleep, We've been together for a while now, and I am tired of doing all the heavy lifting in our relationship. I feel like you've been phoning it in. I am not asking for much, just for you to be there at night. And on rare occasions, a long flight.

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Dear "I Can't Even" -

As a critical fan, I have to admit I've become frustrated by your services. How is it that you allow yourself to be used as a reaction to literally anything without providing any explanation?

Can you not? Can you really not even? Or has your purpose merely been thrust upon you by the culture of memery in which you thrive?

Maybe it's a social issue. We've become charmed by how easily you're able to communicate such an evergreen and #relatable sentiment while avoiding unnecessary labor.

You're speechless. I understand. I'm asking you to reflect on your purpose, and honestly, no one - er, thing - needs to be facing existential questions during a global pandemic. I'll try to be gentle.

Your existence was born out of convenience, yes? Like a microwave in that you can be used in the spirit of capitalism to generate corporate profit - I've seen the I CAN'T EVEN T-shirts - and not like a microwave in that you're never going to be able to give me a burrito.

Alas.

I

Can't

Even

But what do you do for us as a society? Do our responses to what we believe ourselves incapable of doing become meaningless when we rely on you as a crutch to express ourselves?

I use the word "our" because, as previously stated, I'm a critical fan. I'm constantly fatigued, and your conciseness saves me the time of having to formulate a thoughtful response to any person or thing to which I simply cannot.

But I'm also concerned that you have an ulterior motive. That's my real reason for writing to you. You see, this concern has been haunting my mind and my heart in the only way a handful of syllables can.

I worry your existence was borne out of a desire to begin a semantic revolution - one in which we all drastically reduce the amount of time we spend communicating with one another. The end result, then, being a dystopia in which we gradually become silent, the atmosphere simply punctuated with implied meaning.

In this dystopian world, your vagueness would also strip conversations of nuance. You are, after all, just as likely to be invoked in response to a silly film as much as the gaffe of a politician or a national tragedy. Granted, the last two are not always mutually exclusive. It's 2020.

But my question then, is this: Can you calm my fears? Do you have the capacity to respond to such a request? You don't possess a consciousness, so I know this is asking a lot.

Maybe I'm just paranoid, delusional from hunger. It's 2 AM and I'm still thinking about that burrito.

Were there a universe in which you did possess consciousness, I assume you'd probably leave me on Read. Click delete. I'm questioning you, after all, and influencers such as yourself tend to respond indifferently if not with some hostility to those with less cultural capital.

Perhaps you, too, can't even. And honestly? Same. I'm not sure if the idea of us sharing this sentiment is comforting or depressing. I do have a consciousness. And I don't have the ingredients to make a burrito.

Your concerned conjurer,
McKenna

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An Open Letter to the Expression "I Can't Even"

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Dear "I Can't Even" - As a critical fan, I have to admit I've become frustrated by your services. How is it that you allow yourself to be used as a...

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Dear People Who Don't Make Every Conceivable Effort to Ensure that the Bathroom Door is Locked,

First, I want to say sorry, although I think both of us are a little confused about why I'm the one apologizing. And what am I apologizing for, really? For having to use the restroom? For not knocking on the door of a public restroom, which, by definition, is open to the public? For accidentally glimpsing you in what is arguably the most animal of positions, pants at your ankles, trying to, you know, go? In any case, I'm sorry. For both of us.

But what I really want to say is, how? How do you do it? What's it like in the cavalier world you're living in, where the idea of being barged in on in such a vulnerable position doesn't shake you to your core and cause you to check the lock two, sometimes three times before going about your business? Honestly, I am embarrassed just writing this letter, in which I have only been able to vaguely allude to the biological processes so inevitable in human life, but you - you live in a headspace where you're like, what's most important here is using the restroom; forget trying to pretend, like the rest of us, that you're the only person in the world who doesn't do it.

I also would like to have a word with those of you who feel the need to say things like, "Come on in, I'm just finishing up." I want to say here and now that, no, I will not come on in. I will never come on in. I appreciate your hospitality, inviting me into a five-by-five space in which you have just been doing God knows what, but I'm going to have to pass, on the grounds that I'm not sure what it is you imagine me doing once I come in. Do I stand there and watch you wash your hands? Or worse, not wash your hands? Do we make small talk while you stand at the hand dryer? I'll wait at the door.

So, in closing, I want to say both that I envy your carefree confidence, and also, no thank you. I don't ever want to be so nonchalant about my bodily functions that I force my nonchalant bodily functions onto unsuspecting bathroom users. I'm going to make very, very certain that I push that little button in, then I'm going to twist the knob to make sure it actually locks, then I'm going to push the button in again and maybe repeat a few times.

All the best,
Andrew

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An Open Letter to People Who Don't Make Every Conceivable Effort to Ensure that the Bathroom Door is Locked

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Dear People Who Don't Make Every Conceivable Effort to Ensure that the Bathroom Door is Locked, First, I want to say sorry, although I think both o...