Beware the meteoric rise to fame and fortune, that’s what I always say! If I thought it would make any difference I’d advise you to run a mile the next time it looks like this is about to happen to you but no one ever does, of course. No one ever does.
I speak from personal experience here, of course. I always speak from personal experience – either real or imagined. It’s got to be either the one or the other, after all. If it’s not the one way then then you’ll find that it’s probably the other. Folk always seem to imagine that fame and fortune is what they want but that’s only because they don’t know what a burden it is. If ‘burden’ is even the right word here. The curse of fame and fortune would be more like it.
Sometimes people become famous for no reason, all of a sudden. Everyone knows about them, and no one knows how this happened. No one knows how they know – they just do. Everybody knows, instantaneously. That is the way it happened to me anyway – it was like a magnesium flashgun going off in my head. A sudden blinding light making it so I couldn’t tell whether my eyes were open or closed. There was no escaping the light.
My life changed forever from that moment on and if that ever happens to you then you’ll find that it’s not an easy thing to cope with. It’s the very last thing you wanted to happen but what you want or don’t want doesn’t actually matter at all. That is the Big Secret no one ever wants to know! One minute you’re getting on with your life, minding your own business, keeping your nose clean, and so on, and then the next you’re Universally Famous. Through no fault of your own, I might add.
As I sit here at my writing desk I find myself wondering how many people are actually capable of comprehending the essence of what it is I’m saying here. The sort of fame that I’m talking about here is very far from the normal everyday sort, after all. It’s not like being a wildly popular movie star who everyone recognises on sight, or like being a mighty rock star standing on stage in the iconic rockstar stance who gets the fervent crowd to roar out the chorus to the well-known and iconic rock anthem he is belting out. This is normal everyday fame, which really isn’t that much of a big deal when it comes down to it. Normal fame is merely an opaque metaphor for the type of thing I’m talking about here – it’s only a faint echo of the real thing, a terribly feeble imitation.
The type of fame I’m talking about is all-pervading and self-arising – there’s no need for any public relations, in other words. There’s no need for any hit singles or chart-topping platinum-selling albums or any of that kind of rubbish. That’s all just cheap vulgarity and it’s not something I personally want to have anything to do with. That type of stuff isn’t a patch on what I’m talking about, which regular folk simply can’t conceive of. ‘How dreadful it must be to be like normal regular folk in this regard.’ I reflect soberly to myself – and not for the first time either! ‘What a thoroughly appalling state of affairs it is to be ruled by convention and hemmed in on all sides by popularly held misconceptions…’ I feel myself cringe even to think about it – that must surely be the worst fate to befall any sentient life form. I can’t think of anything worse, anyhow. Can you?
