REWRITE --- Fame is a Mood Killer

The following is a rewrite of an old post. It's about 70% the same but I made a few new additions to it and polished it up in order to share it on substack. I figure it's different enough so I might as well share it on Hive again. It took almost as long to edit as it did to write in the first place!

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A few years ago, I wrote an article called "Getting over my fear of becoming Famous". This is a sentiment that some people can't really wrap their head around, but I believe many artists can understand.

Fame was one of the scariest things to me for a big portion of my life. I feared it to the point that I have sabotaged many chances at success over the years. I kept myself small to stay safe.

I’ve overcome much of this fear and no longer get in my own way but I still find fame to be an incredibly uncomfortable phenomena, and completely unnatural when at the scale that we are used to seeing it.

I don’t like treating famous people any different from anyone else and I don’t ever want anyone to ever put me on a pedestal either.

Two days ago I was able to meet one of my favorite artists. It was kind of funny, and I am happy I did, but it was incredibly awkward, because fame is a mood killer.

I went to a concert to see an all female progressive metal band that is surprisingly unknown in the music scene considering how good they are. I will share their music another time, I don’t want to mention anyone’s identity in this post.

I realized before the show that the opening band was on the indie label run by the artist I ended up meeting so I had a feeling he would be there even before we decided to buy tickets.

I did not imagine we would meet though.

After the second band, the one we had come for, the main act came on and I turned my head and saw said artist about 3 meters away in a sea of people.

I imagine that about one third of the people there knew who he was, but it’s Japan so everyone tries not to make a big deal of it, and I also want to respect his right to enjoy his night as a normal person.

He wasn't close enough to talk to and no one in the audience was talking (as I said, it's Japan), so it would have been very unnatural to start a conversation and it likely would have prompted many more people to stop pretending they didn't know who he was.

So I said to myself "We will have our chance to talk, if not today, then someday soon. Maybe it'll happen later tonight, who knows, but I won't force it".

If he were just some famous person, I wouldn't think much about him being there. If he were just an artist that I like, I wouldn't feel the same urge to talk to him. Here's the thing. If I made a list of 10 people I'd like to collaborate with one day, he'd probably be in the top 3.

As much as I wanted to just leave it be, part of my mind was screaming “It’s your fucking chance to meet someone who you’d love to get to know and dream about working with one day!!!!! Ahhhhhhhh!”

I found myself strategizing ways to create an opportunity to talk to him. I imagined where he might hang out after the show and thought of ways to make myself more noticeable.

I realize how silly and childish this is. I’m not embarrassed by it because I understand it. To me, he is not a god among men. He is not something holy that I want to touch. I want more than anything to treat him like a normal person, but he has something I want and I can’t help but want it.

He has success making the kind of art that I want to make! He is respected for his words and actions and he does a lot of atypical things that most people wouldn’t have thought of, but I have.

He is essentially the closest thing I can imagine to a very very successful version of myself. He's accomplished a lot of the things I've wanted to accomplish, and done them in ways that I would have done them, ways that I haven't seen anyone else do before.

His band run a pay-what-you-want festival. They did a documentary about connecting with indigenous tribes. He directs his bands music videos. He directed a movie and wrote two books and has a solo career. He does everything under his bands label which seems to be run like a co-op rather than a company. He does documentaries about artists who are doing interesting things.

As I said, he does stuff I am trying to do, but on a much bigger scale.

I can’t help but want to learn directly from him, to pick his brain or to ride on his coattails. His audience is largely my audience but they know him and they don’t know me, and if they knew me, my life would be a lot easier.

So I'm there, watching a battle between self interest and dignity play out within my own psyche, and trying to act normal. I manage alright. I behave with dignity and enjoy the night.

I want to respect him as a normal person, and give him the space he deserves and not interfere with his ability to live a normal life. I want to stop looking at him like something I can use and see him for who he is. I hope he likes me, but I don’t want to feel upset if he doesn’t. I don't want to do anything I wouldn't do anyway just to get him to like me.

I just want it to not be a big deal!

And so I acted like it wasn’t a big deal, even though my brain is already fantasizing about him producing my album or helping me to promote a Japanese version of my book because I’m pretty sure he’d love it and want to help me produce it.

I know in some places it’s normal to ask someone directly for this kind of opportunity but in my circles (not particularly because it's Japan, but more because it's pretty art-focused rather than profit-focused), it’d be seen as overly pushy and obnoxious and it wouldn’t go well. I also want to know him personally before I make any commitments. Just because he makes art I like doesn’t mean we will see eye to eye.

And so I am trying my best to play it cool and just see what happens.

And so after 45 minutes, my back is tired and my gf and I still have drink tickets we haven’t used and so we go to order some drinks before the show ends.

