I've been thinking about fame a lot today and, well, lately. When I was around 24 or so I had changed my major from Psychology to Music because I wanted to understand music more and to become a better songwriter and musician. One day at school I ran into an acquaintance who has been playing music for a long time and is perhaps a little bitter about his lack of "success" as a musician.
I told him I was majoring in Voice and he said, "Why?" in kind of a disgusted manner. "What are you waiting for? I mean, you don't have that much time."
"You mean because I won't be a sex symol anymore?" I said.
"Yeah," he said. "I mean, like, women who are in their forties trying to play music should just get fat and have kids."
Wow.
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I played a game with fame once. I achieved my goal of some semblance of fame and when I had done it, I felt completely hollow and like a puppt or a performing monkey. As soon as I got the fame I thought I wanted (being chosen to play in an international festival with Nina Hagen as the headliner) I completely shrunk from it. After playing at the audition in NYC to much critical acclaim, I felt sick from the fakeness of it. It was what I thought I had wanted and had been working for some time to achieve. There were radio dj's at the show and Polina, the head of NY Decay, told me to talk to them and give them a copy of our CD, but as soon as we played and everyone loved it I was over it. There were also personal problems within the band at the time that made the whole "success" thing seem even more hollow. Polina also began making plans for us to play at CBGB's just before it closed and when we got back home several NY dj's emailed me saying that they had been playing one of our songs in clubs or that they wanted copies of our CD's. I never even sent them the CD's. The whole thing seemed like a big joke to me and very insubstantial. I had had a lot more fun playing for open mic night at Calamity. It definitely had not been worth the hassle and seemed like a big orchestrated game just to get a bunch of strangers to say, "Wow, you're great."
I really didn't understand what was happening to me at that point. I grew very depressed after that because something that I thought that I had always wanted turned out to be a sham.
I felt like Naomi Watt's character in I Heart Huckabees when she plays a model and kind of goes nuts about having to be pretty all the time and always being in the public eye. She looks in the camera and says something like, "Everybody, look at me; look at me; I'm so pretty; everybody, just look at me; look at me!"
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Here are some quotes I found about fame that I think are interesting:
Don't confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.
Erma Bombeck
"I won't be happy 'til I'm as famous as God."
Madonna (ha!)
If you come to fame not understanding who you are, it will define who you are.
Oprah Winfrey
Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.
Blaise Pascal
What is fame? The advantage of being known by people of whom you yourself know nothing, and for whom you care as little.
Lord Byron
If I became a philosopher, if I have so keenly sought this fame for which I'm still waiting, it's all been to seduce women basically.
Jean-Paul Sartre
If this fame, which people call my lucky break, were to stop tomorrow, I shouldn't care.
Brigitte Bardot
The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.
Jean Cocteau
My career should adapt to me. Fame is like a VIP pass wherever you want to go.
Leonardo DiCaprio
A lot of celebrities, especially when you're talking about the really big ones, live in what I call the fame bubble. Nobody ever says no to them or challenges them or even teases them.
Kathy Griffin
We're constantly striving for success, fame and comfort when all we really need to be happy is someone or some thing to be enthusiastic about.
H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.
Desiderius Erasmus (I wonder what he means by legacy from paganism? I'll have to look into it....)
Fame has also this great drawback, that if we pursue it, we must direct our lives so as to please the fancy of men.
Baruch Spinoza
Fame makes me feel wanted and loved, anybody wants that.
Michael Hutchence
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Reasons humans seek fame as far as I have determined:
1. To feel wanted and loved/accepted by as many people as possible (positive affirmation on a grand scale)
2. The media says it's important
3. Money
4. Power/"VIP pass"
5. To be recognized for one's accomplishments
6. To be remembered
But why do we want to be remembered? Is this an evolutionary or innate drive similar to the procreation drive so that our name will be carried on like our DNA? Or is it kind of a skewed drive for immortality or life after death?
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