recognition

Even before the orchestra tour to New York, and especially while we were there, people have been asking me what kind of "recognition" I've been getting from the Times article. I'm not quite sure how to respond - possibly they have imagined swarms of tourists, crowding around with their copies of the February 18th Arts section, asking for my autograph - or big tour buses pulling over, parking illegally on 5th Ave so everyone could get a picture with me. I don't want to disappoint anyone, but all this attention still hasn't transformed me into a tourist attraction.

I guess one of the odd features of modern celebrity, though, is how people's curiosity is mostly not so much about the celebrity himself - we all know more than we want to about most celebrities already - but about other people's curiosity about the celebrity. Most of the coverage of Anna Nicole Smith's death, which I tried carefully to avoid but heard anyway, was about all the other coverage of her death. So it becomes this self-perpetuating cycle - similar to a hurricane or some other extreme weather pattern - which only subsides once we find something else to talk about.

Not to liken myself to Anna Nicole Smith, or any other celebrity/cataclysmic event. It was more of a short turbulence, temporarily lifting my blog hits into 3 figures (I installed a StatCounter on Sunday, so I could check) and then gradually returning to the normal handful. Still, I found myself wondering, with all those hundreds of people visiting my site for a few days - there must be some way to leverage all of this attention! Could I use it to promote some noble cause, or maybe to broadcast some thought-provoking idea or opinion - maybe, like Al Gore, I could use my temporary fame to promote some social cause? Or find some way to get people to at least stay more than 5 seconds?

In the end, I think I did enjoy some recognition, but not the kinds you might expect. The story itself really determined the form the recognition would take - Dan Wakin described me as "shy, serious, sober, solid, conscientious", so obviously no one was going to visit my website looking for hot gossip or nude pics. They visited because they connected to a certain character, which Dan Wakin portrayed in the article, and wanted to see whether the real-life version matched. And while I don't think the article completely encapsulates my personality, it was recognizably me.

I actually saw Dan Wakin at the concert on Tuesday. It was a strange encounter, since I wanted to thank him and acknowledge what he had written, but I wasn't sure how. He told me that my story served a certain purpose for the article - maybe that purpose was a bit of drama, or structure, or just plain sympathy, for a person struggling in artistic and career limbo... I'm honestly not quite sure what made my particular story work so well for what he wanted, and I might have asked.

Still, it's a certain reassurance just to find one's story can serve a purpose! There were things in the article that most of my friends, and even my family didn't know about - but having read them, everyone seems to understand me a little better. And maybe, now that I've seen my character sketched out on the pages of the New York Times, I can find ways to extend it, loosen and open it up. After all, there's no point being shy and reserved when everyone knows so much about you already, and likes you despite it all! That's the best sort of recognition, I think.