When do a student and teacher part ways?

If you come to me as a student, I cannot guarantee that you will achieve your goals. I can say that the odds are very high that you will improve if you work with me, but I can’t create worldly success for you. You must create your own success. I can only give tools and show you how to use them.

If you go around collecting opinions about how to sing, and you are hearing the same thing from everybody, and you insist that they are all wrong, and only you are right, you need to ask yourself these questions:

• Why is everybody telling me this?
• If there is a reason, is it logical, arbitrary, well-informed, traditional, stupid, sensible, prudent, well-founded?
• How can I be sure that I am right and everyone else is wrong?
• What if they are right? What would I need to do if they were right? Will it harm me to try what they are advising?

If you come to consider what I offer, and do not take it, then why do you keep coming? It is only sensible for me to say, we’re done. It is madness to do otherwise.