Stars

I got the idea for this post from a friend yesterday, whom I will not name but I am sending him this once it's written.  We were walking downtown near an area that is supposed to be a star magnet and I was asked if I had encountered any.  I replied that no, I have not and even if I saw them I likely wouldn't recognize them.  Nothing against stars, by the way, Hollywood, rock or other, but I'm just not in the know about these things.  I don't see movies much and when I do they are usually foreign, indy or art house (yes, Gentle Reader, I am a snob)

Do I have anything against stars?  No.  Am I envious?  No.  Do I care?  Not really.  I mentioned to my friend, with what I thought was gentle sarcasm, that really everyone is a star.  Most of us just don't get paid for it.  I had a conversation like this once many years ago when I was twenty-one with a co-worker at a construction site where I was working at the time.  I mentioned after talking about a movie about famous jazz singer Billy Holliday, Lady Sings the Blues, that really I didn't see what the big deal was about her or Diana Ross who portrayed her.  When you really think of it, everyone suffers and everyone is a hero even if they don't get recognition or credit for it.  My co-worker didn't quite agree.

I have been inspired many times over by people I have known, ordinary anonymous people who will never be remembered sung or written about: by single mothers successfully raising their children in less than friendly circumstances; by mental health sufferers bravely facing not only their illness but public and social stigma in their quest to live their lives on their own terms and to flourish; by people, often of modest means, giving of their money, their time, their hearts and their lives to support and advocate for the homeless and for people with disabilities; by those spiritually gifted individuals who always know exactly what to say to comfort and encourage others when they are facing death or grieving over the loss of people they love; of people living in poverty and refusing to view themselves as poor while they develop and exploit their creative, spiritual and humanistic gifts.  I could go on...

In a way we are also all stars in our own personal movie: sometimes a drama, or a comedy, or a horror film, or a romance, or often all of the above.  Every day we rewrite the script and so we cope in the cruel grey anonymity of ordinary life.

Of course we need our stars and our heroes.  We are often bottomless chasms in perpetual need of inspiration: be they Hollywood royalty, rock and roll royalty or British royalty.  Unaware that each of us is a star we feed parasitically off of borrowed charisma.  There is nothing at all wrong with being inspired and it is perfectly legitimate to look beyond ourselves for inspiration and role-modelling.  I think we also need to learn to discriminate between what has value and what doesn't.  There is in our society an astounding lack of values and ethics and this turns many of us into amoral mannequins wearing whatever horrid tacky rag that the ruling zeitgeist dictates to be in fashion.

We are all stars, we are all heroes and we are all royalty.  Now we just need to learn how to behave.
I am reminded here of one of my few brushes with famous people.  I was showing a number of my paintings in a Yaletown café, some twenty years ago.  A young man walking two Irish setter dogs looked inside the café and loudly declared to me how much he loves my art.  I graciously said thank you and wished him a lovely day.  Then he left.  Who was he? David Duchovny, also known as Fox Mulder from the TV show the X Files.  By the way, I still have never seen one single episode of the X Files, though I am still thinking of seeing it on Youtube.  And until a few moments later when someone told me who that was I didn't have a clue.  And you know something, Gentle Reader?  I still don't care.