by Shaun Usher
THE LETTER
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
Dec. 6. 1950
Mr. Hume:-
I’ve just read your lousy review of Margaret’s concert. I’ve come to the conclusion that you are an “eight ulcer man on four ulcer pay.”
It seems to me that you are a frustrated old man who wishes he could have been successful. When you write such poppy-cock as was in the back section of the paper you work for it shows conclusively that you’re off the beam and at least four of your ulcers are at work.
Some day I hope to meet you. When that happens you’ll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!
Pegler, a gutter snipe, is a gentleman along side you. I hope you’ll accept that statement as a worse insult than a reflection on your ancestry.
H.S.T.
‘SOME DAY I HOPE TO MEET YOU. WHEN THAT HAPPENS YOU’LL NEED A NEW NOSE, A LOT OF BEEFSTEAK FOR BLACK EYES, AND PERHAPS A SUPPORTER BELOW!’
– Harry S. Truman
LETTER 24
THE COLOR OF THE STARS, HER SKIN, HER LOVE
Jon M. Chu to Coldplay
8 December 2017
Upon its hugely successful record-breaking release in 2018, the movie Crazy Rich Asians drew praise from far and wide, not just for being an entertaining piece of cinema, but also for being the first Hollywood film in a quarter of a century to boast an all-Asian cast. Then there is the soundtrack. As the film ends, a woman begins to sing Coldplay’s hit song ‘Yellow’, but in Mandarin rather than English. During production of the film, its director Jon M. Chu was adamant that Coldplay’s song feature, but his request to use it was denied. Undeterred, Chu wrote this letter to the band. Within days, he was given the green light.
THE LETTER
December 8, 2017
Dear Chris, Guy, Jonny and Will,
I know it’s a bit strange, but my whole life I’ve had a complicated relationship with the color yellow. From being called the word in a derogatory way throughout grade school, to watching movies where they called cowardly people yellow, it’s always had a negative connotation in my life. That is, until I heard your song. For the first time in my life, it described the color in the most beautiful, magical ways I had ever heard: the color of the stars, her skin, the love. It was an incredible image of attraction and aspiration that it made me rethink my own self image. I remember seeing the music video in college for the first time time on TRL. The one shot with the sun rising was breathtaking for both my filmmaker and music-loving side. It immediately became an anthem for me and my friends and gave us a new sense of pride we never felt before . . . (even though it probably wasn’t ever your intention). We could reclaim the color for ourselves and it has stuck with me for the majority of my life.
So the reason I am writing this now, is because I am directing a film for Warner Bros. called CRAZY RICH ASIANS (based on the best selling novel) and it is the first ALL-ASIAN cast for a Hollywood studio film in 25 years. Crazy. We were recently featured on the cover of Entertainment Weekly to commemorate this fact. The story is a romantic comedy about a young Asian-American women (played by Constance Wu) from New York coming to terms with her cultural identity while she’s visiting her boyfriend’s mother (played by Michelle Yeoh) in Singapore. It’s a lavish, fun, romantic romp but underneath it all, there’s an intimate story of a girl becoming a woman. Learning that she’s good enough and deserves the world, no matter what she’s been taught or how she’s been treated, and ultimately that she can be proud of her mixed heritage. The last scene of the movie shows this realization as she heads to the airport to return home a different woman. It’s an empowering, emotional march and needs an anthem that lives up and beyond her inner triumph, which is where Yellow comes in. It would be such an honor to to use your song that gave me so much strength throughout the years, to underscore this final part of our film. And for me personally, it would complete a journey that I’ve been going through, fighting to make it in the movie business.
I know as an artist it’s always difficult to decide when it’s ok to attach your art to someone else’s— and I am sure in most instances you are inclined to say no. However, I do believe this project is special. I do believe this is a unique situation in which the first Hollywood studio film, with an All-Asian cast is not playing stereotypes or side-players, but romantic and comedic leads. It will give a whole generation of Asian-Americans, and others, the same sense of pride I got when I heard your song. I know it’s recontextualized but I think that’s what makes it powerful. I want all of them to have an anthem that makes them feel as beautiful as your words and melody made me feel when I needed it most.