We sit down at one of the the only two tables in the venue and listen to the last two songs. Right after we sit down, I see him coming to sit down at the next table with what looks like a business acquaintance he knows rather well.

My partner is shitting bricks. She admires him as much as I do and has similar hopes to work with him in some capacity. She also hasn't had as much exposure as I have to famous people or artists she respects.

We are speaking Mandarin and he only speaks Japanese but she’s talking about him and laughing and sweating and acting very unnatural because we’ve discussed the possibility of meeting him before. Even if he is famous, he is connected to some friends of friends, and used to spend time in the same places as us before he got so busy with various projects.

He is both very close and very very far away. Easy to connect with if the universe wills it, very difficult otherwise.

I also have a very distracting inner dialogue going on. I resolve to speak to him if there is any topic at all to bring up besides “I love your music ahhhhh!!!!” because that is not something you say someone out for a night of music if you want them to treat you like an equal.

My partner says she wants his socks (his bands merchandise) but they were sold out. A thought popped into my brain: “Not the best opener but it’s that or just let the opportunity to talk to him pass me by” I tell myself.

I wait for his friend to stop talking to him.

“Hey, sorry… are you going to print more socks? She wanted a pair.”

And he looks at me trying to figure out what the hell I am talking about. I’m sure strangers talk to him from time to time even though Japanese people tend not to bother people and many have no desire to to talk to their favorite artists because they'd rather idolize them. Yes that's a thing. When they do talk to him it’s probably always praising him, just saying hi, or asking for pictures.

He doesn't seem to know for sure that these two foreigners know who he is, and so the question confuses him.

I can also tell immediately after speaking to him he is a shy guy who doesn’t like taking to strangers.

“I forgot where I got these. Check out my shoes though, they are cute aren’t they?”

I awkwardly nod and his friend tries to get his attention again.

Well that was weird.

I can’t figure out if he likes to play games with people who recognize him or if he just doesn’t want to be treated as a celebrity and is trying to deflect from us acknowledging who he is.

It’s almost as if he wants to say to us “I’m not rejecting you or our interaction but we are strangers so lets start from something other than me and what I do”.

At least, this would be consistent with everything he shows of himself in public. He is elusive despite being very easy to find around Tokyo. He keeps a wall up despite laying everything bare in his art.

Before we had any other interactions, a bouncer came and kicked us out because the show was over and Japanese venues are really stingy about letting people hang out afterwards. Apparently even VIP were getting kicked out and our favorite artist trailed behind us in a huge line going up the stairs.

I caught him glance at us once or twice but we didn’t want to be obsessive (too late?) and so we just tried to regroup and go home.

The problem with fame is that it creates a massive imbalance of supply and demand. You are in low demand and high supply and your favorite artists are in the tightest supply with extremely high demand.

You are uneven by nature and this has to be neutralized somehow if you want to have any semblance of a normal interaction. It takes a whole lot to balance the interaction to where both people are equals. Inner peace, a concerted effort and trying to play it cool only take you so far. The only thing that can equalize the relationship are all of those combined with repeated exposure which is often completely out of your control.

In China, I saw one of my favorite folk singers in a parking lot talking on the phone and just nodded at him. I left a message on his social media and he said he recognized me from a few of their shows and invited me for drinks in the comment section of a public post. We met by chance a second time, as he was starting to get famous, and found out we had mutual friends.

This is really the kind of insane situation that needs to occur in order to quickly be able to interact as equals when someone is famous. That or you need to create work that they will notice and respect.

Back to Tokyo.

If I knew I had many opportunities to speak with this guy naturally, I would have waited for a better opportunity and been less awkward.

But nothing can change the fact that there are things he has that I want and I am currently no one to him.

I don’t like being on either end of this kind of interaction and I imagine that neither does he.

Most people don't realize it, but fame is a mood killer.

If all you’ve had are shallow desires for fame and attention, you can hardly imagine how lonely it must be to have everyone after you for something. For most people it’s less of a desire to collborate and understand and more of an accomplishment to show off to their friends. It’s either clout or connections.

Once you reach a certain level of popularity, you have to make yourself sparse or constantly have people treat you as an idolized version of yourself that they create in their mind.

I would love to get to know this guy, but I don’t want to make him feel like I am just feasting upon him. I don’t want to force it. I don’t want to wait for it either.

And so I use this kind of interaction as fuel to work at my own projects harder and to be more of who I came here to be. If I keep at it, he may notice me through my work and approach me instead of making me feel like a desperate fan who wants a piece of his success.

I am glad I said something.

I don't have to feel like I didn't take the opportunity.

I kind of flopped it but that's how it goes, and the universe will decide if I have another chance to get to know him.

I hope our next interaction feels closer to equal footing, however it comes. And I do think we will meet again, whether he remembers this awkward interaction or not.

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