Brush With Fame

Why do we care about meeting famous people?  They are just people, after all.  Whether by the law of randomness, or by the “six degrees of separation,” it is likely that our paths will intersect those of the famous and the infamous (not to mention Kevin Bacon) on many occasions during our lifetimes.  As the saying goes, famous people put their pants on one leg at a time.  Johnny Carson would famously rail against those who could not contain their excitement in his presence, especially one hapless fool who actually asked for an autograph while the Mighty Carson was conducting business at a urinal.

Proximity to greatness does not confer any special status.  Standing next to Julia Roberts at Starbucks puts the ordinary person no closer to winning an Oscar.  Catching a glimpse of Brad Pitt does not make a man handsome.  Shaking Bill Gates’ hand does not make you rich.  Rubbing shoulders with Richard Feynmann does not make you smart.

As I think back, I have had many brushes with famous people over the years.  For several weeks, my Facebook profile picture showed me standing with Milan Lucic of the Boston Bruins at the team’s Stanley Cup celebration.  It was exciting to meet him and the other players.  They clean up well and they are all surprisingly down-to-earth.  Most of them are about the age of my son.  It is fun to imagine their own mothers—simple women in small towns who probably cringed as I did every time their sons took a hit on the ice.  These boys have had their share of broken facial bones and knocked out teeth. 

One time, while flying from Miami to San Francisco with my six-month-old son on my lap, I was sitting in the bulkhead at the front of coach while famed 49er wide receiver Jerry Rice was sitting on the other side of the first class wall just in front of me.  We were living in San Francisco at that time.  I looked down and noticed that my son was wearing a tiny San Francisco football jersey with Rice’s number 80 on it.  I brought my son up to meet him—to have his own brush with greatness; Rice signed the jersey across my son’s belly.  The jersey and the faint traces of Rice's autograph still hang in my son’s room.

I once bought a book from Shelley Winters and had her autograph it.  She thought I reminded her of her own daughter.  She talked to me for a long while about my college studies and career aspirations as the crowd became agitated behind me.

My family once took a vacation in the keys.  Actor/comedian Dom DeLuise was staying at the same quiet hotel with his family.  He was an ordinary man—not particularly funny—as he sat at the poolside soaking up the rays.  I recognized him from television even at the young age of twelve.  I was star-struck!  No matter how nonchalant I attempted to be, I could not get over that this famous man was bathing in the same pool.  He had a small son who was adorable and precocious.  He loved the water and kept flinging himself into it, and then paddling up to the surface.  Dom and his wife Carol kept yelling, “Way to go, Mikey!”  My daughter and I became devoted fans of the TV show Gilmore Girls.  I could not help laughing every time this same “Mikey” appeared in his supporting role as the addle-minded TJ, Luke’s unfortunate brother-in-law.

I greeted the late Sonny Bono on a business trip in Palm Springs, having the opportunity to dine in his yummy Italian restaurant.  On another business trip to Chicago, Steve Martin and his wife dined one table over from us at another fine Italian restaurant. I could barely swallow my food as once again I was starstruck. I went around the revolving door at the NBA store in Manhattan with Beau Bridges, and nearly bumped right into Jack Lemmon at Hammacher-Schlemmer on Rodeo Drive.  

None of these was as exciting to me, however, as meeting my childhood idol and music legend, Van Cliburn.  Growing up as a pianist in the 60s, Van Cliburn was “all that.”  An American prodigy who won the Tschaikowsky Competition in Moscow during the Cold War, Van Cliburn was the de facto artist of choice for every occasion.  He became a household name despite being an exclusively classical artist—a handsome boy possessed of unusual height and flawless Southern charm.  When I was around the age of thirteen, Van Cliburn came to Miami to play a solo recital at the Miami Auditorium.  I begged my mother for tickets to the concert but they were prohibitively expensive.  Then one day my favorite classical radio station—the now defunct WTMI—announced a contest.  The prize was two tickets to the Cliburn recital and a private meeting with the artist.  All I had to do was write an answer to the question, “Why do you want to meet Van Cliburn?”

A week later I received a call that I had won the radio contest. We had seats in the third row.  Before the concert, a representative from the radio station came to our seats and escorted my mother and me backstage to meet Van Cliburn.  He traveled with his mother who, although as demur as a Southern belle, made it clear she could be as fierce as a lioness to anyone who threatened her son.  I could not get over his larger-than-life appearance; he had porcelain skin that blushed like a schoolgirl and the broadest hands I had ever seen.  I brought the [pink] program from a solo recital I had recently done showing that I had performed the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody #12—a piece for which he was well known.  He looked at my tiny hands and feigned disbelief.  I asked him childish questions, such as “Do you ever get nervous?” and “How much do you practice every day?”  He smiled graciously, explaining that a well-prepared artist need never worry about nerves.  We had our picture taken together.  He showed me how he washed his hands, “in a symbolic gesture,” before every performance.  Then my mother and I were ushered out and back to our choice seats.  I was breathless through the entire performance.  As Cliburn bowed after his final encore, he caught sight of me in the audience and gave a barely perceptible nod in my direction.

Some thirty years later, I entered the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs.  After the first round of competition, the contestants were called one-by-one across the stage to shake hands with the man himself.  I saw the same hands, the same flawless skin, the same lilting drawl, but there was no recognition in his eyes. I was just another among the throngs of admirers who felt a false connection with him because of his fame, his hovering presence in my life.  Later that week, at a reception for the competitors, I had the opportunity to recall the event of our first meeting with him in a more casual setting.  He smiled and laughed politely at a young girl’s folly misplaced in the middle-aged woman I had become.  And with the turn of his head, I, and the memory of that moment, were gone again from his consciousness, replaced by a fresh conversation and an old friend.

There is something different about superstars and ordinary people.  Their status derives from an ability to leave their imprint on others.  Mine assures me that I can disappear untethered, back into the madding crowd.

Tomorrow's blog:  The Number You Have Reached Is Not Giving Money At This Time