Your consideration would mean so much to me and our project.
I can show you the movie if you want to see the context, or talk to you if you have any questions. Thank you for taking the time to listen.
Much love,
Jon M. Chu
Director of Crazy Rich Asians
LETTER 25
IT’S A VIRUS
Tom Waits to The Nation
July 2002
When, in 1988, Tom Waits heard what seemed to be his own voice singing on a Doritos commercial broadcast to the nation, his first thought was to question his own sanity. Then, very quickly, he became furious. It soon transpired that Frito-Lay, Inc. had hired a Tom Waits impersonator to bring the advert to life, perfectly imitating the gravel-voiced musician in a bid to sell snacks – a situation Waits could not abide. A lawsuit ensued, at the end of which he was awarded $2m. In 2002, fourteen years after that advert first pricked his ears, Waits read an article in The Nation by The Doors’ John Densmore on the subject of musicians allowing their work to be featured in commercials. Tom Waits responded with this letter.
THE LETTER
Woodland Hills, Calif.
Thank you for your eloquent “rant” by John Densmore of The Doors on the subject of artists allowing their songs to be used in commercials.
Songs carry emotional information and some transport us back to a poignant time, place or event in our lives. It’s no wonder a corporation would want to hitch a ride on the spell these songs cast and encourage you to buy soft drinks, underwear or automobiles while you’re in the trance. Artists who take money for ads poison and pervert their songs. It reduces them to the level of a jingle, a word that describes the sound of change in your pocket, which is what your songs become. Remember, when you sell your songs for commercials, you are selling your audience as well.
When I was a kid, if I saw an artist I admired doing a commercial, I’d think, “Too bad, he must really need the money.” But now it’s so pervasive. It’s a virus. Artists are lining up to do ads. The money and exposure are too tantalizing for most artists to decline. Corporations are hoping to hijack a culture’s memories for their product. They want an artist’s audience, credibility, goodwill and all the energy the songs have gathered as well as given over the years. They suck the life and meaning from the songs and impregnate them with promises of a better life with their product.
Eventually, artists will be going onstage like race-car drivers covered in hundreds of logos. John, stay pure. Your credibility, your integrity and your honor are things no company should be able to buy.
TOM WAITS
‘REMEMBER, WHEN YOU SELL YOUR SONGS FOR COMMERCIALS, YOU ARE SELLING YOUR AUDIENCE AS WELL.’
– Tom Waits
LETTER 26
HERBS IS HIS MAJESTY’S
Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry to Tokyo’s Minister of Justice
21 January 1980
During a luggage check on 16 January 1980, as Paul McCartney entered Japan, customs officials found 7.7 ounces of cannabis among his belongings – a haul that could have led to years in prison, but which, luckily for the Beatle, resulted in a nine-day stay in a Tokyo prison and the cancellation of an eleven-city Wings tour of Japan. He was deported upon release and warned never to return. Prior to this slap on the wrist, fans all over
the globe feared the worst for Macca, and messages of support materialised from far and wide. But the highlight of the whole ordeal came five days into his incarceration, when his friend – the eccentric inimitable reggae legend that is Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry – wrote a letter to Tokyo’s Minister of Justice in an effort to lend his support.
THE LETTER
21 JANUARY 1980
ARK OF THE COVENANT
5 CARDIFF CRESENT DR.
KINGSTON, JAMAICA
AIR WHITE SMOKE SIGNAL
EARTH MOON BASE
JUDA ONLY LAW HOUSE
ISREAL LIGHT HOUSE
MINISTER OF JUSTICE
1-1-1 KASUMIGASEKI
CHIYODA-KU
TOKYO, JAPAN
Dear Sirs,
I LEE PIPECOCK JACKSON PERRY would LOVE to express my concern over your consideration of one quarter kilo to be an excessive amount of herbs in the case as it pertains to master PAUL McCARTNEY.
