Almost Famous

What is it? who wants it? why would you want it? i was reading an article by Phil Sheridan in the back of Magnet an American music magazine and it was an interesting piece of food for my drug addled little mind, i mean there's a time when we all want it, usually when we're kids, we think we're gonna be a basketball star or a rock star, later maybe it was a famous writer like Bukowski but really how famous was old Buk, i mean a lot of people know who he is but don't know anything about his work, it got me thinking about the my youth, meaning the 80's, being a kid at the end of the punk movement and the American hardcore scene, bands doing it for a love of music, doing it because as Tony Wilson said "they had no fucking choice", the music was a way out of the mundanity of the suburbs, you drank with the band after the show, they were alot like you and me, there was a certain purity to it that may be nothing more than an aging hipster being nostalgic for his youth but in bands like Joy Division, Dinosaur Jr., the Smiths it was about the music and not about the image...it was about the fucking art.

now it seems everybody wants their 15 minutes and they make little Andrew Warhola out to be a genius, commercial music today is really nothing more than a cesspool for the talentless, actors get famous for one movie and proceed to do shit for the remainder of their short careers, a whack job like Daniel Day-Lewis is few and far between, someone who takes pride in the craft and the art of the part and not the interviews and after-parties, music is much the same, bands manufactured to sell records while the label takes the money and they get to date a Simpson sister, it seems to me that these yobs who go into acting and music for the fame are nothing more than life size puppets, morons who don't understand a thing about creation and the reasons for doing it, they are glory hounds hellbent on getting their ridiculous mugs on the covers of magazines, hoping to make spectacles of themselves and then getting pissed when they are exposed for the knobs they really are...

my favorites have always been the underdogs, the losers, the fuck-ups and the brilliant... the Replacements, Joy Division, the Smiths, Destroyer, the Stone Roses, John Fante, Henry Miller, Celine, Nelson Algren, the ones who did it for the art, they didn't do it to be famous they did it because they had to, they did it because they felt a need to pour out the contents of their hearts so the world for the most part could ignore them, yes they had a following but many were neither rich nor all that famous, they were just people doing what they loved for no other reason than that they loved it, tell me John Mayer or Garth Brooks or Madonna or Timberlake or Lindsay Lohan, Paris Cumbucket, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, Good Charlotte give a fuck about anything other than being in the limelight, they are the reason why culture in America is a horrible fucking joke, they wouldn't know art if it fell out of their ass...

So what is fame and who wants it? it seems everyone and anyone and if you have enough mental deficiencies you can get on a reality show and really make a fucking tit out of yourself, then you can get a modicum of fame for being nothing more than a drama queen or dipshit, it seems fame in and of itself is a national illness that we'd like to export to other countries just like we do our special brand of democracy, fame in America is achieved for no other reason than you can be a bigger asshole in front of a camera then the guy next to you, it doesn't take talent or intellect in fact those two things are really more of a detriment...

what's even more interesting is the levels of local fame that people strive for be it strippers, local bands with no talent but tons of attitude, the coffee shop girl who paints murals and what not, i'm not deriding all of these types, not by a long shot, i've met some brilliant and talented people who were struggling to create on their own terms, i'd count myself as one of those types minus of course the brilliance and talent but they are out there and i usually find them on bar stool in some tiny dive or in a coffee house on a saturday night or at the park early in the morning, what they are not doing is making a spectacle of themselves and shouting for everyone to hear about said art and the trials and tribulations of being a trustafarian or mental case, they create their own little fame in their own little heads and you can't order a cup of coffee without hearing about the latest setback in their meteoric rise to international superstardom, egads...

the only time i wish to ever be famous is when at the local boozer, i don't mind being the most famous guy at the bar if for no other reason then i get my beer faster, other than that i don't need it, i kinda like my humble little life, i like hanging with the imaginary boy, i like the conversations i have with my friends, i like the fact that i spend most of my spare time reading, writing, listening to tunes, dwelling on the existential aspects of the universe and what not, the only bright lights i want to see are the stars twinkling over my house as i have an evening cigarette and daydream through life, i'll pass on the national illness, i don't think there's a shortage of morons anyway, they can battle each other, that's fine with me.