Okay, this will be long, but I don’t really want to write a whole lot about this. Because I don’t really want to get angry, or any more depressed than I usually am. So mostly this will just be copied and pasted from my email.
I couple of months ago I got this email from the City Arts Drama Director:
Your public blog has recently come to my attention. Having seen it, I have no choice but to let you know that until such time your naked pictures are not available to the public you will not be allowed to work with City Arts. Our concern is that parents may not understand your point of view and that makes your association with us, potentially damaging to our tax-funded program.
Should you want to discuss this with me, I am available to schedule a meeting at your convenience. We are not terminating you, but rather using the guidelines of Roster work as an as-needed employee. At this time, your services as an accompanist can be served by others on our roster.
Well, the only involvement I’d had with them since starting this blog was that I had once or twice before prepared recordings for their children’s theatre to use. (Yeah, instead of their hiring someone to play the piano, the music director—who is a friend of mine—asked if I could make a recoding.) So, being the creative and often bored type I am, instead of just sitting down and playing through and recording the piano accompaniment as written, I did a (small) orchestration of all the music in the show and had my computer make a recording of that. It was not terribly extensive or complicated music, but this did constitute an artist effort on my part.
So, I wrote back:
That’s fine. I would ask that you inform the others involved with the show to not use the recordings I’ve prepared.
If you would, please, let me know when this has been taken care of. Thanks.
Well, I got no answer from him for a week, during which I contacted my friend the music director and was contacted by the stage director/children’s theatre director, both of whom basically said that it was unfortunate it went this way and that the artistic director didn’t need to send that original email. And they both asked me to reconsider. Yet my feeling was that this was not something I wanted to reconsider.
So I wrote again:
Has this been taken care of?
I want to be sure that the files I sent are deleted and any hard copies that may've been made are destroyed
Please let me know.
He did respond to that:
As this is a work for hire, I don’t need to destroy anything. Please send your invoice for payment. Feel free to call my cell if you have questions. I don’t have your number, otherwise I would have called on the first contact.
So I wrote and sent this diatribe:
I’m sure if you wanted to call me, you have my number somewhere, as it has not changed in the past 5 years.
Since I started posting my blog, over a year ago, you have not hired me as an accompanist. I’ve never thought you to be under any obligation to do offer me any work.
You said in your email last week that my “association” with City Arts could be damaging. Well, this recording is the only “association” I currently have with you, apart from occasional attendance at meetings of the Playwrights’ Forum (of which I’m not currently a member). So, when you contact me to tell me that I will “not be allowed to work with City Arts” I think it’s a reasonable assumption that this position of yours should apply to the recordings I’ve made.
If that is not what you meant, then I don’t know why you bothered to send that email. But you did. You have created this situation at this time. I understand your decision. You’re acting as an administrator out of fear of potential backlash due to ignorance, conservatism, and religion. That is the side you have come down on in this.
Sadly, it is not surprising. However, I completely disagree with your position on this. I would like to think that the director of an Arts program, and a playwright, would make a stand to support personal and artistic exploration and expression, whether or not you or others may like it or are comfortable with it.
Now, I do not consider my photography as being directly connected to my work as a musician, however you have chosen to make that connection. So I am taking a stand, since you will not, in support of artistic expression. This is an issue of artistic integrity, and not something from which I’m likely to back down. Therefore, I must insist that those recordings NOT be used by City Arts.
Furthermore, this is not work that you have “hired” me to do. As in the past, this is something I did at the request of the music director as a favor and for which, in the past, I did not get paid to do, nor do I expect to be paid for the time I put into these recordings.
Well, again I got no response from this guy. Another week later, I found out from the music director that they’d gotten someone else to make a recording. So I wrote this guy again:
I have heard that the children's theatre will be using a different recording from the orchestrated one I prepared. I would appreciate some official word, confirming that this is indeed the case. It would allow me to consider this situation officially resolved, so I no longer need to be concerned with it. Thank you.
He didn’t answer. The children’s theatre director did. And I still have heard nothing from the artistic director.
I don’t get it. It’s a lot like the reaction of the guy in Mississippi last year.
Apparently, from what I’ve gathered by talking to a couple of other people, no one had lodged any sort of complaint. He and the directors of the show for which I’d made these recordings had talked about it and decided it would be okay to use the recordings, and then he sent that first email.
This was all a “what-if”/pre-emptive-strike/covering-my-own-ass-in-case-of-future-whatever sort of thing.
I have yet to run into this City Arts guy socially (or professionally). And when I do, I’m not sure exactly what my response will be. But I don’t have anything much to say that I haven’t already said. I mean, I could say more, but it would likely just get personal and insulting.