As a creator of nature’s LOVE, light, life and all things under the creation sun, positive feelings through songs, good times and no problems. I find the Herbal powers of marijauna in its widely recognized abilities to relax, calm and generate positive feeling a must.
Herbs is his Majesty’s. All singers positive directions and liberty Irrations. Please do not consider the amount of herbs involved excessive.
Master PAUL McCARTNEY’s intentions are positive.
BABY BLUE GREEN STAR
PIPECOCK JACKSON
LEE “SCRATCH” PERRY
BANNANA EYE I PEN JA
NATURES LOVE DEFENDER
LETTER 27
A HARMONIOUS CREATION OF ART
Adele aus der Ohe to Steinway & Sons
1894
From a very young age, Adele aus der Ohe was a remarkable pianist. Born in Hanover in 1861, she was just ten years old when she performed her debut concert; by the age of twelve she had been taken under the wing of Franz Liszt, the Hungarian virtuoso with whom she would continue to study for seven invaluable years. Later on in life she performed at Carnegie Hall with her friend and mentor, the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and later played piano at his funeral. During the course of her incredible career she played with the Boston Symphony Orchestra more than fifty times. She performed to crowds all over the world. She also composed. All told, Adele aus der Ohe was a musician of the highest order.
In 1894, she wrote a letter of appreciation to Steinway & Sons, the manufacturers of her favoured grand piano.
THE LETTER
New York,
1894
Messrs. Steinway & Sons
Gentlemen:
It gives me great pleasure to express my admiration for your pianos. Their tone is noble, sonorous and pure; even in the utmost fortissimo, it is rich and sweet; moreover, it carries so far that it makes the most delicate pianissimo practicable in very large halls. The tone is not only large and round, but exquisitely sensitive and fresh. These qualities make the Steinway piano better adapted to cantabile playing at one extreme and to the most passionate bravoura at the other, than any other piano that I know. The scale is very even in the best sense of the word:- the bass rich and pure, the treble singing and full, the upper octaves round and replete with vitality and character.
The action of the Steinway piano, combining, as it does, depth, power, lightness and elasticity, affords the artist the means of producing the most delicate shades of tone-color, the most piquant effects and the most tremendous bravoura.
The Steinway piano is, in brief, a harmonious creation of art so individual and sympathetic that the artist often feels as if it possessed a living personality of its own.
With my kind regards,
Yours very sincerely,
Adele aus der Ohe
LETTER 28
PLEASE CHANGE YOUR HOLD MUSIC
Dr Steven Schlozman to CVS
May 2018
As Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr Steven Schlozman spends an inordinate amount of time on the phone to CVS, a pharmaceutical behemoth whose retail stores have reached all corners of the United States since the company was founded in 1963. Frustratingly for Dr Schlozman, for the past twenty years CVS have neglected to refresh the hold music which greets those who call for healthcare assistance, instead offering up the same piece of piano music each and every time a customer calls. In May 2018, at his wit’s end, Dr Schlozman wrote to them with a plea which, thanks to the power of the Internet, was soon read by millions.
Ten months and much coverage later, CVS announced that plans were underway to install a new telephone system.
THE LETTER
Dear CVS,
Please change your hold music.
Please. Do the right thing.
It’ll take you, or someone who works for you, or even a barely pubescent adolescent who nevertheless knows how to program music on his iPhone with more aplomb than anyone born before 1975, only about 48 seconds.
And 48 seconds is substantially less than the amount of time I have listened to your never-changing hold music.
I have researched the source of this music online. I did this, as you might guess, when I was on hold. It seemed the healthiest response I could muster to that faux-soothing piano wandering that is supposed to placate customers for anywhere between 20 seconds and 35 minutes.
I am just guessing at these wait times, by the way. That data might be out there and it might not, but I can’t bring myself to see how long my waiting compares to the average waiting.
