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We went at it on every front. I convened a meeting of our senior team every morning at 8 a.m. to discuss what we could to do to drive Anthony from the race. Here’s the best of what we did: Earned media: I kicked things off by saying, on the front page of the New York Times, that if Anthony ran, I’d add an extra $20 million to our campaign budget to ensure that we destroyed his reputation so thoroughly, he’d never be able to run for anything ever again. In retrospect, the threat probably landed harder than I realized because Anthony was already starting to self-destruct. (It wasn’t like what he got caught doing on Twitter didn’t exist in other, pre-Twitter formats before then.) We started exactly where anyone would when it comes to Anthony Weiner: sex. In his time as a member of the House, Anthony had passed all of one bill. And that one illustrious piece of legislation was to give more visas to models. Yep, protecting the rights of hot women was Anthony’s sole achievement in office. That was a good point to make but not an exposé in and of itself. But then our research team noticed something: Anthony had also received campaign contributions from many of the models who received highly coveted H1B visas. Not only was this pay-to-play (give contributions, get government favors), it was illegal. Only American citizens can donate to American political campaigns. He took money from foreign nationals. We gave the story to the New York Post and they ran with it. “Weiner’s ‘Naughty’ Hottie$” ran the next day. Because it captured so many of Anthony’s flaws in one piece—his lack of actual work, his shallowness, his shady ethics, and of course, his shallow obsession with models—the press ran with it. It wasn’t enough to knock Anthony out of the race but it certainly got his attention.
Making music with others is a profoundly intimate experience. Philosopher Bennett Reimer described it as a self-combined-with-other-selves experience in which individuality and community are fused in service of original musical expression. So powerful is this experience in enhancing both the sense of self and the sense of self united with other selves as to change the inner lives of all who have been privileged to undergo it.2 Practice with others. You’ll find that bouncing ideas off another musician will go a long way toward improving your own approach and clarifying what you need to do next. And the very best part about practicing with others is that it’s fun. It can be lonely sitting in a practice room all alone, hour after hour, day after day. Practicing with other people is much more enjoyable. Sometimes, there is beer. And fire. And stars.
The Practice of Practice
Jonathan Harnum
and taught myself Keith Richards’s simple but great guitar solo to “It’s All Over Now.” It took me all night but by midnight I had a reasonable facsimile of it down. Fuck ’em, I was going to play lead guitar. For the next several months (years!) I woodshedded, spending every available hour cradling my Kent, twisting and torturing the strings ’til they broke or until I fell back on my bed asleep with it in my arms. Weekends I spent at the local CYO, YMCA or high school dances. Dancing was over; I was silent, inscrutable, arms folded, standing in front of the lead guitarist of whatever band was playing,
Born to Run
Bruce Springsteen
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