I'm Imagining Ken Burns And Artie Shaw,

finishing up an interview for Burn's documentary TV series "Jazz," an interview which has gone on a bit into the evening, so Burns invites Shaw over to the Tavern on the Green for a drink, and although normally it would be just a short walk from Shaw's apartment, it's raining, so they take a limo instead.

There's a line of taxis dropping people off at the entrance to Tavern on the Green, so they get out and walk a few car lengths in the dark, and Artie almost trips and falls over a homeless person who's passed out in the rain from hunger and exhaustion -- who, if this was the mid-90's, could have been me! -- and they mistakenly assume the person is drunk or high and mumble a little bit about Why doesn't someone get a handle on that problem, and the doorman knows them and zips them right in past a line of people standing, and they sit at the bar sipping 30-year-old unblended Scotch and gradually getting very sad as they agree with each other how no-one understands what a horrible burden their success is.

Oh, I hope so much that some day really soon I am allowed to experience for myself the way that tremendous success is so much harder to bear than being homeless and hungry and so tired that you pass out on some pavement and are half-awakened by some rich guy almost stumbling over you in the dark on his way to someplace warm and snug where he will sip 30-year-old unblended Scotch and complain about how no-one understands that success is so much harder to bear than failure!

Artie Shaw Said Success Was Harder Than Failure

What a shame that so much success was wasted on someone so ignorant. Imagine how shockingly little someone would have to know about failure in order to say something that dumb.

Shaw was making a living as a musician at age 16 and sold tens of millions of records before age 30. That's how little he knew about failure.

He made that boneheaded remark on Ken Burns' documentary Jazz, speaking of someone insufficiently acquainted with failure. I've gotta think that many documentarians --- documentarians. Try to imagine, if you can, the gulf between how familiar the average documentarian is with failure, and how much Ken Freakin Burns could possibly know about it -- Ah say Ah say, I have to think that many documentarians would have kindly cut that remark out of the documentary, because they would have had quite a good idea how much it made Shaw sound like a horse's ass.

You don't know what I'm talking about? Good for you! And Shaw, and Burns!

As far as I can tell, Artie Shaw and Arnold Shaw weren't related. Artie was by far the better musician. On the other hand, Arnold said and wrote things which weren't ridiculous.