Fame

6 Scrap Carissa Fame is a curious animal. I’m certainly no expert and nor, for that matter, can I lay claim to any part of this beast. However, in younger years, I spent a great deal of time imagining what it would be like - to be recognized as affluent in my artistic field, my name revered on stranger's lips, old forgotten girlfriends pining about "the one that got away". I would confidently discuss fame's pitfalls on a chilly New Hampshire morning sipping coffee with Stephen King or late afternoon during a barbeque at the Speilberg's sun-drenched ranch. Inevitable at such times came my wife's shrill reprimand to quit leaving the garbage bags on the back porch because the trash-rooting possum was back, spreading around my son's dirty diapers like a freshly strewn patch of muddy snow. Silly thoughts, really - embarrassing to write, but no less true and from what I gather, a sure signal that I was and still am, indeed, ignorant of what it's like to be famous.

I started my artistic journey convinced that such fame would be the ultimate measure of my success, much as my sixteen year old daughter embarks on her desperate desire to become an MTV icon like Christina Aguilara. Noble, youthful dreams - backed by a great deal of talent and personal charisma. In truth, my daughter is an absolute stunning beauty by anyone's standards, a classically trained dancer who has been known, I'm told, to clear dance floors. She possesses a perfect figure which strains my comfort-level to even reference, a first rate mind, and deep down, an achingly exquisite and soulful heart. Were she actually able to carry the simplest of tunes, life might become interesting…

That being said, you'll have to excuse me while I attempt to worm my way to her forgiveness by illustrating a few things I've noticed in my own forty years of producing art in relative obscurity.

Pumpkin,

Fame, I think, is a by-product - not just of exceptional talent, but of extraordinary hard work, obsessive endurance, and luck. Not the regular luck which would let you walk out of a casino up a few bucks - not even the divine luck which wins million dollar state lotteries or ordains that somehow, amazingly, a daughter such as you be given to me -- but the kind of cataclysmic, earth-shattering luck which makes comets collide with planets and forever alters ecosystems.

Luck so rare, that it inevitably fades into the 'process' and the practice of your craft.

My brother, your uncle Donnie, has great advice on this. He has no talent to speak of, yet he's right-on target to insist there is joy found within any 'process' where one exercises their skill in a creative manner.

A martial arts expert and a wizard with electronics while in the Navy, Donnie tells a story of rigging his radar screen for television reception while out on peacetime Naval maneuvers - old reruns of "Gilligan’s Island", he brags, like this was something to brag about. In fact, its a point which is so anticlimactic that usually, here, I begin to believe there may be some truth to his tale. Such dullness reverberates reality. Something in this speaks of a generalized level of boredom, hitherto unknown to my imagination for he swears that to the men on his cruiser he was a hero. The act placed him in a lot of hot water and somehow I can't fathom that all across the US there are scattered pockets of ex-navy civilians anxious to reverently pass on this epic bit of legendary lore to their sons and bar mates. But for Donnie, the glory and the fame remains undiminished.

The pursuit of fame is an illusion, dear, easily won, at least for a "Warhol-15", if you don't mind a little jail time for indecent exposure... or for destruction of US Government Property.

The pursuit of Art, of sublime creativity, and transcendent personal inspiration, itself, carries an exorbitant cost, but if you're so inclined, the "doing" must be enough. Within the very personal 'process' of your art or of whatever endeavor you decide to pursue, one can find joyful reverence, vital self-awareness, and a sense of connectedness with your family, your shipmates, your community, or your universe.

Of course, a good knock on the head can cause a kind of temporal lobe epilepsy which feels pretty much the same way. Not to mention that genius with a touch of manic-depression, addiction, institutional insanity, destitution, and suicide and you, too, could become another Hemingway or Vincent Van Gogh.

Sure, Christina A's famous… and rich. So is Britany S. (Sorry if that seems to imply a 'voice' need not be necessary to achieve fame.) But so was Janice J. and Jimmy H. and John B. and Victor H. and Edgar Allen P. and Lord B. and Leo T. and Peter Tch... the list is long - world-class talents possessing the rare luck of eternal fame, but afflicted by the common misfortune of divine madness.

Of the world's great artists, alive today and down through history, the one I've come to revere most has got to be Fusbubard!...

…You know - "Dirk Fusbubard". The incomparably prolific artist who moved his family to a small island in the South Pacific where they all lived deliriously happy, creative lives for nearly sixty years, during which time this paragon of human creativity produced 12 complete symphonies, 28 masterpieces of philosophical literature, and over 300 works of Art on Canvas representing four wholly original styles of visual expression. His re-emergence into civilization would have marked one of the most significant events in cultural history - had his bamboo boat carrying his life's work not been accidentally demolished by some neglectful moron on a Battle Cruiser out on peacetime Naval maneuvers.

How many Fusbubards has this earth known, pumpkin? How alike to this common ideal am I?

I believe luck and fame goes both ways... not unlike your uncle Donnie, who is, after all, now an aspiring actor in Hollywood . Hehe.

So much for that barbeque!...

Let luck fall where it will. Let fame do the same. Find your own personal Pixiport, sweetheart, and let it RIP!... And in the 'process' of making it all happen, find joy.

As I have, through you!