[I don’t care about Woodstock. This is not that. Move along, ya hippies!!]
One of my favorite stories about transforming humiliation is the one about Ryan Adams and Bryan Adams and the song, The Summer of ’69. It’s also another side of the harms of poor journalism, if you want to examine the negative.
Michael Hann in The Guardian outlines the inciting incident and fallout very nicely here: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/feb/10/ryan-adams-summer-of-69-humiliation-angry-bryan-heckler
tldr (Seriously? It’s 500 words!): Ryan Adams, who did not write that song, was heckled mercilessly to sing it at a show in Nashville. He confronted the heckler and gave him cash to leave, but the coverage of the incident was exaggerated and spun into an ugly mess. Everywhere he performed, drunken idiots heckled for that song.
Ryan Adams had to get therapy to cope with the effects. Maybe the worst of it was being mistaken for a Canadian. Who knows exactly? It must have been horrible to have one bad moment spawn a hundred more just like it.
He survived to embrace the nonsense with a much improved sense of humor and performs the song now and then. The crowd goes berserk. Well, as berserk as an acoustic audience ever does.
We could all stand to be more like Ryan, or Bryan. Whoever.
Love,
yermom
askyermom 