Part of the fun of being a musician is being out there on stage, strutting your stuff, doing your Mick Jagger impersonation, and having a good time. Unfortunately, though, they often leave the cameras on while you are doing this, and the whole country gets to see you strut your stuff. This is very embarrassing, but there is an upside to all this, and that is that some people enjoy watching you, and they respond by sending you fan mail.
I know it sounds egotistical, but I love getting fan mail. It makes me feel important. It makes me feel like a real pop star. It makes me improve my Chinese. I love looking at all the little kitty and doggy stickers on the envelope, and I like trying to figure out how to undo the incredibly complex folding job they do on the stationary. I love seeing how perfect the penmanship is, and I love the blurry faraway pictures of me with the red eyes. I thought that was just how I looked to myself in the morning after a few beers. I didn’t know that was how I was captured on film too.
Of course my fan mail doesn’t come in by the truck-full like that guy that sells phone cards on TV, but it does demand enough attention to have a box in my office that I am now digging through to look for some examples to write about.
Here’s one that I just got a few days ago, and is really sweet, even though a bit textbook cliché. “I must take my hat off to you for your performance. You are truly to be admired. I knew you would do it all along. You deserve every bit of your success. Here’s wishing you all the best that the world has to offer.”
And one from a volunteer at a concert in Thailand: “I’ll never forget you since it was the first job of my life.”
This is a great one from a fan who heard through some cheezy record company gimmick that I was looking for a wife. She sent a semi-revealing photo (very fuzzy) showing ample bosom and lots of red lipstick, and included a dozen long stemmed roses as well. The letter read, “I know you are looking for a good wife. You need not look further. I am willing to marry you. I like music, I am smart, attractive, and know how to cook.”
I had one fan who was really terrific, but what a weird name, Psycho. I remember Psycho because she sent me an old black and white picture of herself taken when she was three years old. It said on the back, “Guess who I am? Aren’t I adorable? Yours, Psycho.”
In Thailand, a fan gave me a nice card with a phone card inside. It said, “Please call.” But there was no telephone number.
There was one thoughtful fan who after a concert in Taichung gave me a card and a present. Since it was Christmas, I was incredibly busy, and forgot to open the card until a couple of weeks later. “Please open the present immediately!” it said. So I opened the present immediately and found a moldy mushy pack of what used to be frozen dumplings. “I am so worried that you might be hungry after your performance,” the note said inside the package.
Sometimes “fan mail” comes via strange avenues. The bass player in my band came up to me once and said, “Hey, your girlfriend is doing a language exchange today with my little sister. They’ve gotten to be pretty good friends.” “Oh really?” I answered since I didn’t know I had a girlfriend at that time. “Let’s surprise them and say hello.” So we walked over to his house. His sister answered the door and said, “Hi! Your girlfriend’s so sweet! We were just talking about you!” Just then my “girlfriend” turned around and saw me standing in the doorway. She tried to melt into the linoleum. She tried to shrink into her chair. She was trapped. “It’s so nice to finally meet you,” I said to my fan. “What’s your name?”
I also get advice through the mail. One fan wrote, “You must eat more. You are too skinny.” Another gave some good musical advice. “Remember to practice every day.” A concerned fan once wrote, “Be nice to your wife.”
And the winner is: My favorite letter of all time, from an album a couple of years ago. “Even though you are a half-breed person, and I can never forgive what your people did to us Chinese in WWII, I find your music very attractive. I feel very confused listening to your music, especially the song with the jungle people sounds [rap]. I know I should not like you, but I do.”
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