And, to be clear, I am not critical of being on hold. I know the pharmacists are working as hard as they can. I know it’s part of our modern world. This is why we have social media, and ESPN.com, and trashcans placed about four or five feet away, into which I can toss crumpled-up pieces of paper. In fact, being on hold has greatly improved my trashcan basketball accuracy, so there’s that. Thank you.
Still, that tune has got to go.
I hear it in my sleep. I hear it when I go running. Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night humming that melody. It haunts me, day and night. It’s not healthy. I know. I’m a doctor.
It’s not healthy to hear pharmacy-hold music while you sleep.
Oh, you want data?
Fair enough.
CVS hold music stimulates the almond-shaped amygdala that sits in our reptilian brains, and that’s not good. This is the same region of the brain involved in road rage, and in raising your middle finger, and in listening to the Steve Miller Band sing “Abracadabra.”
Some 98 percent of respondents in a large, multi-center study examining the average American’s response to the CVS pharmacy hold music reported that their amygdalae (the plural of amygdala) were enraged.
This study, obviously, does not exist. But it could!
The subjects would be made up entirely of me, or lots of me’s. You see, there are many, many different me’s that have listened to that same tune while on hold at CVS. There’s the me who is in-between patients and operating under the resilient but nevertheless largely naive belief that I can solve a prior authorization quandary in somewhere around four minutes. There’s the me, nervous about my daughter’s ear infection, and hoping that the antibiotics are ready. There’s the me doing laps in my car around and around the street where I live, waiting for the music to end so that I can talk to an organic entity and call in a prescription.
As for numbers, I’ve got those figured out as well.
Let’s say I call CVS, on average, three times per day, six days a week, for a period of about the last 25 years. That would allow me to count my residency as well as post-graduate years. Let’s subtract a couple weeks a year for holidays and so forth.
That means that three times per day, six days a week, 50 weeks a year for 25 years, I’ve called CVS. And let’s estimate that the average time that I am treated to this music is around 1 minute, 34 seconds.
That means that I have mad
e approximately 22,500 calls to CVS, and I am, in all honesty grateful for their service. (6 x 3 x 50 x 25 = 22,500)
Of course, I am making an assumption that the hold music has not changed over the last 25 years. This is because I don’t recall it changing. It’s like taxes. I don’t remember a time when it didn’t exist. Accepting this assumption as fact – because it feels like fact – this means that I have listened to roughly 2,115,000 seconds of that same music. That’s 35,250 minutes, or 587-1/2 hours, or nearly 25 days.
Almost 25 days of my life listening. I am 52 years old, so that means that I have spent 25 days out of my 18,980 days on this planet listening to that piano piece (called, incidentally, “Golden Dragon” – I Googled it while I was on hold). That’s a higher percentage of my days than I’d like.
So let me be clear. I don’t object to being on hold. I hate it, but I am at peace with it. I object to being on hold for more than 587 hours of my hard-earned life while listening to that same tune.
As I hope this piece illustrates, this is a matter of some urgency.
Please change the music.
Please.
With warmest regards,
Steve
‘IT’S NOT HEALTHY TO HEAR PHARMACY-HOLD MUSIC WHILE YOU SLEEP.’
– Dr Steve Schlozman
LETTER 29
BLOW `EM AWAY, KID
Nick Cave to Ptolemy
2019
Nick Cave’s long and illustrious music career began in 1973 with the formation of his first band, The Boys Next Door, which soon became The Birthday Party, a post-punk outfit which lasted a decade before being replaced by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. Cave has also produced multiple film scores and written two novels, an epic prose poem called The Sick Bag Song and a number of award-winning screenplays. Most recently he has curated Stranger than Kindness, a multi-media exhibition of his work and influences. In 2018 he launched The Red Hand Files, a platform through which members of the public are able to ask questions of him directly. In 2019, he responded to a letter from Ptolemy, a young fan living in Launceston, Australia, who had asked:
