FAN MAIL

posted by James Reel

    Some time ago I found in my mailbox an envelope holding a letter I’d written to a listener in response to a question she’d posed about a piece of music; at the bottom of the letter, she’d jotted an appreciative little note. What’s striking about this letter—aside from the shameless and excessive way I misused “which” in restrictive clauses back then—is that I wrote it in 1984, and the listener still had it!
    She’d written to me (I was KUAT’s music director then) for information on obtaining a recording of something she’d recently heard us play, Auber’s hour-long ballet Marco Spada. I regretted to inform her that the disc we’d broadcast was out of print and no other recording was available, but I gave her some tips on where she might find used copies and cutouts. I also mentioned that I’d scheduled the ballet again for a particular afternoon two months later. Turns out she taped that broadcast, and folded up my letter and tucked it into the cassette case.
    The lesson here is that our listeners are inquisitive, tenacious, grateful, and have very, very long memories. It’s good to have friends like these … as long as we behave ourselves, because we could just as easily turn tenacious people with long memories into enemies for life.