There are lots of things that aren't great about my line of work. It's a dying industry, for one. It pays shit, for ONE. You're in constant power/ethics/corrective battles. In a town the size of mine, people actively hate you. To your face(book).
But something that my line of work allows me is access to the artists I admire. Any schmo can buy a plane ticket and pay a scalper and end up in the same room as a band they love, but there are usually thousands of other people there and you're watching them on a screen. And I've done that many times. My Chemical Romance, anyone? (It was just something I needed to do.)
The downside to that access is that there's a professional line, unspoken but looming, and you're not supposed to cross it with tales of your youth and "Don't you remember, we met at that meet and greet outside the ACC back in ’99?" You're supposed to be cool. But journalists are fans too. We have heroes too. I, for all my hating on things, have many heroes. And except for Amy-Sherman Palladino, I have met, talked to or at least been in that room with all of them. I'm not yet 30. Heroes: taken care of. Think about that. Without this job I would not have that.
HOWEVER. There's an old saying that you shouldn't meet your heroes. They could not possibly live up to your expectations. They could be raging assholes. They could be perfectly nice people you've caught at a terrible time. They could be boring as shit. They could hate what makes you love them. There are a million ways it could go wrong.
On Monday, I got a funny email. The subject: Tori Amos. "Do you want to talk to her on Thursday?" asked my editor. OH SURE, I said. I briefly considered throwing up, then dismissed it. These things come up a lot. You can basically ask your local label reps to interview anyone on their rosters. They will dutifully put the request in. Unless Artist is coming to town or happens to be doing the Cowpoke Promo Circuit, you will be denied. But still you make the request because hey, you never know.
Yesterday my editor emailed me to say the record was on her desk. We hadn't heard anything more about the interview so I stopped worrying about it, mildly sad but mostly relieved. I picked it up around 4:30. Just after 5, another email: you + Tori: 1:15pm tomorrow.
It wasn't the optimal situation, the middle of an album press junket with a 15-minute cap—how to tell her I'm not just some schmo journalist on assignment, how to convey that I Get It, how to confess everything she has meant to me for almost 15 years?—but it was lovely and funny and everything I'd always read...the meanderings, the tangents, the confounding metaphors, the sudden stops. I'm sitting there with a phone to my face and the voice on the other end is the hero of my LIFE and she is talking to ME.
THINK ABOUT THAT.
I'm asking her why there is a fuckton of percussion on the new record and she's explaining decisions made by the team she surrounds herself with, the confluence of opinions and how the cream rises to the top and I recite a band mantra someone in In-Flight Safety once said to me—"Best idea wins"—and Tori motherfucking Amos stops and there's an EXACTLY in her voice and she repeats it: "Best idea wins."
And at that moment I am so glad to be alive, to meld minds with greatness for the tiniest of instances, nothing she would even notice or give a fuck about, but this imperceptible slice of time is so monumental it may have changed everything for me.
I am willing to concede that this is post-conversation high and by evening I will be back to my usual cynical doomsdaying. But right now? Anything is possible.
I'm pretty sure I've never said that.
( )!
i think that means i'm speechless.yay!
Posted by: birdie | 05/14/2009 at 07:57 PM