Clark - what you have written is so true and coincidently something I've been pondering myself after some personal experiences and observations this past week and also thinking about the Etheridge/Cyher split. I guess a lot of us to one extent or another "sell our soul to the company store" but I have to agree that the entertainment biz, for all its outward allure and apparent glamour, truly has to be one of the roughest "stores" to work in. I thought working in corporate litigation had to be the roughest until I spent 8 months resident in one of the record companies on a case assignment a few years back. Whew! It made my own job environment seem like a pleasant day at the park in comparison. I also have friends in the film business working on less-celebrated levels.and yes, everything that happens in the "rest of their lives" like relationships, family, taking care of their homes and gardens, etc. always has to take a back seat to the demands of their jobs I could write several books about friends who were used up and spit out of the music and film biz and whose "friends" in the biz immediately discarded them like they never knew them when the going got rough or they were no longer of any use to them. By just quirks of fate, my parents, who were ordinary people not in the biz (but were interesting and creative) had a number of "big name" producer, director and actor friends from the "Old Hollywood". Why would these people be friends with my parents who were "nobody" in their world? Because they were "safe" - they weren't going to take anything away from them or stab them in the back like their show biz friends often did, there was nothing my parents wanted from them and nothing my parents could give them except real and true friendship. They could sit around a poker game or barbeque with them and there was no pressure for them to be anything but themselves. I know this doesn't fit the typical picture most people have of the "world of the stars," but I find it interesting how much we've heard and read about Joni herself preferring the company of more "ordinary" people, whom she often refers to as her "trusted friends" to hang out with instead of her peers in the biz. Which leads me back to my thoughts about how people handle fame once it comes their way. I think it must be horribly difficult for most to negotiate their way through it and stay intact. I look at Etheridge and Cypher as just people, whose affair of the heart should be private and nobody's business, but yet they were almost forced to pay the piper of publicity because of their fame. I think of how some of my own affairs of the heart have been judged, commented on and gossiped about in just my own small circle of ordinary people and how devastating that was for me. I cannot imagine how it must be to have the whole world commenting on and judging these things. There really is no answer to the dilemma of being a public figure and all that comes with that, however, except for people to maybe to put a little more empathy in their hearts for these people who bottom line are just like you and me.. Kakki
