The Strange Disappearance of Fame
People often ask me what it was like knowing this famous person or that famous person.
The funny thing is that many of those names no longer mean much to anyone.
I used to do impressions of Boris Karloff in comedy clubs. They worked every time. Today I might as well be doing an impression of Julius Caesar. The audience would probably have about the same reaction.
Fame has a surprisingly short half-life.
The people who were giants in one generation become footnotes in the next.
As I wandered through old memories today, I realized something.
Our house guests included Julian and Barbara Huxley. Isaac Asimov stopped by. My father’s stories were illustrated by a young Andrew Warhol before he became Andy Warhol. My friend Mac Rebennack became known to the world as Dr. John. Our friend Ken Lehman reinvented himself from Wall Street arbitrageur to one of the most respected diamond appraisers on 47th Street.
My mother studied dance with Ray Bolger, became Billy Rose’s lead dancer, worked as story editor for Bill Burrud, studied silversmithing under Art Smith, and later became an internationally recognized expert in cloisonné. Orson Wells taught me magic.
To us, these weren’t celebrities. They were simply the people who happened to come by. That’s what memory does. It quietly removes the spotlights and leaves the human beings. The older I get, the less interested I am about who was famous, and the more interested I become in who was just plain good at what they did.
Fame is vaporware.
Craft survives fame. Mastery survives fashion. Character survives publicity. Maybe that’s why I enjoy making music with AI so much. The songs don’t care whether anyone remembers the names. Like the swampy stride piano of Bourbon Street, they simply find their own way.
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Here’s the Bardo bus!
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See You At The Top!!!
gorby