I find that I get very upset when musicians do not reply to my emails or phone calls. I call it “the Washington diss”, a variety of snub. In NY, in my limited experience, they do it differently: they want you to particularly understand how unimportant you are, or how much they hate you. But my experience is largely Washington, and this is how they do it here - they simply ignore or “ghost” you, and that is supposed to be understood on all sides. It’s not that they didn’t get the communication - it’s that silence is their answer.

DC diss: "Who you?"
NY diss: "Die, scum!"

I wrote about it in my 2013 journal, and it came out like a kafkaesque poem about communication:

“People coming to doors, windows; people knocking, ringing, phoning, texting. Telegrams, email, letter, fedex, messenger, skywriting, rumor, signs, signals. Flags, color changes. Futile waiting, standing up, misunderstanding, snubbing, rejecting, ghosting. Truancy, dilatory; apologies, no apologies; excuses, no excuses. Acknowledgment, no acknowledgment. Standing at the door shivering. At some other place, some other door. In the hospital, kidnapped. Forgot. Misplaced contact info, decided against, went away. Deliberately offensive. No excuses. Wrong day, wrong way. Thought better of it.”

(Indeed, I have been left out in the rain, shivering, for half an hour, while a church music director could not decide whether to give me a key to get into the church to play a concert).

“A musician declines an engagement, saying to me, "I have decided that I will only play concerts that will further my career." Well, this explains everything! My solitude and isolation, the unreturned phone calls and emails, the musicians who pretend they don't recognize me in a restaurant or on the metro.” 